Thanks susan.
We must have made a connection once before too. I've been away from the forum since the pay-subscription thing, but now I'm back I think you're the only one on my friend list who is still active.
Beren,
yes that sounds like the Mormon perspective I think...?
It's not something that would get me back in to christianity though. If there's no hell then there's no need to be saved, so no need for Jesus 'sacrifice'.
My KJV only brother has argued with Mormon's and found their arguments convincing, but has still stated to me that if he didn't believe in hell he'd simply commit suicide and get this struggle of life over with...
Yet to me, Annihiliation is still a degrading concept, and something that most people would find offensive (without mental conditioning).
It's part of the, "He is the potter, we are the clay", basis of christianity - which makes human souls, and human experience, no more valuable than dirt, and God no more than an ethnic-cleansing tyrant.
(Which is also based on the Egyptian creator god Khnum, who created men from the mud of the Nile and fashioned them on his potter's wheel before breathing the breath of life into them... sound familiar?)
Being an eternal soul, one who is as capable of saying 'I AM' as any other being in the universe, I value my experience higher than that - so have sought higher explanations for existence than mere holy hostage.
I've already found evidence for reincarnation (check my sig), which is now grounds for all manner of other research into our existence.
So for me the bible is really irrelevant, except as a 'version' of history/mythology, and modern research is constantly proving it wrong in that field too.
Basically I think we are all a part of God.
She spun us off from herself, into the ignorance of flesh, in order to experience what her all-knowing mind couldn't.
Ignorance breeds suffering.
Suffering breeds questioning.
Questioning leads to answers.
Answers lead to awareness.
Awareness leads to returning to oneness with the Creator.
(Hey, we need a Yoda smiley here.)
So, we are spiritual yo-yo's who's purpose is simply to experience. Only flung down with the knowledge we will
inevitably return - with great tales of wonder from our journey.
The one who spun us down would gain no benefit from cutting off our string before we came back.
