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The concept of Hell discourages belief
#38
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief
(March 21, 2013 at 2:04 am)Godschild Wrote: There are things we do know that Christ gave up ie. sacrificed. Christ being part of the Holy Trinity gave up His separation from sin to become sin. So God suffered knowing sin instead of the purity He had always know, this was done for all people. Christ gave up His great powers when He came as Jesus, Jesus relied on the Father's power, this means He had to trust instead of always being trusted, this was done for all people. As Drich said, Christ gave up His righteousness and became sin, this in itself should be proof of His love, this was done for all people.

That's an interesting take on it. That has some real potential. If you don't mind, I'm going to theorize a bit here...

I can see where this can work with the concept that humanity's fallen condition is the result of god's design, and therefore he is the cause. Having creating everything and found it to be "good," he presented Adam and Eve with a simple challenge, and they failed miserably. At first, god refuses to accept that his design could be that faulty. He makes some ambiguous promises for the future, but for a while he allows things to develop. Here we see Yahweh, the OT god: resentful, capricious, uncompromising, and harsh. At some point, he arranges to become human for a time and experience the human condition personally.

After growing up human, he becomes conflicted. Seeing it from 'our' vantage point, he understands better why those first humans fell so quickly and easily, and is unsettled (if not outright repulsed) by his own treatment of humanity in the intervening centuries. He begins his ministry conflicted by his two natures: the arbitrary, cruel, demanding Yahweh versus the empathetic Jesus.

The Sermon on the Mount gives evidence of this conflicted nature. Jesus blesses those who struggle and suffer through the pains that Yahweh has visited upon them, and promises them rewards as if he recognizes the unfairness of their condition. Then Yahweh comes forth, cursing their weakness by implying that the law wasn't encompassing enough. That they simply need to be more perfect (just like god) and more humble (not so much like god). This kind of back-and-forth continues through to the end, and it's not clear who is winning.

This struggle continues throughout the gospels. Jesus wins out; he is so burdened by guilt at what Yahweh put humanity through, that he feels the only way to compensate is to put himself through cruel punishment. He arranges for men to mock him, assault him, scourge him, curse him, and finally kill him in a way that was humiliating, painful, and slow. But first he faces his conflict one last time, asking to be spared his fate, a moment of human weakness that quickly passes. Just before he dies, he cries out to Yahweh in anguish and regret that he has been forsaken. Perhaps he referred to himself as a representative of humanity, so that at the very last, he understands the crime that god committed against man. Jesus' last act is to judge god's work as faulty, and in doing so he diminishes god.

And the deed is done. God has connected with humanity and understands them as he could not have before. Chastened, he opens the gates of heaven and offers salvation to humanity, not because they are right but because he was wrong. Just as he had moved closer to them, so he provides for them to move closer to him. God makes up for his misstep by offering humanity godhood.

I can imagine that this is the kind of road map that Christianity will require as time marches on and the Bible continues to be deconstructed and people come to understand it better. We can come full circle, to the times when gods were very human in their actions and attitudes and not so distant from the people that they pretended to condescend to. We will make real progress towards accepting that god is us, and we are god. And hopefully, that will help us to realize the real dream of the Bible: that we can create heaven right here, instead of slogging through this world as if it were a rest stop on the way to something better.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

-Stephen Jay Gould
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Messages In This Thread
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by LastPoet - March 20, 2013 at 10:07 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 20, 2013 at 10:07 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by LastPoet - March 20, 2013 at 10:17 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 20, 2013 at 10:43 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 20, 2013 at 10:25 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 20, 2013 at 11:11 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 20, 2013 at 1:33 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Silver - March 20, 2013 at 1:41 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 20, 2013 at 2:23 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 20, 2013 at 8:55 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 20, 2013 at 9:14 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Godschild - March 21, 2013 at 2:04 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 21, 2013 at 9:34 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Godschild - March 22, 2013 at 3:54 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 22, 2013 at 6:30 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 21, 2013 at 9:12 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 21, 2013 at 11:50 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 22, 2013 at 1:47 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 25, 2013 at 2:25 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 25, 2013 at 8:57 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 20, 2013 at 8:42 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 20, 2013 at 11:37 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Silver - March 20, 2013 at 11:39 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Minimalist - March 20, 2013 at 12:31 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by LastPoet - March 20, 2013 at 12:35 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 20, 2013 at 3:54 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by smax - March 20, 2013 at 4:30 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 20, 2013 at 8:48 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 21, 2013 at 7:26 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Godschild - March 21, 2013 at 5:49 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by archangle - March 21, 2013 at 7:21 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 21, 2013 at 9:08 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 21, 2013 at 9:26 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 21, 2013 at 9:28 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 21, 2013 at 9:40 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 21, 2013 at 9:57 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 21, 2013 at 10:18 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 21, 2013 at 11:18 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 21, 2013 at 2:23 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 3:58 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 7:35 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 7:49 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 8:01 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 9:40 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 10:18 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 22, 2013 at 8:19 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 10:26 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 10:41 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 10:51 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 11:16 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 11:50 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 12:27 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 12:43 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 1:00 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 1:10 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 1:19 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by catfish - March 22, 2013 at 1:22 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by John V - March 22, 2013 at 1:29 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 25, 2013 at 12:56 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 26, 2013 at 12:33 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Ryantology - March 26, 2013 at 12:42 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 26, 2013 at 9:46 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 26, 2013 at 10:06 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 27, 2013 at 6:50 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by smax - March 26, 2013 at 1:20 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 26, 2013 at 10:12 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 26, 2013 at 9:17 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Drich - March 26, 2013 at 10:31 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 26, 2013 at 10:43 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 26, 2013 at 11:22 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Tonus - March 26, 2013 at 9:29 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by smax - March 26, 2013 at 10:26 am
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Esquilax - March 26, 2013 at 2:51 pm
RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief - by Sagasa - March 29, 2013 at 1:57 am

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