Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!emory!att!rutgers!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: garyh@crash.cts.com (Gary Hipp) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: A Question Message-ID: Date: 30 Nov 90 09:54:46 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA Lines: 32 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article ta00est@unccvax.uncc.edu (elizabeth s tallant) writes: >In article , brown@cs.utk.edu (Lance A. Brown) writes: >persecutors? I can easily imagine circumstances where becoming a >Christian would be a violation of God's will. The fact that such >situations exist is of course a serious matter for the Church, for >which we will no doubt be held to account. --clh] I would like to ask you to briefly identify "circumstances where becoming a Christian would be a violation of God's will." I find this hard to swallow. Gary [I thought I had outlined it. Consider a situation where a non-Christian community is being persecuted by Christians, and members of it are under heavy pressure to convert to Christianity. Of course God will judge each person based on their hearts and not jsut the outward action, but in such a circumstance it is unlikely that members of this community would see Christianity as a response to God's love. I think it is reasonable to believe that in most cases conversions would be based on a desire for worldly gain. Even if it were not, Mat. 5:10-11 (as well as the prophets, Psalms, etc.) suggests that God is on the side of the persecuted, not the persecutor, and I believe this would be the case even if the persecutors labelled themselves as Christian. I would like to think that the situation I am describing is one that is impossible to happen in practice. Perhaps one could make it so by defining any group that carries out religious persecution as being by definition non-Christian. However under normal definitions, this situation has been all too common. --clh]