/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>731440

A compass is needed to guide you to a destination. Lest you keep walking north and tapdance on the north pole for eternity. Where is your destination? Where do you think the "compass of Christianity" leads you?

Christianity isn't about polishing the outside of the cup, it's about polishing the inside. Going to church because of something the japs do is taking weeabooism to far. The outward motions of going to church apart from faith and repentance won't do you any good.

>>731440

Nice lukewarm faith you've got there.

>>731442

The journey is endless

>>731446

Show me God

>>731449

How do you want to see Him?

>>731451

I dont know. I want to feel him, know him and have him inside me if he exists

>>731456

Go help the poor, old, homeless and orphaned.

Here's the deal.

You can know that God exists by pure reason alone. You've probably heard all the standard proofs before, so I'll spare you for now, but if you want knowledge that he exists, some of those proofs (I won't say all of them) are actually valid and sound.

The thing is, though, knowing that God exists is not enough. It's not even a start.

The goal of the Christian life is to love God with all of your being. All Christian morality flows directly or indirectly from this ultimate source. If you love God, you want to do what he says; if you love God, you want to love the people tht he loves; if you love God, you want to help him out and give him good things to the extent that's possible. If you love God, you want to be together with him. And so on.

The problem is that you can't love what you don't know. And you need to know God personally in order to love him personally.

But God in his essence is totally beyond the reach of man's limited intellect to grasp. So you have an impossible problem. You have to love God, and you have to know God to love him, but you can't know him.

The only way out of the problem would be if God took it upon himself to reveal personal knowledge about himself to Christians. And that's exactly what Christians claim he has actually done.

Jesus Christ is God's self-communication to humans of God's own knowledge of himself. Because Jesus took flesh and built a Church and taught disciples, you and I can observe God himself, and his personal actions, and their effects in history and in our own lives, with our limited and clumsy human senses and minds.

That's why faith in Jesus is central to all Christianity. Jesus makes it possible for man to love God in a personal way.

There's so, so much more to say. But here's the main thing. Ritualistic, cultural Christianity, of the kind you're practicing, will never effect the kind of interior transformation that is the whole goal of the Christian life. Further, as I said before, all Christian morality has its ultimate basis in the pursuit of this interior transformation in Christ. Our morals simply do not make sense unless there really is a heaven, and becoming the kind of person who goes there really is the most important thing in life. So, you may be able to get by on a day to day basis and pass for a decent person and not cause any grave social harms with your ritualistic approach. But, ultimately, if you're consistent and actually follow out the reasoning, you're going to find no objective answer to the question of why you should live as a Christian rather than as something else, if perhaps one day your mind changes as to whatever seems to you to be most beneficial to society.

Really, until you actually believe in the God who is Love and who communicates himself to us through Jesus Christ and his Church, your ideals that you talk about in the OP aren't even going to be the same as Christian ideals.

>>731489

For example: for you, maybe the ideal of helping the poor could have a sort of sterile utilitarian net positive evaluation, and maybe even if you engage in charity work yourself, you'll start feeling as if you have some heightened sense of purpose and personal responsibility. That's all well and good. But for a Christian to help the poor? That's a source of a glowing hot, fiery love. This is how it works: if you love God, you want to be able to help him somehow, you want to be able to give him something good. The problem is that he's already perfectly self-sufficient, infinitely good in himself, and infinitely and perfectly happy, and nothing anyone can do can add to his happiness. But, once again, Jesus gives the solution! He says, "Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me." A Christian helping the poor quite literally sees his beloved Savior in those people he's helping. His Savior who doesn't need anything from him, but who realizes that the Christian himself needs to be able to have something to give to him. So the Christian sees Jesus, in the poor person he's helping, and also living within himself, doing the helping, and also in the created order of the world in which there are poor and rich people rather than all being equal, and also in the condescension of God in considering good works done to others out of love of Him as being done to himself. And the feeling of being surrounded by all this love is incredibly joyful and energizing, while also making the Christian willing to suffer and desiring to do even more to please this God who is so good…

So, really, what I'm getting at, is that you can't actually share real Christian ideals until you become a real Christian, because nothing's going to make the kind of sense to you that it's supposed to. You're not gonna have the joy, the internal peace, that God wants you to have in doing good works, because that joy springs from the constant awareness of God's presence and his overflowing love, and you really need to actually believe in God and in Jesus before you can even start to understand that love, let alone make it the center of your life.

>>731463

I aint got time for that

>>731449

>The journey is endless

Then it is not a journey and there is no point to it. Journeys are defined by their start and end points. Let me rephrase the question: what is your ideal, both for society and for yourself, and how do you see Christian rituals (without belief) bringing you or society to that ideal?

>>731440

"Amen, amen I say to you, you must be born from ABOVE." - Jn 3:3

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - Jn 3:8

Christianity isn't your "culture". Or any culture you've heard of.

Larpers and real Christians alike are representatives of Christ. That's why there is so much deception around the church. Satan knows that if he makes Christians look like buffoons, a lot of people won't even try looking into Christianity.

You're wasting your time. I know a lot of people want to be part of a culture and tradition nowadays but find it somewhere else and don't make the ultimate murderer's job easier. The horrific state of today's world, which is why you seek identity, is more than enough proof that he's real.

A lot of people do this, it's nothing special, it just means you're an npc

>>731440

That's not exactly how the Japs do it.

They believe in Shinto-Buddhism, they just don't take it too serious.

They'll pray at shrines out of respect for the kami or spirits or whatever, but these entities don't keep them awake at night because they don't do much for their daily lives.

In comparison, believing in God in christianity means you'll either go to heaven or hell depending on what you do.

You're pretty much just an atheist LARPing tbh.

>>731741

everyone has some npc in them, some just have more than others

npc is basically the idea of the mass man in meme form

>>731456

Pray and go to Liturgy.

>>731849

You got to be kidding me. My jap friends said they just do it cos tradition.

>>731440

>Pray to God as if He is a person

How could you do that routinely but not believe in God, or at the very least try to find God? Are all those prayers vain and just for the sake of fitting in?

>Culture and moral values

How can you say you hold the same values as Christians, who (ideally) hold God's values when you don't even believe in God? Which by the way is the most fundamental of all, that shapes the values of the Christian? It's like vegans trying to imitate real meat.

>Buddhist and Shintoist do this

That's why I left Buddhism long ago. All people do is larp at temples once every year or something, and then the rest 345 days it's all degeneracy or everyone does what they want. The real followers are SOME of the monks who devoted their life at the temple. And then also the problems of morality. Buddhism teaches relativist and always seeks to escape conflicts, which never solves any real problem and most of the time it's always consumed or replaced by materialism or outside influences

>>731456

If you want to know God then pray to God and believe in your heart that He exist. Let that faith be a foundation and from then can you truly know God and better yourself. Read the Bible and see how Jesus' followers believe Him without the need for logical explanation or how the people Jesus saved never question His powers and miracles.

Otherwise you're just larping and that only wastes your time. Works alone will never take you to God, only faith does.

>>731520

Guess God aint got time for you either then.

Be a kindhearted person as best you can, at least.

>>731973

Sure, there are a lot who do it purely out of tradition but not the people going on a very frequent basis like you are going to church.

If you went only on Christmas you were a cultural catholic.

If you go daily yet not believe you are a LARPer.

Besides ringing a bell and clapping hands at a shrine =! praying like in church.

>>731489

I and many other people struggle with the idea that Jesus actually fixed anything. I'm not saying he didn't come and do things, but it is said he died for our sins. The problem I and many other people have and struggle with so much is that he did what he did and then left again. After Jesus left, the world became worse and worse (as usual) and continues on some kind of horrible nightmare path. My questions are this:

>Why didn't he just stay? (in the way that he was there? so to speak)

>Why didn't things get better forever even after he left (so to speak?)

>Why is it possible for people to continue to sin after he did what he did on earth?

I think these are important questions because many people struggle with that. Please help me understand.

>>731440

Lex Orandi Lex Credendi. If you keep praying eventually you'll gain the faith or stop praying. Try this: pray to God for the graces of faith, hope and charity and I guarantee you'll either become a catholic or give up the prayer