chrizum, i think you are misinterpreting Christ's words. He never said, thinking something is as bad as doing it. He was saying if you think of sinful acts, you have committed the sin. His point was that all will fall short of the glory of God, not that thinking and doing are the same thing in his eyes.

@ Stockstar: that is still ridiculous, no?

the message of the story was geared towards the Pharisees (sp?) I believe, who basically claimed to have followed the Jewish Law perfectly, thus not needing Christ's salvation, the point of Christ's blurb about thinking as a sin, was basically to tell them, everybody commits sin, everybody needs me, you guys are far from perfect.

I think that was the gist of it, its been a while since i went to sunday school though. 

We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. - 1 John 5:19.

Pick your poison.

 Lol, I'm a practicing Catholic, and you should see my music tastes. :P

Well no. Anyone who believes in what the Bibles says knows that when you sin, you don't lose your salvation. It says that you ask forgiveness for your sins.

No outside influence can cause anyone to abadon a belief other than yourself. At least that what Ive gathered over years of reading and studying my faith.

@ Chirzum

Off the top of my head, I would have to say that took something Jesus said and ran the opposite direction of what it meant. Taking it out of context.

To clarify:

Jesus was talking about actions vs. intentions. You don't randomly cheat on your girlfriend/wife for no reason at all (if you do, then you're just a jerkyface).

In fact, when a man cheats on his wife, most likely it was because he was checking out this other woman and his desire to get with that other woman began to fester and eventually that desire turned into an intention and that intention turned into action.

So the point was to not let things get that far. If you so much as look at a woman so as to have passion for her, then you've already committed adultery with her in your heart. Its better to not try to cultivate these thoughts by not even looking at women in that matter.  The point is to nip things at the bud.

So does that mean thinking about killing a dude is as bad as actually killing the dude? I personally think actually killing dude is worse, but that hatred and desire shouldn't have been there to begin with and you should have made things right before it got that bad.

Jesus is cool.

So is Moses.

I think it's taken somewhat out of context. Let me give you an example of what I think it means. Let's say you want to kill somebody. You hate them so much, that you just want to see them dead. However, you don't kill them, for fear of retribution from the law. It's still bad that you wanted to kill them, no? It's not as bad as actually killing them, but considering the fact that you would've if you had been given the chance, it is a bad thing.

Now, if you just thought of killing somebody, but you didn't actually want to do it, or it was merely a hypothetical thought, like what would happen if so and so wasn't around anymore, then it wouldn't really be a bad thing.

Does that make any sense?

Edit: That Guy had a good explanation as well. I think it's a combination of both of ours, tbh.

Ding. That Guy worded it very nicely. Too lazy to type it out.