(05-06-2019, 02:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-06-2019, 02:05 AM)taramarie Wrote:Well, if you don't believe in Jesus, you probably won't get the chance to see/experience heaven. Do you have a problem with accepting that probability as a reality when the time comes? I doubt that you have the power over rule Jesus's decision. You seem like a decent person who doesn't really have to worry about being burned in hell. I'm in the same group of people as you as far as that goes. Me, I really like American life and I really like being an American. So, I wouldn't mind coming back and making sure that America stays the way that is down the road if that option is available to me when the time comes.(05-06-2019, 01:41 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-05-2019, 10:54 PM)taramarie Wrote: Being Christian doesn't make a person good and being a non Christian does not make a person an asshole. Anyone with a brain should know that one. An asshole is just an asshole whatever belief system. Actions and beliefs notoriously do not play well if one is not a well person. The hypocrisies are startling especially when it comes to those of faith going by their supposed beliefs. I have had Christians tell me it does not matter how good a person you are. If you don't believe, you will burn. As a non believer I laughed it off, but still found it interesting how some think its a fkn club and only they are "pure" of sin and can find peace after death. What a load of toxic rubbish.I wouldn't get upset about a tinch of Christian anymore than I'd get upset about a non Christian. Whatever...
This is not an upset. This is an observation.
The only God that I would ever worship is One powerful enough to act with mercy toward sinners. We all fall short, but that falling short can be anything from failing to send a thank-you letter to casting small children into raging furnaces. It is a good idea to not test such a God with egregious sin that one best describes as crime. I like to believe that the righteous of all nations and cultures will go to Heaven, and that hell is full of people who would mess up Heaven. One of the horrors of Hell, as I imagine it, is a ringside seat in which one has a compulsory witness to the delights of heaven denied them. (That is the opposite of the Puritan view, in which people would get to look through a telescope to witness the suffering of the damned evil-doers, but I think that would get very old very fast). Another is that one is around murderers, thieves, rapists, cheats, perjurers, and liars. Bad company that makes life miserable will also make an Afterlife miserable. I do not want to end up where the Nazis are.
Jesus? Someone who prayed Shema Yisrael as Nazis mowed them down with machine gun fire or as they started to die from hydrogen cyanide fumes would seem damned by your criteria. I expect a merciful God to forgive misunderstandings of theology and correct those gently. Besides -- can we prove which view of God is right? I am tempted to believe that God is beyond full human understanding.
Those who persecuted Muslims may find upon their deaths that God is Allah, and Muhammad is his greatest Prophet. Does anyone want to guess the identity of the God who judges the perpetrators of the Bataan Death March and 9/11? God is powerful enough, I understand, to change His Identity when judging us -- if He exists.
If I am to give any advice on the Hereafter, it is that God is capable of much mercy -- but don't test Him too much. Don't be a murderer, rapist, thief, swindler, perjurer, or shyster lest you end up with your own kind.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.