- Jan 12, 2012
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You make my case.
You have God saying he will repay, and for here I will agree, but expect him to repay with good and not evil.
Are you saying that God should and will ignore scriptures that say he should repay with good and think he will repay evil with evil?
God can either kill or cure those he thinks evil. The moral high ground would be to cure. Why do you think God would take the moral low ground and kill?
Regards
DL
Personally, I don't. But you have to realize that Satan and hell were concepts that were not a part of Judaism in its original form. Those concepts were created around the time of the Babylonian exile to explain why the Jews continued to suffer. Let's go back a bit.
Initially, the Jews did not do a real good job of following the Law. They explained their suffering by reasoning that God was under no obligation to keep up His end of the deal since they were not keeping up theirs. But eventually, the Jews started following Torah very well. yet, still they suffered. Why? The only thing they could come up with was that there was a force in the world that was the opposite of God. Good and evil, therefore battled for the obedience of the people. Hence Satan was born. Centuries later it was reasoned that if heaven was the realm of God where the faithful experienced eternal joy, there must also be a place where the unrighteous went that was a place of eternal suffering. Hence, hell was created and it was the Christians who really jumped on that. So hell and Satan are man made concepts designed to explain suffering and later to terrify the peasant class into behaving the way the Church wanted them to behave.
Scripture actually says nothing about hell. The words Gehenna, sheol, Hades, and Tartaros are usually translated as "hell" in English versions of the Bible, but none of those words refer to a place of eternal punishment through suffering in their original languages. They meant very different things. Now during the Middle Ages, one must remember that it was illegal for anyone to read the Bible except royalty and the clergy. The penalty was death. At some points in time, simply knowing how to read Latin so you could read the Bible was enough to get you killed. The Church did this for a specific reason. If the peasants couldn't read the Bible they had no way to check and see if what the Church was saying was true. Frequently, it wasn't. But that created traditions that survive to this very day. When the King James was translated into English, the translators were told to be as faithful to the manuscripts as possible while maintaining the traditions of the Church. Hell is one of those traditions and so Gehenna, sheol, etc got translated as "hell" even though that's not what the scriptures actually say. There is a lot of stuff like that in English versions of the Bible, unfortunately and sadly, even though anyone can read the Bible today and see what it actually says, most people don't bother. They simply accept the traditions that their priest, pastor, parents, or whoever tell them.
The reason why I know this is because I have spent my life studying not just scripture in English, but in the original languages, combined with in depth study of Christian and Jewish history, ancient cultures, blah, blah, blah. My conclusion is that Satan and hell probably don't exist. Thus God punishes no one for disobedience by sending them to hell, because hell is something invented by human beings. Everyone goes to heaven because...frankly...there's nowhere else to go.
So there's really no scriptural contradictions there in what you are pointing to. In this case there is traditional dogma that contradicts scripture. That is very true, but not within the scriptures you refer to themselves .
BluePhantom
Not to put words in your mouth, but I agree that Christianity screwed things up royally when they distorted the better interpretations that Jews had for their myths.
Take Eden for instance. Jews interpreted Eden as our place of enlightenment and elevation. That made both man and God come out of Eden as winners. Christianity reversed that win win situation to man and God losing. Man due to sin and God due to being too stupid to start us up the right way.
You have made God a Universalist God by eliminating what would be an immoral construct called hell.
In my language, that makes you a Gnostic Christina like myself or close enough as your morals will be close to mine. Pleased to meet you.
I hope you have read a bit of Gnostic writings. We have strange myths but the morality we show puts Christianity and Islam to shame as we cannot be homophobic or misogynous the way they are.
Regards
DL
Well I try to avoid defining myself in such ways. I usually call myself a Christian on these boards even though technically I do not fit the exact definition of a Christian. I do it because of convenience. I am close enough so it saves me the trouble of having to explain the nuances of where I differ on every thread I post on.
I am very familiar with Gnosticism and have read Gnostic scripture extensively. I love the Gospel of Phillip, BTW. It's very intellectual. I will generally agree that Christianity as we know it today is almost certainly not what Jesus had in mind. But that's what happens when you put humans into the mix and give them a shitload of power. Things get fucked up.
BTW...I did not eliminate hell. I merely pointed out that hell is an invention of man based upon history. It should have never been there to begin with.
Are we all saved or not?
Do we even need saving?
Regards
DL
Well I suppose it depends upon who you ask. The Bible itself is actually somewhat vague on the matter With hell ruled out, we must all go to heaven because there is no where else to go, but how does that work exactly? The Bible really doesn't really say and what it does say is pretty inconsistent. So at that point it comes down to personal belief. MY personal belief (and I don't have a shred of evidence to support this ) is that the choice lies with us and not God. I think when we die we go to God and God says "are you good? Did you experience what you wanted to?" and if we say "yes" then we can reunite with God. If we say "no" then God says "well ok, go do whatever you need to then" and at that point we are free to do that including living another human life if we choose. So obviously I incorporate some Hindu and Buddhism into my theology.
So are we all saved? I guess I would have to answer "yes" because of what I think you are referring to when you ask the question and my beliefs on who God is and what we are doing here, but my reasoning would be FAR different than a standard Judeo-Christian approach
It is for sure but lest we forget, Christians love to hate all those not of their ilk.
You and I do not.
We apply logic and reason to our hate. Christians just hate on faith.
This link shows that fact quite well.
Regards
DL