Excerpt from an email:
wow, well this is a tough one, yet an easy one. sounds like being good has nothing to do with going to heaven, its all about recognizing god. Haven't read the whole bible but I have read enough, even this excerpt is enough to remind me of what I have found before. Most people who are not Christians have more of a passive, the whole thing just doesn't work for me. With me its much more extreme. To me, good and evil are universal truths. The god speaking in the excerpt you sent does not represent good or evil to me, even if I knew that everything was completely true, that this god is before me that created me, the heavens, etc... if my only path to being with 'him' is to 'confess that Jesus Christ is lord' or in any other way bow to the authority of the creator, I'm simply not going to make it, my good deeds, the way I have chosen to act in this life with no fear of punishment or hope of reward from a god must be the standing element that leads me to where I go next, if that is insufficient to this god, then, I have no other way to put it, this god is insufficient for me. This is very hard to put mildly but the god described in the bible looks like a 50 foot tall spoiled teenager with a severe inferiority complex who needs his ego boosted by bowing followers. How can I justify being so blastfimous? true I didn't create the oceans or shape the earth or create myself, I didn't invent post-its either but one undeniable truth is that I didn't ask to be created and I have spent most of my life wishing I hadn't been, true there is beauty and love and sunsets but in the end there really can be no greater hell than life on earth as a human, I wouldn't trade gifts like My Son for anything but those gifts are few and far between and I don't have the ability to be grateful to a god that I am told exists only by other humans I can only be grateful to My Son, he gives me Joy and he will live in this world too and he didn't ask to be born either, he will make a sacrifice to bring that joy to me so it is he that I must be thankful too, not my parents, president, pope, or god.
To put it simply, the bible has to be wrong, in fact it needs to be way way off for me to accept god. I think this is entirely possible, if there is a god. This book was written by many men, many hundreds of years after the death of Christ, men who actually voted, democratically as to weather or not to call Jesus the son of god or just a man, son of god won out narrowly. now, they all say that these were not their words that everything is divine inspiration but I have to trust those men - not god - that what they say is true, how on earth can I do that?
In my humble opinion, if there is a god and this god is a good god, not an evil Lord, then the goodness of peoples actions, not their allegiance will be rewarded, fearing gods wrath and avoiding punishment by bowing to his power sounds identical to the work of the Mob, we are powerful and all knowing, if you pay us and do what we tell you, your family will be blessed with many good things, if not, we go to work on your kneecaps. That is what the god in the bible sounds like to me.
I think yoda said it best 'fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering' If I live my life based on a fear of something I cannot feel or see, there will be suffering at my hand.
I don't know why I am so different, I have honestly felt exactly like this since as long as I can remember, when I had to go to church when I was little, I felt like I was in a bad place being taught to believe bad things, wrong things, not always, but very often so I took the things that proved themselves to be good and I left the bad behind.
Its very lonely, how you feel, more or less represents 98% of the people on earth, so where do I get off claiming that they are all wrong? I don't, that would be above my station but there is no way for me to force myself to believe what they believe any more than I can walk to mars. Its like nearly everyone in the world believes its flat when I can plainly see that it is round, they have so much that they can point to to prove that it is flat but everything that comes through my eyes is a round earth, I cant squint and make it look flat and what this excerpt tells me is that unless I lie and say, yep, she's flat alright, I'm going to burn for it. I don't mind burning, lying I cant do.
Don't know what to say, if its all true then we aren't going to the same place, the best I can come up with is, don't worry, I wont have any regrets.
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