Are babies, "enemies of God" in your faith tradition?

[Brian2]

But that's not original sin is it? Is that a different type of theology you follow?

It must be. I don't follow everything that the Roman Catholic Church says.
We are judged on our own sins, not on the sins of our parents.

 

[Brian2]

Make sure that you tow the line and follow God's will, because there are scriptures that indicate that a person's salvation can be taken away by Jesus if they don't follow God's will. His parable of the sheep and the goats is one example, and so is his warning in Matthew 7:21, which he said, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." In my opinion, that's another conflicting message in the Bible, because Romans 10:9:13 says that if someone declares with their mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believes in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, they'll be saved.

And Ephesians 2:8–9 states, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." However, in Matthew 7:21, Jesus stated, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven," and his sheep and goats parable in Matthew 25:31-46 states the "sheep" were rewarded with eternal life for their good works of feeding the hungry, giving water to people who are thirsty, inviting in a stranger, clothing the needy, and visiting the sick or people in prison. However, the "goats" in this parable were lambasted by Jesus for not feeding the hungry, giving water to people who are thirsty, inviting in strangers, clothing the needy, and not visiting the sick or people in prison. Jesus cursed them and sent them to eternal damnation. The "goats" lacked the good works to be rewarded with eternal life, in spite of the fact that they were Christians who accepted Jesus as their lord and savior.

It does look contradictory but is not really since calling Jesus Lord means that we do His will and believing He was raised from the dead is the same as calling His Lord.
People can be punished and judged by others when it is the Lord who is our judge and hypocrisy is not what He wants.
If we are not wanting to do His will then we do not know Him, and salvation is knowing Him.
Those passages about losing salvation may just mean that those people never had salvation to begin with because they were never sincere. If we are sincere that does not mean we are perfect, but it means we try to do what God wants of us.
Those passages imo have been misinterpreted by many and used to scare people and harm them and make them guilty in their walk with Jesus.
I have even used those passages to do that to myself when caught in a long standing sin and wondering if I was even saved.

 

[Estro Felino]

Fwiw, I both believe in evolution and also Adam and Eve. And I image God saying to those who throw Adam and Eve under the bus "Depart from me ye Darwinist-dimwits unto the outer darkness!"

Could you elaborate? You mean that God created Adam and Eve through evolution?
Because I do know people who believe that God did that.
That is he manipulated apes' Dna.

 

[firedragon]

It must be. I don't follow everything that the Roman Catholic Church says.
We are judged on our own sins, not on the sins of our parents.

Okay okay. Understood.

 

[John D. Brey]

Could you elaborate? You mean that God created Adam and Eve through evolution?
Because I do know people who believe that God did that.
That is he manipulated apes' Dna.

Thus I share with the materialists or physicalists not only the emphasis on material objects as the paradigms of reality, but also the evolutionary hypothesis. But our ways seem to part when evolution produces minds, and human language. And they part even more widely when human minds produce stories, explanatory myths, tools and works of art and of science.

Karl Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 11.​

I share with the atheist Popper the emphasis on the legitimacy of evolution. And our ways remain in lockstep when Popper concedes, with some difficulty, that nothing in evolution accounts for the modern human soul. It's that soul that begins with ha-adam and her clone Eve. The human body leaves all kinds of tell-tale proofs of its evolutionary history. Not so the mind. As even the most intelligent atheists concede, it appears to come out of nowhere. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (two of the most vocal contemporary Neo-Darwinist) admit that the human mind came on the scene only very recently in cosmic time. Possibly the most intelligent atheist alive, Noam Chomsky, teaches that there's no sign whatsoever that the human soul (whose DNA is human grammar) evolved.

Adam and Eve are a story about the arrival of human grammar (ha-adam "named" things). And most of the best educated atheists concede that human grammar appears to have blow in on the wing of a prayer and the breath of a god.

Yet, by any conceivable standard, humanity is far and away life's greatest achievement. We are the mind of the biosphere, the solar system, and---who can say? ----perhaps the galaxy. Looking about us, we have learned to translate into our narrow audiovisual systems the sensory modalities of other organisms. We know much of the physicochemical basis of our own biology. We will soon create simple organisms in the laboratory. We have learned the history of the universe and look out almost to its edge. . . except for behaving like apes much of the time and suffering genetically limited lifespans we are godlike.

Edward O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth, p. 288-289.​

In the lifespan of some reading these words the sin-gene/chromosome will be located and eradicated so that our limited lifespan will be expanded beyond the wildest dreams of anyone but a bible-totter and our ape-like behavior will be corrected in the same ceremonial cut (Genesis 17:10) that unceremoniously (Philippians 3:3) removes the sin-gen/chromosome.



John

 

[YoursTrue]

It must be. I don't follow everything that the Roman Catholic Church says.
We are judged on our own sins, not on the sins of our parents.

Psalm 51:5 - Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge. 5 Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
Romans 5:12 - "When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned."
Sin entered the world, the Bible says. We were brought forth in iniquity, sinful upon conception. Them's the facts.
The psalmist realized there is a confined setting to sin. It's in our makeup, can't help it. Only forgiveness from God can set us straight IF we go His way.
(The way is narrow, said Jesus -- few would find it.)

 

[Brian2]

Psalm 51:5 - Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge. 5 Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
Romans 5:12 - "When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned."
Sin entered the world, the Bible says. We were brought forth in iniquity, sinful upon conception. Them's the facts.
The psalmist realized there is a confined setting to sin. It's in our makeup, can't help it. Only forgiveness from God can set us straight IF we go His way.
(The way is narrow, said Jesus -- few would find it.)

We might be sinful from the start but we do not start sinning for a while. A baby is not guilty and does not sin until later when it starts to sin. We are condemned for our sins, not the sins of Adam and Eve or anyone else.

 

[YoursTrue]

We might be sinful from the start but we do not start sinning for a while. A baby is not guilty and does not sin until later when it starts to sin. We are condemned for our sins, not the sins of Adam and Eve or anyone else.

To be conceived in sin seems pretty clear to me. Sin was passed on. Obviously the genetics changed since they were not originally set up to die. In Adam. Or Eve. If you think they were, oh well...Not going to argue it. Because the scriptures are clear -- everyone dies. Now. Death is the penalty of sin. We all sin, nothing we can do about it. We're born into it. Constrained. It doesn't mean we have to commit murder, adultery, things like that. But even if we never murder or do something bad like that, we die. Now. And death is the result of sin. Just like Adam & Eve died.
Romans 5:12 - When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.

 

[YoursTrue]

We might be sinful from the start but we do not start sinning for a while. A baby is not guilty and does not sin until later when it starts to sin. We are condemned for our sins, not the sins of Adam and Eve or anyone else.

Maybe we could discuss what 'sin' is. That's for another thread, perhaps.There is one person that never sinned. But even people argue about that. So at a certain point, I let it go. People will believe what they want to, to an extent. The apostle Paul, formerly called Saul, was firm in his belief as a Jew, thinking he did the right thing to persecute Christians, but then -- something happened that made him realize what was true. It was life-changing for him.

 

[Brian2]

To be conceived in sin seems pretty clear to me. Sin was passed on. Obviously the genetics changed since they were not originally set up to die. In Adam. Or Eve. If you think they were, oh well...Not going to argue it. Because the scriptures are clear -- everyone dies. Now. Death is the penalty of sin. We all sin, nothing we can do about it. We're born into it. Constrained. It doesn't mean we have to commit murder, adultery, things like that. But even if we never murder or do something bad like that, we die. Now. And death is the result of sin. Just like Adam & Eve died.
Romans 5:12 - When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.

The sin part of humanity seems to have spread to everyone either through nature or nurture, and maybe both.
I think the usual thinking is that the soul that gets passed from the parents to the baby somehow inherits this. (That no doubt conflicts with JW theology, but I won't argue that)
None of this however says that babies sin.
Babies do die however and that imo is because we have no access to the tree of life, it is not to do with our genetics having been changed.
If you want to argue that a new born baby that dies must therefore have sinned, I would disagree.

 

[Tiberius]

In the above video Stephen Lett (Governing Body member of the Jehovah's Witnesses) claims babies are, "enemies of God".

He immediately clarifies that he loves babies, but it is worth a good laugh seeing the theological clumsiness of one of 8 leaders of approx. 8.7 million people.

Which brings us to the question, are babies enemies of God in your faith tradition?

In my opinion

That video and the claim that babies are the enemies of God is utterly ridiculous.

I've seen religious people claim that if babies die they automatically go to Heaven because they are innocent.

Now this guy seems to be suggesting that they will go to hell because they are the enemies of God.

Well, there it is. If you ever doubted that religion is nothing more than an excuse to justify believing whatever you want to believe, here is irrefutable proof. Decide what you want to believe, then you can interpret religion in any way you want in order to justify it!

 

[Link]

I have a question. If you believe in reincarnation, doesn't that hold that some babies "lived evil" lives in the past?

Seems this a problem for our reincarnation friends more then Abrahamic.

 

[YoursTrue]

The sin part of humanity seems to have spread to everyone either through nature or nurture, and maybe both.
I think the usual thinking is that the soul that gets passed from the parents to the baby somehow inherits this. (That no doubt conflicts with JW theology, but I won't argue that)
None of this however says that babies sin.
Babies do die however and that imo is because we have no access to the tree of life, it is not to do with our genetics having been changed.
If you want to argue that a new born baby that dies must therefore have sinned, I would disagree.

Is that what you got from what I am saying? No, I am not.
The Bible says that we (all) die because of sin. That includes babies. There is INHERITED SIN. Babies do not have moral values until they are taught right from wrong in God's eyes.
That is what the Bible says. It is also for that reason that God made sacrifices obligatory for the Israelites, to remind them that (ALL OF THEM) except Jesus were sinners, there is no escape.
1 Corinthians 7:14 brings out requirements for parents and children: Notice, please, what it says:
"For the husband that believeth not is hallowed in the wife, And the wife that believeth not is hallowed in the brother: Else were your children impure, But now are they pure." What do you think this means insofar as salvation goes? Particularly for children, which is what we are discussing here...
This translation may be a bit easier to understand: "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in relation to [his] wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in relation to the brother; otherwise, your children would really be unclean, but now they are holy."

 

[YoursTrue]

I have a question. If you believe in reincarnation, doesn't that hold that some babies "lived evil" lives in the past?

Seems this a problem for our reincarnation friends more then Abrahamic.

Good question.
I, too, wonder if anyone who believesin reincarnation worries if he will be reincarnated as a cow, snake, or fish perhaps? Death is a bad enough prospect in a certain sense. So I'd like to see an answer to your question.

 

[Tiberius]

I have a question. If you believe in reincarnation, doesn't that hold that some babies "lived evil" lives in the past?

Seems this a problem for our reincarnation friends more then Abrahamic.

Maybe it's their first time around. After all, if reincarnation is true, then there's a first time for everyone.

And it also requires us to ask the question: Should people who have reincarnated be held responsible for the actions of their past lives?

 

[Brian2]

Is that what you got from what I am saying? No, I am not.
The Bible says that we (all) die because of sin. That includes babies. There is INHERITED SIN. Babies do not have moral values until they are taught right from wrong in God's eyes.
That is what the Bible says. It is also for that reason that God made sacrifices obligatory for the Israelites, to remind them that (ALL OF THEM) except Jesus were sinners, there is no escape.
1 Corinthians 7:14 brings out requirements for parents and children: Notice, please, what it says:
"For the husband that believeth not is hallowed in the wife, And the wife that believeth not is hallowed in the brother: Else were your children impure, But now are they pure." What do you think this means insofar as salvation goes? Particularly for children, which is what we are discussing here...
This translation may be a bit easier to understand: "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in relation to [his] wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in relation to the brother; otherwise, your children would really be unclean, but now they are holy."

1Cor 7:14 is a passage I have never understood well.

 

[YoursTrue]

1Cor 7:14 is a passage I have never understood well.

Let's think about why we ALL face death in part. (Because if Jesus was not killed, he would have continued living.) Do you understand why we die? According to the Bible, I mean. Because I don't want to discuss evolution as if that's the reason. (No, it's not.) Babies are not capable of making decisions, they need help from the moment they're born until they grow and learn. They can't work, can't feed themselves, can't speak, etc. So that's not the point about sin. It absolutely must be that when the death penalty was put upon Adam and Eve, their genes were altered. Causing them to grow old and weak and eventually die. Because if they had not sinned, they could have gone on without dying. I'll try to get back to this later. It's late and have a good night.

 

[danieldemol]

I have a question. If you believe in reincarnation, doesn't that hold that some babies "lived evil" lives in the past?

Seems this a problem for our reincarnation friends more then Abrahamic.

Who are you asking the question to? I don't believe in reincarnation, nor does the person in the video but that didn't stop him from labelling babies "enemies of God".

In my opinion.

 

[Brian2]

It absolutely must be that when the death penalty was put upon Adam and Eve, their genes were altered. Causing them to grow old and weak and eventually die. Because if they had not sinned, they could have gone on without dying. I'll try to get back to this later. It's late and have a good night.

It seems to me that maybe from the start A@E were not designed to live forever. But if they had not sinned they may have been granted access to the tree of life so they could keep living.

 

[Muffled]

In the above video Stephen Lett (Governing Body member of the Jehovah's Witnesses) claims babies are, "enemies of God".

He immediately clarifies that he loves babies, but it is worth a good laugh seeing the theological clumsiness of one of 8 leaders of approx. 8.7 million people.

Which brings us to the question, are babies enemies of God in your faith tradition?

In my opinion

I believe all have sinned and that puts us at enmity with God. However when we receive Jesus a Lord and Savior we are no longer enemies but friends. So someone like me who came down from Heaven to be a baby would already have been a friend of God. Someone who had not accepted Jesus in a previous life would still be at enmity with God as a baby.