INTO THE MYSTIC
Several thousand years ago a man known as Jesus lived & was crucified for preaching dangerous ideas. Some believe he conquered death and rose again and ascended bodily into heaven. Hmmm (we'll get back to this).
Whatever the status of his "divinity", it is a fact that his life, and the philosophy he espoused has had a HUGE influence on the development of Western Civilization. There are billions of Christians across the globe, some of whom risk literally everything just by believing as they do. Here in the USA, there are a confusing number of denominations, each of which tweaks the story, alters interpretations, but mainly they're pretty much the same.
The world Jesus was born into was a complicated one, an often violent one, as various tribes and belief systems tried to learn to live side-by-side. The Elders of Judea were not impressed by this young upstart. They feared him. They loathed him. They conspired against him. But the Roman Overlords had no interest in enforcing the laws of a religious sect they despised. So the Elders came up with some trumped up charges and brought him before the magistrate. He was tried and convicted and was whipped nearly to the death, but it wasn't enough. He was ordered to be Crucified.
Now, I'm sure my story thus far will be tweaked if anyone ever reads this. Feel Free
As referenced earlier, Jesus was born into complicated times. And he came with a message that was just TOO SIMPLE; "All You need Is Love". So incredibly basic, the unpeaceful minds wrestling with existence could not wrap their heads around it. They still can't to this day.
I believe that Jesus lived, and that his life, his philosophy, has had a huge, and hugely beneficial influence On the Western World. A God? Or Son Thereof?? To me its irrelevant
But there are too many.........contradictions inherent in Christianity. I have wrestled these concepts and I've pinned them to the mat, but they've pinned me as often.
Jesus said that the ONLY way to paradise was through him. At the time that Jesus lived, there were millions of people around the world who never heard the name. There were even more that lived and died long before Jesus. Am I to believe that the Son of an almighty and ALL MERCIFUL God would consign these pour souls to hell? To some sort of purgatory? No, I cannot accept that.
Is the Christian View of morality universal?
And there we are at problem number two; Am I to believe that in all the universe, with it's billions of planets, stars and solar systems, only earth contains an intelligent(?) life form deserving of being "saved"?
Well, it took me long enough to get here. Turns out that the problem was at my end and that I was blocking you. Who knew? Anyway, let's begin. First of all, and I don't mean to be picky, Jesus walked the earth 2000 years ago. But I suspect you knew that, as opposed to "several thousand."
ReplyDeleteRe the Elders of Judea, that's not completely correct on its own, although one probably could build the case for the term. The Elders who were really unhappy with Jesus were the Pharisees. The Pharisees were Jewish religious people who, at the most Sr level, determined and oversaw the Laws which the people MUST abide by. There were over 600 of these laws, so the Pharisees had their hands full making sure their congregants followed each one to the letter. They also went to extremes in some cases, charging exorbitant prices for sacrificial animals that the people needed to have in order to meet God's laws of sacrifice which the Pharisees enforced. At times like Passover, when sacrifices were a daily, even hourly event, the Pharisees would set up tables within the temple to sell the animals, and people would stand in line, often with their last pennies available to them, waiting to make their purchase.
Along came Jesus. He preached the love of God, and He saw what the Pharisees were up to as they made their enforcement a hardship on all who only wished to obey God. Jesus told them very clearly that when they forced hardship in the name of keeping God's love through obedience to their laws, the Pharisees themselves were in violation of the very laws they enforced because of their lack of love, lack of fairness, and so on. So Jesus preached against what they were doing. The result? Well, the people turned to Jesus' teachings rather than the Pharisees'. Their mistake, of course, was that they wanted Jesus to be the promised Messiah, not as a loving saviour, but as the mighty warrior the people had envisioned would come in power to rescue them from the oppression of the Romans, and of the Pharasaical machine.
That's an important background to the story of Jesus. Jesus came teaching the love of God to a people who were suffering under the boot of their own religion, one that used God's laws for their own benefit through extortion and greed that totally lacked any love as God, in His complete testament had decreed.
That's enough for now. I'm gonna go through your post and provide further clarification if needed. I'll end this "series" with comments on what you call "inconsistencies."
So here we are for the response to the "contradictions" portion of your post. I didn’t mean for it to be as long as the result you see here. But I hope you can bear with me as I attempt to make the case.
ReplyDeleteHow to begin? Your first “contradiction” is framed by your statement "Jesus said that the ONLY way to paradise was through him. At the time that Jesus lived, there were millions of people around the world who never heard the name. There were even more that lived and died long before Jesus. Am I to believe that the Son of an almighty and ALL MERCIFUL God would consign these pour souls to hell? To some sort of purgatory? No, I cannot accept that."
I'll start with a basic premise for truth, which is the Word of God, commonly referred to since it's final iteration as "The Holy Bible." Today's world of science continues to put forward arguments that supposedly prove the absence of a God, while at the same time publishing more and more discovered evidence to the contrary. That's probably because of the presence of conflicting views within the science world itself, especially the schools of thought that believe in God and those who do not want to. For now, I will use the Bible as my source for the answer because it's in there that I find God's own explanation that answers your question. If you choose to not believe what the Bible says, that's your right, however, I would point out that what's happened because Jesus walked the earth were not events validated by history or science, but that history and science themselves were, and continue to be validated by the Bible; are not a series of events and premises that copied history and science, but that history and science themselves are validated via the Bible. As an interesting experiment, do your own search of archaeological findings that validate scripture. Such validation continues to this day, and the Bible, in each discovery, becomes more and more valid in the eyes of skeptics who are willing to have their world views changed.
Nuff said. The Bible tells a single story. It is the story of mankind from the very beginning until the prophetic end of time described in the final book, Revelation. The story of the Bible is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. OR, Pre-Jesus and Post Jesus. (including his personal Biblical life account) So your question really can be expanded to include those people of the OT who did not know of Jesus as a present or historical being. They DID know Him as the promised saviour of the Jewish people, but they did NOT live to see that prophecy unfold and become real. So, were the people of the OT also lost? Not according to the Bible. Consider the following verses:
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He {God} has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also placed ignorance in the human heart, so that no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
The following verse, while coming from the NT, talks of God's qualities "since the creation of the world." Romans 1:20 20 "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." In other words, before Jesus came, God's power and divine nature were discernible, leaving people with no excuse to not seek Him. I say SEEK Him because our observations of God’s power, beauty, and divine nature all around us is not what saves us. But it IS sufficient evidence of a creator that we should drive us to want to know Him more, find out who He is, and act upon His revelations made specifically for us to know He exists. You yourself experience His divine nature in your "cathedral" that you have frequently mentioned.
"The Bible tells a single story. It is the story of mankind from the very beginning until the prophetic end of time "
DeleteI do not believe that to be true. I believe the "single story" the ( old testament) Bible tells
the story of a people, the jews. Tracing their lineage, exploring their story.
You're not wrong from a historical point of view. But I failed to paint the right perspective, one that is key to answering the question here as to what happened to those who were not in the vicinity of Jesus to be saved. Hence, the need to understand that the Bible is also, and I would say more importantly, the story of sin and redemption. The story of mankind from the spiritual perspective is described in real events throughout the Old and New Testaments using the Jewish nation initially and bringing the Gentile nations into the story in the New Testament. (see the Book of Acts as to how this was accomplished) From that perspective, the Bible is telling a complete single story. That's a fairly basic description.
DeleteA further simplistic description is that the Bible is the story of how sin entered the world, (Genesis) and God’s work to provide a path to redemption. The Old Testament describes the blood sacrifices He required in order to redeem people from their sins, and several covenants He made with the Jewish nation. It describes how the Jews would be obedient followed by periods of disobedience. It describes how God put one thing after another in place to give His people opportunity after opportunity to be redeemed. It is the story of how they succeeded and then failed, time after time. The New Testament describes how Jesus became the final sacrifice for sin, and how true redemption can only be had through accepting the work of Jesus on the cross as a personal commitment to be obedient to God. Basically, God used the story of the Jews to tell the story of sin and redemption that began in the Old Testament and has not yet ended.
The Bible’s single story from that perspective, is a fascinating tale that crosses thousands of years, culminating in Revelation with the coming of Jesus to gather those who have decided to follow Him, and the take down of evil in the world.
To add scholarly depth to the above, see https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-covenants.html for Biblical historical context.
Here are a few verses from the Book of Hebrews which specifically talk about how OT characters were "saved." They're all from Hebrews chapter 11:
ReplyDelete1. Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
2 This is what the ancients were commended for.
7. By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.
14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.
15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.
16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
That’s the Old Testament. Then the New. Jesus came. He was sent actually according to scripture. Sent by God to fulfill the long promised role of messiah so longed for by the Jewish people. The Jewish people saw Him, listened to Him, observed His miracles, and most importantly, saw Him die the world’s most atrocious death invented by man, crucifixion. Not all Jews believed, and as the book of Acts tells, the true status of Jesus was also preached to, convincingly, the gentile nations. Jesus’ final words were that all who already believed who He was were to tell all the nations to turn to Him for their salvation. At that juncture, based on the verses I’ve quoted above describing how OT people were “saved,” I believe that the transition period between God’s revelation of His nature as the reason by which God should be sought, and the teachings of Jesus that all men must turn to Him to be saved, could very well be the same approach for anyone who the gospel of Jesus Christ had net yet been taught. Today we are graced with the presence of both God’s revelatory approach, in that we have no excuse to NOT seek Him. During that seeking activity, the seeker will find the story of Jesus. And through that story, will make a decision one way or the other as to what to do about His work and teachings.
In all of these musings, the thought continues to hammer away at me that the reason why people do NOT seek God really don’t want to find Him. They are content with the lives they’ve built and can excuse that thing called sin quite nicely for various reasons. The problem with that, though, is that IF God really does exist, and if He did create all things, is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, then we can do our own thing as long as we like. Isaiah 55:8-9 says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” But the people who determine to ignore Him with one excuse after another, can never say they weren’t told.
Regarding the second contradiction in which you say “Am I to believe that in all the universe, with it's billions of planets, stars and solar systems, only earth contains an intelligent(?) life form deserving of being "saved"? You can believe that or not. It’s a moot point in any discussion concerning the existence of God or the existence of a plan of salvation for other beings somewhere in the universe. God inspired the writing of His word, the Bible, to tell us the story of salvation for His people here on earth. If He did create other beings, how He treats them and whether or not it’s on a par with His plan for the people of earth really has little if anything to do with our agreement with the plan He unfolded for us. God is not obligated in any way to reveal to us the secrets of His self, His creation, or how He handles His day to day activities. We have exactly the right amount of information which we, His created beings on earth, need to exist in happiness and contentment. The wonderful thing though, in spite of that statement, is that we continue to discover new things. And our excuse and the ability to have one gets smaller and smaller. Especially in light of the salvation invitation extended by Jesus.
ReplyDeleteAnd here is where my theory...INTO THE MYSTIC, Pt II, begins. stay tuned
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