I'm sure you'll agree that Jesus Christ was born of God.

Nevertheless, Jesus was tempted to commit sin although he never did.

e.g. Matthew 4:1-11, Hebrews 2:18, Hebrews 4:15, et al

Now, was it possible for Jesus to give in to temptation and sin?

If <cannot sin> means "impossible to sin" then Jesus' temptations were just a facade.

If Jesus' temptations were real, whereby he *could* have committed sin had he succumbed to temptation, then under that strict interpretation, he wouldn't have been 'born of God' since the person 'born of God' <cannot sin> but presumably Jesus <could> have sinned, even though he didn't!

Yes I understand.

Jesus did not sin because he is a child of God and He is of his Father God in heaven, and not of Satan.

If Jesus did sin, then he would not have been born of God. He <cannot sin> and be a <child of God>. So far there is harmony.

The story of the temptation is a story of temptation. 1 John 3:9 does not say, "If you are born of God, then you <cannot be tempted>! There is still harmony.

Jesus had God's seed in Him; God's nature. With Jesus operating out of God's nature, which is sinless, he could not sin, for God's nature directs Him. The logical possibility of sin is not removed from reality. Rather, your evil nature is removed from you and replaced with God's nature and since God's nature is sinless your nature becomes sinless and you <cannot sin>.

When the author of Hebrews writes, "Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted." (2:18) What does that mean? If Jesus cannot sin, then how did he suffer when he was tempted, and how can he help those who are being tempted if they are not born of God?

When that same author further writes, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin." (4:15) What does that mean? How can Jesus empathize with our weaknesses if he cannot sin? How could he be tempted in every way just as we are when he is born of God but we are not?

This article sounds like you!

I think you are equivocating on the word <can>.

The fact that the story of the Temptation shows that temptation is possible.

1 John 3:9 does not say that anyone born of God cannot be tempted.

Sin remains a logical possibility and remains in the earth. Sin does not remove itself from reality and 1 John 3:9 does not say it does. Sin would have to be removed from reality for it to not be a logical possibility.

What it comes down to is your nature. If you're born again of God you <cannot> sin because that would show that you are of your father the devil and not God.

In each and every case you must still decide not to sin if you are born of God. That decision does not make sin go away.

Finally, the story of the Temptation does not change 1 John 3:9 from <cannot sin> to <can sin>.

<If Jesus cannot sin, then how did he suffer when he was tempted,>

Because he is showing you, <optimal>, that you don't have to sin and therefore you can be in harmony with 1 John 3:9. You, like Jesus can choose to not sin. No special powers needed except to be born of God.

<When that same author further writes, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin." (4:15) What does that mean?>

Same answer as I just gave to the last verse like this.

<Interpreting 1 John 3:9 in context with the rest of the NT doesn't mean turning <cannot sin> into <can sin>.>

If you are saying that if you are <born of God> and a <child of God> and you <can sin> then that changes it completely.

That's the main issue.

God's nature is without sin. If you are born of God and have his seed in you, you have a new, born again, sinless nature.

The body is the temple. God does not share the temple with Satan.

1 John 3:10 makes clear the dichotomous nature of one's nature. You are either of God or of your father the devil.

If you sin you are of your father Satan.

If you sin and say you are born of God you lie to yourself and to whomever you say it to.

It's a Christian myth that people born of God, <children of God>, can sin. The Christian myth makes sin excusable because we aren't <Perfect> or aren't capable of not sinning. If you take the idea that you are not capable of not sinning then 1 John 3:9 is <false> to you.

It becomes, <No one who is born of God sins that much anymore, but they *can sin* and it's okay because Jesus has your back>.

The temptation story reaffirms 1 John 3:9 in that it shows Jesus was <Altogether Human!> and yet did <not sin>.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/...

I've never read that but it was a very interesting, excellent article. And yes, I did recognize some similarities in what I write and what this person wrote. Kind of amazing really.

This author references The Fourth Turning.

https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turni...

Have you read this book or do you know of it? I read the synopsis on the Amazon link above, but had not heard of it. Looks very interesting indeed.

Anyways, I agree with much of what the author of The Burning Platform wrote, both politically and his thinking style.

< I believe an unbiased appreciation of uncertainty is the cornerstone of rationality and reason. >

<In Part One of this article I discussed the failure of our brains to think rationally due to our biases and the relentless propaganda flogged by our Deep State ruling class.>

Are you saying that?> No.

I am saying that, in accordance with 1 John 3:9 if you are <born of God> and a <child of God> then you <cannot sin>, but I understand the admonition <cannot sin> to mean, in the wider context of the NT, that you should not sin, or even that you must not sin, as distinct from being unable to sin.

<What it comes down to is your nature. If you're born again of God you <cannot> sin because that would show that you are of your father the devil and not God.>

You seem to be saying that if someone commits even a minor venial sin then he is not a <child of God> but a <child of the devil> no matter how many times he may have previously resisted the temptation to sin or how good and holy his life in general may be?

<you are equivocating on the word <can>. In one sense it is used to denote a logical possibility while in the other sense it has the connotation of permission.

That's the main issue.> No it's not.

Any equivocation is on the word <cannot>.

In one sense it is used to denote a logical impossibility while in the other sense it has the connotation of inadvisability.

That's actually the main issue.

<God's nature is without sin. If you are born of God and have his seed in you, you have a new, born again, sinless nature.>

Yes, you have God's seed in you, which continues to grow as you journey through life with Christ as part of His Church with the aid of Scripture and the Sacraments.

Quite honestly, I don't even know how anybody could state categorically that they fitted into your definition of being <born of God> and a <child of God>?

I mean, how would anybody even know if they were <born of God> and a <child of God> according to your criteria?

For instance, may I ask how many people you have known who you would truly say was <born of God> and a <child of God>?

Based on your understanding of 1 John 3:9 a <child of God> would not say the "Lord's Prayer" because of the petition 'forgive us our trespasses' which presumably would be unnecessary!?

Or maybe we're talking at cross-purposes here? Maybe we each have a different concept of "sin"?

I know you put the emphasis on pride and anger, but sin includes our thoughts, words, what we have done, and what we have failed to do.

<I am saying that, in accordance with 1 John 3:9 if you are <born of God> and a <child of God> then you <cannot sin>, but I understand the admonition <cannot sin> to mean, in the wider context of the NT, that you should not sin, or even that you must not sin, as distinct from being unable to sin.>

Jesus was human. He did not sin.

Are you saying that as a child of God, born again of God, you

1. <can sin>?

or

2. <cannot sin>?

If you choose 2 you agree with John the disciple of Jesus. If you choose 1 you agree with the majority of the Christian church but not with John, the disciple that walked and talked with Jesus. I choose John over the Christian Myth; the Christian Telephone Game.

<You seem to be saying that if someone commits even a minor venial sin then he is not a <child of God> but a <child of the devil> no matter how many times he may have previously resisted the temptation to sin or how good and holy his life in general may be?>

It's not me saying it.

<By this the children of God and the children of the devil can be distinguished: Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother.> 1 John 3:10

Notice the dichotomous nature of the verse and how it pairs with the dichotomous nature of 3:9.

<In one sense it is used to denote a logical impossibility while in the other sense it has the connotation of inadvisability.>

Not inadvisability, but a justification of sin. 1 John 3:9 does not say <shouldn't sin> or <try your best not to sin>. It says if you are born of God you <cannot sin>.

Can you find a verse in the bible that says that if you are born of God you <can sin>?

<I mean, how would anybody even know if they were <born of God> and a <child of God> according to your criteria?>

You are trying to discredit the Word by attributing it to me.

<optimal>, we are going to have to focus for a moment and make sure you understand something.

This is not <my criteria>. This is 1 John 3:9.

Don't attribute it to me and cheapen it.

<Based on your understanding of 1 John 3:9>

It's not a matter of my understanding but rather my willingness to read the bible simply and depart from the Christian Crowd. When we run into verses that use symbolism or a story to illustrate a point, or a verse that uses personification or analogy, then it calls for interpretation or understanding. This verse is plain and doesn't lend itself to interpretation and individual understanding.

<No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God>

There's not much to it. Only, if you want to change <cannot sin> to <can sin> then you need to offer your own, new, understanding, which is just rationalization.

<For instance, may I ask how many people you have known who you would truly say was <born of God> and a <child of God>?>

It says <cannot sin> and not <can sin, you know, sometimes cuz we're not perfect>. However, the concept of sin that is held may need to be seen again in a new light. I think that 1 John 3:9 shines the light of truth.

Are you able to do your own critical thinking exercise, understand your own biases and consider the possibility that there is real insight in this approach?

I would like you to try to find the verses I challenged you to above. Of course, you won't find any and then that is more reason to put 1 John 3:9 in your pipe and smoke on it, as it were.

<optimal> I wish you would get away from saying <my understanding> and making this about me owning this. <My criteria> and so on. You'll never be able to look at it critically if you make it utterly worthless by attributing it to me.

That makes it absolutely worthless and very easy to reject and discard. These verses are from John and he walked with Jesus. That makes them hard to discard and foolish to reject. They are plainly written and are devoid of symbolism, analogy, personification or story.

<In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others. These rules work well under most circumstances, but they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, probability or rational choice theory. The resulting errors are called “cognitive biases” and many different types have been documented.>

I love this stuff. We all know about critical thinking and for those of us that went to college, we've got experience with critical thinking courses. College education should be all about refining the critical think habits until they are a natural part of our inner algorithm, but that rarely happens.

<To put their research into terms the common person can understand, human decision making is extremely flawed due to our biases, feelings, irrational thought processes and beliefs in falsehoods. >

This was a problem I had, as I've explained in my many, very long posts above over the last week or two.

I've learned that knowing <about> critical thinking is one thing, but actually coming to grips with your biases and employing real critical thinking is quite another thing altogether.

It's difficult to face your biases. It's even more difficult once you have faced them to say, "Okay, now what do I do?" And it's near impossible to honestly embrace ideas contrary to your bias, even in the context of a critical thinking thought experiment.

I believe a blend of trained critical thinking, axiomatic thinking and the Socratic method, if executed right, can produce real progress in one's understanding.

http://staff.mq.edu.au/teaching/cur...

Have you read this book or do you know of it? I read the synopsis on the Amazon link above, but had not heard of it. Looks very interesting indeed.>

PART I:

I've heard of the book, but I haven't read it.

Basically, I've been alive long enough (and paid attention to the world around me enough during my life) to know that there are always doom-and-gloomers out there.

I listened to them in 2008 and invested a lot of money in gold and gold stocks. I was tempted to sell in 2011 after the US credit downgrade, and would have made great profits, but I got greedy and hung on until those profits turned to losses, because the gloom-and-doom crowd was wrong and I didn't see it.

But financier J.P. Morgan said that a man who is bullish on the future of the US will never go broke, or words to that effect.

So now I only invest in stocks.

The author thinks the US will unravel into crisis during this supposed 4th turning. It could happen. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

But by the author's own admission, the stock market has tripled since he first started making his predictions, so he hasn't exactly been giving Nostradamus any competition.

I don't think the US faces internal existential threats because of Obama, or because God will judge us for abortion, or because of Federal Reserve policy, or any of the other fringe theories that I find out there.

I think there are only 2 real existential internal threats to America. One is Islam, but since Trump won we aren't going to make the mistake of allowing a flood of Muslim refugees into our country. So this is not the bigger threat of the two.

The bigger threat is radical feminism. This is destroying our social fabric, ripping it apart.

Evolutionary biologists tell us that homo sapiens emerged as a distinct species about 2 million years ago. Walking upright, large brains and high intellect. Why did it take almost 2 million years for civilization to emerge?

I never really thought about that until last year, when I tried to get back together with an ex-girlfriend that I dumped in 2014.

I took her for granted back then. Was aloof and selfish. I wanted to make sure that she knew I would be more caring and kind this time, and take our relationship seriously. How did that work out? She dumped me!

Why? I was alpha in 2014, and acted alpha. When I tried to get her back in 2016, by pleasing her, it made me beta. I didn't really think it through until it was too late.

And I realized that the reason it took humans so long to create civilization is related to sex. Women evolved to lust after alpha males, and for the first 2 million years, the few alphas monopolized the women, and the betas lived lives of sexual frustration.

I am not making value judgements, just saying it is what it is.

The ancients who invented civilization were very wise. They realized that there must be buy in from the large percentage of beta males in order to make it work. So the institution of marriage was created, to give betas an incentive to participate.

Radical feminism brought the West the liberation of female sexuality, and no fault divorce as well. Women, when left to their own devices, revert to their evolutionary patterns and seek out alpha males for sex, often wrecking their nascent relationships with good, descent hard-working family men.

Did you know that, on average, men with criminal records have more children than the non-criminals in America?

Women seek out dangerous men - they view them as alphas. Our wise ancestors imposed order on the law-of-the-jungle sexual market place about 5000 years ago, because they rightly perceived that civilization could not perpetuate without it.

You probably won't agree with my next statement, but I think religion and gods were probably invented to have a higher authority to impose marriage, due to the fact that is the the most important key to maintaining civilization.

But with radical feminism, we have social responses such as MGTOW, Relampago Furioso, PUA websites, etc.

https://relampagofurioso.com/2016/0...

This is a serious problem. And now that the genie is out of the bottle, it is running amuck. It is one of the reasons I don't agree with Trump about illegal immigration. Most of the illegals are Hispanic, and practicing Catholics. Their women are good marriage material, usually faithful and committed to family. The men for the most part work for a living. These people are great for society.

Radical feminists are not great for society. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle? How's that working out? Terrible. Kids from families with no Dad have a horribly rough life ahead of them.

True. A man should never, ever, EVER try to please his wife or girlfriend. The more you do, the more they hate you. An alpha male is a regular male. A beta male is a new age, feminist, liberal <fake male>.

Women are always testing, trying to find a man that won't let them control them. There is <NOTHING> more unattractive than a <weak man>!

<The bigger threat is radical feminism. This is destroying our social fabric, ripping it apart.>

I agree with this to a point. I see feminism as only part of the bigger problem and that is liberalism. You can't have feminism without liberalism. It is an outgrowth of liberalism. Liberalism turns women into men and men into little beta males.

<Women, when left to their own devices, revert to their evolutionary patterns and seek out alpha males for sex, often wrecking their nascent relationships with good, descent hard-working family men.>

That's right. If you are a beta male, you women will have sex with an alpha male behind your back, and then laugh at you and feel bad for you, because you're weak and pathetic. And just think, all these liberal guys think they are being modern and hip. lol

<You probably won't agree with my next statement, but I think religion and gods were probably invented to have a higher authority to impose marriage, due to the fact that is the the most important key to maintaining civilization.>

Almost every religion and gods were invented.

<Radical feminists are not great for society. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle? How's that working out? Terrible. Kids from families with no Dad have a horribly rough life ahead of them.

Anyway, I could go on, but I've written enough to at least present a partial argument.>

Interesting idea. I will cogitate on it.>

Heh, heh, what are you guys talking about?

<'I've gone back to being a child': Husband and father-of-seven, 52, leaves his wife and kids to live as a transgender SIX-YEAR-OLD girl named Stefonknee>

<Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ> 2 Corinthians 10:5

I noticed the part <bringing into captivity every thought>.

What are some things that are brought into captivity? Wild animal, criminals and enemy soldiers come to mind. Things that could harm you and need to be put in place and controlled, or else.

The word captivity cloaks "thoughts" in a pejorative context. Out thoughts are not our friends. Our thoughts are not good and they work against us.

Our thoughts are always deceiving us into sin by reasoning and rationalizing. Where do they come from?

The bible tells us to take all thoughts into captivity. All of them. It doesn't say to take the bad thoughts into captivity and let the good thoughts be. It says take <every thought> into captivity. That's like putting them in cages. In a zoo. In a cell with an armed guard. It means to arrest them, put them somewhere and watch them carefully, because they can't be trusted.

Every thought.

Jeremiah 17:9 tells us <The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?>

<A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.> Luke 6:45

The mouth speaks out of an overflow of the heart, and the heart is, above all, desperately wicked. Words are thoughts made audible. Every thought should be brought into <captivity>.

This tells us that we should not listen to our thoughts and that our designs are evil. All intellectual constructs are made of a complex tapestry of thoughts. Perhaps we should just know instead of intellectualize.

Our thoughts make us miserable most of the time. They are terrible masters. When we think of the past we get depressed. When we think of the future we become anxious. When we think of our sin we judge ourselves. When we trust our thoughts we are putting our trust in enemies that ought to be brought into captivity instead.

Angry people live in their thoughts and there is no love in anger.

Hateful people live in their thoughts and there is no love in hate.

Prideful people live in their thoughts and seek to please their vanity, and there is no vanity and pride in love.

Depressed people live in their thoughts and have a vivid thought life. Same with suicidal people.

People that take revenge live in their thoughts and dream of revenge until they take it.

The unforgiving live in their thoughts and remain unforgiving.

The fools, who are convinced, live in their thoughts and remain fools, remain convinced.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve just lived. They were just "being" and were right with God. Then they began to live in their thoughts and sinned, because their thoughts were their enemies.

How does one take every thought into captivity?

I think a good way to start is to doubt every thought, the good ones and the bad ones. Doubt them all. Consider that every thought you get is a lie; a set up. Even pleasant thoughts are no good. They serve to get you to trust all your thoughts and then you can be deceived.

<Every thought> is to be taken captive and made to be obedient to Christ. This means that we should expect <every thought> to set itself up against Christ. This means that every thought is rooted in evil because it is against Christ, against God, against truth, against love and against goodness.

Therefore, to find peace, let go of your thoughts, doubt them, don't believe them, don't judge them, don't fight them, don't try to change them, don't resist them - just watch them and know that they are not you. Your thoughts are not your own.

When you just watch your thoughts, doubting them, not believing them, knowing they are not you, then you will be free of anger, depression, anxiety, fear and worry. The bible tells us to trust in God and that we have not been given a <spirit> of fear. Therefore, instead of putting faith in fear (worry) and trusting your thoughts (trusting yourself, because of pride) you should trust God and let your thoughts go.

Cog-dis implies at least some small degree of doubt or confusion, right?