Interesting take. Your point in general is well taken - but it ironically also illustrates what many consider the point of Jesus' message. He was telling the pharisees that their man made law is bullshit and standing between the people (Israel) and God. Martin Luther and the reformation were telling the Catholic Church that the Churches made made shit like indulgences were worthless. Protestants love to preach about Abraham being justified by his actions. Obviously it is not a good "work" to attempt to kill your son on a hill. But it was because Abraham (the father of his people -to whom the promises were given) had faith in God's word or his promise that Abraham was found righteous. He was found righteous because he was willing to act in accord with Gods promise. Abraham knew that God keeps his promises so there was no way God was going let him kill his first son. That was not a sacrifice that father had to make for the sake of his people. Rules made by man do seem stupid. And its possible if you had a relationship with God he would not mind if you did blow with hookers on the hood of your car. That would be between you and God. IMHO. However God might have another plan. He might hook you up with the hottest piece of ass on the east coast who understands the only way to keep a guy truly satisfied is to make sure he walks out the door sated.
Yes, hell, correlates to separation, or rather, the belief therein. As a rule of thumb, if you look around and see things walking around that appear to be separated, it's hell. Separation is the foundational theme/belief hell is built on...just for the hell of it. It induces sticky emotions and generally leads to entrapment. Hell is a belief in your mind, the power of which you greatly underestimate [judge] leading to "lost" entrapment. The stories of yet deeper, worse levels of hell are buried in "your" subconscious mind, which is connected with every seemingly separated mind. Always remember hell is a belief tracing its origin from before the foundation of time. Looking at the original cause of the belief is required to choose again what you want to believe. The worst of "hell" was felt emotionally following a wish to believe and "see" what separation looks like. This led the mind to scramble for a kind of salvation, moving further into the idea of separation, learning, trying to raise a sense of order out of chaos, resulting in what seems to be a tolerable environment. The world is a place to hide out, ostriching more or less. So this is like the far side of hell, and the way back to heaven back past the worst of it...not to experience, but to look at with new eyes and decide against it's apparent cause. It is all self-induced, self-inflicted. So it is all self-reduced, self-solved...albeit with help. The path of salvation is one away from pain and suffering, not further into it. Everyone will make it accross. Jesus
Not to mention that the world is flat and only about 6,000 years old. Yes, it's all coming together for me now.
The thing about rules, and why they are so bogus, is that they intentionally try to trip up the Son of God and make him stumble by making him believe in guilt upon his shoulders. The key thing to remember is that the guilt idea comes first [before the foundation of the world] and the world and its rules come second as effects. It is impossible to live and move in the world without feeling guilty for something sometime, if not all the time. This needs to be dealt with by seeing the whole thing as bogus from its foundation. The world and its rules can never actually cause, or be the cause of guilt. Nor can any of man's actions be a cause of guilt. All scenarios in which guilt seems justified as set-ups [traps], scripted from before the foundation of the world, and each plays his role to fulfill the "law" of the "scriptures" which "can't be broken". It's true they cannot be broken, as each fulfills his role as if his existence were one long deja vu experience. The key is to recognize how the entrapment occurs and begin to diffuse its cause by forgiving [patent pending ] whatever comes up in front of your face. This washes the guilt complex out of your subconscious mind and gradually clears your mind to make meaningful choices regarding the rest of your salvation. Jesus
On the other hand, here are a few of god's gems: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/stoning.html Tell me which ones are your personal favorites from this little selection.
Superstition. Leads to a theological bloody mess. The scribe does not understand what is being saved, nor how to save it. The misunderstanding goes way back to the earliest devolutions of Christian thought, and have "damned" its believers ever since. Think of the devolution like a Rubric's Cube puzzle solved and passed on, altered as each colorblind interpreter "fixed" the order of colors, making the original solution meaningless, and well-nigh unsolvable again. Damnation can never be forever, because it is not reasonable that the Son of God be destroyed or destroy himself. The entire Son will be saved or not at all. In fact it is accomplished, but waiting, in time, for the superstitious to drop their fears and fear-mongering, and find the Way back. Salvation is for the Son of God, saving him from his self-concepts. Self-concepts wander endlessly through time, "death" punctuating chapters in their seeming existence like periods in a long depressing drama called "life". It is not really a life at all, and parallels "life" in a tomb. A self-concept cannot "die" but that it accepts the Truth about itself. Otherwise it is indestructible, because from what the Son of God wants [a self-concept], he will not be saved. The genesis of all self-concepts is Self-denial. So their exodus is through Self-acceptance. This can take some time considering the disparities between the littleness of a self-concept and the magnitude of Self. It is actually frightening at first, even though the threat is totally self-concept manufactured. Heaven is working on emptying hell, and won't stop till it is completely gone. Success has already been achieved, from an eternal perspective. It's finished. And the truth of this is "at hand", now. Redemption is promised to all. Period. It is a path from belittlement back to magnitude. It is finished when all have returned to magnitude. Jesus
Heaven is for the few, not the many. It is by direct action of God that any were saved at all. in the Old Testament, out of all the world, only "the remnant - a believing group within Israel were saved. And it applies to all Matthew 7:13 âEnter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
"People" don't go to heaven. There are no people there. There are only equals, unlimited, having everything. So only the Son of God goes there. The at-one-ment is about regathering together and going there together, as one, the way we came from there. Before this world, there was no such thing as judgement. Judgement is what says the general idea that makes this world is real. Other than the judgement, the world has no reality. Following that first judgement, judgement became a neo way of life. It's a tool to see what you want to believe, operating with the basic law of this universe: You see what you believe. You believe it because you want to see it there. This is basically a formula to work magic, or shall we say, sorcery. It is a formula that has no regard for the truth. And so as judgment proceeds as a way of life, it leads further and further into the dark, such that those who use judgement cannot any more find their way. All of the laws of this world were installed by fiat of judgement. They are not really God's laws, rather, some upside down adaptations. Judging is a near constant activity of mind which is very wearisome. It seems it is absolutely indespensible for survival in a world built with it. So salvation involves a gradual weaning off of judgement, until all judgments are given over to the Holy Spirit, who has total knowledge, and does not guess. He knows the way out of the dark. Alas, you come to your last judgement, and are walking with the Spirit, as the Spirit, blowing where the Spirit blows. Alas, this brings you to the end of time, and the Ascension of the Son of God back to Heaven...leaving judgement behind forever. The last judgement will be from our Father: Where is the world now? You are my beloved Son, holy, unlimited, and free! This is not exactly what the world expects because it as pretty much everything backwards, judging all things from a fear-based point of view. The paradox is this, there is Self, unchanged, and self-concepts in denial of self. Self remains as it has always been, in eternity, in heaven, outside of time...now. The self-concepts seem to experience time while they continue to maintain the original denial that set them upon their various paths away from Self. So yah, you would probably want to acknowledge the Truth about this matter. And you would want to put your whole mind into the acceptance of it, which may not come overnight. And it depends on how much you want/will to be who you are, and let all else go. That is what it means to "sell all you have and follow me". Its the path from false self-concepts back to Self, the Son of God. You could say that after the first judgment [see above] "life" became a living death. Self concepts were never really meant to last indefinitely because they express attributes opposite Self, which is Life. A self-concept will make a change as it puts off the various frames [bodies] it associates with as "self". But the concepts survive and continue to change and evolve. The good news is that they can take learning with them through various changes, for learning is change. And the learning will gradually lead to a waking up from a deep sleep toward a full acceptance of the Truth, which will set them free from that kind of existence. You can grow to love God again, gradually as you learn again about your heritage. Jesus
Yes but since when did clever or intelligent people not do silly things? Like for instance talking to a giant invisible sky daddy . Or going to a building to communally act out various forms of strange weird and quite frankly- perverse practices, which if done in any other place, would ordinarily be considered lunatic, to feign communication with pretend angels fairies spirits and phantoms called holy ghosts. Intelligent people can act daft too. All it means is they are spending that time being a whole lot less clever or intelligent.