God will only forgive you if you repent. You can't be a dick all your existence, say "Please forgive me at the end" without truly beliving it and that's it.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Explain Like I'm Five
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but if you do truly repent then you can be a dick all your life and still get to heaven.
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I had a teacher in school who believed in predestination. Basically, whether you go to heaven or hell is pre-ordained before your even born and there's nothing you can do to change it. I told him that sounded to me like I should be a Satanist because if I'm predestined for heaven I've worshipped Satan all my life for nothing and I get to chill in heaven. If I'm predestined to go to hell I've spent so much time worshipping Satan it probably won't be too bad. I'm personally not really religious myself but I really was dumbfounded at the whole predestination thing.
Biblically the teacher is right. God does know where you are going to end up when he creates you. That's the doctorine.
that... does not sound right. humans have free will
They have free will but omniscience means it's known ahead of time what that free will will lead to.
If you give a 3 year old the choice between watching either the news or baby shark, you can pretty reliably predict the outcome. That but on a bigger scale.
At least that's the explanation that was given to me.
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One view is that God knows how people will end up not because He is forcing them to act a certain way, but because He has a perfect knowledge of the outcomes of their actions. Kind of like how a parent knows what the outcome of a small child's actions will be.
That's an... interesting take on predestination. The idea is that God already knows what you're going to do, because he's omniscient. It's not a matter of just picking you and then whatever you do is fine. He already 'knew' what you were going to do. So if you're good, he already knew and you're in.
If you wanna get into a religious debate about predestination, though, strap in. It's a doozy.
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Sounds like your teacher followed the calvinist branch of Christianity then?
Predestination (in terms of religious salvation but also in general, like in determinism) is something that I always found fascinating. Because, if you are predestined to something (either to salvation or two just wake up today), why do we even try so hard if the outcome is already preset? Why try to be a good person if you are already destined to go to heaven or hell since you've been born? Or why do you set the alarm to wake up early in the morning and go to work if you have no influence on what will happen? Couldn't you just sleep the whole day and the result would be the same because it's already preset?
I guess you wouldn't really have that choice. If a full determinism is true, there is no room for free will and even trying to affect the result is something you are already predestined to do and any choice you think you make (or even vacillating over the choices you make) is still something you were predestined to do and only an illusion of free will.
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Answer according to anyone christian: (note- not me) You don't. You have have to "Be sorry" and "ask forgiveness". You can still be an enormous piece of sh*t if you say you're sorry that you were bad.
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What's so disheartening is that a lot of fundie Christians actually use this logic to get away with twisted stuff like SH, SA, or CSA.
(And then the next day they collectively blame drag queens for allegedly doing the exact same thing to CYA, but that's another story.)
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You see, there are these things called eigenvalues. They dimentionalize the vector space. We can contruct a personality vector space and assign a set of orthogonal personality vectors. (Sees that this is elif). Erm, think of a "which Harry Potter character are you" quiz. We can add and subtract weighted , erm, Harry Potter characters, to get to you. You are half Harry plus two Rons minus 1.5 Malfos.
Now those numbers might change over time. That is you at that moment. If you, erm, took a DeLorean back to 1955, but still had those same numbers, you would still be you. If you wiped your memory but still had those numbers, you would still be you. Stands to reason if you went back in time and got your memory wiped, you would still be you. What if someone in the past (or future) had the exact same numbers? That would be you, even though no time travel occurred.
Now (erm, how do I explain vector projection to a five year old), ummm, if your numbers are close, you are mostly you? Now Jesus, ahh, scored a particular score on the sigh Harry Potter quiz. Remeber how I said your numbers change? Well, if your numbers are close enough, you could say that he is you, or Jesus is living Through you. And as long as more people in the future get numbers close to both yours and Jesus's, you could say you are living on, or having eternal life. And in order to change those number to Jesus's, you have to be good.
What? Oh, yes I got Hermonie. How did you know?
You absolutely don't have to. But when you're a Christian, you love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul; and you love your neighbor as yourself. The result is that you do good works by virtue of doing God's will. Good works are a result of salvation.
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Welp you don't want to hear it but the best explanation is religion is a system to scam commoners of their devotion and money. If things start not making sense then you should stop believing in Santa Claus
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