"Who, then, is to decide which deed is evil and accountable to the devil and which is good and accountable to God?"
Well, G*d for one. And ultimately, G*d is the only one who you will have to answer to. And all deeds done with a heart of good, meant to help the world for good are, IMO, deeds that are good.
By this reasoning, then, the suicide bombing "meant to help the world for good" is going to be accepted by [the god of your choice] as a good deed done in his name. This being the case, then none of us have any reason to protest any killing, so long as the person who did the killing did it because he believed it was to "help the world for good." This is nonsense. Pol Pot thought he was creating utopia with the killing fields in Cambodia. Did God then judge his deeds as good? His murder of a million and half people, was that acceptable to God because it was to "help the world for good"? That's ridiculous.
Mr. Bob said:
Killing of innocent people for the sole reason of killing, is not good no matter what the reason.
Quite, but various people have killed innocent other people -- not for the sake of killing, but because their belief told them that was the way to a better world. (see Pol Pot above.) So you are saying that it is your
belief that you are doing right which makes God accept your deeds which others would judge as evil? If I understand what you are saying, it is that as long as I believe the evil deeds I am doing are for the betterment of the world, then God finds them acceptable. But I find this to be a terrible belief and utterly reject it.
Mr. Bob said:
"If it should turn out that fundamentalist Allah is the one true God, and suicide bombing is good, then are all the good deeds I have done in Jesus' name evil?"
Absolutely not. Assuming that the first supposition is correct, it does not have anything to do with your own deeds.
I don't understand what you are saying here. i thought we were discussing the idea that as long as you sincerely believe in some god, then your good
deeds are acceptable to some god?
Mr. Bob said:
Unless Allah does not expect anything but suicide bombing as good, which is far from what the Islam religion preaches, then all your good deeds will count for Allah.
But if Islam is the way, then my relying on Jesus as God and the Son of God is a sacreligious deed to Allah. The Koran makes clear that Jesus was a man and a prophet, and I am blaspheming every time I pray to Him as if He were God. So how can Allah accept any of my deeds, whether good or evil, as his own?
Mr. Bob said:
Of course, Allah is simply the Islam form of the original G*d found in the Torah, known as the Old Testament by Christians. So all three names represent the same Being. Eloheim, Adonai, Yahweh, G*d, Allah, Jesus, Father, He seems to have many names already. If a Christian performed acts in the name of Eloheim, the Old Testament (Torah) G*d, would that mean that Jesus would not count them as services done to Him? If a Christian prayed to the Creator of Adam and Eve, but did not call Him Jesus, is he not praying to a Christian G*d?
EveningStar's post illustrates the point a lot. If Jesus' name was not Jesus, but Larry, you would be praying to Larry. If you are praying to the good Being, does it matter what name you use? Why should names be so static? G*d does not have a name, yet He answers to all names.
I will say, as I said to ES above:
if you grew up understanding that who you thought of as "INSERT GOD NAME HERE" was the Son of God whose sacrificial death made atonement for your sins, and if you had confessed your sins and accepted his forgiveness, you would be worshipping Christ by whatever name you called Him. This is not the same thing as saying that if you worship another god, God will still accept you for salvation -- because if you worship another god, according to Scripture, you have not wholly trusted Christ, and Christ is the only way to salvation.
According to Christian belief, only your acceptance of the sacrifice of God's Son as atonement for your sins makes you acceptable to God. The
name is not important at all, but if you are worshiping Allah as a Muslim, then you are embracing the idea that Jesus was mere man and prophet and rejecting his sacrificial death. If you are worshiping any of the Hindu gods, then you are defying Jesus' message that He alone is the way to God. So, for Christians, we have to say, as Christ, said, that he is the only way to God, and worshiping any other god disqualifies you.
Mr. Bob said:
No, Aslan accepted Emeth first after he came to Emeth. While talking with Aslan, Emeth said, "I am no sone of thine but the servant of Tash." Note the present tense. He never renounced Tash until he understood the relationship between Aslan and Tash. After that, he realized that his oath was with Aslan, not Tash.
Exactly my point: he had been worshiping Aslan all along by another name, just as I said in my quote above about "insert god name here." Emeth is the perfect picture of someone who had believed on Christ, but just did not know the name of Jesus. He believed on the Great Lion, but he just did not know the name of Aslan.
In fact, if Lewis had meant what
you are implying, Mr. Bob, that all gods are the one god, then he would have endorsed the "Tashlan" concept, that Aslan and Tash were both the same thing, so you could worship them both at once. But in fact, that "Tashlan" concept was horrifying to
both believers in Aslan and true believers in Tash! Emeth hated the concept as much as Rilian did. It was only those who believed in
neither Tash
nor Aslan who tried to say it was good to worship them both together as one.
