- Post
- #82188
- Topic
- Myths
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/82188/action/topic#82188
- Time
I also remember the the argument that hell was endothermic, which someone submitted on a final.I also appreciate your point of view (referring to all your posts). I'm glad to have you in the discussion. A lot of knowledge and thoughtfulness goes into your points which is good both for the discussion and for each of us to defend or propose our own understanding of the truth.
Lastly, welcome to the message board. Sorry it started in being pissed off.
Now, in seriousness, some thoughts.
- if God is God, He exists outside of time. What happened before or after Jesus' death matters to we who exist inside creation, but to God and to those who are dead, there is no before or after. For God to be subject to time would make Him cease to be God, and would make time pre-existant to God.
- Add another quote to your list, It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. The first, as I said above, was telling people that success in life was not a requisite or sign of salvation. The second was saying that you had to be more righteous than the most righteous people on earth to enter heaven (the scribes and pharisees dedicated their whole lives to learning and understanding God's law). Which is to say, righteousness cannot get you into heaven. The third says that even with the smallest faith, we can do anything. But we can't do anything, like move mountains or get ourselves into heaven, so even faith has nothing to do with it.
What he's getting at here is what he says later, "I am the way and the truth and the life." It isn't success or righteousness or faith that Christianity preaches, it is the OBJECT of our faith. It is not by actively doing anything; by obedience, by growing and living our faith, or anything that we get into heaven. We can't actively get into heaven. It is by passively accepting. The void between God and man is uncrossable by man. A God of perfect justice demands that justice, and the wages of any and all sin is death. To reconcile perfect justice wiht perfect love, God took that death in our place. And for God, who is outside of time, that separation of God from God, that very real death and schism that happened on the cross, is eternal. To us in creation, it looks like three days in Hell and it's all over, but not so from the perspective on the throne.
But God has said "you deserve death for what you have done with creation, with yourselves, and what you have done to me. But I cannot bear to be separated from you." And he went in our place, to be with us. To get into heaven, you accept what he did for you, that's all.
And in beginning that love relationship with him, He will make you righteous as you grow, He will grow your faith, He will bless you as he sees fit to bless you, but all those things follow the object of your faith, they do not precede or replace it. It's all on his shoulders, and to be a Christian, you have to humbly accept how little you had to do with any of it, but in that broken failure, to accept Him.
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So that's a serious note in response to some whimsy. I just wanted to lay it out plain and simple for once rather than keep touching on smaller parts of it here and there.
And that is the truth. If you disagree and don't believe it, that is your decision to make. If you understand it but don't want it, that's your decision too. I don't say any of this to convince or persuade anyone. I have reasons and arguments behind those claims, but ultimately it's between you and the silence in your heart to take it or reject it. I just want to lay it out there because I'm tired of Time Magazine and college professors and historians trying to tell the world what Jesus is about.
