h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think the difficulty of providing a clear cut defintion of 'sin is that it varies from one religion to the next hence, for example, Jewish customs of not eating pork, not eating milk and fish together (or something) and various other bits and pieces I can't remember. Any experienced mocker of the bible will tell you it is full of odd sounding things like it being a sin to mix fibres, eat shellfish or for a pregnant woman to take communion (or something). Depends who you ask, but they'll probably all get you on something.

"So for 'sinning' we are punished with a constantly miserable and imperfect world? When I was a child I did many things my parents told me not to do. For that, I was duely punished, my toys were confiscated, I was banned from TV. Whatever. Either way, the punishment elapsed after a certain time, and that was the end of it. I wasn't condemned for the rest of my life for any of my sins, I was punished, then forgiven. I thought that was how the Christian God was supposed to work."

No, I don't think so. Here's my take on it. God may forgive our sins, but we still have to live with the consequences. To take an example, say when you were a kid, you threw your dinner out the window. Now, your parents may forgive you for that and not punish you. But you still have to live with the consequences: ie. you now have no dinner. There's a difference between punishment for sin and its natural consequences. Take stealing something, most people would probably agree that that's a sin. Now, God won't punish you for stealing by making your life miserable. But by stealing from someone you've made them miserable. The natural consequence of sin is to make the world miserable. It's not God going: "OK, these people sinned, so I'll make them miserable." We're doing it to ourselves.

that sounds about right bp

can i also add that everybody on earth is still sinning. therefore the world can never be perfect while we are sinning.

God will forgive the sins of those who belive in him. when he returns those who are forgiven will enter heaven which will be perfect

Okay, well there's a whole world of answers to that little lot.

Yes, okay, so if I chick my dinner out of the window I loose my dinner, but if I lie and claim my brother did it, I might get away with it and he will get punished for something I did. The world of crime and punishment doesn't always work out fairly, in that a whole world of crap can land at the doors of the relatively innocent. What, for example, has a little baby in daffour (sp?) done that is so awful that her deserved fate is that her father has beenb dragged away and murdered, her mother has been raped and she is going to die of starvation? Which leads me on to my second point. Yes, I agree, most of the world is 'sinning' but I think much of the world is committing relativly minor sins like parking on double yellow lines, or littering, not murdering or raping or really bad stuff that merits being slung out of the garden of eden. God is, if that is his view, a little too judgemental for me to want anything to do with him. Finally, God will only forgive us if we believe in him? SO we are only okay if we take a questionable leap of faith randomly in the right direction? In ancient Egyptian culture, when pharoes went up to the afterlife, their good and bad actions were weighed against each other and whatever was the heavier won out. That sounds like a much better system to me.

its not just murdering etc that is sin, sin is rebelling against God. not beliving in him is sin and while ever we are doing that we are sinning

So I haven't really got a choice have I? Believe in God or be punished. Sounds like a police state to me.

Why would God wanna punish us for not believing in him/her/it?
He/she/it as not exactly given us any proof their there.
Plus ive never been able to understand why a being of gods magnitude would want a speck under a microscope like us to worship him.

"I think much of the world is committing relativly minor sins like parking on double yellow lines, or littering"

I think there's a bit of confusion about the nature of sin here. These are my thoughts. Jesus said in the Bible (yeah, I'm coming at this from a Christian perspective) that the whole of the commandments in the Bible could be summed up as "Love God". So therefore anything that you place before loving God is sin. Mostly it's putting yourself before God: what you want, rather than what you know God would want. Basically, God made us to have a relationship with him, but we walked away and said we wanted to do it on our own. That was the start of sin, and since then, the world's become a completely messed-up place.

"What, for example, has a little baby in daffour (sp?) done that is so awful that her deserved fate is that her father has beenb dragged away and murdered, her mother has been raped and she is going to die of starvation?"

This is a perfect example of what sin leads to. Human beings are responsible for the murder and the rape, not God. They're a result of our sinfulness and rebellion against God. God doesn't look down at this kid from Darfour and say, "I want your dad to be murdered, your mum to be raped and you to die of starvation." No! He hates that stuff. He's perfectly holy, perfectly just. Humans who have rejected what God wants have done these awful things.

"God is, if that is his view, a little too judgemental for me to want anything to do with him... In ancient Egyptian culture, when pharoes went up to the afterlife, their good and bad actions were weighed against each other and whatever was the heavier won out. That sounds like a much better system to me."

As we've just seen, sin is fundamentally opposed to the character of God. He's perfect. And he hates sin. And being just, he can't let sin survive. His standard is perfection: absolutely no sin. It's not like the Egyptians, where if you're 49% bad and 51% good, the gods accept that. God can't accept anything less than 100%.

"Finally, God will only forgive us if we believe in him?"

Now, it's obvious that no human being can ever attain the 100% sin-free standard. God has to destroy our sin, because he's just, but he doesn't want to destroy us, because he loves us. So instead of punishing us for our sins, he actually became a human himself (Jesus) and took the punishment for our sin. So if we accept Jesus' sacrifice, we don't have to be punished for our sin any more. We're right with God, because our sin has been taken away. We still keep on sinning, and we still have to deal with its consequences, but we don't have to face the punishment for it. We're forgiven. But we're only forgiven if we accept Jesus' sacrifice. Otherwise, we're still saying, "I don't need you, God. I can do this on my own." We have to realise that we can't, and we need God to get us out of the horrible mess we've got ourselves into.

Well, that was pretty long, and probably very badly-explained and confusing. Hopefully it makes some kind of sense to you. Ask me if it doesn't.

Why does God need us to worship him/her?

he wants us to trust and love him.

if we belive then it isright to worship him.

worship comes from our love for our father.

he loves us uncondtionaly. he doesnt need anything from us.

he is everything and it is right we worship because of who he is and what he has done for us

'So therefore anything that you place before loving God is sin'

Which comes back to my earlier point- we are given no option but to love God. If I went around saying 'everyone must love me and anyone that doesn't is BAD' you would say I was a psychopath, and there's probably some specific psychological term for that kind of behaviour. You can't make someone love you, you either love or you don't.

'Human beings are responsible for the murder and the rape, not God'

Sure, the rapists and murderers are responsible for their own actions, but they are suffering, they're probably perfectly happy. It's the people who get raped and murdered that I worry about. Nobody deserves to be raped, whatever they've done. Where's God when they need him?

'But we're only forgiven if we accept Jesus' sacrifice. Otherwise, we're still saying, "I don't need you, God. I can do this on my own.'

Why? It seems as if the only reason not sinning is so hard is because of the ridiculous rules we're given. Right now, I look at my life and there are things I've done that I regret, that I know were wrong, and I feel bad about them, but rather than wiping those clean I'd really prefer a little more guidance with not making mistakes in the future, even a little help. That's what I get from my wife, my parents, people like that, and that's why I love them, not because they made me.

Re the above Q. "What is sin?"

According to GOD, yes the Peeping-Tom in the Garden, wearing clothes is a SIN! So everybody is a sinner, apart from some lucky south sea islanders.

According to GOD's own definition Jesus must be a sinner. I mean, Jesus wore clothes didn't he.

LL

jesus was perfect and didn sin. which is why he can die in our place.

ive never heard of wearing clothes as a sin. where did you get that from?

I get the idea from GOD's vented anger in The Fall of Man in Chpt. 3 Genesis:

The Scene: Adam and his wife (as yet nnamed although they are a married couple) sew fig leaves together and make coverings for themselves. God, the snooper in the garden arrives -
God: Where are you? (as if he didn't know already!)
Adam: I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.
God: Who told you that you were naked ...

God then curses the serpent and then his tirade continues against the two humans:
God: (to the woman) I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing ...
God: (to Adam) Cursed is the ground because of you ...

Seems like God's more than upset about the fig-leaf uniforms. OK, I'll give him his due, he relents in part for:
God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife ...

In Chpt. 2 of Genesis there's no problem because the couple are naked. God likes it if people go around naked. He wants them to remain down there with chimps and the orang-utangs. That's God's message. He wants Earth to be a "Me Tarzan, you Jane," planet.

Can we take this Old Testament God seriously? He's so erratic and bloody minded he's clearly an impostor.

God is angry because he gave adam and eve one comandment, which was to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2v2). they did eat its fruit (3v6-7) thi opened there eyes so they realised they were naked and ashamed to see God. when they told God they hid because they were ashamed God knew they had eaten from the tree.

part of the problem here is relationships. adam and eve had a perfect relationship with each other and with God. once they had disobeyed God then the reltionship wasnt perfect anymore.

the God from the old testament is exactly the same God as the new testament.

the serpent represents the devil who tempts, God predicted that a son of man would crush the devils head. this is part of the punishment for the serpent. Jesus was a desendent of adam and eve and crushed the devil when he died for us.

God "angry"? The creator of the 30,000,000,000 year universe succumbing to the base emotion anger???
If that's true then there's not much chance of any peace in the world is there? If we brought peace and forgiveness into all the world we'd be better than God because we would have overcome anger, a failing that God suffers from. And as is his Old Testament habit, he would then get angry again and punish us again for outsmarting him, wouldn't he?

Jesus' God cannot be the same as the Old Testament God. Jesus's God is a Love your enemy non-judgemental kind of God and not an Old Testament tyrant.

the God in the old testement and the new testament is the same God.

Does Jesus mention about the old testement?Im not up on my bible studies.

Jesus often refers to the old testament and the old testament constently predicts Jesus' coming

From Matthew 10.34
Jesus: Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I
did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

The angry old tyrant God from the Old Testament is, in some quarters, alive and well after all BUT IS HE IN FACT THE CREATOR of the 30,000,000,000 year universe?

Was the universe REALLY created by a bad-tempered, petty-minded dictator? If so, for whose benefit?