Christians judge god as good. Gnostic Christians judge god as evil. Which religion is correct?

I will answer sincere questions, but please don't make a game of harassing me for my POV with debate where you're not really trying to understand.

All your arguments (I mean that in the philosophical sense, not to be argumentative) amount to the value of delayed gratification in the near term for greater gratification later. I agree that can be a valuable strategy, but it does not address the core of my question to you.

Previously you seem to be arguing for the inherent sinfulness of pleasure/gratification, not just the idea of waiting so that you can have even greater pleasure/gratification later. What I'm asking is, what makes pleasure/gratification enjoyed now, 'wrong/sinful'?

What is it about my question that makes you think I'm trying to harass you? Why do you assume I do not want understanding?

I should add that you have changed your online persona since I first noticed your posts. You came across as fundamentalist at first. You have quickly gotten more methodical and logical in your approach since then. Bravo. That is not at all incompatible with belief in God.

Pleasure should just be an automatic byproduct of living a good life. E.g. if you help an old lady carry her groceries, you should do so because you reason that it's the best use of your time and effort at a given moment and not because you're seeking some kind of reward or gratification or satisfaction. That reward/gratification/satisfaction will happen regardless, but it shouldn't be your goal.

I agree that pleasure should be the product of a good life. What I don’t see is that after a long day of satisfying work feeding the homeless and helping elderly widows (both of which I recall doing), that it would be wrong for my wife/lover/SO and I to have a beer, play a video game, make love, or any other benign pleasurable activity.

I get the thing about ‘priorities’. I’ve said many times that whatever you hold as your highest priority is your God.

As a theist I believe nothing should ever take His place. I have been amazed at how many religions put all kinds of things ahead of God. I chuckle whenever I happen to see an ad for one of the largest religious organizations in the US, they put their priority right out there for all to see. They call it “Family First” .

"I agree that pleasure should be the product of a good life. What I don’t see is that after a long day of satisfying work feeding the homeless and helping elderly widows (both of which I recall doing), that it would be wrong for my wife/lover/SO and I to have a beer, play a video game, make love, or any other benign pleasurable activity."


LL replied:
Well, if you're really honest with yourself (and with God), you are always open to seeing how you can sacrifice something for something better, i.e. because you trust that there will ultimately be more happiness in what you get in return for the thing you sacrifice.

Hopefully what they mean is that participants in the economy should be putting their concern for the people they are responsible for first

Lu:14:26: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

I feel like we are having two different conversations. I haven't made any claims of being sinless nor have I tried the ploy of claiming things to be 'relatively less sinful'. I'm making the case that pleasure per se, is not sinful. As the book says, "nothing is unclean of itself."

You are constantly emphasizing 'sacrifice', as if our sacrifice will get God's approval. I see two problems with that. It implies that our sacrifice (rather than Jesus' sacrifice) is how we 'earn' our way in. The book says you can't do that.

Another way to look at it is that we are not really sacrificing anything. If we are counting on a big reward for our sacrifice, how does that make us any better than a man investing his money to get it back with interest later. There is no sacrifice there anyway, just delayed gratification.

I think the Christian man will want the same things now as he will in heaven. I can't imagine God not wanting us to enjoy some of those blessings now. Again from the book: "I say unto you, now is the kingdom of God come unto you. "

Maybe some of them, but I'm sure you can think of at least one religion that places 'family' above all else, even to the extent that they won't even give it up for heaven. Nope, the book puts in hyperbole to make what your priority should be perfectly clear:

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Lu:14:26: If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

You can't control pleasure, or temptation for that matter. Those are just things you experience passively. Sin happens when you choose to pursue pleasure or otherwise allow yourself to give into temptation, i.e. because you can and should choose to resist and pursue the high/narrow path instead.

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You can't control pleasure, or temptation for that matter. Those are just things you experience passively. Sin happens when you choose to pursue pleasure or otherwise allow yourself to give into temptation, i.e. because you can and should choose to resist and pursue the high/narrow path instead.

You should be a bit more careful with how you phrase things. There is nothing biblical that says the mere engagement in pleasure is a sin.

If you do think the mere engagement in pleasure is a sin, then you have a very, very weird concept of what sin entails, or you have what you believe to be severe damage that makes you desperately want to believe in such. What you believe to be severe damage can equal: no one wanting to have sex with you, being gay or bi but not wanting to admit it, or some other similar reason for this desperate need of yours to push celibacy.

Anyone who has engaged in sex purely for pleasure knows there is nothing inherently sinful in such...but I've no doubt you equate even the mere mention of such, as promoting free sex for all / free affairs, etc...not even recognising such can exist within a marriage....nor that you take the extreme without even looking at the foundation. Just like you do for other arguments in this realm.

You can't control pleasure, or temptation for that matter. Those are just things you experience passively. Sin happens when you choose to pursue pleasure or otherwise allow yourself to give into temptation, i.e. because you can and should choose to resist and pursue the high/narrow path instead.

Did you actually read what you quoted before replying to it? I said that the experience of pleasure isn't a sin because it just happens to you regardless without you pursuing it as such

The pleasure itself isn't the sin. It's making pleasure the objective

'Sin' just means to 'miss the mark' of a target

You don't understand sin.

It sounds like you are lost in the dream of sexual freedom without consequences.

I think I know what you are saying and I sympathize with how hard it is to explain.

You just have to be careful of how easy it is to interpret what you say as 'puritanical', in the worst sense of the term.

Correctly understood, Christianity sets us free of that mindset, not enslaves us to it.

I also appreciate how doing the right thing and helping others can be the most pleasurable thing.

Ironically, when I look deeply enough into human nature, I see that our biggest failure related to this is not giving others the opportunity to have the pleasure of giving us help. Maybe I’m projecting here but I think we are conditioned to think we should be self sufficient and never burden others with having to help us.

Reading that back to myself I see it didn’t come close to what I wanted to say. I’ll try again.

It is often said that the reason we bond so well with dogs is the unadulterated pure love they give us. I disagree, I think it’s the opposite.. I think it is that dogs (or any pet animal) give us the opportunity to give them the uncomplicated love and help that is so pleasurable to us. We rarely get to do that with other people. Feeding the poor and helping elderly women across the street is a good and necessary thing, but it’s a poor substitute for experiencing the giving of love in our everyday existence. We are starved for that experience.

There is no escape from being a pleasure seeking being, no matter how you look at it.

If we purely talk about pleasure - what you wrote as sin, happens within marriage. Which is why I wrote what I wrote. I'm not surprised you couldn't figure it out.

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The pleasure itself isn't the sin. It's making pleasure the objective

And yet again, nothing biblical about this. All quotes in the bible related to such being a sin, provide context relating to this occurring outside marriage.

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'Sin' just means to 'miss the mark' of a target

Like a corporate goal? Or perhaps not winning gold at the olympics?

I've also heard that it is anything that takes you further away from God. I've heard that it is working against his will. Etc. Those are good interpretations, never stated anywhere in the Bible. On the other hand, specific sins are mentioned. That said, there are problems with any definition, beyond the bibles, that I have ever seen, usually once again, relating to interpretation.

It appears that I understand it way better than you. By the way, I don't say that expecting you to believe that at all. I find your 'understanding' very saddening.

And yet again, you are projecting. I've already mentioned before that my posts aimed at the flaws in your own. I've actually told you next to nothing about what I think is best for people in this realm. You would have to ask yourself why you feel the need to keep jumping to conclusions, despite being already informed of this.

Some people question everything around them, and some people question only in a narrower field, never realising that questioning everything around them will help them when it comes to questioning the narrower field.

I don't understand you because you don't seem to be able to differentiate between the experience of pleasure and the seeking of pleasure as a goal/priority.

You also don't seem to understand that sin is inevitable.

You keep implying the expectation of some sin-free realm within marriage

Marriage is just a way of lessening sin compared with indulging in lust outside of marriage.

Well, I think I understand sin but maybe I'm in conflict with the Bible and you're not. When you have it figured out, please preach it to me in a way that I can understand.

I think it's a mistake to try to define sin in terms of rigid statutory lists of sins.

Just a hunch based on what you said about consensual extramarital affairs or whatever it was.

Definitely question, but also follow through with the thoroughest analysis you can muster of all the reasoning you can discover behind the things you question. Also trace out as many possible consequences for things, like a chess player trying to ensure the safety of a piece before changing its position. Also try to see the patterns and chains of cause and effect in the things you see and know are happening in the world.

I believe you post here for pleasure.

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Marriage is just a way of lessening sin compared with indulging in lust outside of marriage.

You have no justification for that at all.

Bible Gateway 1 Corinthians 7 :: NIV. Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

Pauls recommendation was to preachers, and those who could be like him. It was a recommendation. He never implied it was a sin.

That's only possible if you wish to remove your blinkers. You don't have to disbelieve, you only have to be willing to deeply question, and arrive at answers that are consistent across all examples. There is nothing wrong with deeply understanding why you believe what you do.

I think it's a mistake to try to define sin in terms of rigid statutory lists of sins.

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Just a hunch based on what you said about consensual extramarital affairs or whatever it was.

You think that playing devils advocate makes one on the devils side?

These are good things. As long as your answers are able to provide consistent results, then you are on the right path to seeing what is behind patterns. But if they are inconsistent, then you are on the wrong path, or somewhat the wrong path.

Leadfoot wrote:
"I think I know what you are saying and I sympathize with how hard it is to explain."


LL replied:
I think it's harder to understand, because of how badly your mind doesn't want to give it consideration, more so than that it is actually hard to explain. When you're open to it, it's very easy to understand.

It says here that it is good not to marry, but that marriage is pragmatic. In other words, celibacy is the bulls-eye, but at least try to hit the target

I really think we have a different understanding about what is sin and what is not sin.

Idk and I don't want to sift back through past posts. If you want to restate something you said earlier, I can re-respond to it, but I think this is getting tedious because you're just trying to convince me to abandon things that I have realized through deep study.

You're not making any sense when you say cryptic things like this.

As I showed you before, the mind is capable of imagining inconsistency where there isn't any.

3 The husband should meet his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should do the same for her husband.

But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

6 Now as a concession, not a command, I say this.[a] 7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

4 The wife doesn’t have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Don’t refuse to meet each other’s needs unless you both agree for a short period of time to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come back together again so that Satan might not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I’m saying this to give you permission; it’s not a command. 7 I wish all people were like me, but each has a particular gift from God: one has this gift, and another has that one.

- If I say that gay people following their genetic drive isn't a sin - it isn't because I am gay - it is because you haven't considered the double standard involved in any making gay sex a sin and heterosexual sex not.
- if I say there's nothing inherently sinful in seeking pleasure, I am not saying that free sex for all isn't sinful. I have further permutations of thought on that, but they are irrelevant in this particular discussion.

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As I showed you before, the mind is capable of imagining inconsistency where there isn't any.

I already know this. That's why testing is necessary, and why keeping an open mind when things go against your 'principles' is necessary when tests go against you. Either the test has flaws, or your beliefs have flaws.

These are complex rationalizations you're getting into. You're clearly trying to rationalize things because you don't want to understand why sin is sin.

No, there's also the possibility that you find flaws in a flawed way because you want to reject something that you shouldn't actually reject.