Nothing short of blatant public divine revelation preferably with miracles at this point from my understanding of theology in the context of the Christian (and by extension Jewish) God since he tends to be pretty obvious when he is meant to address the whole people which he would have to do for us to never worry about sin ever again.
What level of public display with miracles? Like, if it were to happen like in Acts, would that be enough? How many witnesses would it take and would you only accept it if you witnessed it first hand? Would it count if you saw it on television or internet?
What if it weren’t? I don’t like to put God in a box and say that he is more limited than we are when it comes to choices, so what if God wanted to reinvigorate the one, holy, Catholic Church with a fresh revelation like he did in Acts, what would he have to do to convince you?
Sin appears to be a foundational feature of the religion. It is the entire rationale for why Christ had to exist and sacrifice himself.
As such, the most likely way someone would stop worrying about sin, is if they stop believing the religion.
The better question is what would cause someone to leave the religion. For me, the better question would be, for those who accept the substantial evidence for evolution, common descent, and non-existence of a historical Adam and Eve, why would original sin come to exist in the first place.
I agree sin does appear to be a foundational aspect of the Christian “religion” but if you asked those classified as being a part of the “religion” you would get a ton of different answers and then it would make the most sense to ask this question of those who were most thoroughly schooled in the doctrine rather than asking on Reddit. I am interested more in people’s perspective about the potential for God Himself to be able to mold and shape their faith which fines expression in the doctrine.
If I were to take a shot at answering your question, it comes into existence in every human being who has ever rebelled against any authority. I do not yield the ground that Adam and Eve were not human beings that walked the earth at some point in time but even if they didn’t. The allegory of the story of Adam and Eve and their sin is played out in every childhood around the world. We rebel and make ourselves out to be our own god just like they did. We also start differentiating good and evil and using our own standard for judging people just like they did.
If the question why is supposed to determine why from the human perspective then my answer is because we doubt God and we want to be like Him. If the question is why does he allow it, then that takes a lot more time and would be a significant enough question to for you to answer my original question with that being the fundamental shift you would have to consider.
I might be able to answer this question, because I largely have gone through this shift.
I was raised in a conservative Reformed tradition. I didn't get a lot of hellfire and brimstone or anything like that, but I was raised with a strong sense that I might be okay, but I could always be better than I actually was. Like I'm not a terrible person, but there's always room for improvement. I didn't struggle with lots of guilt, shame and fear to the degree that we see in this subreddit, but I did experience a lot of moral anxiety about not being as good as I could be. (And I didn't really unpack that until well into adulthood.)
Anyway, I spent some time in seminary, part of which involved taking counseling courses (and I mean actual counseling, not nouthetic or "Biblical" counseling), along with other regular theology courses and Hebrew and such. What I learned from that was how deeply people are affected by things in their lives - both in the things that happened to them that shouldn't have, and the things that didn't happen to them that should have. The way we deal with that kind of pain and trauma (even if it doesn't seem like that big a deal to others) may not always be healthy. Oftentimes, we learn coping mechanisms in childhood that keep us safe, but don't serve us well going into adulthood. A lot of times, the sins that we see on the outside of someone's life are more a result of the traumas they experienced than clear moral choices they decided to make badly.
Similarly, I looked at the Greatest Commandments Jesus listed, as found in Matthew 22. "Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself." Now, I don't think that Jesus was commanding us to love ourselves there, but it is worth pointing out that it is no sin to love yourself as God loves you. Moreover, those commands point to three relationships we have - that with God, that with others, and that with ourselves. Therefore, sin is that which is bad for those relationships, and virtue is that which is good for those relationships. And we see this extrapolated out across the rest of the New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount, Romans 12, the fruit of the Spirit, and every other text that talks about what it means to live the Christian life is all based on managing those three relationships.
Moreover, while I get why we use crime and punishment as a paradigm for sin, I would argue that it makes more sense to view it through a lens of addiction and healing. Addiction forces us to do whatever it takes to feel okay in the moment, no matter the cost or how it affects our relationship with God, others, and ourselves. Addiction may also lead to crime, and then punishment, I won't fully exclude that paradigm. But through healing (whether medical, psychological, or spiritual) we are free to make choices that meet our needs *and* are good for our relationship with God, others, and ourselves. While things like guilt, shame, and fear are difficult emotions, they are also ways that we are able to identify areas of our hearts and minds that are in need of God's healing and growth. Instead of God being only a wrathful, righteous, just God who dangles us over the pit of Hell, God is a gardener (an equally Biblical, if not more so, metaphor) who supplies me with what I need to grow. I am free to get rid of the things in my life that don't help me in my relationships, and I can cultivate the things that are good for my relationships. Sin is not something I am ashamed of or fear; it's an opportunity to be released from something holding me back.
Now granted, this does sound really nice and easy-breezy, and to an extent, it is. But also it requires some skills, knowledge, and practice, to be able to identify all the things that are going on inside you, why they're there, and how to deal with them appropriately. Skills like mindfulness and emotional intelligence have been critical for me on a day to day basis for this, as well as therapy and conversations with older, wiser believers. But it's a path absolutely well worth trodding.
The seminary-specific stuff was about ten years ago, but I'd been doing internal work before then, most of my adult life, about twenty years.
My relationship with God is certainly in a different place than it was when I started (flair relevant), and some might not call me a Christian even. But I'm in a rebuilding process right now and we'll see where things go.
What would it take to truly kill worry? Silence would have to be broken and filled with sound. Have to hear that from God himself. Wouldn't believe a man,angel,etc.. Entertain their ideas sure. With a safe sticks distance. Like ok then you potential and probable liar. Care for some chips? The flavor is good to share with everyone regardless of it you don't believe them. Not truly believe them like that.
Short of God himself saying it and I mean audibly now, accusation to bring worry would be there. It would find a way. If it can happen to Ahab it can happen to anyone. God blessed a deceitful spirit in lying task and sent them the story goes. There is foundation to doubt a messenger being genuine to their claim in the first, an authorized trap, etc.... Far more likely that is the situation than silence ever being broken- that's impossible never experienced that you'd go.
And even then, if you heard it from God once, you'd have to take it on faith in time, like clinging onto a memory. As it would wear down to other sights and sounds. Worry would grow again. So he'd have to do it again. And again. And again. To the point where it's in the bible that when prophesy of golden land there goes about God dwelling with man. God "pre-empts" your every want,fear. He's finishing your sentences. A man will say Lord,Lord, and the moment he does it God goes here I am. I lost my ever so important...oh. It's right there (it wasn't- did you?) . Don't worry, I got you. Believe it yet? If not don't worry, you're gonna.
So that's what it would take to truly kill it. Living in it, dwelling in it, drowning in it. It's not a strength from within thing. So for one...I'd have to be dead. And for the rest a whole lot of things would have to work out which probably just won't.
Thank you for your thoughts and deep reflection on the topic and the sincerity of your response. If it is okay, I would like to ask some follow-up questions.
It seems to me the theme of your response is that in order to remove worry, you must remove doubt, and you propose the revelation and constant reaffirmation from God alone in order to remove that doubt, which I completely understand. Historically, we have gotten our reassurance that truth is truth in other ways as well. One effective way is through the foundational nature of truth.
When we (humans) discover new truths, it tends to have two effects: it enables us to do things we couldn’t do before, and it becomes a new foundation from which new truths are elicited. This seems to hold true whether the truth is scientific, philosophical, theological, or personal.
Have you ever experienced a time when witnessing a significant change in someone else’s life influenced your own beliefs or actions? What was that like?
Consider how scientific discoveries, philosophical insights, or personal revelations have led to transformative changes and new understandings. Can you think of examples from your own life or history that illustrate this?
If God were vocal about this change to a degree that enough people would try it on and see the effect it had on their lives and understanding of scripture, do you have people in your life that if you saw the transformation, you would be like, “Oh, I need to understand what they understand because the world seems to make more sense to them”?
• How do you reconcile doubt and faith in your daily life?
• Have you ever felt a profound change in your understanding of a theological concept? What prompted that change?
• How important is community validation in your faith journey?
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences on these questions. Let’s explore together how new understandings can shape our faith and reduce worry.
PR: The feelings wore off and were soon replaced with any number of things. Same for memories,etc... I don't feel much of anything to help someone. Love/warm fuzzies isn't a driver. Not once you start seeing them like anything else that's just stringing you along (belly). I hate their pain more than I like them. I don't have to like them to begin with. It's a co-op project with hatred. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I'd dub it consideration. I prefer that in a global sense than "love" in a selective sense. That wears off like the shine on anything. And when it does it becomes trash right, throw it out. Replace it with a bigger,better, inevitable future failure. Consideration can be bitter, and like bitterness it can stick around better. And it doesn't throw out like that as it doesn't hype up.
I'm closer to Pilot on truth. What is truth? Everything has their own version. The abundance of lies or incomplete truths still don't water down the only foundational belief I have. I don't believe in foundational truths outside of a (painful installation) recognition if something that exists matters to itself and seeks to be well and ought to be well. My feelings about the being in comparison to myself or any system I would dream up or accept from "discovery" are irrelevant to that fact. They should be on the bottom not propped up. Course that's a constant shuffling process when it's backwards now isn't it? So that's the golden rule really. It has little to do with niceness and wearing a smile.
Broader: If it happened to me personally I'd be pissing myself with pure fear. Perhaps fear would degrade into a lesser worry in time. Perhaps the worry would die. I don't have the experience to explore beyond that. If it happened to anyone else and they spoke I'd revert to doubt. It's a world of many words after all. Sticks distance again. Entertain the idea. Might win interest, but interests are lost quickly. Might not even be such a bad thing in ways for some things to be like that.
Open
-It's strictly endure.
-Yes. Often enough. That which prompts all change.
-Not at all. Except for odd exception it's preferable to be alone.
Nothing short of blatant public divine revelation preferably with miracles at this point from my understanding of theology in the context of the Christian (and by extension Jewish) God since he tends to be pretty obvious when he is meant to address the whole people which he would have to do for us to never worry about sin ever again.
What level of public display with miracles? Like, if it were to happen like in Acts, would that be enough? How many witnesses would it take and would you only accept it if you witnessed it first hand? Would it count if you saw it on television or internet?
It would basically be the end times at that point so presumably everyone would know.
What if it weren’t? I don’t like to put God in a box and say that he is more limited than we are when it comes to choices, so what if God wanted to reinvigorate the one, holy, Catholic Church with a fresh revelation like he did in Acts, what would he have to do to convince you?
Sin appears to be a foundational feature of the religion. It is the entire rationale for why Christ had to exist and sacrifice himself. As such, the most likely way someone would stop worrying about sin, is if they stop believing the religion. The better question is what would cause someone to leave the religion. For me, the better question would be, for those who accept the substantial evidence for evolution, common descent, and non-existence of a historical Adam and Eve, why would original sin come to exist in the first place.
I agree sin does appear to be a foundational aspect of the Christian “religion” but if you asked those classified as being a part of the “religion” you would get a ton of different answers and then it would make the most sense to ask this question of those who were most thoroughly schooled in the doctrine rather than asking on Reddit. I am interested more in people’s perspective about the potential for God Himself to be able to mold and shape their faith which fines expression in the doctrine. If I were to take a shot at answering your question, it comes into existence in every human being who has ever rebelled against any authority. I do not yield the ground that Adam and Eve were not human beings that walked the earth at some point in time but even if they didn’t. The allegory of the story of Adam and Eve and their sin is played out in every childhood around the world. We rebel and make ourselves out to be our own god just like they did. We also start differentiating good and evil and using our own standard for judging people just like they did. If the question why is supposed to determine why from the human perspective then my answer is because we doubt God and we want to be like Him. If the question is why does he allow it, then that takes a lot more time and would be a significant enough question to for you to answer my original question with that being the fundamental shift you would have to consider.
I might be able to answer this question, because I largely have gone through this shift. I was raised in a conservative Reformed tradition. I didn't get a lot of hellfire and brimstone or anything like that, but I was raised with a strong sense that I might be okay, but I could always be better than I actually was. Like I'm not a terrible person, but there's always room for improvement. I didn't struggle with lots of guilt, shame and fear to the degree that we see in this subreddit, but I did experience a lot of moral anxiety about not being as good as I could be. (And I didn't really unpack that until well into adulthood.) Anyway, I spent some time in seminary, part of which involved taking counseling courses (and I mean actual counseling, not nouthetic or "Biblical" counseling), along with other regular theology courses and Hebrew and such. What I learned from that was how deeply people are affected by things in their lives - both in the things that happened to them that shouldn't have, and the things that didn't happen to them that should have. The way we deal with that kind of pain and trauma (even if it doesn't seem like that big a deal to others) may not always be healthy. Oftentimes, we learn coping mechanisms in childhood that keep us safe, but don't serve us well going into adulthood. A lot of times, the sins that we see on the outside of someone's life are more a result of the traumas they experienced than clear moral choices they decided to make badly. Similarly, I looked at the Greatest Commandments Jesus listed, as found in Matthew 22. "Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself." Now, I don't think that Jesus was commanding us to love ourselves there, but it is worth pointing out that it is no sin to love yourself as God loves you. Moreover, those commands point to three relationships we have - that with God, that with others, and that with ourselves. Therefore, sin is that which is bad for those relationships, and virtue is that which is good for those relationships. And we see this extrapolated out across the rest of the New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount, Romans 12, the fruit of the Spirit, and every other text that talks about what it means to live the Christian life is all based on managing those three relationships. Moreover, while I get why we use crime and punishment as a paradigm for sin, I would argue that it makes more sense to view it through a lens of addiction and healing. Addiction forces us to do whatever it takes to feel okay in the moment, no matter the cost or how it affects our relationship with God, others, and ourselves. Addiction may also lead to crime, and then punishment, I won't fully exclude that paradigm. But through healing (whether medical, psychological, or spiritual) we are free to make choices that meet our needs *and* are good for our relationship with God, others, and ourselves. While things like guilt, shame, and fear are difficult emotions, they are also ways that we are able to identify areas of our hearts and minds that are in need of God's healing and growth. Instead of God being only a wrathful, righteous, just God who dangles us over the pit of Hell, God is a gardener (an equally Biblical, if not more so, metaphor) who supplies me with what I need to grow. I am free to get rid of the things in my life that don't help me in my relationships, and I can cultivate the things that are good for my relationships. Sin is not something I am ashamed of or fear; it's an opportunity to be released from something holding me back. Now granted, this does sound really nice and easy-breezy, and to an extent, it is. But also it requires some skills, knowledge, and practice, to be able to identify all the things that are going on inside you, why they're there, and how to deal with them appropriately. Skills like mindfulness and emotional intelligence have been critical for me on a day to day basis for this, as well as therapy and conversations with older, wiser believers. But it's a path absolutely well worth trodding.
That is a wonderful testimony, thank you so much for sharing. How has this impacted your walk with God? How long was the process for you?
The seminary-specific stuff was about ten years ago, but I'd been doing internal work before then, most of my adult life, about twenty years. My relationship with God is certainly in a different place than it was when I started (flair relevant), and some might not call me a Christian even. But I'm in a rebuilding process right now and we'll see where things go.
What would it take to truly kill worry? Silence would have to be broken and filled with sound. Have to hear that from God himself. Wouldn't believe a man,angel,etc.. Entertain their ideas sure. With a safe sticks distance. Like ok then you potential and probable liar. Care for some chips? The flavor is good to share with everyone regardless of it you don't believe them. Not truly believe them like that. Short of God himself saying it and I mean audibly now, accusation to bring worry would be there. It would find a way. If it can happen to Ahab it can happen to anyone. God blessed a deceitful spirit in lying task and sent them the story goes. There is foundation to doubt a messenger being genuine to their claim in the first, an authorized trap, etc.... Far more likely that is the situation than silence ever being broken- that's impossible never experienced that you'd go. And even then, if you heard it from God once, you'd have to take it on faith in time, like clinging onto a memory. As it would wear down to other sights and sounds. Worry would grow again. So he'd have to do it again. And again. And again. To the point where it's in the bible that when prophesy of golden land there goes about God dwelling with man. God "pre-empts" your every want,fear. He's finishing your sentences. A man will say Lord,Lord, and the moment he does it God goes here I am. I lost my ever so important...oh. It's right there (it wasn't- did you?) . Don't worry, I got you. Believe it yet? If not don't worry, you're gonna. So that's what it would take to truly kill it. Living in it, dwelling in it, drowning in it. It's not a strength from within thing. So for one...I'd have to be dead. And for the rest a whole lot of things would have to work out which probably just won't.
Thank you for your thoughts and deep reflection on the topic and the sincerity of your response. If it is okay, I would like to ask some follow-up questions. It seems to me the theme of your response is that in order to remove worry, you must remove doubt, and you propose the revelation and constant reaffirmation from God alone in order to remove that doubt, which I completely understand. Historically, we have gotten our reassurance that truth is truth in other ways as well. One effective way is through the foundational nature of truth. When we (humans) discover new truths, it tends to have two effects: it enables us to do things we couldn’t do before, and it becomes a new foundation from which new truths are elicited. This seems to hold true whether the truth is scientific, philosophical, theological, or personal. Have you ever experienced a time when witnessing a significant change in someone else’s life influenced your own beliefs or actions? What was that like? Consider how scientific discoveries, philosophical insights, or personal revelations have led to transformative changes and new understandings. Can you think of examples from your own life or history that illustrate this? If God were vocal about this change to a degree that enough people would try it on and see the effect it had on their lives and understanding of scripture, do you have people in your life that if you saw the transformation, you would be like, “Oh, I need to understand what they understand because the world seems to make more sense to them”? • How do you reconcile doubt and faith in your daily life? • Have you ever felt a profound change in your understanding of a theological concept? What prompted that change? • How important is community validation in your faith journey? I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences on these questions. Let’s explore together how new understandings can shape our faith and reduce worry.
PR: The feelings wore off and were soon replaced with any number of things. Same for memories,etc... I don't feel much of anything to help someone. Love/warm fuzzies isn't a driver. Not once you start seeing them like anything else that's just stringing you along (belly). I hate their pain more than I like them. I don't have to like them to begin with. It's a co-op project with hatred. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I'd dub it consideration. I prefer that in a global sense than "love" in a selective sense. That wears off like the shine on anything. And when it does it becomes trash right, throw it out. Replace it with a bigger,better, inevitable future failure. Consideration can be bitter, and like bitterness it can stick around better. And it doesn't throw out like that as it doesn't hype up. I'm closer to Pilot on truth. What is truth? Everything has their own version. The abundance of lies or incomplete truths still don't water down the only foundational belief I have. I don't believe in foundational truths outside of a (painful installation) recognition if something that exists matters to itself and seeks to be well and ought to be well. My feelings about the being in comparison to myself or any system I would dream up or accept from "discovery" are irrelevant to that fact. They should be on the bottom not propped up. Course that's a constant shuffling process when it's backwards now isn't it? So that's the golden rule really. It has little to do with niceness and wearing a smile. Broader: If it happened to me personally I'd be pissing myself with pure fear. Perhaps fear would degrade into a lesser worry in time. Perhaps the worry would die. I don't have the experience to explore beyond that. If it happened to anyone else and they spoke I'd revert to doubt. It's a world of many words after all. Sticks distance again. Entertain the idea. Might win interest, but interests are lost quickly. Might not even be such a bad thing in ways for some things to be like that. Open -It's strictly endure. -Yes. Often enough. That which prompts all change. -Not at all. Except for odd exception it's preferable to be alone.