EDIT: I made a few adjustments to this post. Again I am truly sorry if this causes a chink in anyones faith. I am not trying to deter you from the faith, these are questions that I personally struggle with as a believer and Satan uses them constantly to make me feel terrible. I would be extremely grateful for any help.
First off are these verses here:
"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." - Matthew 7:13-14
This seems to indicate that the vast majority of people are going to end up in hell. A lot of your friends and family are going to go to hell. To me that is incredibly depressing. How do you find joy in the midst of your faith while in the back of your mind you know this is going to be the end result? How do you fully worship God having that kind of knowledge? Why would you even have children? You'd be doing them a disservice as the overwhelmingly likelihood is that they will fail.
Then there's these verses here:
"So then, it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden." - Romans 9:16-18
And:
"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:" - Ephesians 1:4
God commissions us to go out and preach the gospel to every creature. These verses seem problematic because they diffuse the drive to go out and do that based on the fact that we already know what will happen. It causes the believer to be less vehement in their own spiritual lives, because they think that their salvation is pre-determined.
Which brings to question, why did God create man with foreknowledge that man would sin and fall and that forever in eternity a vast majority would be suffering in eternal torment? The gospel is called good news, but how is that good news? Is this Gods plan of salvation? Can anyone rebuke me with sound reasoning and scripture? I guess there are similarities to prayer in a way, as God knows what you'll say before you say it. It would be ludicrous if we stopped praying for that reason. Still, I'd like to know the mechanisms behind it all.
Here's my next question. In a court of law, if a man is found guilty of murder, is it just if someone intercedes and pays for that persons crime on his behalf? This is a key ingredient in the gospel. I've heard a few people try to explain this by mentioning spiritual marriage, something about the first adam and that in the Torah (first 5 books) the law was that when a womans husband died she may go free. But it's all so vague, can anybody bring any clarity to that?
Next question:
Why is the gospel so confusing? Is it because by seeing I see not, and by hearing I hear not? Am I spiritually blind? Why wouldn't the bible clearly outline, almost in a bulletpoint fashion what needs to be done? Human souls are on the line after all.
You have some people saying it's by faith alone through grace and that through an easy yolk and light burden it allows healing and transformation to take place, and that that leads to fruits of the spirit. It would make sense because disabled people, drug addicts, the uneducated and elderly this way could all be saved, they all stand a chance via this method. Other people say faith without works is dead, that the Sabbath still needs to be observed, that not one jot or tittle of the law was changed. That you need to work out your salvation in fear and trembling. That you're in a spiritual war and you need to be on guard, vigilant in prayer against Satan whom is like a roaring lion. How could the common people ever stand a chance in this case?
Whatever way you swing, you run the risk of eternal punishment. If you decide just to have faith in Jesus Christ, you risk him saying "depart from me you workers of lawlessness, I never knew you". If you stress to do works in an attempt to please him, in fear and trembling like the bible says. You will suffer almost like a form of mental illness, where you'll find yourself constantly feeling guilty, "trying" to walk in freedom, "trying" to love God. This is how people end up stuck in a religious mentality and develop no proper relationship with God.
Then there's a mix and mash of the two together, which I think is probably closer to what it's meant to be. It's neither to the left or the right. The answer seems to lie somewhere in the middle, but I am still unsure. Does anyone actually know what they're following? And please tell me why it's good news. We need to get this right guys, because the consequences are too severe to get it wrong. What makes you so sure that you've got it right? Let me know.
The next question is a big one. It's been on my mind off and on and that is the theology of oneness. It's pagan, but it still bothers me. It's a belief that we are all God, or a part of God. That the sense of self you have developed is an illusion, they call this the "ego".
When people take psychdelics substances, many describe what is called "ego death". Their sense of self, of being an individual dissolves and they realize that there is no separation between the observer and the observed. You don't need me to tell you why that is infinitesimally depressing. It basically means that you are the only thing that exists. In freemasonry one of the highest secret truths to be attained, is that when you hurt other people you are hurting yourself.
When you think about it, from childhood your ego starts to form, when you were a baby it was never there. Your identity seems to establish itself around your teenage years. By the time you're an old man or woman, you become senile and start to lose that identity again. "naked I came into the world, and naked will I return". You can also see a loss of a persons personality in cases like dementia and Alzheimers.
There are so many people out there with the name "john", and their identity is formed by the culture they were brought up in, the genetics they inherited from their parents and environmental factors. What if we were all just numbered instead of having names? Have you seen the way China treats its citizens? They don't allow them to properly develop their egos. From that you can kind of see what I'm talking about. Japan actually has this common proverb "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down".
Do you kind of get why I think there might be some truth to this? It's truly awful to contemplate. And there are some scriptures that make me worry this might be true:
"Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" - Romans 9:21
He's saying we were made out of "the same lump of clay". And all of us have our lineage from Adam and Eve, who comes from God. He breathed his spirit into them and made them animated.
"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." - John 17:21
"For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ." - 1 Corinthians 12:12
"And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it." - 1 Corinthians 12:26
"And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." - Matthew 25:40
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." - John 17:21
"And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh." - Mark 10:8
The gospel is all about relationships, our relationship with god and with people. I know that there is an element of truth to this oneness stuff, but of course since Satan has gotten his grubbby paws on it, it has become corrupted. Satan wants the creation to think that it is God, that is how he deceived a third of the angels. It must have been something really convincing to deceive them, and this theology seems to be it. I can't think of anything else.
My worry is that the reason God created everything, was out of the loneliness of being an eternal self existing being. So he fractured himself into each of us, and that is why love is the most important truth. That to me is depressing beyond measure. I want my God to be a being, that needs nothing and nobody.
Finally, I am deeply saddened by the state of this world. All of the hurt, broken relationships, death and poverty. The entertainment and media that is commonly consumed by the world is depressing. I feel burdened by all this knowledge since I became a Christian and find myself reminiscing back on the days when I was innocent and happy. I wonder why this all had to happen and start to think wouldn't it have been better to create nothing instead? Why did Jesus have to die? Why does there have to be death and blood spilled for sin? Couldn't creation have been some other way? I just feel a deep existential sadness that is difficult to put in words, and I feel that when I try to declare promises in the scriptures sometimes I am kidding myself.
Anyway that's everything, again I am sorry if this is a strain to read. I hope that if anything positive comes from this, that it might be a motivator for us to read our bibles and actually get to the bottom of these things.
Submitted December 22, 2018 at 07:55AM by egg231 http://bit.ly/2Lux3d0
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