HAPPY EASTER, EVERYONE! (Warning - Religious Post Follows!)

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Oh for heaven's sake... Happy easter too... if its "He is Risen" or "Blessid Eostre of the Dawn" or even "Woohoo chocolate bunnies".  Have a good one too.  Now stop peeing in the jelly beans with all yer philosphies the lot of you.

-Ed

[indianasmith]

ALLHALLOWSDAY wrote:
"I'm not sure either, but the Spirit speaks through me.     Think of the old game in kindergarten when 20 or more of you little ones are lined up playing "Telephone..."  I think I mean that what we know of Christ, or much of anything, we know from other people.  There are fingerprints all over history.  Someone has always been there before us.  Paul did not know Jesus and really needed to hang his hat on the Resurrection.  If one accepts the account of Peter, he was weak but found strength in his age, perhaps when death is easier.  Death is the final arbiter.  I think being good is enough reason to be good; being good in order to get to heaven is payoff.  Are people really swindled into fear for their "immortal souls"?    Cannot we love each other enough to always impart good will?       Who wants to die to "reap his eternal reward"?  Life seems even more important than Life Everlasting. "

OK, you raised several very interesting issues there, that I would like to respond to. First off, the analogy to "Telephone" doesn't really work, because the eyewitnesses who saw and spoke to Jesus actually wrote down what was said.  Pass a note around a circle and its contents stay intact . . . ask every member of the circle to copy the note in writing and you may get an error or two, but it is easy to restore the original wording by comparing all the copies.  The New Testament books were written within a relatively brief span of time after the events they chronicle.  Two Gospels (Matthew and John) were penned by eyewitnesses who were members of Jesus' inner circle, one was written second hand from the account of a principle witness (John Mark was Simon Peter's translator and companion, and wrote his gospell from Peter's stories), and Luke was a careful historian who interviewed numerous eyewitnesses in preparing his Gospel (Read Luke 1: 1 - 4 for an example of his cool, analytical style).  The fact is that, despite copyists' errors along the way, the New Testament has been passed down with a textual purity of 99.5%, and of the handful of disputed passages, not one of them affects a major doctrine of Christianity.  The bottom line is, what we have is what the disciples of Christ wrote.  The only issue that matters is, did they write the truth?

To say that getting into heaven is "payoff" for being good is to ignore a basic law of the universe - that actions have consequences.  If this is true for our temporal existence on earth, how can it not echo into eternity?  God placed within each of us a yearning for something greater than ourselves so that we would seek Him.  He then sent Christ into the world to show us the way to find Him.  That was my original point.  Now I have to cut this short because I must go and run an errand for my wife!

[Doggett]

I'm not religious at all.

But I like zombies and chocolate 

Happy Easter !

[ER]

That's a nice Jewish sort of outlook in your post, indy, lol. You know, 'follow the Law because it is Commanded, not for reward. Look to this life, let higher powers sort out what will come if there is a next one.' That sort of view has always seemed commendable to me.

[Allhallowsday]

"How could It not become more human and less divine as the Word is imparted from person to person? 
Christianity cannot and should not be arrived at through the concept of payback." 

I am not sure what you mean by that, AllHallows . . . but I am interested.  Continue here or go to PM?  I'm fine either way, and your perspective interests me greatly.

We discussed this a bit but really never concluded.  Final response to above, below:

In order to be a Christian you must not believe in an eternal reward, you must imagine that your Lord could abandon you in the desert of nothing, thirst unquenched, giving oneself nonetheless because of your own love from within.  Your God demands everything from you, complete abandon.  Problematic at best, so I think we must be like Christ, whose own faith wavered in Gethsemane, and always be loving one another. 

[indianasmith]

How can we, as Christians, NOT believe in an eternal reward, when Christ spoke of one so often?

And I don't know that you can say Christ's faith wavered in Gethsemane.  He asked God if there was another way to accomplish his mission, but ended, "Not my will, but thine be done."  That is an amazing level of faith.

My love of God does not come from the hope of heaven, though.  It comes from gratitude for his sacrifice.  But I still believe in heaven.

[Allhallowsday]

How can we, as Christians, NOT believe in an eternal reward, when Christ spoke of one so often?

Because of doubt, because of fear.  We cannot know Christ but through our hearts, not in person (maybe when we're dead).  We are not divine; but good Christians should strive for divinity.  I suppose what I'm stumbling to express is that too much emphasis is made on eternal reward: life everlasting.  Apparently that's very important to people, and understandably, but it compels one to go through the motions of loving God, but does that "knowledge" obscure the core message of sacrificial love? 

[lester1/2jr]

 I was reading the bible the other day and I came across a passage I'd never seen.  These rabbies asked christ if a woman had been widowed like 7 times which husband would she be reunited with in heaven.  Jesus said that god was the god of the living not the dead! I'm still pndering that one

[indianasmith]

I think I can elucidate on that one a bit.

The Saducees, who did not believe in any afterlife at all, neither in spirits nor angels, cooked up a pretty ridiculous scenario (a single woman married to seven different brothers, and having children by none of them) to try and trap Jesus verbally.  He first of all told them their main problem was that they neither "understand the Scriptures, nor the power of God."  Then he explained that the earthly sacrament of marriage no longer exists in heaven, so their elaborate scenario had no validity.  But then, he said, "as touching the Resurrection of the Dead" that when God spoke to Moses, he said "I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."  That is when he spoke the words which puzzled you - that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."  (Abraham lived about 600 years before Moses, and Isaac and Jacob were his son and grandson respectively.  All of them had been dead for centuries.) The clear context is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still living in heaven - or God would have said "I WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

AH - I think I see where you are coming from now.  Too many people are embracing salvation as a kind of spiritual "fire insurance."  I  guess my answer would be that, while some may initially come to know the Lord through fear of damnation and hope of reward, the mature Christian loves God just because of who He is, not because of what we hope He will do for us.

Have a happy Fourth!

[Javakoala]

Wow, a debate that ran from Easter to July 4th.

My question is, if Jesus were here today, do you think he'd be above tossing a few bottle rockets?

[indianasmith]

I imagine he would enjoy a good fireworks show.  He sure got invited to a lot of dinners and parties.

[Allhallowsday]

I imagine he would enjoy a good fireworks show.  He sure got invited to a lot of dinners and parties.

I'd invite him too it he'd change water into wine... 

[indianasmith]

I think  He only does that if the host runs out . . .