Tonight we went to the Merchant Square section of Williamsburg to find something to eat. While we did end up finding a lovely restaurant with wonderful food, we also found street preachers shouting hellfire and damnation to anyone who would listen. One guy was holding a gigantic sign saying something along the lines of “DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU’LL SPEND ETERNITY? Heaven or HELL!?!?!??!” The second guy was just sort of standing there, and the third guy was actually doing the shouting/preaching. I crossed on the other side of the street, but what I could hear of his rantings, he was going on about “man lying with man” and “depravity” and “Jesus love you!”
Now, most of you know that I’m a Christian. I have been for a long time, though I never had a “born again” moment that so many people think you have to have. My son was born into a Christian home, so I doubt he’ll ever have one of those moments either. (I just read a very interesting discussion on the B-Greek mailing list concerning how the passage about how you must be “born again” could also be translated as “born from above,” but that’s a topic for another day.) So anyway, this guy was shouting about how much “Jesus loves you,” alternating with how homosexuals are all going to burn in hell. It’s crap like this that gives all Christians a bad name. When you talk about the same God loving “you” and damning certain people in the same breath, there’s something wrong. I’ve heard of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” which I think is fine, but that’s not what this guy was saying.
I think it is presumptious for humans to declare what God will and will not accept. There is scant evidence from the Bible that homosexuality is the mortal sin that some seem to think/claim it is. I believe in a benevolent God who wants his creations to eventually come back to Him. How and when that happens, I don’ t know. If you read your Bible, you’ll see that it isn’t exactly spelled out. There are lots of grey areas when it comes to “the path to salvation.” I tend to think that a truly loving God, and that’s what the New Testament tells us we have, would provide as many ways as possible to ensure that His creations found their way back to him. My way is through Jesus. Some find their way through Buddah. Some through various Hindu gods. Some through Allah. Some through other means. There, I said it. (I have one particular friend, whom I know is reading this right now, whose heart probably just skipped a beat at what I just said…) Baptists would throw me out for that. Presbyterians would probably laugh, since everything’s already been decided, anyway. Methodists, of which I am one, would probably call me misguided. My Sunday School teacher would call me enlightened, because that’s exactly how he feels. I truly believe that people who are doing their absolute best to live moral lives, to treat fellow human beings with respect and kindness and to make our world a better place, even though they haven’t “accepted Jesus as their lord and savior,” I still believe those people are going to be welcomed back into God’s presence, somehow. You don’t have to agree with me, but that’s what I think.
I also don’t believe that “hell” exists as the fiery furnace of eternal torment that some believe it to be. I believe that “hell” is actually eternal (?) separation from God. People gleefully and self-righteously telling others that they must “turn or burn” really annoy me. Anyway, I’m sort of rambling at this point and alienating my Christian friends. I do wonder, if we were to sit down with those street preachers, how many “rules” from the Bible we could find that they are breaking, and thus putting their own souls in harm’s way. I would be willing to bet there’d be at least one.
Those kinds of preachers annoy the heck out of me, too.
I have a friend who is B’ahai, and they basically believe what you do. I’ve always found it logically inconsistent. Paths that travel in fundamentally different directions can’t go to the same place.
However, I do believe that while there is only one path, everyone is given the opportunity to see it and decide whether or not they’ll take it.
Quite apart from the fact that if you’re insisting on a literal interpretation of the Old Testament you’re quickly tied in knots because there’s stuff in there that no modern person can possibly believe as literal truth.
Leviticus (the book that causes most of these problems) is a 6th-5th century B.C. manual for Jewish priestly ritual. It highlights the problem with all literal interpretations of any holy text: who is doing the interpretation and why they are interpreting it any particular way. Which shows that a “literal” interpretation is no more valid than any other interpretation: it simply is informed by your particular spiritual tradition, an interpretation from a tradition. And the hellfire-and-brimstone tradition that likes to claim ultimate truth on interpretation of the Christian Bible is simply another one of the available traditions. Of course, trying to argue this to a devout believer of that particular tradition is usually pointless almost from any viewpoint, Christian, other religious, or atheist.
Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
I think this pretty much sums it up.
I didn’t see them.