In my Church (RCC), we were taught that the time to reject sin, the time to pursue righteousness, is now. Why? Well, among other reasons, because “you know neither the day nor the hour.” God’s judgment could happen at any moment. No one knows when one will die. Don’t assume you’ll have an opportunity to repent later.
But I’m not sure how to interpret that, since it seems to imply certain things about God. For example, suppose there are two men of similar character, with common biases and inclinations. Suppose that both would, if given enough time, come to see God’s light and live lives devoted to His service. But the first guy is killed in a car crash before he sees the light. He is not in a state of grace, and he is not entitled to salvation (so goes the theory; of course, it’s up to God). The second guy lives to a ripe old age, coming to God in the process.
What does this tell us about God, if anything? There’s a certain randomness, then, it seems to me, to salvation. “Musical Chairs” comes to mind. The music stops and some are saved, and one poor dope isn’t. Or would God not permit this? Does God’s plan ensure that anyone who is “save-able” gets enough time for that salvation to take root? If someone would see the light by the time he turns eighty (and surely God knows this), does God make sure he turns eighty? And if that’s the case, what does this verse and notion really mean?
What are your thoughts? Scriptural support, gut reactions and logical assertions are welcome, as are the perspectives of those with different faiths and belief systems (including atheists). But please, don’t clog up the thread with “God doesn’t exist, so it’s a pointless question” posts. Thanks.
There’s other examples I’ve used in discussions with people. Take a good honorable charitable person who happens to be atheist because of their upbringing and personal experiences, or take a Buddhist who doesn’t believe in God in the traditioinal Christian way, but is taught to lead a life of kindness and service to his or her fellow beings.
Now consider a Christian who really struggles with certain weaknesses and goes through the process of backsliding and repenting, trying again, backsliding, repenting etc. According to some popular Christian belief the atheists who leads and honorable and charitable life, and the Buddhist who leads a life of peace reverence and compassion, will be punished along with truly evil people while the backsliding Christian who did as much harm as good in their lifetime will recieve eternal reward. This makes no sense to me at all. It makes Jesus and God look like egotists. “Unless you worship me, me ME! you can’t be in Heaven”
I’ll hear things like, “Yes but you can’t earn your way into Heaven through works”
IN studying the NT I noticed there are many passages that indicate we will be judged according to outr works and rewarded according to our deeds.
There are many passages like this. At least as many as tell us to believe in Christ and be saved They seem be ignored or explained away by much of modern Christian doctrine.
The Bible also spells out that belief in Christ serves the purpose of changing us into better people. Lip service isn’t enough.
As far as I can see what The NT says and what JC taught, was that our actions reveal what kind of spirit lives within us. Love, fear, anger, forgiveness, whatever, and that’s how we will be judged, metaphorocally speaking. Regarding non Christians I like this passage
A few years ago, I had a conversation online that touched on similar issues. My friend is a Christian but I’m afraid I don’t know of what denomination. The general conversation was about self-defense, killing someone in self-defense specifically. Most of the people involved thought that killing someone in self-defense was sad but okay. This friend said that she couldn’t be comfortable with the idea because she would be denying the person who was threatening her their chance to find salvation.
This was when I was still a believer, quasi-RCC (though I was never comfortable with the idea of Jesus), and I couldn’t agree with her idea. I argued that her position meant that she had the power to force God’s hand, that she had the power to deny salvation to others, that she got to create a timeline that God had to follow.
And that didn’t, and still doesn’t, make sense to me.
When I believed in God, I didn’t believe in a being who was bounded by a human life, who could be forced by circumstances into unwilling decisions. But I couldn’t reconcile this belief with any other religious belief about life, to be honest. It hits squarely on the notions of omnipotence and omnibenevolence.
Although I can completely see where you are coming from, I disagree with you on the point that God cannot demand that you worship Him. This is God we are talking about. The Creator of all. Why should he not be able to make decisions about who is to go to heaven? For those who believe in God, faith is the perfect means of seeing God. It does not discriminate. It doesn’t matter if you are smart, dumb, poor, rich, black, white, old, young. The only thing it discriminates against is the attitudes and judgements of the heart. Now after having said that, I do not judge other people based on their beliefs. The only one I can judge is myself since I only know the reasons for my own actions. My beliefs are slightly different than the typical viewpoint of Christianity. My beliefs follow that you enter heaven based on whether you believe in Love. Christ and God simply go by a different name and those who do not know them can still believe in them.
The RCC doesn’t exactly say the nice guy who dies on his way to confession doesn’t go to heaven. It doesn’t say anything about who’s where after death, except in the case of saints - that’s what makes them special, that the Church says ‘Okay, we know this person made it’.
The concept of purgatory is also relevant here, I think. The idea is not that it’s a punishment, but a period between death and heaven wherein the soul is made ready for God. Confession pushes it closer to ready than not, but lack of confession doesn’t necessarily mean that one is going to Hell.
God gets the final call, and I believe there’s a lot of support for the idea that God forgives those who want to be forgiven. I think Hell isn’t even necessarily an unpleasant place for those who are in it. God gave us free will, and made a place for those people who don’t want to be with God. The alternative might be what’s unpleasant for them. Certainly many things in life on earth work this way.
That is a great way of phrasing the paradox I see. That’s what makes me infer (though not conclusively) that if someone is “save-able,” God would not permit a seemingly random act, or an act outside of that person’s control, to interrupt the journey to salvation.
But if that’s the case, then what does the notion of “you know neither the day nor the hour” really mean? And for that matter, how does free will enter into it if it’s essentially an inevitablilty that the “save-able” will obtain salvation? And if God makes it a matter of free will, that we willingly choose or reject salvation and it’s NOT an inevitability, then I’m back to the original concern: Doesn’t that make salvation at least something of a crapshoot? At least some of the people who ignore the “you know neither the day nor the hour” advice won’t pay the price for doing so. They’ll ultimately repent. Other poor SOB’s will hit an icy patch on the interstate and too bad for them.
Does God only permit fatal traffic accidents for those either already saved or those who have no possibility of it?
I agree. But what does that say, then, about the person who currently has a heart filled with hate and despair, but who has the capacity to change. In fact, let’s suppose that this person would almost certainly repent given the time (within a normal human life span). Would God let that person die before he had the opportunity to choose a different path?
I don’t think that God punishes people on their way to understanding. People who do not understand are not punished. So if someone did something wrong, the point is for them to UNDERSTAND why it was wrong. If they don’t they cannot properly repent. But, I believe in reincarnation, and other planes of existance where we get to keep going.
That was my belief as well, that many things in life happen by chance but that salvation couldn’t be one of them else it meant that God was capricious or at least allowed a capricious system to stay in place.
But, as you note right after that, it’s a huge can of worms. Huge.
Well, you still wouldn’t know if you’re saved already, or ever going to be, so it still has relevance in a “time’s up!” sort of way, even if not specifically for salvation.
I don’t know about traffic accidents because I never saw any reason for God to be constrained by the length of a human life. And the idea of Purgatory, as mentioned above, plays into that as well.
I’m not much help, am I? These questions proved my undoing, so obviously I’m a bad person to attempt to answer them.
One is that different sects have different interpretations of the same religion. (e.g. Catholics go to confession, Protestants don’t.)
How do you decide who’s right and who’s wrong?
The other is that lots of people seem in trouble with your Church.
Everyone born before Jesus lived.
Most folk living in any country that doesn’t have Christianity as it’s main religion.
All atheists and agnostics, no matter how well they behave in society.
Assuming that God knows exactly when a person will be in a state of grace, if He preserves that person’s life until that moment, what happened to free will?
This is not true about the RCC. The church, at least since Vatican II, has held that seekers after truth (I think that’s one of the phrases used) can be saved as the Holy Spirit acts upon their consciences.
It’s harder for a non-Catholic to be saved, but it’s possible.
I didn’t say God *cannot *demand worship. I’m saying that a benevolent God, a God of love and truth, perfect mercy and justice, would not demand worship in the way much of contemporary Christianity believes it. I’m also *not *saying God cannot make decisions about who is to go to heaven {that’s the kingdom within you} Your own faith says to believe in Love. I agree, but more than simply believe we must choose love in the moment to moment situations that occur in life. Do you see that love fits your description of faith as the means of seeing God. It does not discriminate. It feeds the soul of the poor and the rich. The educated and the ignorent. People from all belief systems can choose and feel love no matter their doctrine. If the kingdom of Heaven is within you then where do you suppose Hell is? We choose and we bear the consequences of our choices.
Time is a concept that comes in handy for us but is non existant to God. The Bible says God is a spirit and those who worship him must do so in spirit and in truth.
A person’s growth or lack of it is measured by the spirit not in terms of time. Personnally I believe in reincarnation. It was taught by many of the early Christians as well as other religions but somewhere along the way early church councils voted against it. These same church councils persecuted and murdered the Gnostics and destroyed many of their sacred writings about Jesus. Keep that in mind when you judge how much you trust their doctrinal decisions.
Here’s an interesting exercise just for fun. Let’s say God has given us this lifetime to repent and choose God. That’s let’s say 80 or so years compared to eternity. Seems kinda short doesn’t it? The Bible says one day is as a thousand years for God. Not literal but for the sake of this exercise let’s say it is. That means 80 years is about 2 hours of one of God’s days. So our loving benevolent Father who wants us all to be saved gives us the equivilent of two hours to repent and learn to love God and our fellow man. Seems rather brief huh?
Reincarnation and a gradual spiritual growth through several lifetimes makes more sense to me.
I hate to use reincarnation, but this is the only way I can ‘rationalize’ the fairness issue.
My view of this right now is that we exist in a place where we are sepperated from God, and we will stay sepperated from God, unless we ask God to take us in - it is really our choice - not God’s (free will and all). God really does not have any obligation at all to take us in, Him doing so is His choice.
Well that’s one way of looking at it. I don’t think God decides who to take in on a whim or is governed by some set of rules. One take on this that I like is that we will stay seperated from God as long as we believe we are seperated. We are what we are, that is, children of God. Connected to God and each other in a way we can’t really comprehend because of our belief in seperatness. AS long as we believe we are seperate from God we will remian so. This can include belief in God. If we believe we ar lowly unworthy sinful beings then we remain seperate. As we choose love and truth more consistantly and learn to have faith in those choices, then we will begin to see ourselves and others as we really are.
Jesus said the kingdom of Heaven is within you. Couldn’t that mean that it’s been in there all along? We’ve always had it with us. We simply need to see it and live it.
Reincarnation just stretches the process out. It doesn’t fix the theological quandary. It just changes the question from “When do you die?” to “When do you stop being reincarnated?”