(July 18, 2013 at 7:16 pm)whateverist Wrote: But don't some Christians view all people as God's people? It would seem quaint if the God who 'created the entire cosmos' turned out to only be invested in the goings on of one little tribe of human beings along with those who believed without proof just this one set of religious claims.
I think this is a very good question that I find myself ill equipped to answer. I do think that something happens after we die and I think that for a lot of people that something is very, very good. Whether it's for everyone, and if not who it's for, is for God, not me, to say. My business is trying to follow Jesus as best I can, because that seems the most sensible thing to do.
There's certainly far more to this than believing a handful of religious claims. The C1 Jews believed that they were part of God's People by birthright, and that their response to that could be identified in their observance to boundary markers as defined by the Torah. One of the core story lines of the Gospels is Jesus' changing the definition of God's People as those who were prepared to follow him, and redefining the things God's people need to do. The NT is the story of how this change in definition occurred. Those without much who help others are now in, those with power who live selfishly are out, that sort of thing.
And I don't buy Hell for the 'out crowd' at all. The passages often gleefully wheeled out by that sort of Xian actually mean something quite different in their C1 Jewish context. Furthermore, the Bible talks a lot about destruction- a head on contradiction to eternal punishment!
