Saved?

Great Debates
21

Sure. You appear to believe that Hell is eternal torment of some sort, so of course it makes sense to avoid it under any circumstances or conditions. And, in the case of my Monsignor, when one can choose between eternal life, love, and bliss in the Kingdom, or spiritual death and annihilation, it makes a lot of sense to opt for the former. What I don’t quite get is the apparent watering-down of salvation to the point that it appears to equate with little more than “happiness”. If salvation is God’s gift to the tormented living, one might just as fruifully obtain it from a pill. I guess to the pluralist, anything that safely and efficaciously elevates the mood and/or outlook is “salvation”. To me, the stakes don’t seem nearly as high in that interpretation as what I was taught in CCD* classes ages ago.

*Confraternity of Christian Doctrine

22

I’ve wondered in the past about all those who have never had the chance to accept Jesus. All those people who lived before His time including the Neanderthals and the other hominids, as well as the billions of people since the cross who have never had a chance to hear about Him. I find the above verse addresses that wrinkle.

I don’t believe in the magic moment or date when “salvation” clicks in other than 2000 years ago. Even so, I believe and or speculate that date was programmed billions of years ago as part of the grand plan where God disassociated Himself or part of Himself into a universe of physical laws over matter and energy leading to the evolution of mankind who he desires to reconnect with in full.

But by design, mankind developed a free will. He acquired knowledge of good and evil. That’s what makes him special. Man has to learn to choose good and reject evil and abide by the simple commandments laid out by Jesus and many other men of “religion” in order to satisfy God’s desire to have decent associates. Fortunately, when we fail our sins are covered because we’ve been purchased by Jesus. All of us. But we won’t enter the kingdom until we are ready. And I believe that physical death is not the deadline to accomplish our reconciliation/salvation with God.

23

Ok I am very intrigued by the potential of the orginal post, as I raised it in the other thread as well, as to what saved means to people who make that statement.

Hopefully I can bring a new perspective to this, as all the other posts seem to deal with specific instances of being saved, rather than the posibilites of what being saved means. Which is what got me interested in the thread to begin with

I would like to start with my previous comment about being asked “have you been saved”:

So I would like to know from people as polycarp orginally asked “what this whole idea of “being saved” might mean,” or maybe we should ask what can we have a fundie ask instead.

I have frequently felt that there is a certain smugness or superiority when this question has been asked, which is also part of the reason this bothers me.

Besides my previous statement it is important to remember that saved also does seem to imply a particular event that a large % of christians, jews, and muslims never experienced having been raised in their faith.

I believe that asking if someone is being saved is pointless, as most religious doctrine tells us that God is going to make this decision. If God is passing out heaven passports or visas at a church somewhere, I have completely missed it.

24

The reason the different religions want their parishioners to believe their forms of Salvation is so they will totally disregard all else said by Jesus and Revelation.

Jesus never once said, “if you believe I died for your sins you’ll be saved.” Never once. He said, Love the Father and like that, love one another and then went on with the other laws of: do not kill, lie to harm, steal, rape, covet, etc.

Coming from a Christian family I noted that they were all “saved” yet continued to do harm to others. I tried explaining to them about the “Book of Life” wherein we are judged. A book with Credits and Debits. The Egyptians believed our heart is weighed in the balances against a feather. This is what Jesus was talking about, do no harm to others, love one another, take care of each other.

It’s interesting to note that in Revelation one third of the world will be burned with fire. And according to the Pope, one third of the world are Christians, 2.2 billion. That the Churches have convinced their parishioners they are saved by saying they believe Jesus died for them, and not by “good works” has allowed their people to think they can do whatever they want to others and they will still be saved eternally because they said a few words. This is what damns their Souls, if they continue to harm others.

Something else I noted in Christians is the nasty things they do to people, and then their justification that it was ok to do, because the other person had sinned somewhere in their past, according to the rules of the religion they were in, be it adultery, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, prostition. Whatever justification was necessary to not feel bad about what they had done to condemn another human being. Which as we all know, sex is not wrong, rape is. And then we see the Pope protecting his priests that rape children and condeming the women that have abortions even if they were raped.

In Ancient Times, that was the original law, Thou shalt not rape. But that was changed by Moses and Jehovah since both of them, Immortal Souls as they are, were exiled due to rape back in the mists of time. Making a law against adultery or prostitution then made child molesters of the devout that did not want to break a law made by their “God”.

The Conscience is a terrible thing to have atrophy.

25

For the record, the feather is a symbolic representation of ma’at, which I translated earlier in the thread as ‘rightness’. I do tend to agree that Jesus was attempting to promote this ideal; I tend to see all community-centred ethics as interpretations of and attempts to reach ma’at. (I also tend to think the thing people are striving for with this is very very difficult to articulate; the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.)

26

You ask why bother? So you feel that the only reason for people follow christian tenets or lead a good life is fear of punishment? I would like to believe that people are better than that.

27

What about the famous John 3:16 - 17

I think you are right about salvation being a personal, selfish thing, rather than making the world a better place for all, as I believe Jesus intended.

In this site, it lists the main values of christian living - you would be hard pressed finding these values in many christians.

  1. Worship only God
  2. Respect all people
  3. Be humble
  4. Be honest
  5. Live a moral life
  6. Be generous with time and money
  7. Practice what you preach; don’t be a hypocrite
  8. Don’t be self-righteous
  9. Don’t hold a grudge
  10. Forgive others
28

But you can lead a good life without anything exclusively Christian, or spiritual at all, for that matter. So without some promise of a transcendent afterlife (often being an alternative to spiritual death or eternal damnation), again, why bother?

29

Perhaps because, having been convinced of the existence of God, you feel love for Him, and wish to do His will? Perhaps because you love your fellow man, and wish to do right by them? A combination of the above?

I’m pleased by the expectation of the “carrot” but not to the point where it would change my behavior – I do what I do because I love God and man, not to “buy His reward for being good.”

30

I’ve known atheists who are better Christians than many self professed Christians are. They try to do the right thing. Not because they hope for heaven, not because they fear judgement, simply because it is right. I’ve known Christians who live up to their beliefs as best they can, and I’ve known others who were petty, vindictive, mean, dishonest and just all around worthless. Jesus himself had harsh words for the self-righteous and the “lukewarm”. Just proclaiming “I am better than you” or “I am saved” did not impress him. Actions did. He did not hang out with the “holy Joes”, he spent his time with those the “better than thous” treated with contempt.
Anyone can thump a bible and yell “Yayyay Jeezusss I am saved! I accept Jeezusss!” But, how often is it just empty words?
In my own case, I can only hope the good outweighs the bad. Too bad, you don’t really know until it’s too late.

31

Oh, I completely agree that one need not be christian/spiritual to live a good life. That was part of the reason I comment on your email. I suppose that if you believe that you should live a good life anyway, I don’t understand what you are referring to when you say why bother. What is it that we don’t need to bother to do if we take away the possibility of transcendent afterlife?

32

But again, this apparently acts-oriented approach to salvation seems, rather than right or wrong, simply unnecessary. As pointed out above, many athiests live morally scrupulous and generous lives; menschen through-and-through. In the version of Christian salvation I grew up with (which, I daresay, was and is pretty mainstream, as far as I can tell), one was certainly expected to be caring and loving; but faith was of ultimage importance. It wasn’t a “get out of Hell free card”; after all, Jesus bade his followers to take up their own cross, and keeping faithful wasn’t expected to be easy. You get tempted; you do penance. But no matter how upstanding a life one leads, no matter how happy and content one may feel, without faith, one is damned. This outlook makes pursuit of faith seem a rather urgent concern for the very state of one’s soul in the next world; not merely an comfort in this world to set against its troubles. In fact, one ought to accept persecution in this world for faith, if such is one’s fate, so “salvation” is hardly a guarantee of comfort, or even a palpable confirmation of God’s love.

33

(I thought I’d post before reading through the responses, so I apologize if I’m repeating others’ thoughts.)

“Do you consider yourself ‘saved’?”: to me this is equivalent to “What will be the ultimate fate of your immortal soul?”. To which I’d have to say I don’t know. I believe that it’s entirely up to the Father to decide on that issue. So I don’t worry about it–let God sort it out. I continue to live my life, following in the Son’s footsteps as best as I can.

I guess I consider Faith and Works more important than Salvation.

34

This is mainly in response to Loopy Dude, but maybe to others also. The acts are certainly necessary. You are expected to live and act a certain way. Professing faith is simply not enough. There have been plenty of horrific things done in the name of faith - the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch trials, stonings, religious wars, and those are just the “biggies”. How do those acts stack up? They were all done in the name of faith.

You say you can lead a virtually perfect life and yet you will still be damned… unless you have the right faith and “say the secret words”. To that I say, since none of us can know for sure just what is the One True Faith, why bother? They each claim to have a monopoly on God. We’re damned anyway, so let’s get to the fun stuff - looting, plundering, pillaging, raping the cattle and stampeding the women.

I don’t think God works that way, I don’t think anyone else’s “pagan” gods would work that way. It, to me, draws up the image of an Ultimate Sadist. One who makes us play a guessing game and bides his time, waiting to doom us all. I wasn’t raised to think of Him that way.

35

Well, again, I was taught that because we are sinners, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven without faith in the Risen Christ and the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Jesus suffered and died for our sins so that we might be forgiven. Forgiveness requires faith, which is renewed periodically by taking the Eucharist and Confession. There is certainly scriptural evidence that some allowance will be made for the pagan untaught, but for the person who is offered eternal salvation through Christ, but refuses it, there is only damnation. Whether this seems fair or not is, in this world view, quite beside the point. These are the core tenents of the Catholic faith, which we recieve from the Holy Scriptures, and that’s the way it is whether it accomodates our sensibilities or not. God does demand a certain amount of obedience, after all.

So how is it that others can claim this understanding of salvation is no good, from a faith-based perspective? Sure, you can say, “Well, I don’t like it; it seems obnoxious”, but do you then claim to have a superior understanding of the Word, than, say, the Apostle Paul?

36

Perception and interpretation-This is why there is a problem with any one person claiming to have all the answers and knowing who is going to be saved (or not)…

I disagree with your perception of catholic doctrine and the scripture if you believe that it says those that may be less faithful by catholic definition will not be saved.

This is because there is actually much contradiction in official church doctrine in this regard, the end result requires the intelligent to form their own opinion. As such what is taught today by many catholics within the US at least does not fall within this belief that all non-baptized will go to hell (which I assume is to what you refer). One of the largest examples of this is the catholic doctrine that after Jesus died on the cross he descended into Hell, had set free all the souls confined there, even the lost and the unbaptized so that they may rise to heaven. As such, it can be argued god showed that anyone can go to heaven as he loves all his children. It is believed by many in the church that since the death and resurrection of Jesus, all can go to heaven if they lead the proper life.

One of the other reasons that the catholic doctrine of all non-baptized going to hell is minimized in todays church is that it goes against current ecumenical works and beliefs of the church, which recognizes all faiths as children of god. If this non-baptized belief was still held to be true, then by church doctine, it would apply to all jews, muslims, and all non-catholic christians as well. Meaning that everyone but catholics are going to hell under this belief.

Far beyond this, catholic doctine and beliefs in themselves are still only one of many interpretations of scripture and christian beliefs. So when you say:

It is not so much that people are just being dismissive because they don’t like it, or “don’t want to face the truth,” but because they simply may disagree with your personal view of scripture and God. They have come to different conclusions than you have.

37

What you are saying appears to be not only at odds with what I was taught in CCD, but also the content of the New Catholic Catechism.

38

In addition, per Paul, Jews get a special pass as bearers of God’s original Covenant. The Promise to the Children of Abraham was not undone by Christ’s New Covenenant; rather, it was posited that all are Children of Abraham, at least in spirit, and can enter the Kingdom through faith in Christ.

39

Well, that is my point, what you were taught in catholic CCD and what others have been taught in catholic CCD are not necessarily the same thing, due to interpretation. What you claim has long been of contention within the catholic church.

As for the link, while informative, does not provide any evidence that the unbaptized will go to hell. While it mentions that salvation can be reached through sacraments, church and baptism, there are no exclusionary references of any kind there. This was your interpretation. Todays church has very specifically been careful about not proclaiming such things. What you claim goes completely against their ecumenical efforts.

Are there members of the church that believe as you do? Certainly there are, no one would deny that. My point is that there are also many that do not. Thus the whole point that it is a matter of personal interpretation. It is not a black and white issue as you made it seem in a previous post.

40

For the record, I rather doubt there is a Hell, or a Heaven for that matter, though I make no claims of certainty on any such matter. Despite some vestiges of heritage, I could not in any reasonable sense be called a Christian, not the least because I have no faith in the existence of God.

As for what the Catholic Church teaches, again, I’m not so sure about what you’re saying. Up until 1999, the Church official Church position was that Hell is a place of torment for unbelievers. Pope John Paul II added some nuance to this concept by declairing that “Hell is the state of those who reject God”. From the preceding cite, he is quite explicit in saying…

I see no indication of overt ecumenicism here. My father-in-law is a professor of European history and a rather esteemed scholarly expert on the Lutheran Church’s involvement in the post-War Ecumenical Movement. Mostly the sundry Christian sects have been quite amenable, the main exception being the Church of Rome. If they have been so reticent with other Christians, where is the evidence they’re even more inclusive in holding completely other faiths in higher esteem? Where are the explicit statements that non-Christians (excepting Jews, of course) go to Heaven too?