As time went on today, I found myself thinking more about this faith issue. Don't get me wrong, there are many things I care about but my faith takes a big chunk of who I am, why I am and how I am. It's kind of scary but also liberating because I never felt like I could always be totally open about talking about it due to a lot of worries about what people would say or how they would react but after realizing that I need to seek my overall health, it is best that I just let it all out. It just so happens that there's a lot.
Part of my heart breaks in knowing that what the tenets of Christendom are versus what is seen or demonstrated seem to clash an awful lot. The Bible, should you sit down and read the New Testament, clearly teaches that judgment belongs to God and that a person's state of salvation (or lack thereof) are not for us to pre-determine (or determine altogether) to begin with. The Bible (both Old and New Testament parts), whether it's in 1 Chronicles, 1 Samuel or even the Book of Revelation, it is very clear in saying that the Lord judges the hearts and minds -- areas of which we are not really able to truly determine. Let's be real, most of the time, we like to impose on others our ideas of what we think people have on their mind and sometimes, those assumptions are a projection of what we are thinking and feeling and therefore, my friends, we sometimes risk executing something we know as mental or emotional abuse or manipulation. A bulk of this has a lot to do with how we were raised, how those that raised us were raised and how they influence those that try to impose themselves on us.
As far as justice or injustice in the Bible, there's two sides to the coin. Sure, Israel was flat out guilty of murdering people they didn't have to murder although in some of those cases, some of them were people that stood by and watched them suffer and did nothing. As I once said in a Facebook status, "By standing by and doing nothing in the face of injustice, you are thereby choosing to support injustice, for if you were against it, you would act against it". Surely, some of these that were killed off knew damn well about Hebrews enslaved by Egyptians but instead of standing in the face of cruelty, they did nothing and thereby catering to the Egyptian bully's power streak. It only made sense that they got hit for standing by and doing nothing in the face of what was going on. However, we also find that not all of those slain by Israel were slain. If we look back, God gave the option of those who wanted to be spared to join alongside Israel. Let us also include that every time Israel strayed from God's commandments with their selfishness, consistent doubt and rebellion in light of seeing how powerful God is, God would strike them down and plague them with slavery and threat of death yet again.
Some may wonder what happened later on. It's simple -- Israel got so drunk in their power and promises that they even tore on each other, adding rules God never added, using abuse of spiritual authority to oppress people. With rules set to not only keep them in line but to also help those in need, Israel still showed something we've always known about mankind -- greed and selfishness and how those qualities can lead into excess, corruption and much unnecessary violence. Remember tithing? That was money used as charity for Levites (musicians) as well as orphans, widows and the impoverished. That's not going on in today's churches are they?
Fast forward to the Jesus era and we find Jesus flipping tables and whipping butts because of how you got people using the temple to conduct monetary business when the temple was designed to be a house of worship -- where people band together as brothers and sisters to seek the presence and love of a God that desires to make our souls rich because trust me, Israel had hardened their hearts so much against God with their lust for all things material that there was no way in hell He was going to restore their kingdom again.
Jesus was all about forgiveness and as I said in a previous entry, "go and sin no more" attitude. IT was as though he was saying, "Look, I'm not stupid and neither are you but I forgive you. Whatever you were doing that wasn't pleasing to God, just move forward on a clean slate and don't do it again". Now, do I believe in divine punishment? It's kinda tricky but I tell you based on my personal experience, as well as an eyewitness of others -- whatever you view to be God's punishment on you is actually nothing more than the end result of the screwups either you or others have done. Some things we go through are a result of things we shouldn't have done but did anyway, thinking that no consequence would come from it. Some things, though, are due to others conspiring to do wrong and you just happen to be a casualty in the process. Then there are also things that happen due to the chain reaction of things we do in conjunction or opposition of the actions of others, of which, in the end, not only affect you but also others.
As for correction, I still believe that in correcting the errs of others, good things can come to both ends, however, how you approach the correction is a whole other thing. I have learned that if you are tactful with your open rebukes or "stand to the side" rebukes, you can make a huge difference but if you are just brash and mindless about it, you will only create a monster or worse, open the door to abuse of some sort. I can put it this way, "a love unrestrained is a lustful monster not apprehended".
As for the question of Hell and punishment? Back then, it was easy for me to say yes without proof but now I am actually beginning to wonder. Also an argument I heard also made me wonder if in sending people to Hell with Satan instantly, wouldn't that insinuate that God and Lucifer are in cahoots and therefore there is an attempt of balance at work? We know the wage of sin is death. If we look back, after Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they saw physical death, not just a spiritual death in the severing of ties with God. Even that can make you wonder because it didn't seem like Abraham was so spiritually dead that he didn't hear God call him out, which is interesting because after the Garden exile, Adam, Eve and their family didn't hear squat from God and the first to do so out of them later on was Enoch and then Noah. Most of what we know of Hell is mentioned in the New Testament, hardly any reference in the Old and in the places referenced in Psalm, they were places where dead souls lied with no distinction on whether souls were devout to God or not.
The other conflict with this Hell business is this -- what logic is there for someone to die, burn in Hell, come back to life to face the Anti-Christ to resist or just burn again anyway? Theoretically, it makes far more logic to die, your soul wake up to confront the Anti-Christ and, with the knowledge and everything the soul knew and learned, decide whether to succumb to Satan's pet or to refuse with the intent of being ultimately saved. Even that process sounds like a mess of a cluster to me.
As for Israel still being God's baby, I can no longer agree or support this. My reason for this is due to Christ's crucifixion. Clearly, a man who shows through His life, attitude and work that He is the Son of God, the one you were looking for, yet you crucify Him? That's like God choosing to place his last ace in the hole to spare you of losing your bet with someone and then slapping His hand away, saying, "No! I can do this myself!", only to lose the bet now that you threw that one offer out the window. As a result, as Jesus said, the Temple of Jerusalem was utterly destroyed at the hands of the Romans and the fact that Paul was sent to the Gentiles. Let's also include that the promise of Christ was not exclusive to Jews -- it was for everyone. Now this may be quite a stretch but holy crap I'll say it anyway -- it seems to me that as a result of rejecting His only begotten Son -- God made it his point to make them pay for the rest of their existence. The Inquisitions, the Crusades -- all done by pagan men who paganized the Church with a ton of baloney -- of which Frank Viola goes in with Pagan Christianity, made it their business to make them really feel how messed up they were. It didn't end there either. You would think that after God knows how many times God would send off Israel into slavery, in the face of death and even under rule of empires, that they would learn to own up and who knows, I don't doubt that some may have -- except for that one idiot who told Hitler that he sucked at art and that he would amount to nothing. That one Jew set Hitler off onto a very evil tantrum.
Now does that mean that I support the Inquisition, the Crusades and even the Holocaust? Hell no! Jesus taught to love one another and even the early Church of the 1st Century taught us well enough to love and correct lovingly, to pray and to help within reason. The point I wanted to make about Israel's disobedience is the same point I made earlier about punishment -- your actions can chain react suffering unto others and even the actions of a group can affect a future generation. If you want to really get down to it, what Hitler did was wrong. What the Catholic Church did was absolutely wrong but what Jews did to God, in spite of all the things they proclaim Him of doing for them, was also wrong. It just so happens that certain agents came into play and a chain reaction of violence was the result. In the process, you have those who have forgotten how disobedient their ancestors were to God and you also have the teachings of Christ utterly ignored by people that oppose Christians as a result of the corrupt pagans that decided to tweak Christianity to their political and dictatorial gain.
Yes I know, this was a lot to read but this is a lot of many more thoughts that lay deep in the iceberg!