aspen
“"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few
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[font="tahoma][color="#000080"]They are the same thing. Total depravity is fancy wording for "totally sinful". A sinful person is depraved, and a depraved person sins. They are the same.[/color][/font]
[font="tahoma][color="#000080"]If you support one you must support the other, and if you disagree with this then please provide your rationale for why they are different.[/color][/font]
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[font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]My support has nothing to do with anything - and you are giving me a false dichotomy. You can have a tendency to sin by being self-serving without being rotten to the core - the doctrine of total depravity is more than just a fancy way of saying sinful - it is a foundational doctrine in Calvinism and an ahboration from what was taught in the Christian Church for the first 1500 years of it's existence.[/color]
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[font="tahoma][color="#000080"]But even if there is a difference, you do agree with David that we are all sinful from birth? If this is true, then my point is still clear, no man thinks for anything other than that which is sinful. Communism will 100% of the time fail.[/color][/font]
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[font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]I agree with David that we have a tendency to be self-seeking from birth and if we do not submit to Jesus we will continue to fail to trust and therefore, love others, contributing to evil in the world. All governments are man-made doctrines - they will all fail - I am just wondering why you are singling out Communism.[/color]
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[color="#000080"][font="tahoma]In other words, you believe he gave them a will to do so. [/font][/color]
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[font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]Wrong - capacity and will are different words with different meanings. If you give your child a new toy for Christmas, does this mean they will have the Will to break it? No. There is a capacity to break it because we have the capacity to misuse creation. Why do some Christians feel it so necessary to add negative intentions to all human actions? Most people bumble through life on autopilot - with a tendency to satisfy their own needs before others; the majority is not plotting the ruin of humanity due to their total depravity.[/color][/font]
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[/font][/color][color="#000080"][font="tahoma]Like I said, this isn't about will, this is about the thought. Weather or not they had a will is really redundant here, where did the thought come from for them to disobey?[/font][/color]
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[font="tahoma][/font][font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]Again, thought have many sources. Cognition may be our first tendency, but it is not the first motivator in other cultures. People are motivated by intuition all the time - the impulse never has time to become a thought before it is acted upon. Cognitive, Behavioral Therapy is a counseling technique that helps people curb their impulsive behavior by making it into thoughts and then deciding to act or not act.
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[/font][/color][color="#000080"][font="tahoma][/font][/color][color="#000080"][font="tahoma]Nonsense. God told them, "you will surely die".[/font][/color]
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[font="tahoma][/font][font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]You misunderstood my post. I was talking about the short term benefits that reinforce behavior, not the negative results. BTW, What makes you think A&E could imagine death? They had never seen it or experienced anything dying before.
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[font="tahoma][color="#000080"]What behavior outside of God's will would gather attention? And who enabled and gave Satan the thought to do that behavior? You must think deeper than you currently are.[/font]
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[color="#8B0000"][font="tahoma][/font][font="tahoma]Ah, I am thinking too shallow.....[/font][/color]
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[font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]Let's try this again. Lucifer is in heaven - he notices that when he sings a particularly beautiful song, many of the angels give him a lot of attention - it feels good - pretty soon, he starts expecting it and when it seems that he is not getting the same amount of attention, self-serving, narcissistic thoughts enter his mind. "I've never heard God sing as well as I can, why is He receiving my glory after my performances?" No one put those thoughts in his head - they germinated in his own heart, based on reinforcement - good feelings about angels noticing him.
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[/font][font="tahoma][/font][font="tahoma][color="#000080"]Again, nonsense. God told them.[/color][/font]
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[font="tahoma][/font][font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]It is nonsense because you did not understand my point. God never told them they would be able to determine good and evil if they ate of the tree - he told them they would die - whatever that meant to two people who had never experienced death, let alone evil. My point was - they never had to know evil so they were not missing out on anything anyway. It was like tempting a kids with a wet willy everyday if they give you their lunch money.......[/color]
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[font="tahoma][color="#000080"]So God's love wasn't as high as it gets? Prove "forgiveness is the highest form of love".[/color][/font]
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[font="tahoma][color="#8B0000"]Nope. There is something higher than God's love - a grander expression - God's forgiveness[/color]
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