Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 6:25 pm
At the time, he was destroying a Pharisaic trap involving taxation, actually. I'm not sure exactly how you're trying to apply that to Judgment Day...
Huh? Are you telling me that anything at all that we mere mortals do in our 70 odd year sojourn down here on Earth isn't applicable to Judgment Day? You know, the day when "I" confronts all the rest of eternity: up or down.
And here today, as back then, the government takes the taxes of citizens and, no doubt, uses the money to pursue any number of polices that might be an abomination to your God. How can this all not get ambiguous, convoluted, confusing.
"Mennonite Dale Glass-Hess wrote:
It is inconceivable to me that Jesus would teach that some spheres of human activity lie outside the authority of God. Are we to heed Caesar when he says to go to war or support war-making when Jesus says in other places that we shall not kill? No! My perception of this incident is that Jesus does not answer the question about the morality of paying taxes to Caesar, but that he throws it back on the people to decide."
He throws it back at the people [their value judgments rooted in dasein] but does not give them a definitive answer rooted instead in God's -- His? -- will.
Again, with so much at stake on Judgment Day. It would be like the Nazis giving Jews the power to decide what to do...when Judgment Day for them revolved around the "Final Solution", the death camps.
Note to others:Mr. Snippet wrote: ↑Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:19 pmI'm not trying to "tell" you anything. I'm just answering your question. You can check the context, and you'll know I'm telling you the truth. The "application" you're trying to make isnt' obvious to me. I'm just wanting you to explain it.
And isn't this typical? I react to him at length. He snips a small part of it and comments in such a way that bares almost no relevance at all of the point I am making. The context in regard to taxes "here today as back then" is the same: producing "ambiguous, convoluted, confusing" reactions in mere mortals as individuals. Reactions rooted existentially in dasein whereas on Judgment Day, God either looks favorably upon your reaction to Caesar or to Hitler or to Trump or He doesn't.
But: He never really makes it all unequivocally clear does He?
Instead, Mr. Snippet here takes up the task of differentiating the True Christian reaction for us here.
Or does immortality and salvation on the one hand and eternal damnation on the other revolve instead around rendering [in the end] everything unto Him?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 6:25 pm When a man renders himself unto God, everything he is and has comes with him.
Right. As with God Himself, this is your idea of clearing things up for us. Dispensing the vaguest of platitudes.
Again, given Judgment Day, there's God judging us on whether we either do or do not understand His will in regard to rendering unto Ceasar. Or Hitler. Or trump. I can't clarify this for Him. And you're the one making a distinction between a True Christian and a False Christian when it comes to these things. When are you going to clarify how a True Christian is obligated to react to taxation and the government.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 6:25 pm Something doesn't become "vague" or "platitudinous" merely because you don't personally understand it. But speaking personally, I'm not at all sure that whatever it is you have in mind is right -- which is why I was offering you the chance to clarify.
Or, for that matter, fascism in America. You know, the reason this thread exists in the first place. After all, your loving, just and merciful -- omnipotent -- God is following the Trump saga unfolding down here, right?
Oh, sure. Just let mere mortals themselves decide how to connect the dots between before and after the grave. Leaving it all up to those like you to decide who is the True Christian and who is not.
No doubt just as there were those in Nazi Germany who took it upon themselves to decide who was with Hitler and who was not.
And your loving, just and merciful -- omnipotent -- God's reaction to the Nazis? Well, he was rooting for the Allies, right?.
Right. And there have never, ever been substantial disagreements down through the ages regarding how Christians must interpret the Scriptures and the life of Jesus. Instead, there is how the True Christians like you understand them...and then everybody else.Mr. Snippet wrote: ↑Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:19 pmI would say that God has not done that, for sure. You have all the "dots" you need "connected" for you in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. Whether or not you're able to "connect" them depends on your own attitude -- which appears a little gratutitously cynical and unreceptive to feedback, at the moment, if I might say.
Again, given this...Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:19 pmIf you have only cynicism to offer, you're wasting your time. You'll find, as Scripture itself says, that God simply chooses not speak to people who take that posture.
https://thebestschools.org/magazine/wor ... -starters/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
...and the fact that each of them will insist that only their own path is the One True Path, gee, why would anyone be cynical about religion and God?