(January 2, 2017 at 8:55 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: It is much simpler than that.
Have compassion for yourself to the extent you begin to fear your everlasting destiny. When you have enough compassion to have compassion for yourself, it will easily extend to others.
Anyone who is humble enough to give up the false cloak of Satan the false pride he inspires people with, will be saved.
Love is a secret language that emanates from and points to the Divine. If you can't hear it to the extent you should have compassion for yourself regarding your everlasting destiny, you will not hear much of it's higher calls to the most beloved and the most beloved's most beloveds.
The way I see it is this: IF God exists and is omni-everything then he doesn't need anything and therefore created mankind on a whim, out of the omni equivalents of boredom and loneliness if such things are even compatible with omni-everything. And if he is eternal then he doesn't deserve to be God, he just is. So this all powerful being, creates mankind for company on a whim, and equally plays with their eternal fates on a whim. He wants his creations to love him but to that end all he offers is a carrot and a stick as motivation... which cannot create real love... only the delusion of it. So at the end of his efforts, heaven is only populated by a bunch of Yes Men suffering from a strange variation of Stockholm Syndrome, who delude themselves into thinking they love the creator when all they really love is the prize - eternal life in 'paradise' - and fear the alternative of hell. Maybe God's happy with that, but it's not real love, and it can't be real love with heaven and hell hanging over people's heads. So as I see it, there is no paradise on offer, only two hells... one an eternal slave to an all powerful being who creates, rewards, punishes, and destroys life on a whim... and the other, the worst that being can throw at you for not towing the Party Line. IF that is the basis for our existence... created on a whim to satisfy the needs of an all powerful being... which it could be - I can't rule anything out... except again an omni-everything with needs seems a contradiction in terms... then those are the only choices I see. But in either case I'm not so deluded to think that all the noble-sounding talk of how wonderful God is is anything other than a comfortable delusion in the minds of believers, that both intentionally or otherwise sucks up to their God and diverts (their own and/or others) attention - again intentionally or otherwise - from the real goal of eternal life in paradise. If on a whim... and God does things on whims so be careful... God changed the rules and said that believers went to hell... how many would be singing his praises then?
