"The lost"

[Elijah John]

TBN preacher today said that what bothers "the lost" more than anything else is Christian hypocrisy.

Agreed, hypocrisy in others must be pretty annoying to many.

For debate:

1) define the term "the lost".

2) And who is she, or any preacher to say who is "saved" and who is "lost"? Who but (ultimately), God alone? Does becoming an Evangelical preacher suddenly confer upon a a person the ability read someone's heart and soul?

3) By using the term "the lost" is this preacher judging? Something that Jesus preached against.

[Elijah John]

OK, let's take a slightly different angel on this. Is it an insult to call someone who is a non-Evangelical "lost"?

Is this offensive and off-putting to non-Evangelicals?

Do you increase or decrease your chance of "winning souls to Christ" by using such a term?

Is there a better term Evangelicals could use?

[marco]

1) define the term "the lost".

2) And who is she, or any preacher to say who is "saved" and who is "lost"? Who but (ultimately), God alone? Does becoming an Evangelical preacher suddenly confer upon a a person the ability read someone's heart and soul?

3) By using the term "the lost" is this preacher judging? Something that Jesus preached against.

The lost are people like me who cannot understand why we should follow ancients who had no idea what a television is but can tell us all about God. Are there any prophecies from thousands of years ago that mention TV?

I have never, in a conscious state, met an evangelical preacher but I know some people who write horoscopes. Is that the same thing?

All religious people judge. Some even think that it is absurd to believe an Arab caravan raider got a piece of dictation from God. Some think it is pretty weird to believe in one God who has a split personality, yet has no need of psychiatry. And when we become convinced of the rightness of our belief set, we write poems about being saved, judging others as lost or as unbelievers or infidels.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 3 by marco]

Sometimes the Ancients were on to something. Timeless Wisdom. Granted, not in every detail, but still...

Not all of the Ancients divided the world into camps of "saved" vs. "lost"...many were more concerned about the righteous vs the wicked.

But unlike Paul and his Spiritual progeny, that division was based more on behavior than on "correct" theology.

[marco]

[Replying to post 3 by marco]

Sometimes the Ancients were on to something. Timeless Wisdom. Granted, not in every detail, but still...

Not all of the Ancients divided the world into camps of "saved" vs. "lost"...many were more concerned about the righteous vs the wicked.

But unlike Paul and his Spiritual progeny, that division was based more on behavior than on "correct" theology.

Yes, I've apparently maligned the ancients when I admire many of them: Euclid, Alexander, Archimedes, Plato, Cicero.... I was of course referring to those who mixed morality with superstition.

As to "correct" theology, we get into the saved and the lost here. My correct theology is someone else's anathema. I find, for example, the the locust-eating John the Baptist quite superfluously weird. He wanders in like a beached whale and perishes in a senseless way. I believe it helped Oscar Wilde to write a play in French, so he has some purpose.

Yet some manage to salvage sense from their holy books. That takes skill or blind faith.

[Checkpoint]

[Replying to post 3 by marco]

Sometimes the Ancients were on to something. Timeless Wisdom. Granted, not in every detail, but still...

Not all of the Ancients divided the world into camps of "saved" vs. "lost"...many were more concerned about the righteous vs the wicked.

But unlike Paul and his Spiritual progeny, that division was based more on behavior than on "correct" theology.

Yes, I've apparently maligned the ancients when I admire many of them: Euclid, Alexander, Archimedes, Plato, Cicero.... I was of course referring to those who mixed morality with superstition.

As to "correct" theology, we get into the saved and the lost here. My correct theology is someone else's anathema. I find, for example, the the locust-eating John the Baptist quite superfluously weird. He wanders in like a beached whale and perishes in a senseless way. I believe it helped Oscar Wilde to write a play in French, so he has some purpose.

Yet some manage to salvage sense from their holy books. That takes skill or blind faith.

Not quite.

Yes, it does take a kind of skill, one that accepts that we walk by faith, not by sight.

Hebrews 11:6

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

[liamconnor]

TBN preacher today said that what bothers "the lost" more than anything else is Christian hypocrisy.

Agreed, hypocrisy in others must be pretty annoying to many.

For debate:

1) define the term "the lost".

2) And who is she, or any preacher to say who is "saved" and who is "lost"? Who but (ultimately), God alone? Does becoming an Evangelical preacher suddenly confer upon a a person the ability read someone's heart and soul?

3) By using the term "the lost" is this preacher judging? Something that Jesus preached against.

Lost:
Does the OP mean "the lost as defined by this preacher" or "what others mean by the lost"? My guess is, the lost refer to those who deny the Resurrection and deity and atoning sacrifice of Jesus.

Who is Lost?:
If the sine qua non of heaven is not a place but a conscious relationship with the "God who raised Jesus from the dead", then by definition those who do not acknowledge the claims of God (this assuming a position of the pastor's) cannot be 'in heaven'. Heaven is less like, say, living in a Utopian England than it is bending the knee to Prince Charles and entering his services. IF one does not recognize the royal authority of Prince Charles, one is not a citizen of this Utopian England.

Judgment:
IF the above definition of lost is correct, then obviously a man can judge (i.e., identify) whether a person is saved; just as a person can identify whether a man is a Republican or Democrat.

I do not think the Jesus intended to forbade all forms of judgment. He gave laws himself. It would be very confusing if he intended for me to avoid lust as evil, but intended that I condone my neighbor's behavior when he cheats on his wife. Jesus gave instructions on how to judge people (cf. Matthew). The warning against judgement that is in question here seems not to address a moral evaluation of behavior, but an emotional fixation on another's vices which blinds one to his own vices. Hypocrisy does not mean that I cannot judge another's murder as wrong; it does mean that, even while judging another's murder as wrong, I must acknowledge I am guilty of anger or hate.

[marco]

My guess is, the lost refer to those who deny the Resurrection and deity and atoning sacrifice of Jesus.

The term lost almost certainly refers to those who deny the apparent Truth. It is possibly an example of prolepsis, an anticipation of what will be rather than a description of the present state, for many of the lost seem to have their wits about them, happy and delightfully functional. Can the lost be found or realise they are lost and cry de profundis for assistance? Perhaps "lostness" means the inability even to do that.

Heaven is less like, say, living in a Utopian England than it is bending the knee to Prince Charles and entering his services. IF one does not recognize the royal authority of Prince Charles, one is not a citizen of this Utopian England.

The Prince's house has many mansions, Liam. For some, heaven seems to be the realisation they are special. They eat the same food, die the same deaths, suffer the same miseries - but somehow, like the frog with the jewel in its head, they are special. And the feeling of comfort that brings distinguishes them from the "lost."

We are told that the billionaire, post mortem, regrets being blindly wealthy when he is thirsting in hell. And those brave Christians, nakedly facing their lions, were in fact in heaven, though the Roman spectators never realised it.

It is all very confusing. What is up is down; what is poor is rich, what is wise is foolish and what is death is life. No wonder people are lost.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 8 by marco]

Interesting how I so often start topics against narrow, rigid Evangelical thinking, and you sometimes turn them against religion in general.

It may be of interest that some of us believers do not automatically consider atheists and skeptics to be "lost".

Furthermore, is not only the likes of you they consider to be "lost" but the likes of me as well, the non-Evangelical, non-Fundamentalist believer.

I have even heard of some "Bible believing" Trinitarian Christians accuse other "Bible believing" Trinitarian Christians of being among "the lost" for differing on the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" in effect, for preaching what they call a "different Gospel".

No matter that they agree on such important matters as the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus and the blood-atonement.

One camp is "saved" the other is "lost".

Thanks to the apostle Paul for the prescedent of turning brother against brother.

[marco]

Thanks to the apostle Paul for the precedent of turning brother against brother.

To be fair to Paul (and I don't always want to be) Jesus said he'd turn brother against brother, so he seems to have succeeded in his mission.

Fundamentalists, for me, are almost mythological. We have people called Wee Frees here and they get upset when coffee machines dispense coffee on Sundays in direct contravention of Yahweh's law. But if you don't disturb them, they are quite harmless. I tend to treat their ideas as several levels below Harry Potter.