And while having this concept of “thee shall not steal”, does have a strong belief in the salesmanship value of syncretism, aka “anything the local religion has that you can baptize and therefore absorb, do”. What’s a bit of cultural appropriation between priesthoods, after all 
And while that sounds bad in the time that’s invented the concept of “cultural appropriation”, I do think it’s a lot healthier than other methods.
You’re reminding me of one of John Oliver’s sketches… one about treating any and all sides as having equal value… let’s see… ah, here.
Has Christianity ever been a monolithic block? No, not any more than the RCC or the Lutherans or the Jews or the Hindus are. But that doesn’t mean all groups were equally important or had equal influence in our world’s politics, art, literature, economic and philosophical development, etc., or that there are not, nor have ever been, positions held by a majority of Christians and others held by one or more minorities.
Late to the party here, but definitely want to join the fun while the party’s still going. 
First of all, where I’m coming from: I had a kick-ass born-again experience nearly 50 years ago. Since then, I’ve lost my way (been down that road more than twice, to steal from Sheryl Crow) and found my way back to varying degrees. Seem to be in a pretty good place these days; the amazingness of that long-ago night seems more present to me now than a hell of a lot of the stuff that’s happened in between. If you need to label me, call me a Jesus freak; I’ll still answer to that after all these years.
So, my best answers:
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Who the hell knows? We don’t need answers to everything. I figure that whatever a soul/spirit is, God’s got it taken care of. I’m good with that.
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I think this has been answered, particularly by tomndebb: there are only a handful of verses in the Bible that refer to Satan or Lucifer or whoever, and it’s clear that they aren’t all really talking about the same thing. Our concept of Satan has largely been formed by extrabiblical writings, from the Book of Enoch to TV preachers, with a particular nod to writers like Dante and Milton.
Is Satan a real being? I would say not: I think the fallenness (however we define that) of the human race is more than adequate to explain the evil in the world. But that’s JMHO, and is worth every penny you just paid for it.
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Again, well answered by others, but I’ll put my own spin on it: time as we know it is part of this Universe, this four-dimensional spacetime bubble that is God’s creation. He’s outside of his creation, hence outside of time itself. When we die, the resurrection is already there.
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I was briefly an end-times junkie, but that was all the way back in 1972. Now “I don’t think about that stuff, it don’t matter now,” per George Ezra.
Who knows whether the world will end next week, or last another million years? All I know is I’ve heard nearly half a century of people saying Jesus was coming back any day now, and they’ve all been wrong. And that’s just IME; people have been saying shit like that for a lot longer than I’ve been around to listen to it.
There’s no reason to pay it any mind; go out and LIVE! Love God, love your neighbor, figure out what your soul wants to do with this crazy life you’re in the middle of, and do it. If you’re doing that stuff when the Lord comes back, he’s not going to have a problem with that.
- I’m not going to worry about this, either. Let’s go with a very personal analogy: my wife and I adopted the Firebug a little over ten years ago. He’s in middle school now, and you know what that can be like. But even at his most annoying and troublesome, the very fact of his existence gives me great joy.
And I know my love for him is a pale shadow of the Lord’s love for us. Jesus said so (“Is there a man among you who will offer his son a stone when he asks for bread, or a snake when he asks for fish? If you, then, bad as you are, know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him!”), but I know this from what I regard as personal experience as well.
What would it take for you to stop loving your child? I just can’t imagine what it would take for me to stop loving the Firebug. So I don’t believe the Lord ever stops loving anyone, nor can I believe he ever stops trying to reach anyone, no matter how lost they are, no matter what they may have done. Whatever ‘hell’ is, we can only be there by the continual refusal to let God into our hearts.
And since God’s love and perseverance are infinite, and our capacity to shut our hearts to him is not, I believe that ultimately, hell will be empty. (Thanks to the late Madeleine L’Engle for this insight.)
But again, that’s just the conclusion I have come to. I’m not representing it as truth, just the belief I’ve come to. God is love, and his love is powerful stuff indeed. He’s not going to give up on us. That’s enough truth for me.
I’m a Jew, but I’ve also studied a lot of Christian sects, so I’ll try to give some Jewish spin, but also answer for non-Mormon Christians.
Souls come from God. God created everything, including us. Our souls are little reflections of God. Our bodies are ensouled when we take our first breath, just as God ensouled Adam by breathing into the clay He had formed. The word for “soul” and the word for “breath” are both “neshama” (or thereabouts) in Hebrew.
I think most Christians also hold that God created all souls, just as He created everything else. But exactly when and how isn’t one of those questions that Christianity is terribly interested in. The idea of a “heavenly mother” who created anything is foreign to Judaism and to most branches of Christianity. FWIW, Judaism holds that God encompasses both the feminine and the masculine, and is both more masculine than nay man and more feminine than any woman, and our sexuality, like the rest of our being, is a reflection of God. But I think Christians generally hold that God is male.
The Jewish belief is that Satan is one of God’s angels, and is a faithful servant of God. We don’t have any dualism to speak of. Yes, Satan tormented Job as a test, as part of a bet with God, but not because he was opposed to God. (And that’s a weird story.) Most Christians hold that Satan is a fallen angel who rebelled against God.
My rabbi said, “we don’t know”. In general, Judaism holds that when the messiah comes, at least some people will be bodily resurrected. Everyone? We don’t know.
Most Christian denominations hold that souls are judged when they die, and the second coming will mostly concern those still alive then. But I believe there are a wide variety of beliefs about this.
See above.
There isn’t really any concept of Hell in Judaism. There are some hints that souls might hang out in a dreary dull place, similar to Hades. And there are fairy tales about the souls of great scholars sitting around a giant table in the afterlife arguing theology. Also mystic stories about a ladder up to heaven, to the presence of God. And I’ve also heard stories about a hell that souls go to for a finite period, to be purified until they are ready to rejoin with God. But mostly we focus on this life. We say that when a great man dies he lives on in the world through all the people he touched and the good things he did.
Christians mostly hold that people go to heaven or hell (or maybe purgatory, if they are Catholic.) Traditionally, most Christians held that unbaptized souls are doomed to Hell, but in modern times, when most Christians are aware that there are a lot of people who never had any chance at baptism, there’s more an idea that God is fair and maybe God has some other way of dealing with those people that we don’t understand.
I would take exception to that last sentence. I think many (though not all) Christians would agree with what you say that “Judaism holds,” and might cite Genesis 1:27 that both men and women reflect the image of God.
It is true that Christians (and maybe also Jews?) commonly use masculine words for God (He, Him Father).
Some Christians believe that God is indeed masculine, or at least more masculine than feminine, either in God’s essential nature or in the way God relates to us.
Some Christians believe that God is neither masculine nor feminine, or both equally, but they use the masculine words out of tradition or convenience or lack of a better alternative.
And some Christians do avoid using masculine words for God, believing that it’s misleading or limiting or exclusionary to do so. (And some use feminine words, instead of or in addition to the masculine ones.)
And of course, many people of all religious traditions differ, or just don’t know, what, if anything, it means to be “male” beyond having a certain kind of body. Since God doesn’t have a body, God certainly isn’t male in that sense. Although for Christians, Jesus, who did have a male body (unless he was hiding something), is considered divine, so there’s that, for whatever it’s worth.
I am, perhaps, overly influenced by C.S.Lewis in this. I don’t have the direct source handy, but
quotes C.S.Lewis extensively on the topic, where he argues that we need priests and not priestesses, because God is Male and we are His bride. He says, among other things:
The last part is not mainstream among Christians. There is considerable debate on when bodies become ensouled, but I don’t think that any major modern Christian denominations believe that it happens at first breath. The Catholic church holds that it happens at the moment of conception, and even among those who disagree, many would say that it’s at some point before birth (which is, of course, very relevant to the abortion debate). Biblically, I think that most would say that both Jesus and John the Baptist were already ensouled at the time that Mary visited Elizabeth while they were both pregnant, and John leapt for joy in Elizabeth’s womb (John was conceived about six months before Jesus). And it may be a gradual process, starting with a very rudimentary or slight soul that develops.
I think Buddhism holds that the fetus is ensouled around the time of quickening.
Judaism places a high value on pregnancies, by the way, but the biblical punishment for injuring a woman so as to make her miscarry is a lot less than the biblical punishment for manslaughter.
You are referring to Exodus 21:22. Some translations refer to the woman having a premature birth, rather than a miscarriage, as a result of her having been struck. I’ve read commentary that suggests that conservative Protestant translations began taking that tack roughly 40 years ago, about the time abortion went from largely a non-issue to a huge issue among evangelicals.
Going back a bit in the thread, there was some discussion about the (unforgivable) sin against the Holy Spirit. All I can say about this one is that it’s surely mentioned in Oolon Colluphid’s Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes, due to the number of sincere Christians across the centuries who’ve experienced great anxiety because they’ve believed themselves to have committed that sin.
I don’t know what this unforgivable sin really is either, but if someone is upset at the prospect of losing communion with God, such a person surely hasn’t committed it.
God is a spirit, He has neither a penis nor a vagina. I think that almost all Christians would agree with that statement. Traditionally, God is more often referred to with male pronouns, so traditionalists get stuck on that. Very few theologians though would contend that God has a sex since it denies God’s sovereignty. If He wanted to appear in a feminine form, why couldn’t He? God exhibits characteristics of both sexes. He both bears and begets in various places in the Bible though I think that most theologians would say that more accurately he does neither. He creates in His own way and not sexually at all. It’s merely imagery. Deuteronomy 32:18 speaks of God giving birth to humankind and female imagery of God is scattered throughout the Bible (God is a mother hen, a mother bear, a woman searching for coins, a servant’s mistress, a comforting mother, etc.)
Only those who get stuck on the need for grammatical gender-matching; sadly it’s a big “only”. The official RCC teaching is that referring to God as male is a matter of grammar, but well… if people were good at understanding that not-so-little detail there wouldn’t be so much Mariology as we have. A lot of people have serious problem understanding that it’s not “God the Father”, it’s “God the Parent”.
There’s a bit about the “God the Father” part which I always think is mistranslated and misunderstood: there are verses where the word “abba” is translated as “father”. On one hand, ok, that’s the dictionary translation. But on the other I think it kind of misses the point, because “abba” is also the transliteration of that first utterance a baby makes and which, depending on who was near at the time, gets understood as mama, nana, papa… it doesn’t so much mean “Male Person Who Is My Progenitor And Has Power Over Me” as “person whom i trust, who gives me food and warmth and wipes my bum and tickles my tummy! i am hap-pppppy to see you!” blows accidental raspberry crosses eyes trying to see where noise came from
I swear a lot of theologians should have spent more time tickling babies. We might have had less wars of religion, if that had been the case.
Ghod save us from amateur etymologists.
Hey, if you prefer to disbelieve in a male-only, limited God, be my guest.
My own God isn’t gender-limited or age-limited.
Sheol is mentioned several times in the OT, even as a place of fire and punishment: Isaiah 33:14, Isaiah 30:33, also Psalm 9:17.
*While the Mishnah doesn’t elaborate on the afterlife, the Talmud (redacted in 500 CE) gives us a glimpse into the rabbis’ view of life after death.
In Eruvin 19b, we are told that all but the most wicked are sent to Gehenom (a fiery place, according to Berakhot 57b), but their stay in the flames is temporary. After being purged of their sins, they are ushered to Heaven by Abraham.
Elsewhere (Rosh Hashanah 17a), the torments of Hell are said to be temporary for most sinners - but instead of ending in Heaven, they end in nonexistence…In his highly influential book “Gate of Reward,” Nachmanides elaborates his conception of the afterlife in great detail: Once a person dies he is judged. The righteous go to Garden of Eden, which he claims is a real place in this world where souls are trained for the World to Come. The wicked are sent to Gehenom, also a physical place on earth where they undergo fiery torment. The most wicked will endure the tortures of Hell for ever; the less evil will cease to exist after they are punished sufficiently; and the mildly wicked will atone for their sins in Gehenom until deemed fit to go to Garden of Eden.*
So altho the current common belief is debatable, at one time the Jewish belief about Hell was similar to the Christian one, and of course it from when the Christian belief sourced.
As a Gentile, I’ll avoid discussion of the Talmud and other revered documents, since my ignorance of such texts overwhelms my knowledge.
However, I’ll note that I can’t find an English translation of either of those verses of Isaiah that mentions Sheol, or implies that it’s talking about any life besides the one we’re in. And the Psalm mentions Sheol, but doesn’t discuss its attributes. The consensus translation is basically “The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God.” Clearly not a desirable destination, but no mention of fire or physical punishment.
I tend to refer to God as “He.” My sister refers to God as “she.” Neither is accurate, but there’s no good alternative. Using the trendy “they” could be construed as polytheism, which would also be inaccurate for those of us with monotheistic belief systems. I’m open to suggestions.
It.
God is generally used as the pronoun as well by some congregations. Though it leads to some strange constructions like “Godself”.