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Originally Posted by Sommerset
I must confess I don't exactly know what you mean here... I THINK its this:
Following Jesus entails you do X
Sam doesn't do X
Therefore Sam wants nothing to do with God.
Not quite. It's slightly more tautological.
To be a Christian, you need to do X.
Doing X is how you interact with God.
Choosing not to do X is choosing not to interact with God.
It's creating a narrower view of what it means to be a Christian. Consistent with the first half of that sentence, it doesn't place any emphasis on creating paritcular theologies (argumentation), but rather puts the emphasis on doing (being?) something, and that this doing (being) is the way that interaction with God occurs.
To make a somewhat silly example: There's a kid in front of you. To show love to the kid means to hug him. But you don't hug him. It doesn't really matter how much desire you express in wanting to show love to kid. It's very simple. Go hug him. Whatever excuses you can come up with (he smells like he needs a diaper change) are all kind of hollow. There's something to do if you really want to show love to the kid, and you just need to do it if that's really what you want to do.
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Alternatively, could there be no other reason for not following "x" than "not wanting anything to do with God? This strikes me as dismissive.
It comes down to what it means to "want to do something with God." It's like saying "I want to hug the kid but..." <it doesn't really matter what follows>.