The Catholic Church definitely calls its members Christians. Before the Reformation and afterward. Eastern Orthodox members also call themselves Christians, despite not being Protestant nor Roman Catholic.
Anyone who acknowledges the deity of Christ is a Christian, they do not need to be a member of the Catholic, protestant or any other church, a surprising number refuses any church affiliation.
Let’s keep the “are Catholics Christians” debate off this thread. Anyone else want to comfort and/or scare me regarding the afterlife?
In the fundamentalist Christian belief, if you have not personally accepted Christ as your lord and savior, then your name is not in the book of life. If you aren’t in the book, you don’t get into heaven, no debate at the gate, no second chance in purgatory, only two places to go, heaven and hell. So that leaves only one choice left, hell.
Is that your personal belief too? If so, what’s Hell like exactly?
What about me bbbill? My earlier post above shows that according to the Bible, I, an atheist, get sanctified through my believing wife.
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originally posted by Priceguy
Anyone else want to comfort and/or scare me regarding the afterlife?
Are you really a true atheist?
Anyone interested in a Baha’i point of view? (Well, I’ve no time to wait for an answer, so I’ll give it, and if you’d rather skip it, feel free to do so:))
We view the life on this world, and in the next, to be a spiritual journey. They purpose of this journey is to polish our spiritual qualities to perfection, so that we will be fit to be in the presence of The Creator. God is perfect, and we cannot dwell with Him until we, too, are perfect. This cannot happen in this world, but we can make progress. In the next world (heaven, if you’d like), we continue the journey. When we are perfected, then we get to be in the presence of God. The Prophet/Founder of our Faith (who spoke for God, we believe) said: “Let deeds, not words, be your adorning”.
IMO, Priceguy, you’re gonna be OK in the afterlife. You may have further to journey than others who have made more progress in this world (and I don’t necessarily count myself as one of those!), but you’ll get there eventually. OTOH, Baha’u’llah also said “Love Me that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee”. So, the attribute of the love of God is one that you would have to gain and perfect in the next world.
My personal take is that God is love. Therefore, if you love (as you claim to love Pricegal), then you do know God, even if you don’t recognize it or name it as such. I tell my husband (the atheist) this stuff all the time.
As I said, I was presenting the position held by those who hold to a fundamentalist view; I have expressed my personal views elsewhere and won’t take the time to go into great depth here, except to say that I do not consider myself as such. I, however do believe that we are each responsible for our own salvation; we can’t tailgate someone else into heaven. I am not convinced that hell is necessarily a pit of burning brimstone, just a place of eternal spiritual separation from God. The epistles can present some apparent contradictions with the rest of scripture; they are after all letters written to specific churches or individuals and may have been unambiguous to the intended reader, but not so clear out of context to modern-day audiences. The sanctification here is of the union itself. The chapter that you referenced, 1 Corinthians 7, is dealing with marriage, not salvation.
Like LostCause said, the fire is not the main attraction when it comes to hell. I’ve been raised in a Presbyterian USA church.* My church has always taught me that unless you’ve accepted Jesus into your heart <insert rest of aforementioned rhetoric here> you go to hell. Hell is complete and total separation from God, which is the most painful and lonely place one could possibly be. This is being cut off from God’s overwhelming love and mercy.
[sub]*(Yes, there are even different flavors of Presbyterian in the Protestant church.) [/sub]
So it’s just like living on Earth now? Or do you think God shows us love and mercy here on Earth?
I’m a Catholic Christian. This is what I believe, without knowing if it perfectly squares with church teaching.
You arrive at the aforementioned gates. Rather than a conversation, you experience a presence. Or rather A Presence. You meet your Maker. If my own experiences in this earthly life are anything to go by, you will feel simultaneously complete and utter love and acceptance and complete and utter exposure. You are laid bare. Every small meanness, every unkindness of thought and deed are known to this One who loves you so much, as well as the overall good life you have led. The question at this point is not whether God lets you in, but whether you let God in. Because even in the face of such true presence you still have the choice to refuse this love.
I do believe in purgatory, but I don’t think of as a place where you “do time” to work off you sins, but as the state of not yet having chosen to be with God.
I suppose I believe in Hell also, though not as an eternal punishment, but as the most separate from God you can be. I guess I imagine purgatory as you saying…“I’m thinking, I’m thinking” and Hell as you saying “NO!”
C.S.Lewis’s The Great Divorce describes this separation from God.
The movie The Rapture starring Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny contains …Spoiler Alert!..A vivid cinematic portrayal of the choice to turn one’s back on God.
When I saw Dogma …Spoiler Alert! … the encounter between God (as played by Alanis Morissette) and Bartleby (the fallen angel played by Ben Affleck) looked a lot like I’ve always imagined a meeting with God.
What carlotta said.
This lapsed Catholic believes that God sees into all of our hearts. We don’t have to justify ourselves, because he knows us, and he KNOWS who and what we are. And that’s how he judges us. By what’s in our hearts and our minds.
Well, if this is love and mercy, imagine what hell will be like.
My POV on the issue is more or less fundie Christian. You have a relationship with God (accept Him into your heart) and you go to heaven to be with Him. You don’t have a relationship with God, you don’t go to be with Him. Which I suppose could be percieved as a kindness – those who don’t want to be with God won’t be with Him. At any rate, it’s the choice that we make in this life.
As far as I know (this may have changed) Catholics had a works based religion. In other words you could earn your way into heaven by doing good deeds and following the rituals set forth by the church.
Christians on the other hand believe that we as humans are incapable of earning our way into heaven. It could be summed up as this.
The righteousness that He requires is the righteousness that his righteousness requires Him to require.
In other words no unholy thing may come into contact with Him. God sent his only begotten Son to earth, to live a righteous life and be the blood sacrifice for our sins. (for there is none holy, no not one, except the Lord Jesus Christ). You see God had always required a blood sacrifice for atonement, ask any practicing Jew, the animal sacrifices were a symbol of what was to come in His Son Jesus. In the Temple there was a curtain, that separated the Arc Of the Covenant from the people, only the High Preist was allowed behind the curtain or veil. He had a rope tied to his ankle just in case something went wrong and he should accidentily touch the Arc, so the congregation could pull him out. Because touching the Arc was instant death. When Jesus cried, “Lord why hast Thou forsaken me” it was because God had to look away while the sins of the world were borne on to His Son Jesus. When Jesus died The Bible tells us the Temple veil was ripped from the top to the bottom so that everyone knew it wasn’t done by man. The veil was tall and very thick, I don’t remember exactly how thick but were talking several feet thick, no human was going to tear this veil. Thus symbolizing that now with the price paid for the sins of the people that believed in Jesus as the blood sacrifice for their sins, they could now go directly to God himself, for now God would not see their sins as it was covered and washed away by the blood of His Son.
So we can not earn what is freely given, our only act so to speak is to believe that Christ is indeed the blood sacrifice for our sins, our Saviour. A gift is not a gift if you work for it.
I’m sorry if this is a little disjointed, I’m tired and trying to hurry so I can go to bed.
Jesus said that if you have lusted in your heart, then you have already commited adultery, if you have hated your neighbor then you have already commited murder in your heart. So you see, there is none righteous, we are all guilty of sin and to God sin is sin, there are no degrees, any sin at all, even the tiniest of them to us is still sin to him and is unholy. So you see being a “good” person won’t cut it because you are already unholy.
Interesting question, Priceguy.
I label myself as a Christian, and believe that each of us, on critical examination, will find instances where we have behaved in selfish or self-centered ways–where we have not “loved our neighbor as ourselves.” These may be as trivial as St. Augustine stealing his neighbor’s pear or as grievous as mass murder.
While we can try to repent and “make things right,” we often lack the ability to correct our mistakes. And we frequently lack the will to avoid making new ones.
I believe the creator loves creation and has revealed himself both in nature, in our individual intellect, through his prophets (and their writings), and through his incarnation as Jesus. These revelations show each of us that we do not measure up to the basic commandments to love the creator and each other.
Jesus’ example and willing sacrifice provides a means to “make things right” which we as individuals lack. It also provides a promise that after our own death and resurrection, we will be be “fixed” so that we will no longer have the innate selfish tendencies that lead us to be unkind, thoughtless or cruel to each other. It is my greatest yearning to have this internal flaw corrected.
What do I expect to happen to me, and others who are aware of and have accepted the “means” described above? I expect some sort of process, either quick or lengthy, possibly physically or psychologically “painful,” that will correct our flawed nature and allow us to enjoy the presence of God and each other eternally.
What do I expect to happen to those who are unaware of have not accepted the “means”? I believe God loves each of us. He is not nearly as persnickety about details as his followers and (it should be clear to anyone that acts of kindness done out of compassion by an “unbeliever” are far more acceptable to him than acts of cruelty “done in his name”.) I do not think God will be fooled by labels or by whether a person has been sprinkled, dunked or gone through any rites. He will provide the very best eternity possible to every person created. That being said, he also will not over-master our own free will. To “achieve the very best” may require our willing consent, as well as some degree of submission and effort. Perhaps an analogy.
If heaven is being able to play the concert piano expertly–you will be provided with the piano. And the piano teacher. And the time to take the lessons and learn to play. And even with some internal urge to play. But if you do not take some initiative to learn to play and to practice, you will not ever be an expert. And, the earlier you start to learn (here on earth as opposed to in the hear-after), the easier it will be to get really good. Will you be in “hell” if you chose not to practice or even to bother to try? Only in so far as you regret not being in heaven…not being able to play the piano really well, not being able to give pleasure to yourself and others.
So, what will happen to Priceguy? As I see it, that’s up to Priceguy.
Ewwwww. And my apologies for the typos above (hear after, shudder). I tried to hit preview and obviously hit submit. Dang my stupid flawed nature anyway.
Define atheist. In the thread I linked to in the original post, I wrote:
That sums it up. I don’t think of myself as an atheist, since I agree with the definition in the American Heritage Dictionary: “One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.” I cheerfully accept the possibility that God exists, but I see no reason to actually believe it. I guess that makes me an agnostic.
Agnosticism is an epistemological stance - so in a theological realm, you might likely fall under weak atheism, noncoherentism, or apathetic atheism.
Yeah, I know, I’m nitpicking. I’ve listened to a lot of people argue this point before. Don’t mean to derail the thread here. Apologies in advance.
If I say I’m agnostic, most people have a reasonable idea of what I am. If I say I’m a noncoherentist, I’m there till midnight. Mmm’kay?