Are you going to heaven?

Reply #1 August 4, 2004 8:43 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

I believe the death penalty should be used....it scares people so that they don't mow down a crowd of people with an uzi....Although the Bible doesn't teach revenge....or does it?....It's a tad ambiguous at times......eh, but what can ya do?....If you want to know my beliefs.....they are that you will go to Heaven if you are sorry for your sins and admit that they were wrong and try some kind of penance or beg for forgiveness....I also like revenge, which is a very effective anger outlet...

So, there ya go,
~Zoo

Reply #2 August 4, 2004 8:55 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

First off, no one can tell you what to think. That is the biggest problem with organized religion today. People go to church and are told by a priest or preacher what to think about the Bible. I say, read the book, cover to cover and decide for yourself.

As a Christian (Quaker if you must know the denomination) I believe in the New Testament as the life and words of Jesus Christ. Jesus was a man who preached love, forgiveness, charity, and kindness. As far as the death penalty is concerned, the Bible may say an eye for an eye, but it also says thou shalt not kill. Killing one another goes against the basic teachings of Jesus Christ.

In my opinion, Jesus wanted us to see that we are all children of God and we all carry within us the light of God. The good people and the bad people in the world are all God's children and we should treat them as we would treat God. No, it may not always be easy, but it is not our place to judge one another. That is God's place. Who are we as mortals to decide who lives and who dies?

Good luck sorting out everything. Religion can be overwhelming. Just follow in your heart what you know is right.

Reply #3 August 4, 2004 9:44 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

Why didn't you just say that I was the one you were with? lol. Well you already know my opinion on this one.

~carebear~

Reply #4 August 4, 2004 10:21 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

I think that you should be willing to listen to whomever but keep your commitment on a leash when you get into heavy duty discussions on the bible. Some folks want to "Literally " interperet it (which version?) while others will create a cult of personality around a central figure who makes all major decisions for his flock ( The Reverend Sun Hyung Moon). You might want to do some study on your own about different religious beliefs. A comparative religion course is a great Idea for young minds. Just don't do all of your research on the net due to the garbage in, garbage out factor.
Just don't let someone elses high emotional state drive you to make a commitment to anything you don't fully grasp. I am not a person who reads the bible as a historical document but feel that there are lessons to be learned in it; I just prefer to make my own associations with the lessons inside.
What is in you is the most important thing.

Reply #5 August 4, 2004 10:24 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

Am I going to Heaven? No, or at least I hope not. I consider whatever deity that rules this reality to be a total ass.

Reply #6 August 5, 2004 2:16 AM from JoeUser Forums Top

Actually, why would you want to go anyway. Apparently it's "hotter than hell" there.

http://www.atheistalliance.org/aaw/Heavenstemperature.html

Maybe we should change that phrase to hotter than heaven? What the heaven am I talkin about?

Reply #7 August 5, 2004 12:08 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

Why would you wanna go to heaven?? Maybe you should read the bible and go to church. The should be able to answer that question.

~carebear~

Reply #8 August 5, 2004 12:18 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

blonde~

I'm Christian too...and I struggle with this.

God is a just God. He is an angry God. He wants to "get even" with people that hurt HIS people.

BUT (and I mean BUT) on the other hand, He is a loving, caring, understanding God. I believe that people twist the Bible around and make it say whatever supports their cause, you know. I mean...it *is* the Word of God...and what He says, goes, right? As for the death penalty...I think that we "play" God when we decide who lives and who dies. I believe strongly in a heaven and hell, and set ways to get to either place (and they're easy ways to get to both places). So...in the end, I think God will punish someone like Timothy McVeigh and Hitler far better than any human could.

Hope that makes sense...basically...insert whatever "psyche" said here...

Reply #9 August 5, 2004 2:37 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

When the bible says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. People think well if they kill someone that means i can kill them

This is strictly from the Old Testament before Jesus Christ died for our sins and basically stated in his philosophy that we should turn the other cheek rather than exact something like eye for an eye. 

Reply #10 August 5, 2004 9:17 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

one thing that i can say Is i am going to heaven and i want to. I can't believe you wouldn't want to go there. Well i don't care i beleive in god and jesus christ. I didn't think anyone would say anything like that.

~blondelife~

Reply #11 August 6, 2004 1:24 AM from JoeUser Forums Top

Yeah really, who would want to go to hell?

~carebear~

Reply #12 August 6, 2004 7:33 AM from JoeUser Forums Top

I consider whatever deity that rules this reality to be a total ass.

Aren't we rulers of this reality? God gave man dominion over the earth and everything upon it, and provided us with freedom of choice. God is the ruler of the Heavens. Maybe He's doing a better job there than we are here.

Reply #13 August 6, 2004 9:34 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

You are right about that. God helped us get it started. We are the ones that are making it better or making it worse. Also if you believe it is better up there then it will be.

~blondelife~

Reply #14 August 6, 2004 9:53 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

Yes, I'm going to heaven. It's very normal and very human to wonder and question. I liked that time of WWJD. I can tell you honestly that if I were face to face right now with the one that killed my brother, I would not kill him.

Reply #15 August 6, 2004 10:20 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

I am sorry for your lose. Also that is a very good thing that you wouldn't kill him. I give you a huge applause to have the courage and ability to do that.

~blondelife~

Reply #16 August 7, 2004 12:34 AM from JoeUser Forums Top

The very last thing you want to do when discussing heaven, hell, and other assorted hangovers from the past, metaphysical misjudgments, theoretical quandries and/or moral dilemmas, is talk to another christian about them since they're all as thoroughly confused as you are.

The first thing you need to know about christianity is that it's the religion of slaves. "Help me God I wanna new [insert name of preferred object here]"
"Help me God my father, brother, mother, sister, lover, gerbil (or whatever) is dying. Make it stop and I'll be good"
"Help me God my life is totally fucked up and I don't know what to do"

Slaves are natural dependents, forever looking for someone else to step in and make their lives ok. You wanna know the truth? You were born alone, you'll die alone, and there isn't a living soul on the planet that can help you get from the first point to the second.

The second thing you need to know about christianity is that it teaches a doctrine of forgiveness without responsibility. If Jesus did away with the 'Old Man', our sinful nature, then no one need take responsibility for the consequences of their actions in this world. "Jesus forgave me, so now the fact that I raped and murdered a small child is OK with God, and I can sleep peacefully at night." It inculcates in its believers the moral backbone of a nematode.

And the third thing you need to know about christianity is this: its description of the bliss believers experience after death is so vague, so nebulous, so utterly unconvincing, that never in the course of human artistic production has any artist managed to portray 'heaven' in a fashion that would make anyone in their right mind want to go there.

Hell, on the other hand, has always been infinitely more sexy - which is why Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost is the most interesting character in the entire poem, and why Dante's Inferno is by far the more entertaining of the three books of his Commedia.

I seriously suggest that you avoid all further contact with anyone so slavish, so morally bankrupt, and so unutterably, so vilely dull, as to refer to himself as a 'christian'.

~~DivasRule~~

Reply #17 August 7, 2004 1:40 AM from JoeUser Forums Top

Am I going to Heaven? No, or at least I hope not. I consider whatever deity that rules this reality to be a total ass.

I must full-heartedly agree, even if God were to prove to me he was real, if he was like the Bible God, I would neither respect nor bow down to him. I'd rather burn in hell with interesting people who share my beliefs than those cowardly enough to bow to a tyrant.

I can tell you honestly that if I were face to face right now with the one that killed my brother, I would not kill him.

And? You don't have to accept Jesus to make that decision, I am an atheist and I have my own views on what is right and what is wrong, and I happen to think that killing someone is almost never right, and forgiveness is a virtue. I don't think this because the Bible tells me to, I think it because I too would like to be treated with forgiveness and mercy.

Reply #18 August 7, 2004 9:00 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

I don't know about you lord Shitzu on how you believe. You have your opionins and i respect that. I have mine and they are totally opposite. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ the only son of god. I want to go to heaven. I am sure i will go there as long as i ask for forgiveness. But i do respect your view and the others.

~blondelife

Reply #19 August 7, 2004 9:07 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

Yes, I'm going to heaven. It's very normal and very human to wonder and question. I liked that time of WWJD. I can tell you honestly that if I were face to face right now with the one that killed my brother, I would not kill him.

Excellent response, WF...I'm going to hit you with an insightful for that (I have also dealt with the wrongful murder of a brother, as you probably know). That's one reason I believe the family should be a major factor in decding death penalty cases; if I were to be affected by a killer of a famil member in a capital case, I would want a chance to SHOW them the grace of God, and perhaps change their life.

I do not think it is consistent for a Christian to hope ANYONE winds up in Hell; we are to walk a better path.

Just my two cents.

Reply #20 August 7, 2004 9:19 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

Pearl,

Wow. While I defer to you the right to have your beliefs, I honestly think your prejudice is appalling. You have lumped me in a category with a billion other folks, and you hardly know me.

Frankly, what you expressed in your thread is that, sight unseen, you hate me because I am a Christian. And you have the balls to call US bigots?

Reply #21 August 7, 2004 9:21 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

Thank you WF and Gideon MacLeish i think you guys understand. I feel the same way. I also hope that noone will wind up in hell ever. You should think of heaven as peaceful.

~blondelife~

Reply #22 August 9, 2004 12:22 AM from JoeUser Forums Top

"From the rites of the jungle witch-doctors, which distorted reality into grotesque absurdities, stunted the minds of their victims and kept them in terror of the supernatural for stagnant stretches of centuries--to the supernatural doctrines of the Middle Ages, which kept men huddling on the mud floors of their hovels, in terror that the devil might steal the soup they had worked eighteen hours to earn--to the seedy little smiling professor who assures you that your brain has no capacity to think, that you have no means of perception and must blindly obey the omnipotent will of that supernatural force: Society--all of it is the same performance for the same and only purpose: to reduce you to the kind of pulp that has surrendered the validity of its consciousness.

"But it cannot be done without your consent. If you permit it to be done, you deserve it."

Reply #23 August 9, 2004 3:52 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

I do not think it is consistent for a Christian to hope ANYONE winds up in Hell; we are to walk a better path.

And if you do, that's great, it's just that, speaking only for myself, when you've encountered enough people threatening you with fire, brimstone, and eternal suffering just because you're a different sort of decent person than they'd like you to be, you tend to end up a little jaded. That's why Christians end up lumped together sometimes in my mind as "self-righteous assholes" rather than "those with differing viewpoints."

Reply #24 August 9, 2004 4:31 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life"

I've always wondered about this verse. It's an "if/then" clause. It's possible that the negative doesn't hold true.

People who believe in Jesus will go to heaven, does not necessarily mean that all people who go to heaven believe in Jesus. Think of it this way: If I have red shoes, it doesn't mean that all shoes are red, or to stretch my logic a bit further: Everyone standing at Bus stop A will ride Bus 2. But that doesn't mean that everyone on Bus 2 was standing at Bus stop A. There were other ways for people to get on Bus 2, just as, I believe, there are other ways to get to heaven.

Personally, I have a hard time with the notion that Jesus is the only way to heaven--I've grappled with it for years, and always come back to the notion that God couldn't possibly damn to hell for all eternity people who had never ever heard his name uttered. The very notion that small villages in Africa, or remote towns in Asia would go to hell out of ignorance rather than rejecting God is extremely disturbing in my mind.

I agree with your assessment of the death penalty...I saw a bumper sticker years ago that said, "How does killing someone teach people that it is not ok to kill?"

Reply #25 August 9, 2004 5:10 PM from JoeUser Forums Top

I've always wondered about this verse. It's an "if/then" clause. It's possible that the negative doesn't hold true. People who believe in Jesus will go to heaven, does not necessarily mean that all people who go to heaven believe in Jesus. Think of it this way: If I have red shoes, it doesn't mean that all shoes are red, or to stretch my logic a bit further: Everyone standing at Bus stop A will ride Bus 2. But that doesn't mean that everyone on Bus 2 was standing at Bus stop A. There were other ways for people to get on Bus 2, just as, I believe, there are other ways to get to heaven.

You know, somehow I've never noticed that, but thinking of it that way, I can almost see a sort of loopshole that would make "God" less of a pompous ass than I'd always considered his Biblical persona to be. Very interesting observation.