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Doesn't it follow, then, in a non-Catholic point of view (what you say is distinctly opposed to the Catholic point of view, I think) that there is no real reason to avoid sin? I can believe that Jesus died for my sins, so why not go hog-wild? No reason for him to pay for something I'm not using.


Roman's 6 deals specifically with this. It doesn't really give a reason not to go hog wild, other than saying that we've been set free from sin and ought to live by our new nature. However, the growing Christian understands that life is generally better and more fullfilling when you live according to the new nature.

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Yet you assume that that moral compass, when interpreted by the people who wrote it down, then interpreted by your brain, then interpreted by your moral compass has more validity than the one inside you that shares one of those potential failing points and then adds a few more on top.
While I don't agree on the nature of scripture, your point of stacking errors is still a good question. However, I don't think it's quite accurate.

Imagine if my moral outlook on an issue were written on a piece of paper. Unfortunatly, because of sin it has become corrupted and contains errors. In fact, the errors are subtle and aren't obvious- all I know that it isn't quite right. I also know that several other people have similar pages that I can compare mine against. Theirs also contain errors, but different ones from mine. If I compare my page against a bunch of different pages from different people, odds are I'll be able to ferret out the errors and come very close to what the original page said because most of our pages will contain different errors. We can look to see what is the same and get close to the original. Adding the number of opinions reduces the distortion of the original page rather than increasing it. The reason for this is that while we're all fallen and have a dim view of truth, we are fallen in different areas and God is working on those individually, making us each stronger. Thus we can sharpen one another and point each other toward the ultimate truth. I trust this process a lot more than my own understanding of scripture and feelings alone, though those certainly are a factor as well.


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Like I said: it's the failure to listen to your own compass that's the problem.
I think that people listen to their own compasses and do very, very bad things.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.