u/No-Newspapers

I was speaking withsomeone who is trying to tell me Jews, had/have a method of salvation of faith and works. for gentiles it’s only faith, but Jews in the OT (and even the NT, they cited James 2) it was faith AND works.

they cited

Deuteronomy 6:25

^(25) And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as he hath commanded us.

I think this obviously misses the points of Romans 3 and 4, to show us that salvation has ALWAYS been by faith apart from works of the law; James uses the word “justified” in a different sense than Paul does to show us our faith is justified/proven true by the works, not that the works add to our justification or salvation.

However I’m not certain what to make of Deuteronomy 6;25 - is it speaking of “relative” righteousness (in the sense that David could be considered “righteous” in some psalms, but not ultimately righteous enough for salvation?) or is it talking about the hypothetical “if you did obey the law perfectly you’d be righteous and justified”?

especially in light of Galatians 3:11?

A lot of debates within Arminian vs Calvinist circles (especially in the modern day) boils down to each side having slightly different definitions of terms and words, I feel.
Especially since online it’s mostly amateur theologians.

From my understanding, Calvin taught that God “decreed” the fall of man.

I consider myself a classical Arminian, my understanding was always that God foresaw the fall of man, and allowed/permitted it to happen, for a few reasons:

1. To bring Glory to himself

2. God often chooses to use/respect/allow human free will for his purpose and plans, even using human evil for his ultimate purpose (See: Pharoah. this is different than God forcing people to do evil things; rather he foresees their evil and uses it for his glory)

Ive read a few quotes from Calvin and also the WCF that seem to suggest God not only allowed the fall to happen, but DECREED it to happen; from my understanding of the word decree, this would essentially mean God decided/ordained/caused it to happen.

What’s the accurate Calvinist stance?

the newest update for bejeweled blitz has made my game unplayable.

It will not connect to the internet to download blitz challenges, gems, etc

any fix

Very distraught within my soul today.

I struggle with lust and porn addiction - this year has actually been a bright spot among years, as I've had a level of victory that I have not had since before I became addicted. Praise GOD! I am not perfect but there are actually days where I don't look at porn now, and typically the days I do are less and less throughout the weeks.

Of course, the fact I am still doing it at all, i hate. I hate myself for it too.

But today, I woke up early to pray for an hour, and felt nothing. I try to trust God even when I am not "feeling" his presence upon me, because my faith is in Him and not my feelings, but no matter how I prayed this morning I felt like I could not dive deep into His presence or the Spirit.

Then, not even another hour after I finished praying, I fell and looked at porn.

What is wrong with me?

Why do I pray continuously for a new heart, to be delivered from temptation and protected against the traps of the enemy throughout the day, to have the strength to turn away from them, that God would help me, and yet its like He does not answer?

Does He even hear me anymore? There are many psalms about God not hearing the prayers of the wicked. But I always ask for forgiveness and to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus when I pray. What more can I do to be forgiven in His eyes? To receive forgiveness from Him?

It's so frustrating because I really am trying to seek Him and rely on Him in this battle, but I feel like He is distant and not hearing my prayers. I do not blame Him, He owes me nothing, but I wish I knew what I was doing wrong so that I could correct it and find favor with Him again, that He would hear my prayers.

I’ve been talking with Catholics and they seem to look at me like I’ve got two heads if I claim that we can believe the Bible is divinely inspired without having an infallible church institution as the reason why.

I know what the Bible has its authority from God, not from the Church, and the whole “Isaac Newton only discovered gravity“ argument, but I’m still having issues putting into words how we can know that the Bible IS INSPIRED INFALLIBLY, and that we have the CORRECT LIST OF BOOKS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT (canon) without appealing to the authority of the Roman Church.

hey yall

trying to get back into melee with some friends, but only have one official GameCube controller (which isn’t in very good shape to begin with).

Are there ANY good 3rd party options? Are all these ones I’m seeing on amazon not worth the 15-30 dollars?

YouTube doesn’t have many reviews of them at all. And the ones that do have review videos, the people don’t even test them in game or say if there’s input lag, stick drift, etc.

Does anyone have experience with this and can possibly save me from wasting money? Thanks!!

kind of a basic question but i cannot think of a great answer to it…

Since we don’t have a list of commandments like the law of Moses anymore, how do we know what is sinful and what isn’t sinful?

is it just things the NT lists as sinful or fleshly behavior? Or is there another metric that I am unaware of?

I know that some things exist as personal convictions, but how do we answer this question without drifting into liberal Christianity (”it’s not a sin unless my own heart convicts me”, and “no action is sinful anymore”)?

I pray every single day for a clean heart, one that doesn’t desire sin anymore, one that doesn’t lust or have adulterous thoughts or any other sins against my Father…

I pray daily for the Holy Spirit to strengthen me and fill me, to resist temptation, and to keep his commandments

I feel like my prayers are going unanswered because I still struggle with all these things… even sometimes while praying I will get intrusive thoughts of sexual immorality, I don’t want to think them at all but it feels like I cannot control my mind. it makes me so sad because I feel like God has either turned his face from me or forsaken me because I’ve sinned too much against him, like Romans 1 talks about God turning people over to their debased minds…

what am I doing wrong? why does it seem God does not strengthen me to walk in his commandments, that I wouldn’t sin against him, when I pray?

throughout Job he argued with his friends, they were trying to convince him that he must’ve sinned so all the trials and sufferings were God’s judgement, but Job kept affirming that he hadn’t sinned. it really paints a beautiful message about how God will put us through trials even if we hadn’t sinned, and we can always rely on his goodness (that’s a very short summary lol)

However I find this hard to relate to because I know I have sinned. I know my sufferings and trials are all deserved because I am a wretched sinner.

What do I take from the book of Job besides knowing God is always in control?

thoughts on the early writing known as the didache?

from what I’ve read it functioned as sort of a “new believers manual”, providing insights on daily living for a Christian.

After reading it I see it most clearly mirrors the teachings found from Jesus during the sermon on the mount.
there’s also some commandments given about the Eucharist.

interestingly, it makes no mention of the death, burial, or resurrection of Jesus Christ. I assume this is because it was meant as a manual for standard living among Christian’s, not necessarily a “gospel tract”.

What do you guys think of it? is there any place where it doesn’t agree with or even contradicts the bible at all?

The only part I’ve taken issue with is ”do not let your fasts fall on the same days as the hypocrites. they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, you should fast on wednesdays and Fridays”. as far as I know this isn’t taught in the Bible at all, and it also seems to be missing the point of what Jesus said when he meant “do not fast as the hypocrites do”, which refers to the reason behind doing the fast, not the day it is practiced on.

Perhaps this points to how even in the first century there were man made traditions and teachings in Christianity, they are inevitable to a degree. I suppose it also points to how the didache isn’t divinely inspired to the same level of the Bible.

I also do not think that the age of the text alone necessarily gives it more authority, as a lot of Catholics like to do.

what are your thoughts?

Not just the video games, but the entire Lego series of Lego Indiana Jones.

I feel like we kind of saw this when the new temple of doom set got cancelled for “violent content”, and the sets for the dial of destiny movie getting cancelled also go to support that Lego really doesn’t want to keep making this series.

It just made me think, Would this series even exist if it hadn’t been started in the 2000s?

playing through the video games we see things like the Temple of doom with the thuggee cult and sacrifices, violence, guns throughout, Nazis as bad guys, etc

I feel like Lego wouldn’t want anything to do with the Indiana jones franchise nowadays. It’s wild how it happened at all.

We are fans of a product from a world which no longer exists :(

Fedoras used to be standard attire for men, from going out to dinner, the movies, an event…

In 2026 is there any socially acceptable time to wear one of these?

With all of the digital arrangements/images of what a normal vision person sees and then the types of color blindness, are most people just pretending they don’t see a difference?

I ask this because I constantly see comments like “Whoa, I can’t see a difference, maybe I’m colorblind 😭”

and then I’ll also see comments explaining how it’s just a visual representation made for non color blind people to SIMULATE what others might see, and since the different pixels are actually different hex codes they will not look like the same color to real colorblinded folks.

can anyone weigh in?

For those of you who own multiple bibles that you mark, highlight, write in, and take notes in - do you distinguish what type of notes go in each Bible?

Is each Bible restricted to a specific notetaking system, serving a specific function?

Do you ever copy identical notes between bibles?

Are these verses connected in the theology they are teaching?

It would seem to suggest, in 1 John, that some sins can be forgiven through intercession of others, while some aren’t even worth praying for.

when we take the into context with the beginning of 1 John, it would seem to suggest that the person who committed a sin unto death must be the one repenting themselves.

It would also seem that, given the context of 1 Samuel 2:25, it’s not teaching that God cannot forgive those who sin against Him, but rather suggesting God ALONE can forgive those who sin against Him.

For Eli’s sons situation it was more serious since they were the priests, who interceded on behalf of the children of Israel, who would they have had to intercede for them?

Ive got a lot of thoughts about these passages but I feel like perhaps I have yet to come to the main conclusion or point. Any ideas?