Losing loved ones who are not saved...?

[Zep]

OK, this is not strictly a gay question, but it shows what we are up against.

http://tinyurl.com/5scd4

[tuvor]

1. You know what I say to that?

www.tentmaker.org

Doesn't really answer your question, I know, but, well, there ya go.

[GOPBasher]

20. Damn, I love this site!

Thanks for that!

[OneBlueSky]

2. I can't believe that God is that vain . . . or that cruel . . . n/t

.

[UL_Approved]

3. No all-powerful being would be that petty and insane

The god of Israel, who starts the whole saga that is Judaism/Christianity/Islam, is a nutcase as portrayed in the Old Testament.

If one reads and studies the origin of the Bible, however, one finds HUGE amounts of revision. I for one don't see how this saga could be error and revision free after about 5000-6000 years. I seriously wonder how much of the written text is just made up bullshit. Humans, not God, wrote the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Quran. Remember that.

[trotsky]

9. In addition...

more humans were responsible for picking & choosing WHICH of those texts they were going to officially include in the "bible."

Spoken by humans for centuries, written and rewritten for a few centuries more, then edited and updated, then FINALLY compiled and re-edited to make a supposedly god-inspired and "infallible" text.

Yeah, right.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

10. Just finished "Beyond Belief"

By Elaine Pagels, about how the Nag Hammadi scrolls ended up in a jar in a cave in Egypt, and why the pope and bishops were trying to suppress what we now know as the Gnostic Gospels. I recommend it highly for those interested in how Christianity got where it is today.

[shimmergal]

4. That GoodMe has it right. . .

(even if the avatar is rather scary!

If there _is_ a heaven and hell, only God knows who's going where.
And only God can know what's in a human's heart. It's arrogant for humans to assume they know that their loved ones are in hell--who the ^%#@ are they to second-guess the divine?

[tjwmason]

5. Too damn right

>>>It's arrogant for humans to assume they know that their loved ones are in hell--who the ^%#@ are they to second-guess the divine?<<<

I'm a Catholic, and generally a pretty traditionally minded one. Catholicism has never made specific judgements that a given person is in hell for exactly this reason. The Church has judged that certain people are in Heaven (they are the canonised Saints), but judgement belongs to God alone. Nobody knows the full details of the state of a soul at death, and we have only the slighest idea of what happens afterwards.

We can commend all departed souls to the mercy of God, and we should do so.

[pelagius]

23. Much of what many believe about heaven and hell...

...comes more from Dante than it does the Bible! The Bible is not as explict about the afterlife as many would like to believe. Most of what we "know" about heaven from the text is taking from a particular type of Near Eastern literary tradition called an "apocalypse" that was understood by its readers to be vivid imagery and not literal descriptions.

On the general issue, I believe its a sin for any so-called Christian to put him or herself in the place of the Almighty God and pronounce judgement on a particular soul.

[livinginphotographs]

6. Yet one more problem I have with organized religion.

Even the most evil person can repent on their deathbed, accept Jesus, and go to heaven while good people who don't "accept" Jesus burn in hell.

Another problem is the people who decide that they don't like that part of their faith, so they decide not to believe it.

If there is a god (and I've seen little evidence that there is), I don't think people would be able to pick and choose which parts of their faith they like.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. The idea that non-believers are going to hell isn't even Biblical

IT's mostly from Revelation, which is so weird that Martin Luther wanted to take it out of the Bible.

Look at Romans 2:12-16:

12] For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;
<13> For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
<14> For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
<15> Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
<16> In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

In other words, good people who happen to be non-believers are home free. Somehow the fundies never seem to be able to find this passage, despite the fact that Paul's Letter to the Romans is considered one of the most important books of the New Testament.

[Ando]

8. twisted a bit

I believe you have twisted the passage a little bit. This passage speaks of those who have not heard the law, it was written to combat the feeling amongst Jews in the early church that the Gentiles were not worthy of salvation. It is important for us in that it explains the process of judgement for those who have not heard the gospel. If they have not heard, then their hearts will judge them. As for everyone else, they will be judged by Jesus Christ according to the gospel as it says in the last verse of your passage.

The removal of the teeth of Christianity is the beginning of the fall of Christianity. Christianity has no power if it cannot stand in the storm and say that it alone knows calm. This is not intolerance, it is compassion. Everyone likes to quote the passage with Jesus and the prostitute, when he tells the crowd "He who is without sin, cast the first stone." Everyone lifts this up as an example of acceptance. They fail to mention the end of the story when Jesus tells her "Go and sin no more". Christianity doesn't have to accept the actions and doctrines of others, we have to respect and recognize the fallen nature of man and realize that "There is none who does good, there is not even one," (Romans 3:12)

Galatians 2:21 says that if good deeds are enough to get you into heaven, then Christ died in vain. To be in God's presence requires perfect purity, perfect purity can only be demonstrated when Jesus stands in our place at the throne of judgement.

Jesus was a rebel, read the gospel carefully and you'll see that he offended more people than he befriended. He preached truth to those who did not want to hear it and did it in a way that exemplified compassion and love. Fundamentalists have some truth mixed in with their lies, but they scream it out with venom rather than love. I will not abandon the aspects of Christianity that challenge the hearts and presuppositions of the world around me, I will just speak those things in love and humility. I don't want to send people to Hell, I want them to come to an understanding of truth.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Unfortunately for such smug assurances, I have lived in Japan

which is only 1% Christian. There are historical reasons why the people of this country are resistant to Christianity, two of which are the sheer cluelessness of missionary efforts over the years and the cliquishness of Japanese churches. In addition, parts of the country have a traditional antipathy to Christianity fostered and encouraged by local daimyo who considered Christians to be disloyal to the emperor. Although the daimyo are long gone, the antipathy remains strong in the folk culture.

I have also traveled in China, where hundreds of millions lived and died without any opportunity even to hear the Gospel during the forty years of the Maoist era. According to the logic of "salvation for Christians only," either they were predestined for hell, which makes God a sadist, deliberately creating people for damnation, or else God is a cold, uncaring, "letter of the law" judge who doesn't take mitigating circumstances into account.

Nor can I blame the dozens of bitter atheists on this very website. Most of them were actually driven away by craven emotional and physical abusers who tried to disguise their evil intentions in Christian garb.

I cannot believe in eternal damnation for unbelievers. If that condemns me to hell, too, and it does, according to the fundamentalists, so be it. If God condemns people to eternal flames or eternal cold and darkness or eternal anything because they never heard of him or were driven away from him by human actions, that makes him a spiteful narcisssist, not the infinitely loving Lord of the Universe.

Here's an analogy from real life. About 15-20 years ago in Oregon, there was a cult called Ecclesia. There were rumors of child abuse within the cult, and eventually, the leader, Eldridge Broussard, was convicted of murder in the abuse death of his 8-year-old daughter. He insisted that he had had to abuse his child because she was "bad."

As one commentator in the local newspaper asked, "What could an 8-year-old do that was bad enough to deserve being tortured to death?"

I don't know about the state of any individual's soul, but unless people deliberately chooses a path of evil and cause great suffering to further their own selfish ends, condemning them to eternal punishment for the petty sins that make up most people's lives turns God into a cosmic Eldridge Broussard.

There's also an element of smug sadism in the attitude of some preachers and fundamentalist believers. It goes all the way back to the Puritans, who believed that one of the joys of heaven would be watching the torments of the damned. More recently, during my teaching years, I had students who gloated that hard-partying classmates of theirs were bound for hell.

You can dance around the questions all you want, but the fact remains that the "salvation for Christians only" doctrine turns God into either a narcissistic sadist or a merciless stickler of a judge who demands blood.

[Ando]

12. Did you even read my post?

I don't think you understood my post, I specifically addressed the issue of those who live and die without a knowledge of Jesus Christ. They are judged by the way in which their lives were lived, that is the meaning of the passage which you originally posted. Those who are properly presented with the Gospel are accountable to the Gospel. I don't presume to condemn anyone, I never tell anyone that they are going to Hell. I'm only presenting what I know of this issue from the Bible. I can't accurately judge the state of a human heart nor is that my job. However, I do know that the likeness of Christ is the fingerprint of Salvation. Thus, those living lives contradictory to the life of Christ can reasonably be assumed to be in a tough spot. I can't see the end of their life however, so I am not able to judge. It's really very simple and it does not turn God into a Sadist. As I said, the difference between Christianity and every other religion is that Christianity demands and requires perfection. The only method of achieving perfection is to align ourselves with the only Man to achieve the goal of perfection, Jesus Christ. Anyone presented with the story of Christianity must make a choice in their minds, the options are:

-the story is a fable, I don't believe it

-the story may be true, but I think I can be perfect on my own, I don't need God's help (those who posit that Jesus was a good moral teacher and nothing more fall into this camp, they ignore the divinity of God and only choose to recognize certain aspects of Jesus' words. Hence the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument. Jesus must be one of the three)

-the story is true and I need to make changes in my life, i.e. the road to salvation.

Please read my previous post again, I was not being as harsh as you suggest.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. And did you read my post?

I was talking about non-believers, too.

[Ando]

15. confused

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with my position? My position is not salvation only for Christians, there are plenty of people who have not heard the Gospel. I've got to head out of town for the weekend, so hopefully I can get back to this on Monday, just don't think I'm ignoring you all weekend!

[trotsky]

14. "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic"

Ah, the Josh McDowell school of theology. :eyes:

http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html#LLL

Firstly, note that this argument hinges on the assumption that Jesus did in fact exist. This is at least debatable.

Secondly, the argument attempts a logical fallacy which we might call "trifurcation", by analogy with "bifurcation" (see the "Constructing a Logical Argument" document). That is, the argument attempts to restrict us to three possibilities, when in fact there are many more.

Two of the more likely alternatives are:

1. He was misquoted in the Bible, and did not claim to be Lord.
2. The stories about him were made up, or embroidered with fictitious material by the early Christians.

Note that in the New Testament Jesus does not say that he is God, although John 10:30 claims that he said "I and my father are one". The claim that Jesus was God was first made after the death of Jesus and his twelve disciples.

Finally, note that the possibility that he was a "lunatic" is not easily discountable. Even today in the western world there are numerous people who have managed to convince hundreds or thousands of followers that they are the Lord or his One True Prophet. People like L. Ron Hubbard, Sun Myung Moon, Jim Jones and David Koresh continue to peddle their divinity. In more superstitious countries, there are literally hundreds of present-day messiahs.

Incidentally, the "Lord, Liar or Lunatic" argument is based on arguments in the book "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, the well known author and committed Christian. He wrote many books containing Christian apologia, and also a number of fantasy and SF novels influenced by Christian themes. His most famous books, the Narnia series of novels, are a fantasy retelling of many aspects of Christian faith, with Aslan taking the place of Jesus. Amusingly, some Christian fundamentalists in the USA have attempted to have Lewis's books banned from schools, alleging that they are "Satanic" in influence.

[Ando]

16. aknowledged

alright, I'll ammend my statement. Provided the Bible is accurate and does not contain fiction then he must be one of the three. I'm no fan of Josh McDowell either, he's a poor apologetic. I'm partial to Lewis, Chesterton, and to a lesser extent, Ravi Zacharias.

[GOPBasher]

19. Salvation for Christians only?

I'm going to echo a lot of the things Lydia Leftcoast said. I talk about this issue a lot, and to be honest, it's the reason I had a very, very difficult time becoming a Christian. I am, now, because I found out that I can be a Christian without believing in this "salvation for Christians only" concept.

Well, here's what I think. If God is really like that, if he only saves Christians, then I'm not interested in being in heaven with him, because that is one tyrant of a god. He sent us into a temporal world, a world a constant suffering, with free will, and said, "Only complete perfection can come to me after death, and everyone else will suffer for all of eternity, with no second chance." Of course, given these circumstances, perfection is impossible. So, he sent his son to come and suffer and die for our sins, and from then on, anyone who happens to pick the correct religion is saved from eternal damnation; and everyone who, for whatever reason, picked a different religion, will suffer forever. This ends up being predestination, because what your brain happens to think it the truth is not really free will. You don't really decide that; it depends on where you were born, who your influences were, what you studied, etc.

Now, I believe in an inclusive God, a God who really loves ALL of His children and will not abandon any of them unless they are downright evil. The dogma they happen to believe cannot possibly be a determining factor, in my opinion. I don't want to keep this post going forever, but suffice to say that there are many interpretations of the Bible that can allow me to believe in salvation for non-Christian.

[GOPBasher]

17. I like this post, at least.

For the record, I'm a Christian but I certainly do NOT have the belief that all non-Christians go to hell. Here is a Christian over there who disagrees with me.




Re: Losing loved ones who are not saved...?
Posted: Dec 13, 2004, 10:52 AM


Thank you for your replies so far.

This is a topic that frankly really confuses me. Until I was in college I believed that "good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell" regardless of their belief system. Then I got involved in a campus ministry and was "born again." At that point I realized that my parents, my best friend (who was Jewish), and the vast majority of people on earth would go to hell. Before, when I thought about people in east Africa and India starving to death or dying in mudslides, I would think, "at least they are finally at peace." Now, I thought, "if they weren't Christians, their agony is only just beginning." Before, I imagined that loved ones of mine were in heaven and I would see them again someday; now, I wasn't sure they were in heaven; in fact they were probably in hell.

So - instead of feeling joyful about my new religion, I became despondant. In fact I developed clinical depression and became suicidal. I had gone from believing that most people (including, of course, my loved ones) would go to heaven to believing that most people would go to hell (and realizing for the first time that some of my loved ones were already there).

It's been 20 years since then that I have been struggling with this, and frankly it baffles me that this is one extreme taboo - I just don't hear it discussed in Christian circles or on forums like this one. People talk about how those who do not believe in Christ will go to hell (and this includes, of course, people who die faithful and trusting in other religions, such as Judaism or Hinduism) but I never hear anyone say, "I'm so sad that my poor father is in hell," or "Unfortunately my daughter died, but she was Jewish and will probably not be saved."

If I believed my loved one was, for instance, was RIGHT NOW being tortured (boiled in oil, having fingernails pulled out, etc.) in a prison camp I would not be able to eat, sleep or even think straight - even if my loved one had broken some law and was being "justly punished" for it. But I don't see Christians feeling pain or fear about this. In fact, people who are non-Christians, perhaps raised as non-Christians, become born again and convert to Christianity, but I don't see them weeping for (for example) their parents who died unsaved before them.

For those who say that everyone deserves to go to hell eternally, that may be so, but again I don't understand how even they can deal emotionally with the knowledge that someone THEY loved is currently and eternally being punished in that way. It is one thing to believe this dogma, but it seems like quite another to apply it to one's own life and loved ones.

As for not being sure what happened to someone who died (and therefore, I assume, being hopeful that at the last minute they accepted Christ)...again, if one believes that salvation is based on belief in Christ alone, and not on how one lived in this world, than we CAN be 99% sure about some people - especially those people who died secure and trusting in another faith. We can pretend to ourselves that our Uncle Steinberg, who was a faithful member of his Synagogue and lived as a pious Jew, suddenly converted to Christianity in his last few seconds on earth, but it is extraordinarily unlikely.

As for myself, in my pain and agony I left organized religion for many years. I since then converted to a Christianity that does not subscribe to "saved by faith alone" (a belief that, by the way, did not exist for the first 1,400 years of Christianity). My beliefs are reflected in those of the first poster - that God works within us, that when we do good things we are reflecting Christ within us. But I believe this is the case even if we don't know or label it as such. And I believe that in loving that which is good, we ARE loving God - again, even if we don't label it as such. In other words, "Christian" (and therefore "saved") is a label God puts on us, whether or not we put the label on ourselves.And yet I still struggle with this. I suspect I always will. Even though my new faith does not subscribe to "saved by faith alone," it is impossible to erase the tapes in my head. And it is hard for me to imagine why other people - especailly "new" Christians - are not really bothered by this.

[Nikia]

18. My grandfather, who died this summer, was atheist leaning agnostic

He believed that it was more likely aliens, technologically superior but mortal, helped direct evolution and civilization on earth and were mistaken as gods than more there to actually be an immortal, creator Christian like God. Despite this, he allowed his wife to raise his children in his mother's Methodist church and was tolerant of the faith of his mother, wife, friends, and believing children (a couple of my aunts and uncles are non believers). My grandmother had Christian funeral service for him. She always worried about his salvation.
The minister, who did not know my grandfather well, acknowledged my grandfather didn't go to church much (only for important family occaisions) and wasn't religious. He said something like this: "But we shouldn't judge this (my grandfather not being religious). Only God can judge this. We can trust though that God will judge Grandfather (his name) with the same sort of kindness, fairness, love, and justice that Grandfather judged people with during his life on Earth."

[supernova]

21. Ugh. I really feel

for these spiritual children. How awful to imagine people you love suffering eternal torment.

Personally, I fall into the God is for Everyone camp. I don't believe in the exclusivity argument. Christ died for love of ALL of us, not just some of us.

[gorbal]

22. I have two words

Good Samaritan, all you need to know:)