Yeah, you have a great point there which does bring confusion.
Salvation does have a condition which is to have faith in Jesus (in all things). You can see it as choosing to have faith is more like "accepting" the gift rather than working for it. That's my take though, hope it makes sense.
See that's the thing, so this Christian church's list is a little shorter than that one's. For example, I was raised Mormon (no longer though). They thought that in order to "accept" the gift of salvation they had to:
Have faith in Christ
Repent (that really just means "truly desire to follow his will and commit to trying even though they know they'll suck at it)
Get baptized by someone in their clergy the same way Jesus did (under water)
Have someone in their clergy put their hands on your head and perform a ceremony wherein you accept the Holy Ghost
None of those are big things. Certainly nothing to "boast" about. But that's THEIR checklist. Yours is just shorter. But you both agree you do have to DO something to earn/accept/receive/whatever salvation.
I don't know. I guess I just don't get why Christians think this is such a unique aspect of their religion and seem to accuse everyone else of blasphemy for trying to earn salvation (no matter how much the insist they don't believe that). Nobody who reads the Bible thinks they can build a tower to get to heaven.
I love Christianity although I don't really believe in it. I've always seen a problem with this take on things though.
Out of one side of your mouth you say you can't do anything to earn salvation--that the gift is free and you don't have to do anything to receive it.
But then you say you must accept Christ as your savior in order to receive it.
Well...that's doing something.
I'm open to hearing what you think is wrong with that take though.
Yeah, you have a great point there which does bring confusion. Salvation does have a condition which is to have faith in Jesus (in all things). You can see it as choosing to have faith is more like "accepting" the gift rather than working for it. That's my take though, hope it makes sense.
See that's the thing, so this Christian church's list is a little shorter than that one's. For example, I was raised Mormon (no longer though). They thought that in order to "accept" the gift of salvation they had to:
Have faith in Christ
Repent (that really just means "truly desire to follow his will and commit to trying even though they know they'll suck at it)
Get baptized by someone in their clergy the same way Jesus did (under water)
Have someone in their clergy put their hands on your head and perform a ceremony wherein you accept the Holy Ghost
None of those are big things. Certainly nothing to "boast" about. But that's THEIR checklist. Yours is just shorter. But you both agree you do have to DO something to earn/accept/receive/whatever salvation.
I don't know. I guess I just don't get why Christians think this is such a unique aspect of their religion and seem to accuse everyone else of blasphemy for trying to earn salvation (no matter how much the insist they don't believe that). Nobody who reads the Bible thinks they can build a tower to get to heaven.
I mean that’s all very cool but I believe we were talking about religions.