Father and Husband, car guy! just your basic squirrel trying to get a nut! This is not for catch-up, if I see something messed up, I am calling it out.
Christianity has the harshest verdict on human nature of any religion on earth. It also has the most extravagant grace of any religion on earth. That is not coincidental.
Every other religion does one of two things. It sets a bar you can clear; works, rituals, devotion, and moral accumulation, with a path to standing before your god with something to show.
Or it dissolves guilt altogether, telling you the self is an illusion, that sin is merely ignorance, that enlightenment is just a reframe. Human religion, across every culture and every century, moves in one of these two directions. Earn your way in, or talk your way out.
Christianity does neither. It does something no human committee would or could design.
The Sermon on the Mount is not mere moral teaching, it is an intense prosecution. Jesus does not merely raise the behavioral bar, but He relocates it to the interior, where nobody can hide. The Pharisees; the most disciplined religious performers in the ancient world, could clear the behavioral bar. They could not touch the heart bar. Nobody back then could and nobody since has.
Anger is murder, lust is essentially adultery. When Jesus finished speaking in Matthew 5, no one in that crowd was still standing, all their defenses collapsed. That does not look like religion, it resembles a courtroom. And the verdict is an emphatic GUILTY, without exception.
Now watch what happens next.
The same God who delivers that verdict does not simply show mercy. A judge who acquits a criminal is merciful. What Christianity offers is not acquittal. The criminal does not simply walk free. He moves into the judge’s house, he gets the last name and he receives an enormous inheritance. Romans 8:17 says we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. Not pardoned, or tolerated but adopted and entitled to the full inheritance of the eternal Son.
People underestimate what that inheritance means because they think in earthly categories. The richest human who has ever lived will die, and his estate will eventually dissolve. What Romans 8 describes is something creation itself is groaning in anticipation of; the full revelation of the glory of the sons of God. You are not inheriting assets. You are inheriting glory. The shared, eternal glory of the Son of God.
No human religious imagination arrives here. The gap is too wide. The indictment is too severe and the grace is too extravagant, and they are too precisely proportional to each other to have been invented. The depth of the hole and the height of the rescue match exactly. That kind of architecture does not come from a fleshly committee.
The most devastating indictment in the history of religion. The most generous verdict in the history of religion. Both in the same book, both from the same God. The paradox is not a contradiction. It is in my opinion, comprehensive proof of the substance and the veracity of this beautiful faith.
@MoundLore My question is are the noses like that because of the shapes of the stones or
Is that how they looked. I wish antiquity would come up with wall art or something answering that question. It is important imo.
Very interesting, Thank you for pointing that out. War is heinous, all we have to do is go back in the Old Testament and see that, especially in that region. I pray for all involved, for Israel to have the Wisdom to follow his plan. I pray for the suffering to end in Gaza and around the world. I hope and pray this conflict ends soon. I trust in the Trinity, I believe and hope Goodness and love prevails. Money and Power and Pleasure are an awfully big part of the enemies plan, and he has people lining up for it. Thank you for your insight.
Henry, nothing I said disputed anything you just said. I believe Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, I believe he died for our sins. I believe he was sent by our Heavenly Father. Jesus told us to love one another. We were told to watch for the signs. I believe when he said times like we are in now are the beginning of birth pains, it will only get worse from here. Our place as followers is to praise him and spread his word. We are not the Judges, Jesus is not the judge, but I believe he will speak on our behalves to the Lord. The Lord God our Father is who will judge. In my understanding of the Word, This material Earth means nothing only the life that comes after by his side in his kingdom. We have no idea of his plan, we have no idea who he uses where. He is merciful but the end will have no mercy and that end is beginning.