Holy Moses from Sidney,
First, thanks for all the comments! I sincerely appreciate all of you taking the time.
Second, I think my message might have gotten lost. As Tim helped to point out, I was only talking about the math. I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that the vast majority of humanity aren't (or weren't) fundamental christians. BY DEFINITION, they are guaranteed to go to hell if they never accepted jesus into their heart. If even 50% of all humanity are christians, that still leaves half of everybody who has ever lived going to hell. That's rough!
Today, I want to discuss motivation. My question is this: Why do most people become christians in the first place? It's unreasonable to assume that, immediately upon becoming a christian, someone instantly feels a deep and abiding love for their god. Therefore, there must be some other driving force.
I submit that it's fear that drives someone to become saved. "Saved" suggests that there's something from which to be saved, of course. Saved from hell is the presumption.
Consider this: If you don't accept christ into your heart, what's the alternative? Eternity in hell, right? That's an awfully serious "Carrot and Stick" scenario. I think the mafia has a similar program... You remember, it's something like "An offer you can't refuse."
Imagine this: I come to your house and offer you riches beyond belief if you'll only love me with all your heart. That's literally all I ask. However, you have to REALLY love me, not just say you love me. Also, you really should start living for me (although, in some versions of christianity, it's not absolutely necessary).
On the other hand, if you can't (or won't) love me, I'm going to have to kill you by burning you to death, slowly and painfully. I don't WAN'T to burn you to death, but I just can't abide you with me otherwise. I already burned my dog to death in your place so that you'd have the opportunity to love me, and if you can't appreciate that, maybe you're just an ungrateful bastard after all!
Is there really a difference with what I suggested and what the christian bible (the new testament, anyway) purports? IMHO, it's exactly the same thing. Naturally, given the scenario I proposed, of course you'd find a way to love me with all your heart. You might even convince other people to start loving me, too, just to show how much you love me. Also, they may not really believe that I will burn them up if they don't, so, really, you're saving them from the fate that they'd otherwise suffer!
And WHY do people deserve to be burned up if they don't take what I offer? Because they're great, great grandfathers were jerks and didn't do what I told them to do.
Another factor in the "fear as a motivator" series is, instead of fear of everlasting pain and suffering, it's the fear of being nothing. It is damn near impossible to consider not being. That there is no hereafter. I'll bet that you can't do it... that, whether christian or not, you'll always imagine something after death. Go ahead, try it... I'll wait.
Finaly, I think the last reason people are hoping for some kind of life after death is so that "bad" people get what's coming to them. I can't count how many times I've heard a christian talking about how they hope some guy fries in hell, etc, etc. I think it stems from a sense of powerlessness. If they weren't powerless, they'd take matters into their own hands and not wait on an angry god to do their punishing for them.
Next week: The soul! What is it, and how does it work?
Now, conquer your fear and go out there and buy my house!
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8 comments:
This is a long post - but I do have a relevant point :)
I watched a fascinating video recently entitled, "The Man with Two Brains". A man who suffered from severe epileptic seizures (when are we going to have our discussion about design flaws, Anthony?) had his corpus callosum severed to stop the "brain storms" that were causing the seizures. The operation was a success - but the man now has no communication path between the left and right hemispheres of his brain.
For more than a decade, brain researchers have been studying how the man interacts with his environment with this handicap. One of the more interesting phenomena that happened as a result is that his left eye and right eye see the world in completely different ways. Since the two halves of his brain can't communicate, they have no way to compare notes and come to a shared conclusion as to what they're seeing.
In one test, he is shown two words. One eye sees "bell", and the other "music". When asked what word he saw, he replies "music". He doesn't say "bell", because the half of his brain that controls speech (and most cognitive reasoning) didn't see "bell". However, when shown four pictures and asked which one best represents the word "music", he points to a bell in a church steeple. The other three pictures all contain musical instruments, but he chooses the bell. It's his brain trying to let him know that he's seen "bell", you see.
How is this relevant to the current conversation? When asked why he pointed to the bell, the man struggled for a few seconds, then produced a rationalization. He said that the last music he'd heard was from the bells on the college grounds where the test was being conducted. When faced with confusing information, our brains work very hard to create a reason to explain the confusion. It's how we're built. We need to explain everything. We hate the unknown.
When faced with the great mysteries of the world, man has always looked for answers to explain them. When we didn't have enough information to develop a rational explanation, we developed irrational ones. We just have to have an answer - it doesn't necessarily have to make sense. We invented gods to answer the questions of "why" and "how". Every civilization that has ever existed has invented gods for this purpose. The fact that they all invented completely different gods has never particularly troubled those who believe in the gods that are currently the most popular.
Well said Tim. The mind is clearly a very powerful thing, although some are a little more powerful than others ;-).
Humans have always needed to find answers, from how the body functions, to how a little cell in the body functions and interacts with the other cells, to where we came from. Obviously, the last one is a little harder to determine with science, but that doesn't stop scientist from trying.
I recently watched a show on the Discovery channel, with a scientist’s theory of how we got here. He showed the evolution of our planet and that long before humans roamed the planet; the atmosphere was too toxic for most modern mammals to survive. According to his theory, originally there were certain organisms that emitted oxygen into the atmosphere. With nothing out there to keep the balance of oxygen down, eventually the atmospheric levels came to what they are today. I believe he also claimed our ozone layer was different, causing extremely high temperatures. We still have bacteria now that can survive in hot springs, when most others cannot.
He then went on to show how once the temperatures went down and the oxygen levels went up, those organisms began to evolve.
Of course, this is only a theory, and if you don’t believe evolution happened, despite the copious amount of evidence supporting it, then it would be very hard to accept this theory.
You are right, just because you have accepted Jesus into your heart doesn't mean that you totally are in love with him deeply right away. You have to work at your relationship with Jesus on an on-going basis. Just like I have to work on my relationship with my husband. There are times when I don't feel as close to Jesus as I would like to. I have to reach out to Him and live my life the best that I can. Jesus died for our sins. Once we have accepted Jesus into our hearts and keep Him in our hearts we are saved and will have eternal life. People can harden their hearts and turn away from Jesus. Jesus doesn't want half of the world to go to Hell. That is why we are here to have the time to come to Him.
To Tim and Stephanie:
All of this has been very interesting. It is interesting to see other people's points of view. One thing I do know is that I will agree to disagree with all three of you.
I know deep in my heart that there is a God. I know he created the earth and people. I know that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and that I will have eternal life with Jesus.
There is only one person in my family that has come to Jesus, and that is my Grandmother, who died when I was 16. She was the greatest influential person in my life.
My father passed away this year from alcoholism. I prayed for him and I spoke to him about accepting Jesus into his heart. I want to beleive that he did accept Jesus into his heart before he died but I don't know - only Jesus knows. But Jesus has given me peace about it.
Jesus will come back to earth one day and He will give Judgments to those people who have had so many times to accept him but turned the other way. He will not take pleasure by doing this but will be saddened - but as Stephanie says He is all knowing and he already knows who will and will not accept Him.
Intellectually, I am not on the same playing field as you people are, so therefore, I surrender. All I know is that my life was a roller coaster, one major disaster after another. I opened up my heart to Christ and now I live the life I have always dreamed of. Yes, there are bad days and bad things still happen. But I am not alone.
What about the people who died before Jesus was born? They didn't get a chance. Is that fair? Did God pre-judge those people by putting them on earth before they had a method of being "saved"?
And what was the original sin that we were all doomed for? Curiosity? God puts two people in a garden with a tree and says if you eat the fruit you'll die. Kind of like leaving a loaded gun around your house for your kids to play with. "Don't play with the gun while I'm at the store. Have fun!" Then a serpent (which God created) tells the humans that you won't die, but become like God and know good and evil. These people were innocent, like children. If you tell your kid not to take rides from strangers, and some sicko tricks them into getting into his car, do you burn your kid in hell as punishment?
Anthony,
By the way - excellent tactic for increasing your comments. Religion is guaranteed to generate discussion.
just testing...
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