thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-08, Joel P. Shempert wrote:
Vincent, thank you for hosting these discussions. Thank you especially for inviting me, more than once, to testify to my beliefs. In our sparring, you have landed a few blows that hurt, but that's inevitable, and my admiration and love for you have only grown.
I want to echo these thanks, andextend them to you too, Sydney. That this kind of discussion can take place, with such starkly contrasting viewpoints, on the internet, without bitterness and offense and hurt feelings, is an amazing testament to friendship. it makes me wish I knew you both, as well as all the rest of you in the discussion.
A few standout bits on first reading:
So whatever Jesus meant in this passage, it has to be something more open than "if you weren't lucky enough to hear about Me, or if You did hear about Me but didn't believe I was your savior because my followers didn't explain it convincingly enough to overcome your understandable skepticism, or you originally believed but then something horrible happened and you changed your mind, or whatever, then tough, you're gonna fry." Nor can I find any passage in the Gospels that equates "coming to the Father... through me" with thinking some specified thought, or saying some specified words, or performing some specified action.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made... (John 1: 1-4)
. . .Jesus Christ is both human being and God, and specifically He embodies that aspect of God which created—well, everything. "And God saw that it was good" is the refrain of the creation story (Genesis 1). . .everything that exists comes from God and has some spark of that essential goodness at its core, however befouled and scabbed over it may have become by accumulated evil. Which means we can come to Jesus through anything, for everything comes from Him.
This is what I've been trying for the last few years, in a broken and awkward and frustrated way, to say to anyone who'll listen. You've stated it brilliantly and succinctly.
Hell is not other people: Hell is being trapped with your worst self, forever. Hell is closing yourself off from God so completely that just brushing up against a trace of goodness burns like fire. . .we have infinite time to make ourselves more and more miserable until boiling pits and pitchforks sound comfortable by comparison.
But if death is not the end, we also have infinite time to make ourselves better, bit by bit, with God's help, until we can stand up straight before the Lord and open ourselves completely to the good.
I assume you've read C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, 'cause what you've said is basically the cliff notes. Reading that book changed mythinking radically, and probably meant the difference between me altering my understanding of Heaven and Hell in Christian doctrine, and just rejecting it utterly. If anyone hasn't read it, it's a thing of beauty, a communication of truth through story without being allegory.
I do know I am promised the resurrection of my body, somehow perfected, not some ghostly shadow-existence: God created my flesh, after all, and He called it good.
To continue the Lewis love-fest: "God likes matter; he invented it." :)
