Afterlife?

You should wait a couple of decades, Rainy. If not for yourself or us, just for PR!

 

I interpret it differently. I think I already have eternal life, thanks to Jesus. But to me, eternity is outside of time. Beauty is eternal. Truth is eternal. Love is an eternal value. God is love. When we experience God for a moment, we experience eternal meaning and eternal life. And I've been a Christian for lots of moments. I don't think of Heaven as a place I'll go to when I die, but rather a condition I'm experiencing now. "The kingdom of the Father is spread out everywhere upon the earth, and people do not see it." (Thomas, 113)

 

Okiefreak, how do you interprete "my fathers house has many mansions/rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."?

 

That statement appears only in John 14:2 (ie., it isn't multiply attested). I'd interpret it to refer to being with Jesus in our daily lives. We get there by following "the way"--i.e., Jesus, or the way that He taught us. There is room in heaven for all who follow Him. The kingdom, which I believe is on earth, has "many mansions"--i.e., there is room for plenty of diversity, and diversity is welcome.

 

Oh, okay, that's pretty cool actually. Because that is very, very close to what I actually feel and believe. I may not have used those exact words but pretty close... as for me as to the afterlife part-that part I am not sure about.. not sure it's a physical place or just a contentness and being a part of God/LOVE when gone from this world.
But, in any case, I like that.

Oh, quick story... one time at couple summers ago I sat on this beautiful, tranquil-very still and peaceful day at this lake. Beautiful lake and mountains and I was sitting there looking out at the peaceful water and all the people swimming, kids playing in the water and people on paddle boats, row boats, etc.- and I just had this intense! (intense!!) feeling of "this is heaven right now on earth and people don't even realize it... that we can experience all that right here and right now"... it was the most I ever felt that before and I can't fully explain it or why but it was nice.

 

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.

 

The after-life is tomorrow; I think the gospel is about the beatitudes in Matthew.

 

Even if the afterlife is tomorrow (and I actually think that IS nice to believe and I don't disbelieve it, just not sure personally.)-- I do think you can get glimpses of it today.

 

Interesting...


"Outside the Church there is no salvation"


Joseph Ratzinger was one of the progressivist theologians who gave his opinion. He wrote two articles for this book. In one of them Ratzinger takes as a consumate fact that the dogma "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" [there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church] changed. Without presenting any argument he considered that the dogma doesn't make sense when compared to the modern geographic discoveries that "prove" that the world has millions of years, instead of the 4,000 years of the biblical history. He implies that it cannot be true that all the people that lived during these millions of years were not saved. Based solely on this imaginary "evidence" of the disputable modern discoveries, Ratzinger considers it obsolete to defend the mentioned Catholic dogma. No argument was presented. He jumped over it and went on to investigate the future of the Church without the dogma "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus."

http://www.traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_006_RatzingerSalvation.htm

 

I keep thinking of "where two or more are gathered...."

And what defines what is a church....

A church can obviously be a large, organized church... but I believe it could also be a couple or a few people gathered in nature appreciating the beauty of nature and asking to be filled w God's love...

 

AFTER life is pretty self explanatory, isn't it?

 

Law of contradiction for Abel; good God, the law of non-contradiction for Cain. I sin. I admit; I am not so good at Hebraism.

 

Actually, if it's a Catholic dogma, the answer to "what church" is not really an issue here.

 

Birth--Life--Death---Resurrection

 

Interesting indeed.

 

Yea, I agree the Catholic religion is different.


I have been thinking about how ...well, my brother is the worship leader at his church and him and his friends from church got tired of a lot of the politics of the particular church they went to-still go to sometimes and he still leads one of the worship services there- well, you know, the music leader... but about 7-12 of them get together now on sundays at different people's houses for a "church service" and it's totally different-but still church (to them... I'm sure to catholics it's different)--- they also go out into the world and do a lot of "secular" things---I've been wanting to go one of these Sundays and see exactly what they do but I know sometimes when the weather is nice they are outside and they do music... play guitars and do "worship" and pray and also talk about things they can do out and do to show God's love and peace in the world.
Anyways, they are all very passionate and serious about what they are doing and in my head I'm comparing that to the Methodist church I grew up going to. Where the doctrine was big but when it came down to it many, or even most, people who went there just went there because their parents went there or because they had to (when they were younger) and there was just a lot of worry about what people are wearing, and how much money people had, etc.
Anyways, just my rambling and wandering thoughts about what type of thing Jesus (or whatever God for diff religions) would be more happy with...

 

Yes, there is something after life.
And no, it's not life. Hence afterlife.

 

You're supposed to call spoiler alert.

 

the body dies. that's for sure. you will never again walk around in the same body you live in now in this life, once it wears out and ceases to function as a living organism.

but the experience of existing, how tied is the one to the other. this is a matter of speculation. one of which there is no proving and no disproving.

i do not believe there is any eternal state. but that is not the same as believing the awareness dies perminently and for ever with the body.

because for one thing, that kind of death, would also be a perminent and eternal state, and as i've just mentioned, that is not what i believe either.

two possibilities exist. we die, and have no experience of being dead. and then an infant is born, on some world, to some life form. in as big a universe as there unimaginably is, the odds of it being the same world twice in a row do not seem great. and so that infant, is once again you.

the other is that there is some other kind of experiencing of existence, that does not involve physical life. and this to is not an eternal single condition, but rather in either case, is what i would call serial mortality.

that is, every existence is a seperate whole cycle, but is then fallowed by another, and another and another.

whether any more of them are physical again, or some other kind of thing entirely.

because an eternal death is just as unobservable as an eternal life.

 

eternity is all there is. It is right now, every yesterday and every tomorrow. It's something people "wake up" to. And when they do, they'll understand it just fine.