[b]WARNING:The following is perhaps the WEIRDEST conceptual analysis of a certain aspect of Christian thought. The reader is hereby forewarned. Proponents of “logic”, “reason”, and the “empirical” may wish to stop reading NOW.
Despite the title of this thread, everyone is invited to read the “foolishness” that awaits. The following is meant primarily for Christians (and adherents of any “mutant strain” of Christian belief). Thus atheists and non-Christians may wish to accept what greets the eye with a grain of salt, or ignore the text altogether and move on to another thread.[/b]
PART ONE: THE PREDICAMENT OF THE “SAVED” (THE CHRISTIAN SALVATION OF THE HUMAN BEING)
Within Christianity (and Superchristianity) “salvation” is the most desired predicament of the human being that believes in the existence of the Judeo-Christian God, Jesus Christ, and the Christian entailment of God’s relation to and behavioral intentional toward the human being.
According to Christianity (and Superchristianity), a “saved” individual is rescued from the threat of eternal torment in hellfire (Fundamentalist Christianity) and/or rescued from the “dark side” of human nature (self/other destructive lust and predatory instinct and desire), with that nature displaced by a transcendent state of mind.
This salvation is due to a God-imposed relationship between a human being and Jesus Christ, which allows (or causes) the human to transcend a theological “evolutionary ladder” above the unsaved, humans who fail to possess the aforementioned relationship with the Judeo-Christian God and Jesus Christ due to ignorance, disbelief, or unwillingness.
A. The “Saved” According To Fundamentalist Christianity
Within Fundamentalist Christian doctrine, a “saved” human being is one who:
(1) Learns of the doctrine or hypothesis of the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ through the Roman execution of crucifixion
(2) Believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and a version of that God made flesh and prays for forgiveness of sins, falling upon one’s knees to accept “the God made flesh” as Personal Lord and Savior.
(3) Believes (most importantly) that the physical blood of Jesus shed during the scourging and crucifixion of Christ possesses the power to “wash away human sin”.
The shedding of Jesus’ blood is considered (by God) to be the universal “legal tender” for the absolution of all past sins (moral and lawful offense against God yielding an automatic penalty of eternal torment in Hell, if no forgiveness or intercession of sin is made for the damned).
(4)The “saved” individual now possesses a “clean slate”, prayerful access to God the Father (through Christ who continuously intermediates for the prayers of the saved individual), and admission after death (or upon the Rapture) to eternal bliss in heaven.
Fundamentalist Christian belief conflicts concerning the “permanence” of Christian salvation. There exist two distinct views concerning the invulnerability of the “saved” individual from any future wrath of God. One view holds that salvation is irrevocable, while the other holds that salvation is conditional and reversible. Biblical verses within the New Testament, strangely, support both arguments.
(4a) The “Once Saved Always Saved” view of Christian Salvation:
Fundamentalist Christians of the “once saved always saved” camp hold that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and it’s redemption of the believer is irreversible and irrevocable. In this view, a “saved” person is bound for Heaven “no matter what”, such that an individual who continues to commit even deliberte sins will nevertheless achieve Heaven, due to primordial faith and acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and their invitation for Christ to become Personal Lord and Savior.
The individual who continues to sin, according to the OSAS argument, is nevertheless continually punished (pre-afterlife) by God, and there exists the belief that God, while respecting freedom of will, nevertheless influences the conscience of the sinning Christian in order to instigate a desire to cease their deliberate behavior. Nevertheless, the “blood pardon” of Jesus Christ is transtemporal (applying to all past and future sins) and irrevocable, with the individual granted entrance to Heaven.
However, questions beg concerning deeper implications and “loopholes” within the OSAS argument:
(4a1) Are sociopaths (human beings incapable of experiencing conscience and empathy, and are unapologetic concerning delibertate violation of the Golden Rule) capable of becoming “saved” and thus qualifying for the “once saved always saved” status?
(4a2) Are non-sociopaths, by nature, the only beings capable of believing the relevant Christian concept and accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? If sociopaths can do the same, are they denied salvation due to their sociopathy? If so, then what of God’s “freely given unanimous grace” to the repentant wicked mentioned in Romans 3?
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus…”
(Romans 3:23,24 NIV)
(4a3) What of moral character within Heaven itself, once “all the saints have marched in”? If an individual is morally “less-than-stellar”, yet is granted admittance to Heaven due to their faith in the sacrifice of Jesus and acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior, is this not allowance of the threat of future sin within Heaven itself, short of a God-imposed lobotomy or psychomoral evolution of the sinful into the sinless?
(4b) The “Once Saved Not Always Saved” (Conditional Salvation) view of Christian Salvation:
Fundamentalist Christians who hold to the notion of Conditional Salvation derive their belief from the biblical verse:
“It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentence, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.” (Hebrews 6:4-6 NIV)
The conditional and reversible salvation view holds that upon belief in the divinity and sacrifice of Jesus Christ and acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior, the blood of Jesus “covers” only all past sinsbefore faith and repentance, and only all future sins that are repented, and for which forgiveness is sought.
Conditional and reversible salvation can be further decomposed into two disparate sub-groups: (a) Conditional Salvation that allows Forgiveable Deliberate Sin (to a point) and; (b) Conditional Salvation that invokes Unforgivable Deliberate Sin.
As the names imply, certain adherents of conditional and reversible salvation allow forgiveness for deliberate and defiant sin against God post-“salvation”, provided the indiviudal repents and asks forgiveness.
Conditional and reversible salvation views that considers unforgiveable deliberate/defiant sin holds that “the deal is off” once an individual deliberately sins, regardless of whether or not the individual seeks forgiveness after the fact.
Thus one can label the sub-groups, subsuming each within an overall Conditional and Reversible Salvation as (a) Strong Conditional Salvation (in which deliberate sin regardless of beseeching of forgiveness after the fact is unforgiveable) and (b) Weak Conditional Salvation (in which the former is forgiven, upon request for forgiveness).
Needless to say, the Fundamentalist Christian notion of the predicament of the “saved” is an escape from or a continued tightrope-walking within the Darwinian minefield of the Judeo-Christian God,with eternal damnation in hell as the “Sword of Damocles” that ensures the animals are all obediently jumping through their hoops through fear of the Second Death (Revelations 20).
B. THE “SAVED” ACCORDING TO SUPERCHRISTIANITY
Within Superchristianity, human “sin” is an aspect of the Grand Primordial Nihilism, that part of God’s omniscient foreknowledge of all events that contain all human evil (natural and deliberate evil). Thus, humans (within Superchristianity) are replicas of the imaginary characters within the GPN, re-enacted according to a grand scheme of the Judeo-Christian God to psychologically and morally evolve the nihilistic characters discovered within the GPN toward as state of psychomoral transcendence, “defeating” the GPN by using the GPN for his own ends.
According to Superchristianity, God’s use of the GPN in turn yields three psychological “species” or psychological “races” of human being, with two differentiated only due to the possession or lack of conscience, empathy, and the emotional significance of the practice of the Golden Rule.
These two “species” of human are:
(1)Non-Sociopathic Deviants (Non-sociopathic Non-Transcendents) are humans who are non-sociopathic to the level that they possess conscience and experience empathy (regardless of degree), and actively work to repress their natural predatory impulses that exist as a natural aspect of the “dark side of the moon” of human nature (thus non-sociopaths are beings who strongly feel and believe that restraint of their inner workings for the protection and safety of others is tantamount).
(The term “deviant” in Superchristian terminology is any conscious being whose psychology is distinct from that of the Judeo-Christian God and Jesus Christ, in the sense that a given human mind [as the most relevant example] “deviates” in terms of it’s perceptions, intentions, and desires from the mind of Jesus Christ)
(2) Sociopathic Deviants (Non-Transcendent sociopaths) are humans that exist as the “other side of the coin” from non-sociopathic deviants, due to their lack of conscience, lack of the ability to experience empathy, and their heartfelt disbelief in the significance or necessity for adherence to the Golden Rule and self-control for the sake of others.
It is the charge of Superchristianity that sociopaths are incapable of existence as the third “species” of human being introduced below (absent a God-imposed lobotomy). Sociopathic deviants that physically act out their predations are punished within a temporary karmic “hell” within which God forces them to exchange bodies and traumatic circumstances with each of their pre-afterlife victims.
(3) Transcendent Deviants are the “saved” according to Superchristian doctrine. These humans come to possess an inextricable mind/experience-sharing parallelism between their “normal” human mind and the mind of Jesus Christ.
This psychological “merger” with Christ occurs due to the instantiation of a bizarre “faith in Jesus” (wholly distinct from the “faith in Jesus” invoked within Fundamentalist Christianity), in which the Transcendent Deviant comes to believe that one’s experiences are actually re-enactments of the experiences of Christ himself (with Christ “wearing the form” of the TD within his mind while dying upon the cross, and within Christ’s disembodied mind while his body lies in state post-crucifixion within the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea).
The Transcendent Deviant, during physical life intermittently shares the private menality and emotional affect of Jesus Christ (according to the faith of the TD, with the belief that Christ continues to “run” within the TD subconsciously), and as such the Transcendent Deviant is the furthest being “up the evolutionary ladder” of God’s transformation of the human mind beyond the confines of the GPN.
The Transcendent Deviant possesses (theoretically) the bizarre property of immunity from death (save perhaps through aging).
THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING, O GENTLE READER—TO BE CONTINUED…!
Jay M. Brewer
(For an online easy-to-read COMIC BOOK that basically states the above but in a more concise and entertaining manner, simply go to:)
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
or:
superchristianity.com