Reply to Gandolf

I'd told Gandolf that it was a dangerous thing to focus on those of us who live out our faith poorly and use that as an excuse to ignore what Jesus is saying to HIM.

He then went off on another tangent about being threatened with eternity and how atheism would never do such a horrible thing.

My reply:

So, rather than seeing Jesus' words to YOU as a warning, you see them as a threat? I wonder why? When I tell my kids about playing in the street, is that a threat or a warning? When I tell my kids about smoking, is that a threat or a warning? When I tell my kids about STD's, is that a threat or a warning? When I tell my kids about good and bad touching, is that a threat or a warning? When Jesus tells you about how He came to rescue you from eternal separation from God and how to access that rescue, you see that as a threat instead of a warning. Why is that?

Now, as to the beauty of those who think we should all reject faith.

People who aggressively eschewed faith killed almost 100 million people in the twentieth century. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Honecker, Castro, Ho, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kim, Ceausescu and virtually every atheist that blogs about religion says that the world would be a better place if Christianity was made a thing of the past. The point of their agendas is, ‘Religion is harmful. Get rid of it and everything will begin to move toward civil society.’ Marx and Engels put it bluntly, “Abolish all religion and all morality.”

The fallacy in the belief that peace will reign if religion is dismantled is seen in the fact that in the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the October Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the Sino-Indian War, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, the Chinese Civil War and other conflicts around the globe, both past and present, religion is nowhere to be seen while atheism is front and centre. Richard Dawkins simply cannot bring himself to admit that atheism was the driving force from which atheists, directing governments made up exclusively of atheists was obsessed with spreading anti-God propaganda, and specialized in the murder of millions of believers. Soviet rulers, people who thought that humans without faith were more peaceful than people of faith systematically and efficiently destroyed the majority of churches and killed the majority of religious leaders during a period from 1918 - 1941.

Does this somehow absolve Christians and other religious people from the evil that has been perpetrated in the name of that religion? Not at all. That is simply the other side of the human coin.

ALL of us have sinned and fall short of God’s expectations for us. There is a price to be paid for that sin, that evil that resides within us. Jesus said, not “Mak” (it’s not my faith) but Jesus said that you can either let Him pay that penalty or YOU will suffer the consequences.

Trying to draw attention away from this fact by saying you don’t agree with how the universe was arranged will not help you avoid the reality of the fact that a decision has to be made. Jesus is warning you, Gandolf. Why reject that warning?