Quote:
Originally Posted by chickenonsteroids
If you were born in Saudi Arabia, how sure are you that you would have been 'saved' by the Christian God rather than Allah?
I ask because you seem pretty sure about your belief in your current God so if this influence is so powerful... why isn't he saving people from other religions?
To answer the original question I think that we're all born ignostic (neither atheist, agnostic or theist) but we just get influenced by our parents and our surroundings. If they were told the Bible or the Quran was a fairy tale they'd accept it. If they were taught it as fact they'd accept it too. I wish it was taught as a big metaphor rather than fact. You'd still have the benefits of following a character (Jesus) and you'd probably get rid of all the assholes committing atrocities in the name of their God. Then as people grow older they'll either move to deism or not believe in a theological god and depend on people rather than God. The idea of "what caused the big bang" would lead to deism and not a God that can intervene in our everyday lives. To me we'd have a better society or if not we'd still have the good acts that religious people do today and bad people can't throw the blame on someone else. We wouldn't have people making things "sacred" so they are never allowed to change. We would have a lot less rubbish about sexual inequality. All those who think things like homosexuality are wrong usually only have the statement "In the bible it says homosexuality is wrong blah blah blah but even though killing babies and plagues are seen as justice i'll just ignore that part so I can justify my stubbornness *more rubbish*".
Maybe i've become a little bit biased  |
Actually, there are several stories about people in other countries where there is no teaching of Christianity who got saved. One story that sticks in my mind is this one: There was a man who lived in a little never-heard-of-by-most-people country in the middle of nowhere, and his country had no teaching/talk of God or Christianity. I'm not sure if the country followed another religion or just didn't follow any. But anyways, the man looked around one day at all of God's creations and realized "Someone HAD to have created all this!". So he prayed (although he didn't know it was called prayer; he was just talking to whoever was out there) and asked for whoever was out there to reveal themself to him and show him how to know them. God spoke to him (I can't remember if it was through a dream or while he was awake) and told him that a man carrying a black book would tell him the truth about Him. A long time later, he was out one day and saw a man (a missionary) carrying a black book. He ran over to him and begged him saying "TELL ME WHO HE IS!!!!", and so the missionary did and the man got saved. You're probably going to say "It was the missionary who did it, not God"...but God told the man ahead of time who to look for.
There are also many stories similar to that of people in other countries where there aren't even any missionaries who had never heard of a God or Christianity and God revealed Himself to them through dreams and they got saved. The story that I mentioned is the only one that I remember in detail, but there are other ones that happened through dreams too without the help of any human.
So to answer your question "Why isn't He saving people from other religions?", He is.