If it makes you happy..

[BoSoxGal]

wesw, I don't consider myself superior to anybody - we are all children of the universe (or God, as you prefer) and no better or lesser than any other.

Meade, I certainly understand that you might take offense, which is why I've gone out of my way to make it clear that no offense was intended. There is nothing else I can do - if you insist on being offended, so be it.

[MajGenl.Meade]

But I'm not offended! I don't understand what's been said to create that impression. We're just discussing stuff. How about that question - am I following you correctly, that by devastation we're both thinking of the awful things humans do on a fairly regular basis?

(I find Ray's know-it-all posts and insults offensive and I have responded poorly).

[RayThom]

"It's a well known fact that naturally happy people are the least religious. "

It is a well-known fact that people who type poppycock like this are not very disciplined in their thinking. One could write a fairly good sized pamphlet on the idiocy contained in that one sentence.

Obviously sarcasm is lost on you. Regardless, if you are, in fact, the one, I would like to read your fairly good sized pamphlet on idiocy. I'm sure you're an expect in the field. Fire away.

Bless your little heart... but God loves you anyway.

And MGM, thank you very much. At least you're reading my screed, as I do yours.

[wesw]

yeah, it would have been better to leave that first sentence out of my post Bigsky.

[BoSoxGal]

the only way to father is thru Christ, but can you define Christ? can you say with certainty that Christ cannot be more than was revealed to us? can you be sure that Christ has not appeared elsewhere and to others, or that he has not taken other faces or forms?

wes

I didn't see this before, because I didn't get past the superiority jab.

This sentiment is the only way that I was able to remain a Christian for the 'higher-educated' portion of my life, which was basically when I started attending church (again) in college/graduate school.

But many, many Christians would find this abhorrent. We have a whole lot of 'strict constructionists' of the Bible in our country, and I'm sure elsewhere in the world. Those folks would probably say you weren't authentically Christian just for saying such a thing, wesw.

[Scooter]

Si parva licet componere magnis...

Nothing in the bible precludes the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. If such intelligent lives exist, then surely God intends that they be saved, just as he wants all humans to be saved. With no way of partaking of the salvation offered through Jesus Christ to those on this earth, salvation must have come to those beings by other means that would make sense in the otherworldly cultures in which those means were used. Otherwise, God created intelligent life on other worlds for the express purpose of seeing them damned, which makes no sense.

So why would the same not apply right here on earth, where there have been cultures as practically isolated in time and space from each other as from any culture on another planet? Why assume that God intended Christianity as the means of salvation for indigenous peoples of the Americas or Australia, or for the Chinese, when the existence of those lands was as unknown to the Christian world as any interstellar life forms? Why would God have not chosen a means of salvation that made sense on the Indian subcontinent or in Siberia in the thousands of years before Christianity could have ever reached there, and which therefore would continue to make sense there to this day?

How could it possibly be that humanity was damned in the hundreds of thousands of years of its existence prior to the emergence of Christianity in cultures in which it did not spring up of its own accord? How could it then possibly be true today that Christianity is the only means of salvation in cultures in which it is completely alien?

The only possible answer is that it cannot be so.

[BoSoxGal]

^ this describes my current perspective.

So I'm a hopeful agnostic who wants to believe that somehow it all makes sense, but I'm not buying any of the explanations currently on offer.

[wesw]

well, my eyes are not up to reading my bible anymore, but I ll go out on a limb here and ask meade to find the verses that talk about people who have no idea about salvation or Christ, but who , none the less, lead a righteous , good life and will be saved.

perhaps in paul, I can t remember....

[wesw]

well, seeing as how jesus taught thru parable and metaphor, and expected us to see for ourselves, I d say the literal interpretation crowd (which I think is small, but vocal), is off base

[RayThom]

Of all the posts in this now horribly redundant thread your last entry says it all. Great insight and perspective so often distorted by absolute faith in one's god. It's too bad that the blind will not be able to see. Thanks. DIXI

[MajGenl.Meade]

Oh well - I'm a happily redundant person so I'll post some redundant happiness.

In another thread, BSG asked if people could convert "after death" - to which my reply is first "I don't know" (I'm not going to restrict what God can do). Secondly, it doesn't seem likely given what the Bible teaches. I didn't expand because it was not really the thread subject and I didn't want to appear to be lecturing (oh just stop it, Ray!).

But I don't think the issue is "convert". If the question is "can non-believers be saved" after death, then the answer (as wesw and Scooter both alluded to) is far more complex. This is what I think:

a. all who are saved are saved through Jesus Christ - whether believers, unbelievers or aliens
b. biblically Christ is God and yet the totality of God is not Christ (very Eastern, that)
c. before Jesus' incarnation, God saved people
d. therefore, for many people "belief" in Christ/God as He is/teaches in the Gospel is not the essential element of salvation. God identifies a form of "belief" in Him that we may not recognize as "belief" in the same sense
e. I think this means that God has made provision for people who never heard of Jesus, according to His own understanding - not mine or anyone else's. But the means of that salvation is the 2nd person of the Trinity, to whom the appellation Christ Jesus was later applied.

This comes across in many places in the Bible.
o Abraham is saved through righteousness (Paul) and his obedience to God (James)

o Same with Elijah, Daniel, Elisha, Nathan and so on

o After death, Jesus will judge all nations, separating the righteous from the unrighteous. His criteria (Matt 25:21-46) is NOT 'you didn't believe in me" but "you did not give me food, clothing and comfort"... by which he explains is meant not helping the least of his people (i.e. all people). Many are surprised to find they are included in the righteous - many more find they are surprised to have been left out. I take the latter group to be "believers" in name only.

o Romans 2 should be daily compulsory reading for Christians. Paul shouts it - that gentiles who don't even know the law in fact obey God's law in their own hearts and consciences when they do what is right in God's eyes. Read Romans 2 (especially vss 6 - 11 )

That's enough for now. I believe this means that those who don't hear about Jesus are as eligible for salvation as those who do. They don't "convert" to Christianity after death - "conversion" is beside the point by then. But I also believe that those who hear about Jesus and who resolutely and deliberately deny him have actually denied God. And that's a lot different from never having had the opportunity to hear. It is a conscious choice that has been made.

But what has "God's plan for aliens" or "God's plan for people who haven't heard of Jesus" got to do with any of us? We have heard. We have our opportunity. I think it extremely foolish to reject God because we "don't know how God deals with aliens or Buddhists".

I'm going to follow up with another post - a summary (not be me) of C S Lewis' thoughts on aliens

[MajGenl.Meade]

C S Lewis on extraterrestrials- from The World's Last Night: And Other Essays

(1) If there are species, and they are rational species with a spiritual sense, are any or all of them - like us - fallen? (p. 86). God's activity on behalf of humanity implies not our merit or excellence, but our demerit and depravity: "No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed" (p. 86). Perhaps the beings we encounter would not have fallen so far as humanity has.

(2) If all of them or any of them have fallen, have they been denied Redemption by Christ? (p. 86). If they exist (which is still hypothetical at this point), perhaps Christ has already been incarnate their world and provided salvation to them. Or perhaps, of all other created species it is only we who fell.

(3) If we knew the answers to [the above] and if we knew that redemption had not yet reached them, might it be that "Redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us [to them]?" (p. 88). Yes: "Those who are, or can become His sons, are our real brothers [and sisters] even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological, kinship that counts" (p. 91).

[Crackpot]

Which leads us to the likely situation should extraterrestrial life be discovered of a large number of our evangelicals making a nuisance of themselves to a race that may not have even fallen.

[liberty]

... "Dictating what or how they should feel" indeed. I am sorry for your childhood. It must have been unpleasant judging by your hurt and cheap insults.

Your smugness speaks volumes. Your God will be very proud, I'm sure.

Now, get closer to the screen
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IDIOT!

So, the General can’t defend his belief in God without being smug. Would you tell the same thing to a Moslem? Perhaps my reading ability in not up to your standards, but I didn’t see anything smug in what the Meade wrote.

[wesw]

thank you general.

[Sue U]

I'm far from focused on the afterlife - more on good wine actually. Why pick on Christians with those two accusations? Seems to me that applies to almost everyone. Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless. That's the ticket.

One of us may be hell-bound, Meade, but so far we seem to be on the same track.

[Big RR]

It's that last turn that's the killer; just remember, it's always a left turn a Albuquerque.

[Sue U]

But what if I'm coming from the other direction?

[Big RR]

Obviously then you're both on the wrong path.

[rubato]

C S Lewis on extraterrestrials- from The World's Last Night: And Other Essays

(1) If there are species, and they are rational species with a spiritual sense, are any or all of them - like us - fallen? (p. 86). God's activity on behalf of humanity implies not our merit or excellence, but our demerit and depravity: "No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed" (p. 86). Perhaps the beings we encounter would not have fallen so far as humanity has.

(2) If all of them or any of them have fallen, have they been denied Redemption by Christ? (p. 86). If they exist (which is still hypothetical at this point), perhaps Christ has already been incarnate their world and provided salvation to them. Or perhaps, of all other created species it is only we who fell.

(3) If we knew the answers to [the above] and if we knew that redemption had not yet reached them, might it be that "Redemption, starting with us, is to work from us and through us [to them]?" (p. 88). Yes: "Those who are, or can become His sons, are our real brothers [and sisters] even if they have shells or tusks. It is spiritual, not biological, kinship that counts" (p. 91).

I did not fall, I was PUSHED goddamn it. And Andrew Dulaney is right, you cannot claim that god is omnipotent and omniscient without admitting that he is the sadistic weasel who did the pushing.


yrs,
rubato