Do you believe that you are being judged by God?

[tentative]

Bessy,

In my understanding, helping the neighbor is the performance of the sacrament. It is the difference of talking about being a good samaritan, and being that samaritan. Whether the act is 'good' or 'bad' is not in the act itself, but in the intent. If your husband performed the act of kindness from his heart, then he has performed a communion with his creator. If he mowed the lawn so that all the neighbors would see it, he has not. Same act, different intent.

[Bessy]

Bessy,

In my understanding, helping the neighbor is the performance of the sacrament. It is the difference of talking about being a good samaritan, and being that samaritan. Whether the act is 'good' or 'bad' is not in the act itself, but in the intent. If your husband performed the act of kindness from his heart, then he has performed a communion with his creator. If he mowed the lawn so that all the neighbors would see it, he has not. Same act, different intent.

That is your belief system which I agree with (by the way) but most RC would go to mass.

Their belief in being judged has now infringed on their daily "goodness." THAT worries me.

[Bob]

Hi Bessy,

If you assume that good is an impossible thing to achieve then I can understand the struggle and the reason for the need for church and further study. It is remarkable to me that the more I study Eastern philosophy, the more I can see that Jesus was not the only one with these thoughts. As the Son of God, you would say that he was the first to honor the Golden Rule … But as you can see.... he wasn't.

Ah yes, this is „deeper magic from before the dawn of time“(as Aslan put it). Jesus doesn’t use the term “Son of God” for himself in the synoptic Gospels. It could reasonably be assumed that Jesus was perceived to be the personification of chokmâh (divine wisdom), which speaks so clearly in Ecclesiastes, before he became Christ and the “uihos theos” or son of God. Essentially it is the merging of ideas, which is fascinating since in the Christian tradition they all merge from different parts of the Tenakh and find their meeting point in the Sage from Nazareth. I think it would have disturbed him that people thought of him in that way, but that is one of the reasons they did.

I find eastern philosophy inspiring too, although, as you can se, I am deeply involved in the Christian.

My husband asked me something as we were discussing this. He mowed the lawn of a sick woman next door yesterday. As a Jewish man, he wondered - would a Christian be more inclined to go to mass or do someone a favor? In the RC church, mass is a sacrament - so what if there was a choice? Is living it the thing or "living as" the thing? In the OP, I asked how one would be judged. I wonder if God and Jesus don't see the day to day good that you say is impossible to achieve.

OK, I was raised an Anglican, which is a bit of both, but have been protestant for years, and I would say that on judgement day (to stay with he subject) it won’t matter how many times you have missed mass.

Shalom

[Uccisore]

Bob

OK, I was raised an Anglican, which is a bit of both, but have been protestant for years, and I would say that on judgement day (to stay with he subject) it won’t matter how many times you have missed mass.

Is there a good word for the force in Christianity that keeps people being good when they know they don't have to be for a reward? The question will come up again and again that if a Christian knows he will be forgiven, that he may as well sin all he likes and just apologize after. I agree what you've said above, but I'm still reminded of that skeptical argument.

[Bessy]

Anyone who looks for the easy way out and sins just for sport isn't much of a Christian, but I am not sure of this "scale" of who gets in and who doesn't. In a way this even sounds like I'm joking... it even sounds like I am being sarcastic and I'm not. I am merely tellling it like the rest of us from the outside see it...

Bob was pretty sure that intent was essential when it came to placing the lawn mowing over the church going but most Catholics I know would forgo the favor for their trek to take their weekly communion. Now it would seem like common sense to me that kindness is the Christian way and yet there are rules, you know. This sacrament of Communion is clearly an essential ideology of the Catholic church.

So, getting back to Judgement Day, does that mean that there are degrees of behavior where (say) the Baptists may allow a favor of giving an old lady a ride over missing a Bible study or a dinner made by a Presbyterian for a sick neighbor could negate the fact that she had a one night stand with a man from the subway on her commute home. I realize that putting specifics in this scenario makes it sound like I am pulling your chain - but I am trying to make my point. If I strip it down to the bare essentials it begins to allow you to understand what non-Christians see. There seems to be a double standard depending on the mood of the believer.

If it is all written in the Bible (as you say) why the heck are there so many standards when it comes to the entrance into eternal life? I can't get a grasp on it unless I (again) chalk it up to undying faith that will never be understood by the masses least of all little ole me...

Heavens, my head is spinning.

[Dan~]

Technically true. However, God could punish someone for the choices they made in life that resulted in their being an atheist. For example, anybody who claims to be a philosopher, and does the sorts of things that philosophers characteristically do, would not be 'off the hook'. They could potentially be punished for intentionally choosing courses of study that lead them away from the truth of God.
So, I do agree that there are atheists (as well as people who believe plenty of other things) that are not accountable for what they believe in any moral sense- children come to mind, and perhaps people with extremely poor access to education. However, I don't believe that people are universally excused for what they believe- certainly, the people who post here bare reponsibility for what they believe, for example.

Uccisore, I am curious about something, as I do not know what you estimate god is and if/what god's judgment is.

Suppose I was waring red shoes, I am invisible, and got a friend of mine got to write that down in a book 4000 years ago... Would I be entitled to view it as a sin if you did not believe him? There were many other people everywhere to said that my shoes were blue, or green, or that I had no shoes at all. It'd not be easy to chose between one proofless claim and 1000 others...

[Dan~]

If it is all written in the Bible (as you say) why the heck are there so many standards when it comes to the entrance into eternal life? I can't get a grasp on it unless I (again) chalk it up to undying faith that will never be understood by the masses least of all little ole me...

Heavens, my head is spinning.

As you can see, anyone can be moral without god, and anyone can live without god. Anyone can be happy without god, and anyone can be healed without god. It depends upon the situation, but yes, the god of the bible isn't as useful as he appears to be. If it's possible to spiritually live forever, I think that also can be done without god.

Entrance into eternal life is not a question of moral purity or faith, it's a question of spiritual evolution and a wide enough self-understanding which leads to ni 'perfect' self-repair.

[Bessy]

Dan,

I think the woman in my subway story was wearing those red shoes tho' they could have been green or blue, but you know how that telephone game gets after the 1000th person.

[Dan~]

Dan,

I think the woman in my subway story was wearing those red shoes tho' they could have been green or blue, but you know how that telephone game gets after the 1000th person.

Yeah, and the question is only compounded by YHWH supposedly being all-powerful, because if he was all-powerful, he wouldn't need anyone to talk for him, he could talk for himself.

It's like a baby needs people to feed it at an early age because it cannot feed itself. And a cripple in a wheel-chair can't walk, he needs help.

Same thing applies to god, TOTALLY.
If he's all-mighty then he doesn't need little specks of dust like us to do his work for him and he can do it better himself.

But if he is not all poweful then there will be a vast, trickly web of supposed "reason" for why he does not discharge his love, mercy, might and glory into humanity visibly.

[Bob]

Hi Ucc.,

Is there a good word for the force in Christianity that keeps people being good when they know they don't have to be for a reward? The question will come up again and again that if a Christian knows he will be forgiven, that he may as well sin all he likes and just apologize after. I agree what you've said above, but I'm still reminded of that skeptical argument.

Yes, I know. It is a little disconcerting, but I find that coercion isn’t what makes Christianity tick, but rather has come along when Christianity became a mass movement. It isn’t the threat of punishment or even the promise of heaven, but the spiritual awareness of renewal that leads people down the narrow path. The Pharisees assumed that a little coercion or “good example” could change people – Jesus shocked these presumed venerable gentlemen by telling them that they had to be reborn, that they were blocking the entrance to eternity, and that they already had their reward and couldn’t expect more.

I understand why people get the idea that coercion is necessary, but that is the weakness of the Church, not its strength. It shouldn’t surprise you either – doesn’t God continually turn things around and present us with a perspective we didn’t expect?


Hi Bessy,

Anyone who looks for the easy way out and sins just for sport isn't much of a Christian, but I am not sure of this "scale" of who gets in and who doesn't. In a way this even sounds like I'm joking... it even sounds like I am being sarcastic and I'm not. I am merely tellling it like the rest of us from the outside see it...

I know, and I have often said that there are many reasons for not being a Christian – most of them are people who call themselves Christians.

Bob was pretty sure that intent was essential when it came to placing the lawn mowing over the church going but most Catholics I know would forgo the favor for their trek to take their weekly communion. Now it would seem like common sense to me that kindness is the Christian way and yet there are rules, you know. This sacrament of Communion is clearly an essential ideology of the Catholic church.

I think where we are at odds is in the fact that the provision of the Catholic Church is adequate to do both. There are numerous celebrations of Mass in the week and enough exceptions to allow people who have difficulty attending to come to the sacrament. What you are criticising, however, is not how the Church provides, but how the people react and lead their lives. Even though I am not a Roman Catholic, I find it important to differentiate.

So, getting back to Judgement Day, does that mean that there are degrees of behavior where (say) the Baptists may allow a favor of giving an old lady a ride over missing a Bible study or a dinner made by a Presbyterian for a sick neighbor could negate the fact that she had a one night stand with a man from the subway on her commute home. I realize that putting specifics in this scenario makes it sound like I am pulling your chain - but I am trying to make my point. If I strip it down to the bare essentials it begins to allow you to understand what non-Christians see. There seems to be a double standard depending on the mood of the believer.

It seems to be a similar problem here. It isn’t our good works that recommend us, but the Spirit in which we live. That is, it is something which isn’t apparent for all to see – which is a good argument for not judging. I have no doubt that where the Holy Spirit is in control, there will be good works, but you can’t turn the sentence around.

If it is all written in the Bible (as you say) why the heck are there so many standards when it comes to the entrance into eternal life? I can't get a grasp on it unless I (again) chalk it up to undying faith that will never be understood by the masses least of all little ole me...

This is where Ucc. gets uncomfortable. The problem is that it is not a question of a blanket answer, but where you are. You have heard of the story where a rich young man asks how he can attain eternal life. Jesus says, “You know the commandments …” He says that he has followed them his life long. Jesus then says, “Then there is only one thing else to do – sell all of your possessions and give them to the poor and follow me.”

This was an individual answer for someone for whom the commandments were not enough. You must ask yourself, what do I need? Am I compromising myself by hanging onto Mammon or anything else? Nobody can answer hat question but yourself.

Shalom

[Bessy]

Such a pleasure it is to read your answer, Bob. Christianity would be a good thing for everyone if they could see the Holy Spirit from this personal point of view. So, just as I thought, the answer lies within. If you can admit to where you are now and know where you want to go - it isn't a matter of judgment at all but of the personal journey. Funny, the journey is what has moved me in my daily search all along.

There will always be zealots and it isn't fair to hold them up as our guide. They seem to forget that when it is all said and done their pure and elitist attitude will only push them further away from the Light that they are so drawn to.

Matt. 7:1-5 Do not judge lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

Thank you for your time, Bob.

[Jakob]

I will say this much.

Remember a couple days ago we were talking about worst songs and I mentioned MeatLoaf? Well the following day I heard like three MeatLoaf songs on two different stations while at work, when usually I don't hear any and only one on a rare occasion.

Aaargh, that <i>is</i> terrifying. What a vengeful god must watch over you.

Sing us a meatloaf song Karaoke man!

[Exuberant Teleportation]

Yes, God always watches us and hopes for the best. The highest will, the most supreme legacy, the most exalted honors, and deepest course into the routes of expansion prime and gear us up for the level that God knows that we have to be at. Those who are weak, shallow, without emotion or emblems of divine guidance falter, succumb to the easy way out, flicker away from life, and fail, ties down by their own puny negativity.

But, if you find inner peace, harness the flow of God, act from the sacred heart, and channel the most wise orders from the virtuous, then it's love, life, purity, and endless oceans of joy everyday, painted and restored into pristine form for you (your reward, your judgment from God)!

[Dan~]

This is an old thread to resurrect.
Why?

[promethean75]

I agree, danno. A much better thread would be: does God believe he is being judged by promethean75.

[barbarianhorde]

This is an old thread to resurrect.
Why?

Why not?


Judgement shall be passed by anyone one has made a contract with.



You have made thousands of subconscious contracts. All of us have.

[Anomaly654]

Both are required. A Christian who thinks that behavior is not associated with eternal life needs to read the bible again.

Romans 11
22Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off.

The problem with this thinking imo is that it's based on a literal reading of the Bible which is inherently exclusivistic (new word?) and leads to what I believe are wrongfully elitist doctrines.

The Bible is, as Swedenborg noted, a book of correspondences. Salvation--what one is saved from--is difficult to define because the symbolic language of Scripture, which states we're saved from "sin"--references effects, not the actual cause. (The cause is value itself; we're being saved (cleansed) from falsity, the denomination of value in human essence that corrupts and causes sin. Humans literally have a spiritual disease.) The concept of sin qua sin is like pornography: you know it when you see it but it's almost impossible to define. Organized Christianity has ripped the title "God's favorite" from the Jews and held it up triumphantly like a championship belt. The Jews didn't get it, and Christianity doesn't get it either: God doesn't have favorites. Everyone is saved already in eternity, life is a big play wherein hell is instituted in time against the falsity we create within ourselves and fuels our acting. This reality is what is really expressed in the Bible in a unified, coherent allegorical system in virtually every book of the Bible.

We all just have to act out our parts on the stage of matter in time and space. The Jews saw the other nations as the bad guys. Christians generally see the Jews as the bad guys. (Those who say they don't are disingenuous if they believe only Christians are saved.) The point of the Jews' rejection of Christ is not that they're bad guys, that was just the part in the play they had to perform. Their rejection was the symbolic presentation of everyman. They are us and we them. When we see the evil the Jews and gentiles committed, we're looking in a mirror at ourselves, at every man, woman and child ever born. They were a representation. Hitler played his role, Idi Amin played his, Joan of Arc played hers. None are bad, we all just have a role to play. We learn by making bad decisions, falsifying our souls and are cleansed in the purifying fires of hell to restoration before entering eternity. This isn't what the Bible "says" (literalism), but it's what God teaches in it.

I'm not dissing Christianity as bad. We're all bad and there's a lot of truth in even the literal. Just saying the literal is not and should not be the focus of the book.

[Anomaly654]

Is there a good word for the force in Christianity that keeps people being good when they know they don't have to be for a reward? The question will come up again and again that if a Christian knows he will be forgiven, that he may as well sin all he likes and just apologize after. I agree what you've said above, but I'm still reminded of that skeptical argument.

I hold that force is truth. Value--reduced to two simple denominations, truth and falsity-- is for me an abstract quality that exerts force in the 'real' world. The falsified soul has, by virtue of its fragmental falsification, a propensity to act falsely (sin). The delusion that one can sin with impunity is grounded in a misunderstanding of what the Bible actually teaches, as re "...He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed." (1Pe 2:24) Christ didn't die so we can sin with impunity, He died that when we kill ourselves with our willful sin He destroys the root cause of that sin (falsity in essence) and resurrects us--fragmentally and progressively--to life by restoring the destroyed parts of essence to a true state. Death and resurrection. Thus, Paul isn't contradicted: " "...the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus..." (Rom 6:23) One suffers the death of death (falsity) by their own sin. This is like the dog throwing itself in rage against its own hated image in a mirror...with each crash, his hatred is lessened until at last it learns to love what it sees. Its falsity is removed and it is able to unite with the truth, wherein love resides.

By destroying the root of sin, the desire to sin is gradually removed in those who practice faith. This is the work of hell, the destruction of falsity and its restoration to a truth state, worked out gradually in those of faith in time (sanctification) from a more theologically orthodox point of view. This is open to all humans; thus, the moral atheist or Muslim can, by virtue of conforming to Truth (Christ) in time and being cleansed and strengthened internally, gain the salvation of faith in time. It's well known that psychotherapy generally seeks to bring one to face personal falsehood. This is necessarily performed gradually; no one willingly walks into a fiery death, but if the patient can be burned a little at a time, he can often be brought to the truth about himself. This is man working with Christ to perform a spiritual function, introducing a broken person to the fires of hell (truth) so that the false can be destroyed.

When Jesus said, "...you shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins." (Jn 8:24) He was speaking beyond the manmade religious requirement to believe in a man (Jesus), which breeds elitism, to hear and obey the call to believe in truth. "Believe in Me" in its broadest meaning is "Believe in prescriptive/moral Truth", and this is to all persons regardless of religious demeanor. The 'devout' Christian thus theoretically could suffer cleansing hellfire with the unbeliever in an "all at once" event [most likely at the precise moment of physical death, prior to entering eternity), but this results in a restoration to a wholly true state the 'hard way', which those of faith avoid.

Another possibility is that every person is cleansed in various areas in time just in proportion to their union with Truth, and the same "all" yet proportionately suffer the harsh and immediate cleansing of "hell" in those areas of the soul that yet produce a stubborn clinging to false beliefs. There is no more fair and just scenario than this; everyone gets exactly what they deserve. In the end, all are reclaimed and wholly restored to a true (perfect) state.