God's love is an absurdity

[Tanner9188]

Honestly, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. I somehow feel called to deepen my understanding of my faith. But some things annoy the blits out of me.

Constantly, God is proclaimed as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent – and ALL LOVING. God is continually pronounced as all loving and merciful. It’s one of the fundamental core beliefs in Catholicism. I WANT to believe this. But realistically, somebody who damns people to hell is not ALL loving if you ask me…

If a mother has a child. She will love that child forever despite what that child does. Even if her child rapes, murders, steals, bombs cities and whatnot; the mother will continue to LOVE that child forever. Yes, she may be distraught, forever saddened, and angry with her child’s actions – but her love will never cease, and she will always welcome her child into her love. Furthermore, she would not want ANYTHING BAD to happen to her child regardless of the things he has done. WHY? BECAUSE SHE LOVES HIM FOREVER AND HER LOVE WILL NEVER CEASE. This is what love is!

And when I hear such things as, “Thou shalt be condemned in hell and burn forever”, or “Thou shall be engulfed in eternal flames for eternity” – I seriously get angry.

WHO IS MORE LOVING HERE?

The mother who loves her child forever and forgives her child forever and will always welcome her child?

Or

A God who loves ALL; but if they trespass against him he will condemn thee to hell for ETERNITY?

There is no mercy in condemning someone to hell. Even though God forgives sins through the Ministry of the Church, I cannot see how our God can condemn people to hell. No matter who it is, no body deserves to go there. Even if a murderer killed my entire family I would never want him to be in a pit of fire for eternity. It just isn’t right. Plus, looking at the world now, the utmost majority of the world does not follow the word of God, they do not go to Church, they do not confess their sins, and they continually sin throughout their lives. - These people, according to the Bible will go to hell. Moreover, it basically even says if you’re a good and loving person you will still go to hell if you don’t follow the word of Christ. Right…

Might I add that people will be argueing that, “God does not send people to hell; they send themselves.” Well there doesen’t have to be a hell in the first place. If God is God, he is the ALL POWERFUL God and therefore hell does not need to exist. Moreover, he should bring his children back to him as intended - God being the alpha and omega; or beginning and end.

Anyone who loves another person WOULD never even consider damming someone into hell for eternity. It’s just not right. And this is what seriously pisses me of about my faith and I’m trying to find a deeper meaning in all this, but I can’t.

**You have actually shown the love of God in this way; everyone deserves death because they have violated the holiness of God through sin, which the penalty is death, but in His kindness and mercies; He has given us a way of escape, which is through Jesus; not a religion. Why do people go to hell? Rejecting the Son of God, which is God. So all those babies that are aborted, the ones that are so poor they die of starvation and disease, and all the “retarded” (I don’t like that word, but can’t come up with something better at the moment) people are all in Heaven because God is caring and loving. You can take the love, but you must also take the justice of God.

You are correct in the assessment that “many” people will be in hell, but once you understand the holiness of God, then you will agree that those that reject the Son are deserving of eternal hell. Believe me when I tell you that religion will not save you; only the person of Christ can do that. But you must first come to the place where you realize there is nothing inside of you that you can offer to God and that in your sin you have you have violated the holiness of God and offended Him, for He made man in His image. Once you get to that point, then you will break down at that realization of your violations and how you offended Him. If you reach that point, then you will have the “poverty of spirit” and will be “mournful” over you nothingness and offensiveness before God, then be like the Publican and cry out to God for mercy. Only then will your heart be prepared to accept the Savior as Lord of your life and you will begin to “hunger and thirst” for His righteousness.

Ask, Seek, and Knock; , and be persistent!

Your real problem is you are looking through “sin stained” glasses. Perhaps you are looking at religion; rather a person???**

 

[cynic]

cynic;5415234:

There are no sins that do not spring from goods created by God. That is, sin is a good thing being used in the wrong way or in the wrong context.

The pleasure we get from these things, is then a pleasure in some way intrinsic to them, and in itself good. So bodily sins like eating of sex can give us pleasure, because they are supposed to. They still give us pleasure if we use them inappropriately. Our appetites are not fully under the thumb of our reason, and it is the job of reason, not the appetite, to determine when a thing is being used properly. When reason says - no more cake - the appetite continues to demand. This sets up an uncomfortable situation, and so “being good” seems very unpleasant, and the sin seems that much more wonderful.

Many of the intellectual sins have their root in pride, which is the desire to put ourselves in the wrong place. We put our own importance above that of other people, the Earth, morality or God. We ourselves become the arbiter of existence. This is pleasurable because God is the greatest good, and so to be God must also be very pleasant. By understanding our proper place in the universe, we must understand that we are not the arbiter of existence, but dependent, the greatest good is found outside of ourselves, and we must submit to it.

For most people, it takes time to learn that there is great joy in this, and many don’t really believe it until they experience it. And it takes work and desire to achieve it. Much of religion is geared toward exercises to help people learn this.

.
That makes some sense, but I can’t see how all sin can have originated with good. For exampe sadism (taking pleasure in the pain of others), or violence, insatiable desire for wealth…

 

[jkiernan56]

If a mother has a child. She will love that child forever despite what that child does. Even if her child rapes, murders, steals, bombs cities and whatnot; the mother will continue to LOVE that child forever. Yes, she may be distraught, forever saddened, and angry with her child’s actions – but her love will never cease, and she will always welcome her child into her love. Furthermore, she would not want ANYTHING BAD to happen to her child regardless of the things he has done. WHY? BECAUSE SHE LOVES HIM FOREVER AND HER LOVE WILL NEVER CEASE. This is what love is!

I found this very interesting. God DOES CONTINUE TO LOVE everyone He has ever created. It is incorrect to start out with the premise that God DOES NOT LOVE … The truth is that God DOES CONTINUE … even if that love is not reciprocated. God’s Love is Unconditional just like you state. But the real question becomes this - is the person who has done evil … are they able to love God? Will they be able to if they continue in their error or wrong doing? Intrinsically in the act of doing evil … is a rejection of God’s Love. Reason is darkened and the will is weakened. A person who continues down the slippery slope of deluding themselves in thinking they do no evil … may never be able to pull out of the wrong doing … and turn back to God asking for the grace to change … asking in humility to be reunited with God’s Love and a desire/willingness to turn away from any and all wrong doing … and desire to turn to doing good …

God still LOVES those in hell … but they are not able to Love God in return … that is Hell … they are spiritually devoid of Love … cut off from God … and to be cut off from God means hell … because God is Live … and to reject God is to reject Life … and Goodness … and to reject Love. God does not send anyone to hell. People send themselves to hell and are are no longer able to Love. Being unable to love is a hellish kind of existence …

 

[Detales]

By your own words, '56, no one is ever cut off from God. That is impossible, because if they were, God, in your dynamic wouldn’t know they exist. That God still loves them, as you so state, implies the continuance of a sustaining grace. The hell aspect of experiecence is soley/souly a feeling result of acting on premises that produce the sense of separation from God or others, or from meaning within oneself due to lack of integrity on several levels. That is why so many religons contain an inherently hellish aspect: they presume separation from God, which is a radical impossibility. Such separation is delusional due to the beliefs accepted by belivers.

 

[MindOverMatter]

By your own words, '56, no one is ever cut off from God. That is impossible, because if they were, God, in your dynamic wouldn’t know they exist. That God still loves them, as you so state, implies the continuance of a sustaining grace. The hell aspect of experiecence is soley/souly a feeling result of acting on premises that produce the sense of separation from God or others, or from meaning within oneself due to lack of integrity on several levels. That is why so many religons contain an inherently hellish aspect: they presume separation from God, which is a radical impossibility. Such separation is delusional due to the beliefs accepted by belivers.

Separation from God, doesn’t necessarily mean separation from being. There is a spiritual separation in regards to Love, but not an ontological separation. If you reject love, hell is the necessary result; since love is the root of all that which is good in our experience, and to experience spiritual fulfillment in that which is good, one must be spiritually united to the will of love. For if God is love, then you must be free to reject it. Love will never force you from heaven, but you can deny love. Logic supports this position if you perceive God as love. If one is forever selfish, they cannot perceive or experience the love of God even though love is necessarily present in being, since God is love. To be in hell, is to have a mind that is indifferent to the will of love.

 

[Detales]

Well said, MoM

 

[jkiernan56]

Separation from God, doesn’t necessarily mean separation from being. There is a spiritual separation in regards to Love, but not an ontological separation. If you reject love, hell is the necessary result; since love is the root of all that which is good in our experience, and to experience spiritual fulfillment in that which is good, one must be spiritually united to the will of love. For if God is love, then you must be free to reject it. Love will never force you from heaven, but you can deny love. Logic supports this position if you perceive God as love. If one is forever selfish, they cannot perceive or experience the love of God even though love is necessarily present in being, since God is love. To be in hell, is to have a mind that is indifferent to the will of love.

 

[Mhz]

We seem to push God’s unconditional love when we are preaching to the saints and his damnation wrath when we are evangelizing the heathen. Which is it?

I can appreciate PePPaR’s comments that compares God’s love for his creation as a mother or father would for their child. Jesus even said it stronger: if we who are evil (100% of us) know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will your Father in heaven. If we are being created in God’s image and we are unable to turn our back or remove our love from our children then why would we think God would do it?

The problem isn’t God’s lack of love it’s our lack of understanding of God and scripture. We have made God into our own image with a belief in eternal torment. There is just as much biblical support for God’s love never failing as there is for this nonsense that we send ourselves to hell in an effort to protect God’s image. I’ve always told my kids that if you think you smell something, you probably do… and Pep’s smeller is working very well.

The absorbed part of all this is to think that God isn’t culpable if Eternal Damnation in an endless lake of fire if he is the designer and creator of all things. We even come up with some blame shifting that it’s all Adam’s fault or that the Devil made God do it as if we need to cover for God. If God predestines some as St Paul states for salvation (election); picks a chosen people (Jews); creates some as vessels of honor and some for dishonor (Judas); created good and evil (Satan); then it would make no sense that hell would be reserved for the poor smucks that were created by a arbitrary and all knowing God with the Philistine gene in their body or a head hunting aborigine in the deepest jungle.

For years I was just as guilty of this type of religious hypocrisy as the next Christian but after putting on a different set of glasses I can see that the damnation theology is what we have made it to be… not God.

If we change your image of God, the scriptures and many of our doctrines may appear quite different.

Thanks Peppy… worthwhile discussion.

 

[Detales]

“If we change your image of God, the scriptures and many of our doctrines may appear quite different.”~Mhz

Well said, and exactly the point. We tend to make God in our image and likeness. The representational functions of the Church are making maps of the territory of the Divine that a) we forget are maps, b) we forget that no map is itself thet territory, and c) maps almost invaraiably leave out the mapmaker. In the case of faith, we have an historic mapmaker, the Church, charting territory on premises and information compromised by several layers of distortion, and then it claims that the map is the territory. The faithful, mostly being infants when exposed to this sequence of historic events, aquires the faith (map) without any recourse to even the possibility of thinking critically about it. The exception might be if someone actually thinks about the Church from outside its own self verifying logic, or if they recieve a shock that lands them for even a moment in a different psychological perspective.

A good analogy br this might be someone who is able to think, not just mouth words, in two dissimilar languages. They discover that a language can be completely valid within itself and useful to converse in with those who speak it as well. Howevere, another depth of understanding is reached when it is realized that a language, by means of its grammar and other structures, describes the world in a paritcular way, as distinct from another language. Another language is in a very actual psychological sense, another world.

So such a speaker as I describe can now think at another level of understanding, namely that languages are ways of describing the world, and are not necessarily accurate, but functional within themselves and not necessarily congruent to other languese except in that they describe what appears, generaly, to be the common ascpects of the world. But even then, they can be very dis-similar. The Romans said “Idem non idem.” The same in one language is not the same in another.

So, Catholicism, as are all religions, is just that: a language that describes a territory from a particular, but not necessarily completely correct, standpoint, despite wonderful internal logic. This is why we can say that man makes God in his own image and likeness. The only ones who have transcended that sort of language to the greatest degree and can translate usefully between various ones, are the non-dualists of the ages who speak from the Root of all such religious systems, as they have been speaking for the duration of history.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Detales

*So, Catholicism, as are all religions, is just that: a language that describes a territory from a particular, but not necessarily completely correct, standpoint, despite wonderful internal logic. This is why we can say that man makes God in his own image and likeness. The only ones who have transcended that sort of language to the greatest degree and can translate usefully between various ones, are the non-dualists of the ages who speak from the Root of all such religious systems, as they have been speaking for the duration of history. *

What would be an example of an incomplete and incorrect standpoint of the Catholic Church?

So you reject that God made man in His image and likeness, or are we all making each other in our own image and likeness?

Can you name some of these “non-dualists of the ages”?

 

[Detales]

I’m not sure where to go with you, Charlemagne. I’m not sure whether you are actually interested in what I might have to say, or are waitng to pounce on my statement from your dogmatic adherences, or if you are wavering on the edge, or what.

I will assume the best, despite odds heavily against, and despite my conviction that a heavily indoctrinated Catholic mindset such as yours is capable of comprehending what I’m saying. That has been proven to a large extent already, as we both have seen. It is not an comment on your intellectual ability, but on the adamantine nature of the habituated human mind. No wonder it takes a shock to awaken from metaphysical sleep. Such a presentation as follows is likely useless and mor certain to solidify your pre-determined stance than even make you curious. Even mind sets have survival as a prime directive.

I have repeatedly stated on these fora that I see that Man is created in the image and likeness of God. Image and likeness imply samenes or recognizability of pattern. Pattern comes from the word “father.” Pattern is what makes itself known as sameness, despite dissimilarity.

So, if Man is made in the image and likeness of God, what is that similarity? It is what we might call soul/Soul. I have that word doubled in two forms because it does indeed signify two things in my experience. One is the individual and immortal link to the Divine that is inherent in each one of us and comprises our Real nature as distinct from the body it animates, which is yet included in that Nature. It is the aspect of each one of us rightfully named “I” as distinct form “me,” “me” refering to the contents of the awareness lit by Soul. Soul, cap S, is also a synonym for God, whether it is so in your system or not, contend with it or not. Soul is the light to the soul, one might say, in the sense that Consciousness as Principle lights Awareness, its local manifestaiton in space/time. The soul factor is what we experience as our unchanging sense of “I” and the changing world is pertinent to “me,” that part which is transitory and is the labaratory of experience pertinet to what we value or not in terms of “I.” Thus come the clarities or obfuscations surrounding goodness. I could go on for a long time about that and the nature of its significance relative to the Golden Rule, etc. but that is enough for now.

The only additional thing of great value in this is that it has been know for aeons that this soul link is the way to the feeling of and actual Unity with God. Religions have been made around how this dynamic works. Invariabley there is, in the mystical form of the religion, an aspect of God that takes on human form, does great deeds, teaches, is betrayed, suffers, dies ignominiously, visits hell, and rises again from the dead in three days. The difference between those and Catholicism is that the ancients and the sages since then and to the present day knew that that story and others were pertinent to the soul transformation of the individual through rigorous practice. This is history.

What is not history is what the Church fathers did with Jesus’ teaching of that Sacred Way of knowledge. They made Him into history and by attributing what is every Man’s birthright to Him soley/Souly, they made the Church and made it militiant. If you will notice, many of the Identity statements of Jesus are identical to similar statements of the realization of the fulfillment of that dynamic. “I and my Father are One” in the sense deliniated above could as easily be “Atman is Brahman.” Or “I AM THAT,” but only from the standpoint of a final recogniton. Of course, the public statement of it , to protect the innocent, might be as simple as a confession that one’s life work in thought was “as straw.”

As to your request for names, Let’s start with Jesus of Nazareth. Then we can hop around in time and name such as Adi Shankara, F. Merrell-Wollff, Ramana Maharshi, Byron Katie, Nisargadatta, Lau-Tse, Gautama Sidhartha, KG MIlls, St. Francis, Meister Eckhart, St.Catherine of Sienna, St. Augustine, Toni Robeson, etc, etc.

Thank you for your attention.

BD

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

tonyrey;5414506:

Well here’s another question : *why *

do they give a great amount of pleasure?

If God is the source of good, why does sin feel good (in the short term)?

AFAICS: because it is good. Shooting an enemy & thereby committing murder is made up of lots of good things:​

• bodily strength
• intelligence
• bodily health
• skill in taking aim

…& so on - the badness is not in them. Murder is almost entirely good - the bad thing, that makes the set of things that go into committing a murder, is the moral wrongness that is the “glue” of the (good) parts of the action that make the action as a whole morally bad. Those acts, despite all their goodness, are bad in how they are combined; because of the spirit that joins them to make them the ingredients of the murder in its entirety.

And so with any sin. ISTM that sin is a mis-relation of things to other things - a bit like grafting an ear on to a mouse Ears & mice are not related in that way.

The trouble with sin is so often that our virtues and our vices seem to be identical in their “material”; the roots are the same…

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Bluegoat;5416513:

.
That makes some sense, but I can’t see how all sin can have originated with good. For exampe sadism (taking pleasure in the pain of others), or violence, insatiable desire for wealth…

Sadism is a perversion of human sexuality; which is certainly a good - if it were not, it could not be perverted. If a line is crooked to begin with, to make use of it as crooked, is not a perversion of it, but a right use of it. Sadism is recognisable as perverse, because there is a normal sort of sexuality to compare it with.​

So with the other things: they are perversions of good things.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Detales

I wasn’t looking to pounce on you, but to understand you.

I find that I do not understand you.

 

[Detales]

That is perfectly understandable, Charlemagne. No one of us understands more inclusively until there is a huge pressure to change, either by perception or shock. There just isn’t the motivation or the need for explanation. You are perfectly happy and functional where you are, supported by like minded individuals, so you are in a kind of stasis. You will not change until something becomes a wrench in your works. That may or may not happen. Some folks have a wrench thrown in, like me, or they provide their own wrench. As long as there are limits, there will be wrenches. You will find yours, or die contented in your state. It is just how it works for all of us.

 

[mangy_dog]

tonyrey;5414506:

Well here’s another question : *why *

do they give a great amount of pleasure?

If God is the source of good, why does sin feel good (in the short term)?

We sin for the “good” we percieve we can get from this wrong action or bad decision.

No one commits a sin for the sake of sinning. A common example is the person that drinks to drown his sorrows. The percieved good here is “I will forget the lousy day I’ve had today”. However, the evil is the horrible hangover and the liver damage I’ve inflicted on myself and the memory of the lousy day comes back anyway.

Some sins are committed for the pleasure one feels and that is the “percieved good”. Such as vengance. It is an evil pleasure.

 

[Mhz]

What I would like to note here is the anecdotal evidence of “particular judgement” that might be gleaned from the growing body of data concerning the NDE phenomenon. .

Detales, I’m facinated with the whole NDE issue. Can you give us more details of your experience and what it confirmed or changed in you regarding judgment and the belief in eternal damnation teaching? Do you think God’s love is stonger than our free will to resist it? Is there literal hell fire to avoid and a heaven to gain?

Mhz

 

[Detales]

Symbolically and in some senses, yes and no. Literally, yes and no. Depends on perspective. What’s yours?

spiritofmaat.com/archive/aug2/dannion.htm

near-death.com/index.html

are two good sites to do some book learning. Doesn’t substitute for the real thing. Might try lucid dreaming experiences or astral travel, if you are stable and can find a credible teacher, That will give you some experiential data. As to its meaning, that will depend on your own history and predelicitons. If you have the ability to do so, the safest way in that regard is to understand non-dualism. That understanding will clarify Brinkleys ultimate explanation, and get you out of the religion quandry. A far happier end, I assure you. That is all I will say here, as it is not directly relevant to the thread.

BD

 

[Mhz]

Symbolically and in some senses, yes and no. Literally, yes and no. Depends on perspective. What’s yours?

spiritofmaat.com/archive/aug2/dannion.htm

near-death.com/index.html

are two good sites to do some book learning. Doesn’t substitute for the real thing. Might try lucid dreaming experiences or astral travel, if you are stable and can find a credible teacher, That will give you some experiential data. As to its meaning, that will depend on your own history and predelicitons. If you have the ability to do so, the safest way in that regard is to understand non-dualism. That understanding will clarify Brinkleys ultimate explanation, and get you out of the religion quandry. A far happier end, I assure you. That is all I will say here, as it is not directly relevant to the thread.

BD

I’m not up for astral projection because of my experience with demonic individuals and the powers that control them. I’ll take a look at the sites you recommended.

As it relates to the thread, can you expand on what you mean by non-dualism?

I’ll happy to give you my perspective on hell based theology (as it relates to God’s love) when I have a little more time to write. Thanks, Mhz

 

[Detales]

Such malevolent encounters are a risk of such travel. Reportedly the best defense is training oneself to focus on the feeling of Love, Light, Truth, God, like that.

Non-dualism is the Root from which religions devolve into popularized forms and become entrenched as faiths as distinct from Knowledge imparted by an Original revelator. Non-dualism is not for most folks, by any means, as it requires a subtlety of understanding disabled by strong adherence to any kind of a faith system that results from the almost inevitable misunderstanding of an Original Teacher. That is why even rudimentary understanding of non-dualism in any experiential way might happen only after a “dark night of the soul” or after a shock of significant proportions. Such a shock must take one out of their ordinary frame of reference in a way that empirically demonstrates that ordinary awareness, and the feeling of separation, are completely learned and artificial modes of experience. Those modes of awareness are aided and abetted both by the structure, in our case, of English itself, and by the necessity of brain functions that enable us to cope with the astounding amount of information impinging on our senses.

Under an accurate auspices of analysis, it can be seen that our ordinary assumptions of our relativist interpretation of the world are functional in our cultural context, but they are not ultimately Real. They exist as experiential tools, but are ad hoc, contextually specific, and not Universally substantial. This is especially so over time in contexts where valid, but not necessarily true, logics can be developed to re-enforce the misunderstandings of genuine revaluations. This is largely due to mistaking contents for Substance. The map maker is left out of the interpretation of the individualized map. That map is in almost any case adequate only for limited engagement with the phenomenal world according to the simplest survival and comfort needs of the person.

Non-dualism is the ancient understanding of what IS Universally substantial Knowledge beyond belief. That is why it is usually categorized as a philosophy, and rejected by those who need more localized understandings of temporal situations. That need for localization and small scale sense (as distinct from feeling) of control is why why have an unfortunate tendency to crucify our Saviors, physically, or mentally by rejection.

This is the problem we are encountering in the ideological sphere of faith considerations as we find the global village mentalities with their ages-old parochial and locally functional methods of coping clashing in the world theater. We do not yet publicly understand the Root derivation of all of these seemingly disparate systems.

If that perks you interest, I can give you a bibliography to pursue.