Another Thought

I find myself thinking today about the idea of "eternal damnation". Once again, this is something that bothers me.

The way I see it, God has eternity. This means that time is pretty well an irrelevant concept when it comes to God. After all, time is a construct of man: a construct that I believe God uses to help teach us. But back to the topic at hand...

Allow me to propose a few things as true: 1. God is Love. (and all the things that go along with love like forgiveness, mercy, and grace) 2. God is eternal. 3. Eternity never ends. 4. In the scheme of eternity, a human lifetime is the equivalent of the blink of an eye.

Now, from these truths, I propose the following question: If God is Love, how could He condemn a soul to never-ending pain and torture for things that happened in the blink of an eye? To me, this kind of thing is like a parent who, when they find that their child has stolen ten dollars out of their wallet, takes them out and beats them nearly to death. We would look at that and say, "How awful! Look at how that parent abuses their child!" We are God's children, and I should hope that He is not an abusive parent. If God wished to condemn souls to an eternity of suffering, what then was the point of giving his only begotten Son to cover our iniquities?

And so, the answer is simple. Eternal damnation was never the plan. Eternal salvation was. Not eternal salvation for the chosen few, but eternal salvation for everyone because we are all God's children. Yes, that means that we must come to terms with the fact that when (not if) we get to Heaven, we might very well meet Hitler on the other side. Now, that's a point a lot of people are going to be angry at me for. I chose one of humankind's worst examples for a reason. I chose it because I'm sure it wasn't the first time (nor would it be the last) Christ said, "Forgive them Father, they know not what they are doing." Of course, I myself find it hard to swallow that I might well see Hitler in Heaven, but then again, I'm judging from the perception of man, not the perception of God, and we all know that man perceives in the flesh, not the spirit. That's why we don't get a say in where people's souls go, after all.

I think that when we die, we go through a major perspective shift. As we are: living, breathing, and doing stupid human things on the earth, we perceive things in the flesh. It makes it very hard to see the living God in everyone because God is in the Spirit and we're not perceiving in the Spirit, we're perceiving in flesh. When we die, we are only Spirit, and thus perceive in the Spirit and in truth. I think at that moment, we finally do "know what we have done" and in knowing the truth, how could you not ask for forgiveness? Ask and ye shall receive.

Out for today.
Falx