Hi People,
I just wanted to post a few thoughts of mine about religion in general. I'm going to warn you that this is not for the faint hearted, or for the fundamentalists who think that asking questions about Christianity is a cardinal sin. This is for those who believe and want to believe, but just can't get over a few stumbling blocks. Here goes;
Why do we believe what we believe? Have we ever REALLY examined the nature of this foreign religion we dedicate our lives to? Do you realize that Jesus Himself wasn't even a Christian? But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I am a Kenyan by birth and was raised a catholic with a firm grounding in the bible and all its teachings and for most of my life, I believed it all. I accepted it, I never questioned it because somehow I knew that questioning would be wrong. And I don't want to go to hell, because that is where those weak in the faith go right?
That changed the other day when I became a father and I had to really think about the state of my spiritual life and what I would teach my son. I decided to get more serious with my faith and began a serious study of Christianity. I cleared my mind of all I thought I knew and approached it as if I was meeting it for the first time.
That led to me to ask fundamental questions that a "serious" Christian would consider to be childish and silly. Such as what did Jesus REALLY do for us? What is the significance of the crucifixion? What is the nature of God in practical terms? Why do we think God owes us anything? i.e. why should he answer our prayers at all? Why should we pray in the first place? Why is the religion of my ancestors "wrong" and Christianity somehow "right"? Are ALL my ancestors in hell simply because they were born in the "wrong" part of the world? Why are we asked to leave our brain at the door when we become Christians? The same way you would want to read the fine print before committing to a deal/mortgage whatever, how come it's such a taboo to ask difficult questions about our faith? I'll examine some of what I found in this blog.
Let me begin with a quote: Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the creator of Human intelligence.
The most important question (I think) is: What did Jesus REALLY do for humanity?
To tackle this, I reject all the answers that begin with "The bible tells us" and I approach it from the standpoint of total ignorance. For the simple reason you cannot logically use the document in question to prove its veracity now can you?
Who was Jesus? He was both Man and GOD at the same time.
Okay, so what is GOD? Wikipedia says" God is often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of humans and the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.
The important part of this is the attributes namely:
1. Eternal- Eternal means HE cannot die. it is impossible for GOD to die or cease to be in any fashion.
2.Omniscient- Omniscient means HE knows EVERYTHING. His knowledge is infinite and perfect.
Let's take a moment to think about this....HE knows everything, Not only basic facts but also perfect knowledge, not just what a chair IS but what CHAIRNESS is. HE knows what it's like to be an amoeba in the primordial oceans of the earth just as HE knows what you had for breakfast and HE has known all this for Eternity. HE knows what it's like to be you...or me...or a tree for that matter. HE knows EVERYTHING, there is nothing new for GOD under the sun.
3.Omnipotent-HE is all powerful, there is absolutely nothing HE cannot do with ease.
4.Omnipresent-HE is everywhere, always and at all times. Whether in heaven or on earth or in hell for that matter, HE is there.
So what did Jesus do for us? They say He suffered and died for our sins. So I ask, how can an immortal being die? or suffer for that matter? HE who knows ALL experiences in existence undoubtedly knows of even worse sufferings than crucifixion. For an eternal being there is no true suffering only experiences of varying kinds. We who have short lives crave comfort because we know that our time is limited so we had better spend it wisely but what if you were truly immortal? In time you would crave novelty above everything else, it would not matter if an experience was painful or pleasurable only that it was New and different. What is suffering to an eternal being? Boredom. That is the only kind of intolerable state that an immortal, all powerful being can experience.
Let us not project our own ideas of what is pain or pleasure onto a being so Alien from us that we cannot ever truly understand their perspective on things. From a human perspective, being crucified sucks, but from Gods perspective? just another experience in an eternal list.
HE sacrificed nothing by "Suffering" or "dying" as those are things that are meaningless to an Eternal being. HE cannot do any of those things in the way we as humans understand them because he is immortal and omniscient.
Some would argue "But Jesus was Human And GOD so the human half suffered and died and hence sacrificed for us.
Really? Is it possible to be equally human and equally GOD? those two things are not equal in any sense. Even if we say he was literally half human and half GOD, that means that the GOD half of his mind is INFIFNITELY greater than his human half. To put a number on it, let's say his GOD half is a billion times smarter than his human half. This means when he thinks, only 1/1,000,000,000 of his thoughts or actions are human in any sense. Is that really a human being at all? Can any actions taken by such a creature be referred to as human? when his humanity is only a TINY, TINY, TINY part of his Totality?
And don't give me that "it's a mystery" nonsense because that is just a way to close your mind to rational thought. GOD created the human mind and HE created it to be used, so USE IT.
More to come..
