You have some good points. But as for your last sentence and overall point, I fear too many will be too irreparably broken for that. Life is not soul-building. It is soul-destroying. There are things I imagine even paradise could not make some forget. Whatever God has planned for the next run. It doesn’t matter, as the worst has already happened. If He couldn’t do it better, He should never have done it at all. It seems so irresponsible to me. He has no heart for such things though. And people lose too much to ever care about Him or His paradise. Who would trade their family, their children, their wife, for a God they have never heard or seen, who has never acted in their lives in any definite way? Who can love such a being the way He demands to be loved? A relationship requires things that God does not provide.
He claims He will wipe away every tear… All this says to me is that we’ll be like the rescue Cat that came from an abusive place, and how it takes the new owner time and care to help the animal recover, so that it acts how they want it to. The damage has already been done. The horror already occurred. Only in the case of God, He was aware of the horror and let it happen, only to then tell you to get over it, though perhaps gently.
Heaven isn’t worth what has happened here. If you think it is, I don’t believe you have seen enough.
Millions of Christians believe suicide is a sin and to die in sin means Hell. I don’t believe this, but if it were true, the person who suffered bad enough on Earth to end it, will just face more and forever after? That is monstrous.
And who, upon losing their entire family, would be able to last here after that? And how could they possibly care about God and His eventual paradise? They have already experienced the worst life can do. God can do nothing more. Wipe away their tears!? Offer a tissue? What an insult!
And I don’t believe you are speaking rationally, you are understanably angry and being run by pure emotion so a rational response is probably not what you need. I’ve been where you are so I’ll attempt some seed planting nonetheless. Note that Christianity is not some pop philosophy about living the good life in a worldly sense. Jesus himself suffered and died a horrific fate as did a number of his followers. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh. Jesus tells us we have to carry our own cross if we wish to follow him. That aside, let’s talk about heaven vs here in a classical sense.
Hylomorphism is the belief that we are composites of matter and form. In our current state, the soul–as the form of the body-- is limited by the body’s physical constraints. When your brain is tired or injured, your mind is groggy or doesn’t work properly. The material realm strongly dictates what happens to us. We, after all, live in a physical universe and the soul has to try to drag the body along so to speak.
In heaven, classical theology believes this whole dynamic is flipped. Our bodies are elevated beyond their current status but more importantly, our intellect and souls experience the Beatific Vision—a more direct, unmediated vision of God (Ipsum Esse). Because our soul is in union with the infinite, perfect source of all existence it becomes perfectly actualized, lacking nothing (in the sense of us achieving our fullest telos–we are never actus purus) This overflows into our glorified bodies which are not our natural biological state, but the supernatural elevation of our matter. In our reality, alienated from God, the physical world can hinder our souls. In heaven, our soul’s union with God is what thwarts physical corruption as it overflows into the body.
You are one million percent wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong about anything in your life. As terrible as cancer in children as, as crappy as disease, loss and pain are to us, there is no finite amount of suffering that could ever compare to the beatific vision. An analogy where you are comparing a candle to the sun is in order but even that vastly underestimates things.
ou are attacking a crude, fundamentalist view of sin. In classical moral theology, for an act to sever you from God, you must have ‘deliberate consent.’ Because humans are physical creatures, severe depression, trauma, or physical agony literally impairs the brain’s ability to consent freely. Someone driven to suicide by unbearable suffering is acting out of a broken biological instinct to escape pain, not a definitive, free choice to reject goodness.
God isn’t a legalistic robot holding people accountable for what their broken neurochemistry drove them to do. He judges the exact freedom of the will. To say ‘suicide automatically equals Hell’ ignores both classical theology and human biology."
Well these millions of Christians would be wrong. This is attacking a crude, fundamentalist view of sin. Sure, suicide is a grave moral sin. Our end or telos to live. Taking one’s own life is wrong and objectively so. It violates natural law. But it does not d a m n someone to hell. There is a difference between moral error and moral culpability. For an act to sever us from God, there must be deliberate consent. We are physical creatures prone to severe depression, trauma, or physical agony. These all literally impair the brain’s ability to consent freely. God isn’t a legalistic robot holding people accountable for what their broken neurochemistry drove them to do. A person driven to suicide by unbearable suffering Is not making a definitive, free choice to reject goodness.
Hell is also not some sadistic torture chamber either. Anyone there is a knowing and willful volunteer.
Vinnie
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SkovandOfMitaze
(One 8 ounce steak used as much water as 6,000 ai searches. )
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So you do or do not think that God burns people in hell?
Why would revelation screw me over? It’s a story written in 90 something ad about events that happened earlier in 70ad through the “post prophecy” style. Much like 4 Ezra on why Zion fell, 2 Baruch on why would God allow a physical destruction of the temple, or the Sibyline Oracles, specifically prophecies in book 5, which was also about Nero and cosmic vengeance. Revelation was not even fully accepted by the bulk of the church until close to 400ad. Eusebius makes it clear not all accepted it. It was Athenius who said it was finally accepted by all around 360ad.
After all if Laodicea was destroyed in 61ad and the temple around around 70ad, how could it have given up its first true love as major “lamppost church.” Revelation is very much a “vaticinum ex eventu.”
As for how god treats animals it depends on if you believe that the sacrificial system of animals was something actually installed by god.
The New Testament does say “ no one has seen me face to face” contrary to Moses saying he say him face to face or that he desired grace and mercy, not animal sacrifices and offerings.
I know suffering is the case here. This “vision” is just an idea. I also don’t believe anyone goes to “Heaven”, but are resurrected to Earth. Supposedly to be transformed by God’s people into a new Eden. When I say Heaven or paradise, that is what I mean.
This is C.S Lewis’ god. Not what the Bible states at all.
You are confusing a wooden, fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible with reality. CS Lewis is a noob (chronologically) in terms of classical theism. All these ideas were discussed centuries ago by Aquinas and many others. Nothing new under the sun here. Just ignorance and egotistical modernism thinking it knows better than those who came before us. If your goal is to argue against fundamentalism, I recommend you find some fundamentalists to do that with.
Everything either of us wrote here are ideas. That is a boring deflection. You think the Christian God is a monster. It’s been demonstrated your reasons are lacking and only apply to wooden fundamentalists and theistic personalism.
Actually, for my humanities class last semester, we had a small assignment comparing the story of “The Epic of Gilgamesh” to some of the stories of Genesis. Truth be told, I do see some glaring similarities. Also in another thread, @gregoreite pointed out that even in the New Testament, Mathew was twisting the events of Jesus’ life to fit his personal agenda, particularly in trying to posit Jesus as coming only for Jews (which would contradict most of previous hopeful statements as the Messiah coming to bless all nations). The archeological evidence backs up the journey side of the Old Testament, but judging by the fact that the Old Testament, like any work of writing, was penned by people with their own worldviews and own agendas, certain texts are likely to get twisted here and there (heck, it even happens today!).
When people talk about the “glaring similarities” between The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible, they are usually talking especially about the flood story.
In Gilgamesh, the gods decide to send a great flood. One man, Utnapishtim, is warned in advance and told to build a large boat. He brings aboard his family, craftsmen, and animals. The flood comes, destroys life around him, and eventually the boat comes to rest on a mountain. He then sends out birds to see whether the waters have receded. Afterward, he offers a sacrifice.
Those similarities to Genesis are obvious:
a divinely announced flood,
one righteous or favored man warned beforehand,
construction of a boat,
preservation of human and animal life,
the boat resting on a mountain,
birds sent out after the flood,
sacrifice after deliverance.
So yes, the parallels are real. They should not be dismissed.
But similarity is not identity.
The theological meaning is very different. In Gilgamesh, the gods are multiple, morally unstable, and sometimes petty. The flood is not presented with the same moral seriousness as Genesis. In Genesis, the flood is connected to human violence and corruption, and the story is told under the authority of one God who judges, preserves, covenants, and gives moral order.
So the best conclusion is not “Genesis copied Gilgamesh, therefore the Bible is false.” A better conclusion is that ancient Near Eastern peoples shared flood traditions, and Genesis gives Israel’s theological version of that ancient memory or motif.
In other words, the similarity is historically interesting, but it is not a crisis. The Bible was written in the ancient Near East, not dropped from the sky in modern English with no cultural context.
For certain. I wasn’t trying to suggest the Bible was false; far from it. I was just pointing out that, despite a relationship with a very different God as posited by other ANE religions, they cannot help but be influenced by human factors like inspiration by peers.
Is it reasonable to believe that a Great Flood occurred and Two cultures wrote it down in ways their culture understood it, one was simply correct (The Bible) in it’s interpretation? Real life often inspires fictional works. Gilgamesh is myth based in the real world. And a Great Flood that almost killed everybody would leave an impression for a long time.
I also read that it would not matter if Gilgamesh was written first as ancient Bible stories were shared for long periods as oral traditions first.
Apparently none of my direct ancestors died in the Flood. Every one of my direct ancestors did, however, die after the Flood. My hope does not rest on identifying which flood theory is correct. My hope rests on whether Christ truly died, was buried, was raised, and ascended.
Uh… something similar applies to misotheism as has been observed of atheism: we are all atheists with respect to the vast majority of gods and understandings of God. … we are all misotheists with respect to many gods and understandings of God.
But trying to be an absolute misotheist is as problematic as being an absolute atheist. How can a person honestly claim know there no understanding of God which is worthy of worship/admiration any more than you can honestly claim know there is no God which actually exists – because that is claiming excessive knowledge of things.
As a fan of Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” I find considerable comfort with a misotheistic response to many versions of God pushed by various groups of people.
I have rejected all other gods that I am aware of. I only count and acknowledge the Judeo/Christian God of the Bible. I do hate other gods though, as fictional characters. The Greek gods I especially have a cold disdain for. I know those cretins aren’t real as they could never create something as sophisticated as this Universe or the Earth.
But I am purely talking in all instances here about the Judeo/Christian God. I’m also not happy about being a misotheist and so in no way am interested in making it an “identity”. Most of the time I don’t even feel hatred, just sadness. Like when my Human father disowned me. I wonder if I did enough, if it really is me, if I am justified… I miss how I used to feel. My hope is that this is just a season. Though I don’t currently know how to end it.
I used to believe God was worthy of love. And I’ve always been a kind of kings-man, just waiting for the right king to follow with all my heart. Jesus is it. I have discovered no greater god. I just need to understand. I need to figure out this hitch I have. Change the way I see things. And I can love Him again. As I mentioned earlier, Jesus is the only God that has actually taken responsibility for His creation. By dying in our place. THAT is the kind of God I WANT to follow anywhere.
But at the same time, I feel He deserved it for all that we have suffered. And I resent Him for His lack of action. And I struggle to not distinguish Jesus with His Father, whom I REALLY dislike currently… And really, have for about Ten years now and it’s just getting worse. And the more I hear about how loving and personal He is, the angrier I get.
Seems tome that this thread, like many others relies on Go being more tha just a creator but also a moralistic controller. I realise that such a view can taken from reading Scripture, but it is a very shallow one.
Perhaps the underlying problem is the humanistic view of morality and justice, whereby everything has to be accounted for and culpability found.
Such a view ignores the basic principles of Christianity and forgiveness, and/or free will
Your statement does indicate the blur of Hope, Belief, or Knowing the Truth distinction and whether they are separate or a combination. The Bibles are Questionable Who wrote them or edited them. With all the Holy Bibles and translations, it certainly presents doubt to Us all.
My only Truth is I know I have the ability to Pray. To what and how to Pray are variable. I’m Praying to “Our Father” as Supposedly Jesus did.
I wouldn’t say that Matthew twists the events of Jesus life to fit his personal agenda. I don’t think it is anything as conscious as that. Consider the task at hand. The authors of the Gospels are faced with source material in the form of episodes, (the technical name is “pericopes”, pronounced pear-ik-o-peas) in the life of Jesus. How do they combine these pericopes to make sense of it all? One thing for sure, they do not attempt to combine the pericopes in a strict chronological order, what gain is there to be had in that? They are interested in combining the pericopes in a way that releases their meaning.
A simple example. Jesus curses a fig tree. In Matthew 21:17-20, Jesus and his disciples are on their way from the village of Bethany back into the city of Jerusalem. Jesus curses a barren fig tree, and it withers right then and there. This becomes a point for Matthew to introduce a pericope about the power of faith. Now, jump across to Mark’s Gospel and the same event (Mark 11:12-21). Mark will also follow the cursing of the fig tree with Jesus’ teaching on the power of faith. BUT look at what Mark has done with the pericope about the cursing of the fig tree. The pericope about the cursing of the fig tree is broken into two parts: The cursing occurs on the first walk into Jerusalem, but the withering is not noted until they repeat the action on a second day. That one-day interval is wrapped around the story of Jesus expelling the merchants from the Temple. Furthermore, the cursing of the fig tree is not a problem with the tree, because it is not the season for figs. The cursing of the fig tree is a prophetic sign about the Temple. This is the same kind of artistry we see in the making of a movie, where there are flashbacks and juxtapositions of scenes.
In placing pericopes about Jesus in a certain order, the authors of the Gospels are drawing upon the understanding of the meaning of those events in their faith communities. Would it be humanly possible to do anything else? We understand information in the context of our day and time and culture.
Thank you for the help! Although, why exactly would Jesus do this? I understand what you just said but I presumed this was a real historical event, not a movie. So, why would Jesus punish a tree that couldn’t help otherwise?