Is it egotistical to think that a God would die for you?
Is it egotistical to think that a God would die for you?
People who believe in the barbaric human blood sacrifice of the Triune Jesus/God must believe that the greatest force ever to exist decided that humans, lowly creations whom we are told are infinitely inferior to God, are somehow more important than God’s own life and that he would give it up for believers.
That is like a slave master dying in place of his slave. A rather silly notion to me.
Jesus preached that we should develop a humble character with little self-pride.
How is placing your own life above Triune Jesus/God’s showing a humble character as you think that he would die for you? That is taking self-pride to the maximum.
I think that those with good morals will know that no noble and gracious God would demand the sacrifice of a so called son just to prove it's benevolence.
Yet Christians who think they are moral will believe that God would do such a despicable thing as having his son killed even as scriptures say that God prefers repentance to sacrifice and does not believe in asking or accepting a ransom.
Is thinking that to believe that God would die for you the epitome of an inflated ego?
If not, what could possibly inflate an ego more than that?
This is a pretty flawed rationalization of something that has numerous other interpretations. At best it's a decent point with a shallow treatment.
It's only egotistical if it was expected by us. Most Christians glorify Jesus because he sacrificed himself for such flawed creatures. They understand their unworthiness compared to their deity, and use the sacrifice to show God's unconditional love for humanity.
So it's not "we deserve this" but "God is great." It's an act of self-deprecation to admit this fully. Hell, their are litanies written into most masses that express this same idea. How many Christians have uttered "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the Word and I shall be healed."
In short, it's only egotistical if you're egotistical about it. It's not inherently anything. And few, if any, go around thinking "well, we deserved eternal salvation despite our sins."
So your argument falls flat, at least in how you try to frame it.
I would contend that there's some egotism to saying "we're God's chosen people" as a sect, race, creed, etc. This happens on occasion. At that point, the message becomes not love but sectarian division and elitism. But that isn't what you're arguing.
I think there's also personal egotism in those who claim to "know" the truth, instead of just saying "this is what I believe." But a lot of that can be attributed to gaps in logic or education, not necessarily deliberate egoism.
And if you approach it a different way, God and Jesus are not the same person so God didn't sacrifice Himself to save us from Himself.
To put it the Mormon way: Jesus suffered our sins and hardships so we wouldn't have to suffer eternal guilt and shame over them (because we, as perfect conscious beings (our spirits think a lot differently than our corporeal selves) would be perfectly conscious of our sins).
As Mormon with Jewish ancestry, I am clearly better than you.
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As I understand the current philosophical debate, the discussion of "knowledge" in philosophy is at the point to where there is no answer to the "you can know if God is real and therefore it is impossible to claim that one cannot know if God exists."
This sounds like naive realism. You're trying to fit Christianity into atheist modes of thought and discovering that it requires egotism. But Christianity was never meant to fit into an atheistic belief system and it makes no sense to judge its internal logic from that point of view. The bible saying that god died for humanity makes it not egotistical for a Christian to believe that god died for humanity. Remember that they take the biblical account as sufficient evidence about the life and actions of god.
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__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
if someone yells "lower your weapons" what do you say? i say "you first".
that is exactly what god did. he came down here and played by his own rules and submitted himself peacefully to our judgement. Only now can he ask me to do the same without being a hypocrite tyrant.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
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May 31st, 2013 07:03 PM
