Call it Christmas

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mbasset@iconn.net (Mark Bassett) wrote:
>>    God deals with us all differently. 
>Is this essetially a true statement ?
>What do you Bible scholars say ?

Well, I am certainly no Bible scholar, but I'd like to respond
anyway....

I don't know the exact reference or author, and I don't have a
bible handy, but, I know in the New Testament that the idea of
clean and unclean foods is discussed.  The Lord tells Paul that
all foods are clean because they are created by Him (and Jesus
says it is not what goes in, but what comes out of one's mouth
that makes him/her unclean).  Yet, for the Jews it was a way of
life, and many (having been raised since birth to believe it 
was a sin to eat such things) did not feel comfortable to eat
those foods even after they were condoned.  If you believe 
something is (or even might be) wrong and do it anyway, you 
are in direct defiance of God, whether the act was in fact a 
sin or not.
 
In this way, God does deal with us differently.  If I believed
for any reason that wearing red was a sin against God, and I
then wore red, I would be sinning.  So while certain things 
are sins, other things may be a sin for one person and not
for another.  It is not necessarily the act, but the defiance
of God.  Now I don't mean to say that if a person thought it
was ok to, say, commit murder and then went ahead and did it
that this would not be a sin for them.  Clearly certain things
are sins in an absolute sense.  But acts which are not sinful
can become sins if done with a certain attitude.

Another example from scripture of God dealing with us dif-
ferently is the story of the young rich man who came to 
Christ and said (paraphrase) "I've kept all the commandments,
what else must I do to be saved?", and Jesus responded "Sell
all you own and come follow me."  This does not mean that 
every Christian must sell all they own to be saved, but for
this man, money was a greater priority than God.  So in 
order for him to follow God, he needed to get rid of his
money.  Different people have different weaknesses.  God
must then deal with each of us in a slightly different 
or tailored way.

-Dee, who is trying to slip past the check-sum regulator