Hello Grarsch,
I don't believe we've met before, I'm Seagoon, the OCs token crazy evangelical pastor (at least until a more suitable replacement can be found.) Nice to meet you.
Originally posted by Grarsch
So what are you trying to prove?
That your type of religious people are more moral than the disbelievers?
Please don't let preconceived notions or prejudices about evangelicals drive your assumptions about this (or better, about most things). Also, please wait until you've interacted with me a few times before you label me and put me in the appropriate box, I'll try to accord you the same courtesy.
While it is bad methodology to tell the poll group what you are trying to ascertain before the poll closes, its actually closer to the exact opposite of your assumption. This is actually meant to be more of an examination and if necessary wake-up call for people in my particular profession. You guys are meant to represent the general population, hence the control aspect. I expect that in most of their habits AH players are about in the mainstream for middle class American male behavior.
Dude, you read the Bible the answer is right there.
Or the Quran. Answer is there too.
Just about any religious text will tell you that your kind are better more saved more aptly suited, morally superior and whatnot.
Actually, Grarsch, I'll freely admit to you that I am not a good man, quite the opposite, I know myself to be a sinner and a wretch and that far too often I have to admit with the Apostle Paul:
" For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice." (Romans 7:19) But while I am not a good man, I do know
the Good man, and live only to point others to Him saying with John the Baptist - "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29)
That's the message of the bible incidentally, not that believers are good and morally superior, but that they are sinners saved only by grace, burning sticks snatched from the fire as Zec. 3:2 puts it. So if you are looking for declarations of moral superiority from me, you are going to have to look elsewhere.
The Quran is a different matter entirely, it does ground salvation on the good works and righteousness of followers (defined by conformity to Quranic law - codified later as
Sharia). So in that system you do go to heaven by becoming morally superior to the infidel by your conformity to the teachings of "the prophet". But I'd suggest you take up that conversation with the Muslims.
As for the bible solving the "social ills" of this present age, that really isn't possible or even the objective of the gospel. Whether you believe it or not, the gospel is designed to point the way of salvation to the lost, it also teaches them how to live their lives after they are saved in order that they might be conformed to the image of the savior. It is not designed to "save societies" or create an earthly kingdom, rather it is designed to save people out of those societies. There are rules (the decalogue) found in the word that should direct the civil magistrate as he fulfills his mandate to create laws and govern, and society should be improved by changed people doing what they can to be salt and light, but there is no mandate for a theocratic solution to "social ills" in the manner of say the aforementioned Quran. The bible is not a political guidebook for utopian government, for that you'll need to look into something like Mein Kampf, or the Communist Manifesto.
