How To Get To Heaven When You Die

Mmmhh, secrets are so hot. Like, what is that blond wearing? Does she have a boyfriend? Is she as horny as I am? What does she look like naked?

OR more importantly, If I see the hot blond naked, will I recognize her when she is wearing clothing to hang out with all of the people who do not feel comfortable around her when she is naked?

Will I judge those people as anything other than silly for wanting the blond to keep her clothes on?

It's like my friend said about his kid "I don't know why young kids are more interested in wrapping paper than a present."

Let Go. Let God.

 

Jesus Christ is STILL GOD and He can STILL save you if you will only ask Him to.

 

God is still God and will take care of you no matter what. Stop trying to trick people into thinking God does not love and care for them.

 

God does love them. That is why He wants to save them from going to hell. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for them so that they could go to heaven. All they have to do is accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. That is what the bible says. There is no trick, just the truth.

 

That's what the bible says to you. To me it says that a really mean god created two people and tricked them into taking a test he knew they would fail so that he could punish them for it. A while later the god got jealous of all the other gods and committed mass genocide, wiping out all life on in the world, man, animal and plant, except for a few who loved him, so that he could take over the world with his followers, who would be all that were left. It didn't work. Then the god made a deal with one man (a coward and a pimp, who forced his wife to sleep with other men because he was afraid of them) promising to lead him and his family and all of his decendants to paradise, which he never really did. Instead he let them suffer as slaves to other nations, escaping from one captivity long enough to think that perhaps they had a chance for what they had been promised, only to be overrun by another group of people. When they were free, he told them to make war on other tribes that worshipped other gods and told them to do terrible things to those people. Despite whatever power he showed, his people still didn't obey him enough for his liking, so he let one calamity after another befall them. Strangely enough, even when a man did show the greatest faith in the god, and loved him and obeyed him, the god made a deal with an adversary which allowed that adversary to cause all sorts of awful things to happen to him, just to prove that at least one person wouldn't stop loving him, under those conditions - the mark of a really great deity, I'm sure. So after years upon years of suffering, this gods chosen people were again under the rule of yet another nation when this god decided to have a son with a twelve year old girl (the pervert). This son grew to be 33 year old and was very wise and told people a new way to live and worship the god that would ease their suffering, but he never fulfilled the original promise the god made. Nevertheless, the things the man said were very wise and quite good advice: he introduced the idea that if people dropped their grudges and forgave one another and started helping each other instead of helping only themselves, they could make the world a better place and perhaps even find real happiness in their lives (something very similar to what Buddha had said a thousand years earlier). This man was murdered - he suffered greatly and died horribly. Three days later he rose from the dead, but he didn't stick around to continue his work (which certainly might have convinced a lot of people to follow him). Instead he let a few people see him then disappeared, promising to come back eventually and lead them to their paradise. Many people believed him and prepared for his return, but he didn't come when they thought he would and the Romans massacred them. A few people survived, and spread the word that the man would come back and save them, but also shared the wisdom the man had taught them with others. Rome sent a man to persecute them, but he had a vision and claimed the he knew what this son of the god had really meant (which was quite different from what the man had taught the other people who had actually known this son of the god when he was alive). He told people the they had to believe in this son of the god or they would suffer for eternity when they died. He also said a lot of terrible things about women and said more than a few things that made it look like he (who had changed his name, and now called himself Paul) was actually quite insane, not wise like the son of the god had been. But people believed him anyway - especially people who wanted power over the followers of the son of the god who used this mans letters and chose some of the other religious writings (carefully edited to say things that would support their ideas and give them more power) and put them into a book. For a long time the gods chosen people continued to suffer - they split into two religions, one vilifying the other and grew to hate each other (well, the group that followed the teachings of Paul hated the other group, at least). Then while still under Roman occupation and suffering, yet another man told them that it was because they didn't love their god enough or believe in him enough and that an adversary would trick them into following a false god (though there is some indication that rather than just creating some false god that would serve their purposes, the would actually replace the son of god with an exact duplicate (only better looking) and corrupt what the son of god had said. Then the real son of god would finally return and punish everyone who had been tricked, taking those who had been lucky enough to choose the sect of the religion that worshiped him the right way to safety and sending everyone else to hell. The End.

Since that time, people have used this book and their faith in this son of the god to justify all kinds of war and torture - which I'm sure was exactly what he wanted them to do. Then more people cam along and said that these people were misinterpreting the bible and that actually it meant something else. Then that group used it to justify all sorts of wars and torture. Now it's happening again. And even more wars and torture will happen because powerful people will twist the beliefs of the sheep that follow them and say the book says so - and the people will believe them and go to war and try to create a whole nation of people who think just the same way they do (and consider themselves superior to those that don't). They will claim that anyone who doesn't believe the same way is an enemy and should be killed (or at least persecuted a lot and forced to hide their beliefs).

Today we have no clue who actually believes in the correct son of god and who is going to burn for eternity despite their best efforts because they believed the wrong way.

I think I wouldn't want anything to do with that mean old god, though I think I'd like to have become close friends with his son while he was alive. I have no intention of going to war because someone says that's what it says to do in this book. I have no intention of doing anything someone else tells me the book says to do. I'll read several different translations and try to get some idea myself of what the book says, then I'll do what I think is best.

 

It's not what it means to me. It is what the bible says.

2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
(KJV)

 

And yet you persist in following this god of the bible. You have seen his idea of justice, read about how he committed horrible atrocities, how he put those who loved him most through terrible agony.

He chose one family as his favorite; a family headed by a man who pimped his wife to strangers to save his own miserable skin. But why would this one true god single out a man like that (a real jerk, to put it kindly) to be the sole recipient of his grace? Perhaps he needed a coward to follow him; someone that would be so afraid of what this deity would do (or perhaps merely allow to happen) if he didn't obey that he would have sacrificed his own son. I mean okay, he didn't actually make the guy go through with it, but that is the kind of thing a Nazi SS officer might do. It seems more like this deity led a poor, not-so-bright man through all sorts of terrible trials (like cutting off his own foreskin - this god is the definition of the word "masochist") and dangerous terrain, full of deadly animals and people to get to a place that his decendants would spend the rest of their lives fighting to hold onto (and often losing).

Abraham didn't spread the word except to his own decendents, did he? No one in his whole family did. They were a tribe and eventually a series of tribes all with one god, in a world of vast numbers of people who's religions were very different. They didn't proselytize.

Why did God, creator of the universe, lord of heaven, not start out as everyone's deity to begin with? Where did the concept of these other deity's come from? Demons, pehaps? That would be the standard response, I guess. But even if that were the case, wouldn't he have had to lose the belief (or at least the worship) of all the people in the world (save one family) to a bunch of demons? How did that happen?

All the other people were demon worshippers, eh? Or perhaps they were atheists? Or perhaps they simply made their gods up out of nothing. Look at how he's commanded horrible fates to an entire world full of people that he... what, didn't have time to say hello to!?

This god, who is reputed to have created everything, which would include hell, then set up requirements for entry into his kingdom which are impossible to meet. We have to gain his grace, in order to enter. What kind of kingdom would it be?

He sent his son to intercede for us, to suffer and die as a scape goat to take our punishments for us. And he calls that "love." "Look," he says, "I didn't make Abraham sacrifice his son to me, although I know he would have, but I'll sacrifice my own son (to me) because I love you so much. His son could be said to love us, for voluntarily accepting that charge, but the father? All so our souls would become "perfect" enough through the grace provided by this gods son (if we accept him) to enter his "perfect" kingdom (almost perfect, that is - this god resides there, so it falls a bit short of perfection, I should think).

I'm supposed to want to be near a god like this for eternity? The god described in your book is not what you have come to think of him as. The god in this book is a petty tyrant. Nine of his ten commandments are merely common sense rules for a functioning society. The majority of people in the world (who, by the way, are not Judeo-Christian) know enough to behave according to these rules (at least to the same extent that the Judeo-Christians do). It isn't because this god told them to. But one of the commandments forbids the worship of other gods. Only by giving this god your sole devotion can you escape the torments of the hell he created.

Analyzing the arc of meaning behind the series of writings in this book, one finds that the most probable reason this god gave us free-will was to force us by threat or merely neglect, to beg him to take it back.

So tell me again, why should I want to enter his kingdom? Because if I don't he'll make me suffer for all eternity? Let's see, hmmm, what a choice...

I choose not to surrender my free will and beg to be allowed to stand in the presence of an asshole. Such a god should be asking for my forgiveness.

My religion enhances my understanding of the world. It doesn't force me to fear accepting the truth of my own observations about the universe. It doesn't use the words in a book as an excuse to persecute others or to feel like those who don't believe what I believe are doomed or that I should consider them my enemies. Even my concept of what a god is is entirely different from yours. I live a peaceful and moral existence. I enjoy my life. I do not fear death. Your concepts of heaven and hell hold no power over me. They are imaginary constructs designed to enslave. My own idea of what heaven and hell really are (at least as my religion might concieve of them) are proof of my freedom and exist for me in life. They are "at hand." I don't concern myself with what will happen when I die, I concern myself with living rightly. I am living rightly when I refuse to be bullied into becoming a sycophant to a tyrant.

 

Reality exists.

If nothing else, this one thing is universally believed to be true - reality exists. Science and religion and philosophy and art and, well, most genuine inquiry, is all about the nature of reality, or rather, these things are the path of humanity's quest to know, definitively, what the nature of reality ultimately is.


Reality is a single, unified whole. Reality simply is. It is as simple as this, as simple as anything can be. And yet, in its simplicity, reality is far more mysterious and inexplicable than we human beings know in our habitual, day-to-day relationship with . . . all of this.


There is, of course, a physical dimension to reality, which is easily evident to one's senses. What science seeks, primarily, are answers to the most important questions about this physical universe of ours.


But there is also a non-physical dimension that is best addressed through philosophy and religion. With philosophy, the seeker tends to concentrate his or her focus on one specific question, like - What is beauty? What is truth? How can we know what we know? How can we know anything?


Once you gain enough perspective and "see" through at least one of the veils of being, you may begin to recognize the single, unified whole of reality itself as eternal, divine, conscious, creative, beyond the sovereignty of the merely rational human mind. Once you have done this, you join the mystics of every tradition, of every human culture, of every land, of every time in history. All of the mystics have said the same things about the nature of reality.


One of the primary aspects of reality that everyone must face, sooner or later is this - There are many eternally recurring, vital patterns of reality that transcend their physical expression. The best of these are: Love, Truth, Consciousness, Creativity, Wisdom, Compassion, Bliss, Peace, Harmony, and Unity. There are more, of course, but without these, one's greatest efforts are trivial at best. You may recognize that the course of your life, when it is well lived, is an ever-deepening realization of each of these. In fact, it may be that the ultimate task of one's life is to realize the primal nature of each of these as thoroughly as possible.


Once you have begun to do this (and not one millisecond sooner), you have transcended philosophy and are now discussing the stuff of religion. When you realize the reality where Love, Truth, Consciousness, Creativity, Wisdom, Compassion, Bliss, Peace, Harmony, and Unity are effectively indistinguishable from one another, then you may speak of the existence or non-existence of God with the authority of one who has direct, first-hand experience.

You can think of religion as a forum in which human beings get together to trade notes about the nature of this non-physical reality of ours. We are all learning about all of this stuff together, or rather, you and I and everyone are all on the same path, regardless of how far one has progressed along that path. The history of the Western Religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and all of their variations, is really the unfolding story of humanity's discovery and knowledge and realization of what God is.

In that light, it makes a little more sense that our earliest religious ideas, our earliest ideas about the divine, about God, were quite a bit less developed than ideas expressed a thousand years later. The same can be said about our earliest scientific knowledge, our earliest philosophies, our earliest artistic expressions and our earliest political organizations. It seems that it would be equally foolish to completely disregard all science because we once believed the earth was flat, was the center of the universe, and was enveloped in a multi-layered series of concentric heavenly spheres which held up the moon, the sun and the stars.

 

Isa 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: {It is...: or, Him that}
(KJV)

Job 26:7 He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.
(KJV)

 

I agree. Religious thinking around the world has evolved as our own sophistication (for lack of a better word) has evolved.

I thought the "Liberation theology" movement was a really powerful religious idea and it bothers me that it has been suppressed. Or perhaps, more to the point, it's been corrupted into something really frightening: a movement to unite a nation under a single deity and force their interpretation of religious morality upon the world by whatever means necessary. There is a small but extremely passionate and vocal group that is at war with freedom, and disguising it as a war for freedom, and the most amazing part is that the majority of people are standing idly by and letting it happen.

It could be said that some sects of various religious affiliations continue to have a spiritual egocentrism which mirrors those debunked scientific beliefs which your post mentions. One's moral fibre can often be measured by the point at which conditions which run counter to ones moral compass become so intolerable that finally say "no more." For these unenlightened folk, whose morality is the only morality, that tolerance is diminishing rapidly. It matters not where we are the same, only that we differ in some respects. I can agree with the statement that morality isn't relative, but I separate morality from socio-religious taboos, mores, and folkways. These things ARE relative. They should be respected, but they shouldn't be forced upon others. Some of us respect the differences in our beliefs. Some do not. The way in which we demonstrate our love for one another or the pricelessness of life, for instance, varies widely with the nature of our understanding of the mysteries surrounding these concepts. A monocular view of the world inhibits ones' understanding of this.

Particularly frustrating, is the blind insistence on one particular notion that the physics of our universe has made logically impossible: the concept of the "end times." This little gem has been floating around for millennia, always gaining tremendous strength during the conclusion of some number of years, arbitrarily based upon a numeric system designed by creatures with ten fingers. Right now, it's particularly bad, and I have to say that I'm really disappointed we haven't evolved beyond this one, yet. It's pure silliness belies the dangerously reckless behavior it inspires. When I can take no more of it, my response is to cast those who cling to this absurd belief (a stupidly literal reading of a series of religious symbols which chart the rising and falling cycles of Western civilization) as if the rest of their belief system was equally unevolved, hence my earlier diatribe on other literal readings of Judeo-Christian symbols.


Religious symbols are ambiguous (just as the language we sometimes use to express them is). Placed in a particular context, they explode with meaning. Their ambiguity, however, is partially in the multiplicity of contexts into which they can be placed. Often this is a beautiful thing and I think that, perhaps that may be the defining element of a religious symbol. Still, I never cease to be amazed at the number of people who choose to ignore certain symbols (or contexts) and elevate others to serve thier own purposes, aiming at some imagined outcome which will support their "Truth," rather than marvelling at the constant barrage of meanings which manifest themselves in the now. The "Truth" is unfolding before us and these poor people can't see it because the're too busy looking for those symbols which they might use to support their narrow views.

 

God's word does NOT evolve. It is a constant. It never changes because perfection doesn't need to change.

 

Humanity, however, isn't perfect. The bible is written in various languages, all created by man, and because that is the case, the written word cannot be perfect. It can only come as close to perfection as our imperfect language structures will allow - hence the incredible amount of ambiguity and argument concerning the meanings (and, for that matter, the relevance) of various biblical passages. Our language has evolved and we have re-translated the bible a number of times to attempt to keep it up to date with those changes. Perhaps the original word has no need to evolve, but the people who heard or were divinely inspired to write that word are long dead and cannot re-translate the word into the new paradigm that our language has become.

All of this being the case, it follows that either the written word MUST CHANGE as our language evolves or we must trust to imperfect scholars of the ancient languages in which the bible was written to tell us what they actually mean (and we had better hope said scholars are also divinely inspired, or we will still get only an imperfect understanding of the word) OR we must each learn to speak each of those ancient languages fluently enough to read the original texts.

Our understanding of the word, then, evolves as we do. To think otherwise is to blind yourself to the unassailable fact of our own imperfections.

I am a happy blasphemer of your god, and will continue to be, so long as people like yourself continue to believe that our imperfect language structure could possibly hold the message of the divine in its entirety - unchanged and literal. Such a notion is ridiculous, and the concept of deity that it gives rise to deserves nothing less than my derision.

 

then why is God a vengeful god in the OT and a loving, father figure god in the NT?

 

It is. Until you know this you do not know God.

God constantly adds to our repertoire of words and understanding.

I think you believe that lack of knowledge is an imperfection, which only demonstrates your lack of wisdom (this is not an insult, it is the truth). You need to accumulate certain ideas in order to understand other ideas. This does not make you imperfect- it teaches you what you are.

There is more to God than the written or spoken word. However, the words hold power within them as well, just like an atom, photon, or battery.

You can send a message with flowers as well. Usually you send the flowers with a note.

 

To teach you about God.

 

Know1nozsme wrote,

Humanity, however, isn't perfect. The bible is written in various languages, all created by man, and because that is the case, the written word cannot be perfect.

My response is,

These languages WERE created by God. Man had one language and at the time of the tower of babel God confused all of the languages. Therefore, your argument is flawed.

 

its not flawed unless you have proof that God actually ever did this, which you dont.

 

I wasn't talking to you, but if you wish to engage in this, I'll be happy to oblige. From your perspective, perhaps, applying a much broader view of the workings of a complex and interconnected universe, humanity (and, for that matter, everything) is perfect. When we are a process, rather than a product, the concept of perfection applies to all things. However, when your worldview teaches that humanity cannot be perfect except by a grace gained only when they undergo a specific series of rituals and carry a specific set of beliefs, then according to your worldview, humanity isn't perfect - it only has the potential to achieve a kind of perfection (by association to that which is perfect). The meaning of the word "perfect" is greatly affected by the context in which it is placed (language is ambiguous).

An important word in your statement is "our." This is a very ambiguous word. Which "we" does "our" refer to?

Form a number of perspectives, your statement is true, but each of us gains that understanding through a constant re-creation of the lens through which we experience the world in the forge of each new experience we have. Everyone’s "understanding" increases, but the "truth" revealed in that understanding varies from person to person. Two people coming into contact with the same concept or event may learn entirely different things from that experience.

I find lack of knowledge to be evidence of potential for the increase of knowledge, and nothing more. I have opinions, however. And my opinion of those who seem to willfully resist the acceptance of any knowledge simply because it challenges their worldview is that they are annoying. Occasionally, I "act out" that annoyance. Deal with it. If your worldview cannot withstand scrutiny; if you fear that which might test your faith; don't proselytize.

And like those other things, that power can find multiple uses. Sometimes terrible uses.

The cost of floral delivery to Mt. Sinai is out of my budget range. I find that word-of-mouth is often preferable in these cases.

 

christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship.

 

How else would the prophecies come true?