Why Would God Care What We Believe?

[ElCodeMonkey]

Let's assume the typical Christian orthodox of Jesus dying for our sins is true and that we must believe in him to be saved. I don't care to prove that it's true or not in this thread--we''ll just assume it is--but rather WHY does God care what we believe? Why would God be so intent on ensuring we believe something rather than only being intent on ensuring what we physically do with our lives? I'm not looking for "it's both" or the like, I'm wondering why God cares about the former at all. Why would our thoughts even matter to God and not only our actions?

[postroad]

[Replying to post 30 by ttruscott]


If God deceived the Jews I'm thinking he could deceive everyone.

Galatians 3:22
But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

[ElCodeMonkey]

Even theological questions can have supporting evidence via scripture, but you made a statement that essentially says atheists will not perform certain actions that God desires because they do not believe what God requires. So please back that up and substantiate your claim

Emphasis MINE

I believe I did provide scriptural support for my stat

The "but" negates the point of the previous part of the statement and essentially changes the topic. As you already know, given your complaint about it, I'm asking for real-world evidence. You made a real-world claim, not a theological one. So support your claim with evidence, please. You are only reluctant to provide it because you know it is impossible. If you know it is impossible, then why not simply own the truth? It's far better in life to own truth than falsehoods. This is absolutely a falsifiable claim you are making and it is indeed false by absolutely any standard you could throw at it. You can't just believe your way out of it.

The "infidel" the faithless, cannot meet this standard thus their actions no matter how "good"they themselves might judge them to be, are substandard.

Your claim is that the actions themselves are substandard, not because of their quality, but because they are based on something like "love" rather than something like "God is real?" This simply redirects the question. Why does this make the actions supposedly substandard? Why does God care so much that we believe something rather than that we simply do good for goodness' sake? Why does my aid of the poor result to nothing while yours results to God's approval just because I believe it's nice to help the poor and you believe whatever religious belief you have? In scripture, Jesus straight up condemned the Pharisees who had all their "beliefs" and instead commended the poor woman instead. Why? Because her love was self-sacrificial. In other words, it was real love. So Jesus cared about the motive of love, not the religious beliefs behind it, and especially not a desire for honor, but the heart of love. He didn't ask her if she believed in him before commending her.

These "good" actions, while commendable, do not of themselves negate the necessity of obeying what Jesus referred to as "the greatest commandement".

I'm pretty sure the greatest commandment is love. You might be thinking "love God" specifically, but isn't God love? So me, loving love, I therefore love God without actually calling him God. How many people love Samuel Clemens but call him Mark Twain instead? Do they cease to love Samuel by calling him Mark or do they love Samuel despite his name because they love his work?

PLEASE NOTE : I explicitly stated my posts to be statements of belief (ie faith based statements) based on [ my understanding] of the bible.

Right, but is it not prudent, for the beliefs that have real-world falsifiability, to verify that they line up with reality when it's so easy to do? Why simply "believe" the sky is purple just because it's written in a book rather than simply looking up and seeing it's blue? I mean, you don't even have ditch the book, but just your interpretation of it like everyone else. You can say "Blue used to be referred to as purple" and whatever but now realize that the sky is actually blue. In short, atheists don't behave any worse than Christians and plenty of them behave far better than plenty of Christians. Your claim falls entirely flat on its face that somehow our belief about God's existence changes our actions apart from whether or not we go to church or pray (things of no consequence to anyone).

[ElCodeMonkey]

The Christian God desires to have everyone come under judgement.

He acomplishes this by tricking people into agreements they are unable to fulfill.

Since this seems to contradict the redemption of elect sinners in Christ which is a common Christian topic, I will only say that many of the sinners on earth believe that are not evil, a pov they hold until it is proven to them they must be evil or they could and would fulfill the covenants they are within. The law is for the purpose only to convict of sin...

Depending on your definition of evil, I don't think there's a single person on the planet who thinks they are perfect. Well, barring people who believe they have become so based upon their mere faith in God to make them so. As an atheist, I absolutely know I am not perfect. But I still try and desire to do good by the world. I am sorrowful for where I fail and joyous for where I succeed. Is this not more important than a mere belief in a blood sacrifice? How does blood sacrifice aid in any of this except by maybe making me feel absolved without the actual repentance? My repentance is real since I have no scapegoat nor any God to appease. When I repent, it's guaranteed authentic. Is this not far better than any belief?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 32 by ElCodeMonkey]

I do not understand what statement you are asking evidence for. If you isolate it specifically in a quote I will attempt to better explain what I am trying evidently unsuccesdfully to say.

JW

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 32 by ElCodeMonkey]

The Greatest Command is biblically to Love Jehovah your God with your whole heart , mind and soul. In other words not only to recognise that the intelligent loving God YHWH exists, but to Love him as a person. No atheist recognizes God exists and no atheist can love Him. By definition they cannot obey this command.

I explained in my previous posts why I believed God cares. Feel free to disagree.



Regards,

JW

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 1 by ElCodeMonkey]

why would you care if your children recognize you?

Love

that's all you need to answer most of these kinds of questions

[ElCodeMonkey]

[Replying to post 1 by ElCodeMonkey]

why would you care if your children recognize you?

Love

that's all you need to answer most of these kinds of questions

Only if you want to redirect the question. What does recognition have to do with anything?

Using your example of children to ease the comprehension of the situation, it would not be the equivalent of me wanting them to recognize me, but me absolutely requiring that they believe that I had a child before they were born and that I had him killed so that they could love me. I don't show them this, and I don't tell them this personally, but I absolutely require that they somehow figured it out (perhaps by someone else telling them) and believe it or else I'm not going to find anything they do acceptable. Their drawings for me? Rubbish if you don't believe the dead sibling thing. Good grades in school? Worthless. Sharing with your other siblings? Not good enough for me. My kids are trash unless they believe in this other sibling they never met, and I will certainly never personally tell them any of this. That is the true analogy.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 37 by ElCodeMonkey]

Jesus was the son of God, yes we are all 'children' of God, but rather than get into those semantics..

Why would our thoughts even matter to God and not only our actions?

^this was your summary of the question.

Why would your children's thoughts matter to you?

Love is about more than practical actions, those are merely an extension of love, how we feel about each other-

This is unique to man, and the being who made us in his image.

[ttruscott]

yes we are all 'children' of God,

What is this based upon?


The Bible says: Deuteronomy 32:5 "They have acted corruptly toward Him, They are NOT His children, because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation. or: their defect is that they are NOT HIS children...

[Deleted]

"Replying to post 4 by Elijah John"

Why would God be so intent on ensuring we believe something rather than only being intent on ensuring what we physically do with our lives? . . . Why would our thoughts even matter to God and not only our actions?

The alternative would be to merely assent to it mentally or intellectually, and one could do that devoid of any belief that it was true, which is contradictory. What is required is that a person profess it to be true, and that has to be an operation of faith, which means it has to have a component of belief.

It has been made plain elsewhere here that no one can prove axiomatically or scientifically that Jesus died for the sins of the world. Else, it would be a matter of factual assent like Augustus was emperor of Rome.

So it could never be appropriated to us without belief that it is true.

Your second point by extension -

That would eliminate all of the Old Testament heroes of faith, including Abraham, Melchizidek, Noah, King David, etc, etc.

Because there is no real evidence that any of them "accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior".

You actually answered this dilemma further on with the verse, "He who does the will of my Father . ."

It was always by faith (OT included) - a faith that God acknowledges is genuine and without guile.

Paul handles this in the first chapters of Romans. Was the man in the jungle saved? He offers that God made Himself known to them so they are without excuse. If he responded in faith, he was saved even though ignorant of Christ.

The right faith before the specific revelation of Christ for salvation would have acknowledged Christ's role if it had been revealed to them. The key is God knows what is genuine and what isn't.

The Pharisees were condemned for rejecting Christ because their trust with the oracles of God should have prepared them to accept Him coming from the Father. But Jesus says, you reject me because you do not know Him.

So OT believers did not have to know Christ and the Cross in OT times to be saved. They only had to have the faith that would have acknowledged it.

Jesus said of Abraham - "Abraham saw My day and rejoiced in it." Abraham did not have a time travel machine to witness Jesus' ministry. Yet he rejoiced.

The verse, "There is now no other name under heaven by which men can be saved" has the keyword now. That means from now on. Now that Christ has died. That doesn't affect OT believers who were saved by faith.