good for you my friend, it's the OP here, you are actually respecting the thread - it's about Christians not Christianity - I respect the religion it's just I've too regularly found a certain type of Christian who is judgemental, petty authoritarian and creepy - I think these tend to veer more towards evangelicalism. A lot of the debate here is old hat - there are many who believe in a non-personal god, the bearded spouter of old english perched behind the clouds is as dead as Nietszche said he was - it actually takes a leap of faith to be an atheist - you have to presume existence emanates or emanated from scientific law then accept that this law pre-existed the universe, you make this law God-like. Being open to forces we don't understand does not make you believe in plagues of frogs or the efficacy of mass infanticide. So there.

Once again, those are not Christians.

A plague of frogs is a perfectly possible, albeit unusual, effect of deoxification of the water (the Nile). That it was immediately preceded by the killing of the fish in the river supports that. The other plagues of Egypt were also evidently natural phenomena that the people, knowing no better, ascribed to divine forces. The rain of fire and the three-day darkness for example were probably caused by the Minoan eruption of Thera, at what is now Santorini, c. 1630-1600 BC.

Similarly, Sodom and Gommorah were probably destroyed not by "God's wrath" but by a bolide that sliced the top off the Gamskogel, slammed at a rather oblique angle into the western side of the Oetztal near what is now the village of Umhausen in the Tyrol, and (among other things) threw molten fragments into the air which rained down over eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Since observers knew the inhabitants' conduct had been disgraceful, and knew nothing of near-earth asteroid trajectories, they will have interpreted this as divine retribution. This event is dated to about 3000 BC. (By comparison, there were many contemporary explanations offered for the Tsunguska impact in Siberia in 1908, which we know now to have been the airborne explosion of an office-block sized iron meteorite, but there was enough science around by then to determine that it was not the deliberate act of an angry deity. Some of them did however implicate supposed alien spacecraft crews).

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The Ferret
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I thought Christians was an early brand of cat food?

... feeding "Christians" to the lions.

Edited by Henry of Peckham (09 Mar 2018 12.00am)

Denial is not just a river in Egypt

Following Christ to perfection is not possible, of course, but we are expected to strive to come as close to His Example as we can. There are varying degrees of falling short, as you say, but there is also outright hypocrisy, people who instead of repenting of their sin try to justify it by claiming that what they are doing is actually good and mandated by God, typically citing some tenuous reference to some Old Testament reference as "evidence".

They probably start out by following the "broad and easy path" (Matt. 7 : 13-14) which leads them astray, not because they are actively evil at the outset, but because they lack application or are easily led. The parable of the sower breaks this down further (Matt. 13 : 1-23).

Edited by chateauferret (08 Mar 2018 1.59am)

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The Ferret
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I think on this we can concur.

It's a relegation risking season, lots of bad injuries and poor form by key players. Lots of losing games in the last ten minutes instead of winning them.

We can survive but us going down wouldn't surprise me.

Edited by Stirlingsays (08 Mar 2018 6.11am)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Few of us will get through life without at least one major crisis.

In despair nobody to help or turn to.

How does any human being react?

'God, please help me!'