Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer
I do not believe that anyone is going there. What would be the point? I find the entire idea more than absurd, that anyone would warrant dying on an ongoing basis for an infinite amount of time, in the first place, for any reason. That God would stoop to punish anyone, given that he has allowed his own son to sacrifice himself on behalf of the human race, renders worthless the thought that the price he paid to redeem the human race does not extend to every being on every planet in the entire universe.
If there is someone on a distant world, if he, too, will have a chance to go to heaven, to be redeemed, he will either have to meet Christ as Paul did (by force), hear of Christ from a follower, or Christ will have to go personally to that alien world to meet him face to face in real time, possibly even to die again and again for each new alien race as he did for humans, otherwise the potentially trillions of beings on other worlds will all go to hell and only the very few humans who have by sheer chance met up with Christ in some way, psychologically or through an actual or mystic meeting, will go to heaven, a terrible loss and an ineffective sacrifice. To say that the entire universe was set into motion so that a handful of human people are able to be redeemed is absurd to the degree that meets only the standard of a psychotic. Knowing the single equation of faith that sets up the liability that God would necessarily have to take someone to heaven is so ego-centric and profoundly self-righteous that it flies in the face of compassion and unconditional love; why need to force God to do what he is already more than willing to do, his having purchased us with a price? Are we not freed to act or believe what we will since we are already bought and cannot undo what grace has already accomplished? I can believe or not believe in gravity, it matters not and I do not complain about my free will being cast aside! I deny and defy gravity! Oops!
Even after Christ had been with the Apostles, he still had to come down from the right hand of God and set Paul straight so that the Jewish bounty hunter of Christians would be turned from his being a ruthless demigod into a peaceful and graceful servant of God. If Peter, John, and James had gotten the message right, what would have been the need for Paul at all?
Obviously, something did get lost in the translation from the Old to the New Testament, at least as far as the original 12 are concerned. Peter would have had some laws followed, and he messed up more than a few people with his legalist doctrines of circumcision, washings, and constant anti-grace attitude of neo-Jewish Christianity. I find it interesting that Christians will align themselves with Jews as in “Judeo-Christian” nationalism, but will serve the Jews up as cannon fodder during the Tribulation. Are they pro-Jewish or just simply do not want to anger God any further by throwing the Jews to the wolves? I thought the picture was that the wolves would live beside the lambs.
Silly me, consistency of thought is not the point, or is it?
The way that legalists have told the story, people were supposed to have a chance to make a choice to accept Christ or to face certain eternal destruction, a system that was already in place before Jesus was born, the only difference, according to those in Jerusalem, being that Jesus replaced Moses. Seriously? If they were not able to keep the Law of Moses, now all of a sudden they are going to be able to both obey the Law and believe that Jesus is the Great High Priest? Let’s put that with the urim and thummim in the breast plate of righteousness and smoke it. Let’s say that the believers did really believe; what are we to do with the argument of Paul that if we do follow the Law then Christ died in vain? Paul totally got into Peter’s face about this, and yet it seems to be a point of absolute security for modern fundamentalists. If we are to rely on our own faith, then how faithful are we? If Christ is the author of faith, why would we brag about our own faith? What the hell?
And, on the basis of these arguments, we are supposed to support the idea that all of those who do not believe as do those who are communicating to us that we should do what they themselves are incapable of doing are going to hell? Really? Can we undo God’s faithfulness by our not believing? If all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, then all are going to hell, maybe? Why is it so hard to believe that Jesus could redeem the entire world given that we all agree that Adam single handedly brought condemnation on the world? Did you get the memo that we were to choose to be under condemnation in the first place? It was done without my consent then! Is Adam more powerful than the Son of God? Oh, I’m reading it wrong? I see. Even in John, where the vast majority of the calls for belief reside, Jesus finally says that he has not come into the world to condemn it; I wonder then why Christians go out of their way to condemn others in the name of Christ. It boggles the mind!
We are the only ones in the universe, just us? Only those few who agree with the way that any specific group of believers believe are not going to hell, and some of those are lying! Ask those who have left the Westboro Baptist Church. How do we know that those who are using the party line are in fact even sincere? Maybe they could use some of that terrific faith they claim to have to do something that will show that they are sincere; complaining about others or calling for a day of reckoning does little to put forward the cause of Christ. On May 21, 2011, Harold Camping said that Christ was returning. One enterprising atheist told Christians that he would take care of their pets, and he made over $30,000 on the occasion. Many believers have called the day in the past, but we have yet to see it. Not that I am scoffing; believe what you want for yourself, I always say. Not that I believe that Christ is going to return to devastate the planet that he sacrificed himself to redeem. What would be the point? First he purchases us with his blood and then he wipes us out? Not as good business model for sure.
All and all, we have some really messed up thoughts that people are using in very odd ways to do some really terrifyingly awful emotional damage to others for the sake of creating panic and craziness. What, really, is the point? We get all worked up, and it’s the Crusades. Or it’s the Inquisition. We protest at funerals, parade around self-righteously on street corners, and we ex-communicate at the drop of a hat, and for what? If God wanted to get rid of the gays, for example, certainly if he were able to target just the believers for extraction during the Second Coming, he would be able to eradicate the gays with a lightning bolt or a plague or something else divinely stealthy. Instead, AIDS is wiping out parts of Africa, decimating the African American community, and is passed along into children’s lives without their having done anything to warrant it. How is that a blight against gays? It’s not.
If America is being punished because we allow gays to live here, then what are we to think of the real trouble we have with our society? 1/3 of all women will be raped in their live times. There are 300,000,000 people in the united States, and half of them are female. That means that of the 150,000,000 women in America, 50,000,000 of them will be raped. If every rapist commits 3 rapes, this means that there are 16,800,000 rapists in the United States of America. If 5% of the population is gay then there are 15,000,000 gays in America, but more rapists. Why aren’t people protesting that? Why isn’t God punishing us for how we treat our women? And those are the reported cases, and that does not include sexually molested men, women, and children. If sex between consenting partners is a thing to focus on, we should definitely get after those perpetrators who force themselves on others.
While we are at it, we need to think about how it is harder for a rich man to enter into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Isn’t this a suggestion that thinking about money, loving money, is not supposed to be a priority in life? Let me hear that in church and see that paraded in protest on the streets. While we are visiting that, let’s remember that it is an abomination to eat catfish, shrimp, mudbugs, and crab. Should we just walk around with a huge rock knocking out everyone at the Catfish King? Joe’s Crab Shack: that is a place for the Devil to do his dirty work, right? If your eye offends you pluck it out, right? Let’s hear it for all the one-eyed Christians that are swearing off of staring at the NASCAR girls and Dallas Cheerleaders!
Is everyone going to hell, and I just don’t know it? What in the world can we do about the cotton/poly blended shirts and socks? No more bacon? And what about Peter saying that Paul needed to do his washing, make sure that everyone is circumcised, and that we need to remember the poor? Maybe we should simply impose a religious tax of 100% on the entire country and let God sort it out. What about Matthew 5 and Jesus’ getting an attitude about people who are being sued? Giving up their coats and shirts, and turning the other cheek? I thought we were supposed to love those who do harm to us, not attack them into oblivion and assassinate their leaders and their children? Putting sanctions on a country to keep out medical supplies cannot be very Christ like. What in the hell is going on here? Ah, now I see! Hell on earth! Why wait?
We are not a Christian nation; we are a neo-Jewish nation. We need to make sure that our enemies know the full force of God’s fury. This is the love-your-neighbor-as-yourself routine on its ear, right? Fear and self-loathing. There may not be a real hell in the universe as a matter of punishment from God, but we have made one right here on earth to punish those who disagree with us. We are not what we purport to be. We are the unbelievers we are fighting. If we had faith in God that he is righteous and is in control of the world, then we would deal with things from that point of view. Rather though, we treat God as if he is non-existent, and that we are his ambassadors of shame and death.
IF this is not true, then why are we angry? Why are we after the resources of other countries? Why do we limit the strangers at our door as if the things we own are our own when in fact we say that we have given it all to God? God does not plan on sending anyone to hell; this is a service that is performed by us on each other. We damn each other and curse our brothers and sisters. We saddle our children with our expenses and we evade responsibility by blaming others for what we ourselves have chosen to do. We are the ones who are determined to live our lives like kings, use the resources we have at lightning speed, take advantage of our neighbors, and use gridlock and insensitivity as our goalposts. I can hear those who decline to take responsibility for their actions, complaining about the whining. Does the discomfort you create bother you? Out of sight and out of mind you might think. And this is what will draw all men to God? Whatever happened to grace and peace? On sale at Sears? Are we bound and gagged by social pressures to be liars and thieves? And we were off to such a good start, too. And that, My Friends, is a hell of a thing to do to ourselves. More than that, what kind of a thing is that to do to others and our children?
runningturtle87
