Is there a practice of worship in Heaven? (Jehovah, Egyptian, myths)

[HeelaMonster]

Originally Posted by Hannibal Flavius

Thats crazy lol, God created us for a reason, and that reason is not to sing songs, or to stand around, heaven is not a place, it is a job.

No, what's "crazy" is the number of assumptions you have packed into a single sentence. Namely....

1. There is a god
2. He/she/it created us
3. We know why we were created
4. We know why we were not
5. There is a heaven
6. We know what will take place there
7. Your ideas on this are any less-crazy than anyone else's

That's one heckuva sentence!?

[GoCardinals]

Originally Posted by Hannibal Flavius

Thats crazy lol, God created us for a reason, and that reason is not to sing songs, or to stand around, heaven is not a place, it is a job.

No.
This life is a job where your efforts will be looked at by God. If you make it, then there is no more job.

[Hannibal Flavius]

Originally Posted by HeelaMonster

No, what's "crazy" is the number of assumptions you have packed into a single sentence. Namely....

1. There is a god
2. He/she/it created us
3. We know why we were created
4. We know why we were not
5. There is a heaven
6. We know what will take place there
7. Your ideas on this are any less-crazy than anyone else's

That's one heckuva sentence!?

There is a set and appointed high prize that the bibe is instruction for winning that prize. You are in a race, you may not know you zre in a race, nonetheless, you are in a race for the high prize, do you know exactly what that prize is.

Again, we are all in a race for a high prize, unfortunately, most people havn't a clue that they are in a race, much less that a high prize is waiting for the winners.


I mean, imagine that, people don't even know what the high prize is, ALTHOUGH we have been told, they still don't even know.

[snj90]

Originally Posted by LuminousTruth

You are built to eat and defecate.

No, I'm built to love and to be loved.

I heard something recently that's stuck with me: humans are basically all born with a God-shaped vacuum in us. Very true. Our experience of love is due to the fact that we're created in God's image.

Biblically, God is Jealousy.

God commands that we have no other gods besides Him. He is worthy of our devotion! I also see jealousy as the flip side of God's love. When I went through my atheist phase in rebellion against God, I tried to get into paganism (though I couldn't bring myself to believe in the literal existence of those pagan deities). The fact that God would feel jealousy while I worship some idol instead of Him just tells me of His love for me. It's a possessive love. Yes, I cherish God's possessiveness of me!

God is Wrath.

Yeah, His righteousness demands wrath against unrighteousness. However, Jesus became sin for us and took the full and complete punishment for the sins of those of us who have receive Him as our personal Master and Savior. So God's wrath is satisfied with respect to the ones that Christ has purchased.

God is Patient until Wrath. When does love's patience run out to Wrath, though? Perhaps when love is seen as perfect only if it is Jealous/insecure. Such "good teachings" from the Dark Clouds.

We know from the Bible that God is slow to anger. You treat these categories as mutually exclusive when they are not. God does not cease being loving in order to be wrathful. He never ceases being any one of His attributes.

Does the Bible not say that God gives money to the deserving, is on the side of his slaves and rewards them with money in this life?

God gives or withholds earthly gifts to the extent that we may fulfill His purpose, on an individual level. Look to the blind man that Jesus cured as an example. Jesus tells us in John 9:3 that "[...] this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him"

Of course, the greatest gift is the free gift of eternal life. I don't think we should be too concerned about what superficial things we may or may not have been given in this present age, when those of us who have been elected to receive God's of eternal life will receive something far better than we can ever even imagine. And eternally! I'd rather be the poorest man in the world today and a recipient of this particular gift than the richest man in the world and a non-recipient of this gift that is to come!

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by Pleroo

Well I’ll be doggoned. I’ve been saying drug instead of dragged my whole life. Never knew people would be offended by it. It’s just how us ignant folk talk sometimes.

Those Limeys think they are so superior.

Somebody makes fun of ME for saying a'ready. He doesn't understand that the "L" is silent in New Jersey.

[LuminousTruth]

Originally Posted by GoCardinals

No.
This life is a job where your efforts will be looked at by God. If you make it, then there is no more job.

I don't think that is really how jobs work though. In a job, your efforts are looked at by a superior. The more you work and succeed, the more you are given to work; an idle worker is a business loss.

In order to pay you less, they promise you future benefits that they might or might not be able to manage. It won't matter because their benefit (paying you less) is immediate and thus more tangible than their promises (future losses).

The only way to "make it" is to variously manage to take the place of your pyramid superiors. If you make it, then you have pushed out the original owner through some unimaginably genius scheme and have taken over.

Unless your idea of success is mere survival or mediocre comfort and control.

Pray for it 5 times in all directions, and "making it" will only mean merely "making it."

[Rafius]

Originally Posted by snj90

No, I'm built to love and to be loved.

There are some questions waiting for you here:

//www.city-data.com/forum/relig...l-hell-10.html

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by snj90

No, I'm built to love and to be loved.

First of all, I wasn't "built." I'm not the product of a Lego set. You don't want to get me started on the human body and why, if we were designed at all, it was though "unintelligent design."

Secondly, I never understood the need for believers to have their purpose imposed on them by some third party? I decide for myself why was ... "built." I give my own life purpose. Or I may not give it any purpose at all and just enjoy life.

Thirdly, I love because ... I love. I am a thinking, feeling human being. I have emotions and therefore, I love. What I feel has *nothing* to do with a god. This is yet one more thing religion has tried to hijack. Just like it tries to hijack marriage, morality, the founding of America, and a plethora of other things. Yes, religion also wants to hijack love.

Sorry, but people have been loving each other thousands upon thousands of years before the Hebrews decided to make up Yahweh, the Musterer of Armies for everyone to kneel to.

Originally Posted by snj90

I heard something recently that's stuck with me: humans are basically all born with a God-shaped vacuum in us. Very true. Our experience of love is due to the fact that we're created in God's image.

I've never seen a god-shaped vacuum. Who makes them? Hoover? Kirby? Dyson? Shark? I might get one. I'll have fun moving god around the house as he picks up dirt. At least then he'd be useful for something.

Heh, on a serious note. No. Humans are not born with a "god shaped vacuum." I know that's what believers *want* to think because they just can't imagine a person who didn't want to kiss something's arse. Fortunately, I don't - and while I have many holes of a certain shape in my heart, none of them look like a guy with long hair, robes, and sandles. Sorry. Whoever said that line is awfully presumptuous to know what goes on in the minds and hearts of every human on the planet. The hubris is breathtaking.

Originally Posted by snj90

God commands that we have no other gods besides Him.

I chose to have no gods at all - including him. Well, actually, I didn't *choose* not to have any gods. That's just how my mind works - and there's not a thing I can do about it. Nor do I want to.

Originally Posted by snj90

He is worthy of our devotion!

He's worthy of being sent to the electric chair - or hung like the Nazis. Your God, throughout the Old Testament, loved only the Hebrews. And the only love he showed them was getting them out of bondage. After that, he started murdering them for petty rules violations or forcing them to walk around a desert for 40 years. After that, he ordered the Hebrews to commit no less than 25 acts of genocide - except when they were permitted by your god to take all the virgin girls as sex slaves.

Speaking of slavery, yeah, in Exodus 21, he goes on and on at length about how your permitted to own slaves and even pass your slaves to your children. You can bash your slaves to death if you want - as long as they die a day or two later and not right away. Women, of course, are slaves forever but men can be released after 7 years. But only if they're Hebrew. Nice, huh? Racism and sexism all wrapped up into one law.

No, sorry, no being, god or not, that turns Palistine into a sea of innocent blood isn't deserving of my devotion. Or yours. (Well, if he was actually real, that is)

Originally Posted by snj90

I also see jealousy as the flip side of God's love. When I went through my atheist phase in rebellion against God, I tried to get into paganism (though I couldn't bring myself to believe in the literal existence of those pagan deities). The fact that God would feel jealousy while I worship some idol instead of Him just tells me of His love for me. It's a possessive love. Yes, I cherish God's possessiveness of me!

Is jealousy a positive emotion? Hmm? Is it a mature emotion? Is it the kind of emotion a perfect, all-wise, all-powerful being should be feeling?

Plus, there is no such thing as "possessive jealousy" because that's redundant. All jealousy is the result of someone possessing something or someone you want. For me, if I had a boyfriend that started to become possessive of me - told me who I could be friends with, what to wear, what to do, and tried to run my life, I drew him a map to the door and told him to get out.

Why on *earth* would you think that possessiveness is a *good* emotion? Because it's not. It is extremely harmful, causes all kinds of crime, tears apart friends and families alike, and generally causes nothing but chaos.

And to think that an all-powerful being that is supposed to be perfect feels petty, harmful, and selfish emotions like "possessive jealousy" - sheesh. No thanks.

Originally Posted by snj90

Yeah, His righteousness demands wrath against unrighteousness.

Yahweh's wrath has nothing to do with righteousness. It has everything to do with ego.

Unfortunately, somehow being "ancient" makes it more believable, for some bizarre reason. So most people worship ancient gods that were invented to have the same exact weaknesses and foibles as any normal human being. Thus God himself does not act righteous - at all - especially when he's engaged in another one of his genocidal rampages because he's feeling ... "possessive love."

Originally Posted by snj90

However, Jesus became sin for us and took the full and complete punishment for the sins of those of us who have receive Him as our personal Master and Savior. So God's wrath is satisfied with respect to the ones that Christ has purchased.

As I've said before, this is like breaking your leg to sell you a crutch. God was the one who brought sin into the world, not humanity. It was his own stupid fault to lose his head and invite sin to earth when Adam and Eve at that stupid fruit that shouldn't have been in the garden in the first place.

Not only that, but it's immoral for an innocent person to be punished for the crimes of another. That's like paying someone to go to jail for you - so you don't have to face the consequences of *your* actions. Thus Jesus being crucified for the sins of man is an immoral concept. As if blood sacrifices weren't immoral enough.

Originally Posted by snj90

We know from the Bible that God is slow to anger. You treat these categories as mutually exclusive when they are not. God does not cease being loving in order to be wrathful. He never ceases being any one of His attributes.

Heh, God is not slow to anger. In fact, he's never anything *but* angry. You can barely turn a page in the Old Testament without reading about God murdering someone - or lots of someones - usually because God's ego was tweaked. Disobey me, will ya? Take that!

When God answered Elijiah's curse in the book of Judges and had a couple of she-bears set upon 42 little children and tear them apart merely because the kids called Elijiah "old baldhead" - is that one of those times when he was being both loving *and* wrathful? Because, to me, that just sounds like a petty god who got ticked off that kids were teasing one of his prophets. There was no love there. At all.

Originally Posted by snj90

God gives or withholds earthly gifts to the extent that we may fulfill His purpose, on an individual level.

Giving and withholding earthly gifts - you mean like Job? Yes, let's make him suffer so he can win a bet with Satan. Seriously? I mean, wouldn't Satan know that God is all-powerful and does not lie? More importantly, wouldn't *God* know that he's all-powerful and does not lie? Why did God even accept such a stupid bet - one where the outcome is preordained and obvious? Again, God's ego got in the way - he just *had* to put Satan in his place. And while Job may have gotten everything back, the fact is, Job's first family is *dead.* He didn't get *them* back. Is that the plan God had for Job's family? Were they "created" just so he could let Satan butcher them for the sake of a juvenile bet?

Originally Posted by snj90

Look to the blind man that Jesus cured as an example. Jesus tells us in John 9:3 that "[...] this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him"

In other words, there was no altruistic reason here. Oh no. Jesus didn't cure the man simply because the man was blind and Jesus was doing a good deed. No, it was to show everyone, "Look at me, I work miracles. Now follow me - or burn!"

Originally Posted by snj90

Of course, the greatest gift is the free gift of eternal life.

You mean "eternal servitude."

Originally Posted by snj90

I don't think we should be too concerned about what superficial things we may or may not have been given in this present age, when those of us who have been elected to receive God's of eternal life will receive something far better than we can ever even imagine.

One of the things I've always found detestable about religions is that they acted as though this life, the *only* life we know we receive, is nothing but a time to wait for death. Religion teaches us to waste this life wishing for the next one - and all kinds of fantastic claims can be made about the next life because no one has ever been there and then came back to tell us the truth of it. Or even if there *is* a next life.

Christianity isn't alone in that. No, almost every religion is fascinated with death and teaches essentially the same thing. I mean, look at the Egptian religion - they built entire cities for dead people. All that wasted time and effort. It's really quite sad. Especially knowing where our civilization could be today if we hadn't wasted almost a thousand years in intellectual darkness after the fall of Rome - everyone fearing death yet wanting it all the same.

Originally Posted by snj90

And eternally! I'd rather be the poorest man in the world today and a recipient of this particular gift than the richest man in the world and a non-recipient of this gift that is to come!

Yeah, this is yet another immoral paradigm of the Christian faith. Who really cares what your condition is in this life when, in the next life, everything will be glorious! This concept has led to almost inhuman suffering for centuries because, gee, why try to heal someone or relieve someone's pain? It's all temporary anyway - because the afterlife is eternal! Mother Theresa had a similar view of the world and thus became obsessed with suffering. Oh, not to alleviate suffering, not at all. She merely provided places where people could go to suffer while having useless prayers said over their writhing bodies. Oh yeah, and those places were nothing but pits of dirt and filth, starvation and disease. Yeah, the more you suffered, the better it was. While Mother Theresa made millions of dollars - and did *nothing* with that money to try and heal or cure people. Because ... why bother? This life doesn't matter. It's all temporary.

*sigh*

And I've seen that very attitude displayed right here by people on the forum. Whenever the subject of suffering came up, someone would essentially say, "Why should anyone care about their suffering when it'll only last 4 or 5 decades - until they die. It's macabre, morose, and disgusting.

[LuminousTruth]

Originally Posted by snj90

No, I'm built to love and to be loved.

Try holding your breath, then you will know the extent of your free-will and what your phenotype forces you into.

I heard something recently that's stuck with me: humans are basically all born with a God-shaped vacuum in us. Very true. Our experience of love is due to the fact that we're created in God's image.

Not to accuse others, as you have done, but perhaps It is YOU and those like you that have a vacuum in you which you are filling with religion desperately for a very different and very awkward reason.

God commands that we have no other gods besides Him. He is worthy of our devotion! I also see jealousy as the flip side of God's love. When I went through my atheist phase in rebellion against God, I tried to get into paganism (though I couldn't bring myself to believe in the literal existence of those pagan deities). The fact that God would feel jealousy while I worship some idol instead of Him just tells me of His love for me. It's a possessive love. Yes, I cherish God's possessiveness of me!

"Love is not Jealous" ~ Paul. One of these things is not like the other.

A more worthy god would not seek attention or nag sentient beings around. More likely, it is merely your Abrahamic split-animal blood magic and fertility pact religion that seeks envious attention and nags. It is rather pathetic to be jealous of stones or books in your, or your creations's and childrens's, honor. Truly a human mental deficit. Then again, look at the roaches, sharks, and monkeys, they seem to be breeding their phenotypes just fine.

What sort of pathetic atheist would be in rebellion against false religions and their false gods? Oh that's right, Christians, whom the Roman Syncretic Polytheists called ATHEIST.

The pagan dieties!? Ha, you should have looked for peer pressure somewhere else with better apologists and manipulators. It is not so easy to pick and choose somewhere where there is no strongly established writings to choose within.

Yeah, His righteousness demands wrath against unrighteousness. However, Jesus became sin for us and took the full and complete punishment for the sins of those of us who have receive Him as our personal Master and Savior. So God's wrath is satisfied with respect to the ones that Christ has purchased.

How about instead of wrath, goodness and love? Oh that's right Jesus says not to be wrathful against unrighteousness but instead not to stand in its way and also to give it more than it seeks.

The venerated writings also say that Jesus was without sin, and I think Mary too. Unless Jesus was fine with a dirty womb, he was certainly fine with a dirty land.

We know from the Bible that God is slow to anger. You treat these categories as mutually exclusive when they are not. God does not cease being loving in order to be wrathful. He never ceases being any one of His attributes.

"slow to anger" is undifferentiable from spastic and pathetically procrastinating like most humans who frolic to such religions.

Love and jealousy/envy are mutually exclusive.
Selfishness and Jealousy/envy are the same things.

To be merciful is to be unjust.
To be just is to never break that justice with mercy or unfairness and favoritism.

God gives or withholds earthly gifts to the extent that we may fulfill His purpose, on an individual level. Look to the blind man that Jesus cured as an example. Jesus tells us in John 9:3 that "[...] this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him"

Of course, the greatest gift is the free gift of eternal life. I don't think we should be too concerned about what superficial things we may or may not have been given in this present age, when those of us who have been elected to receive God's of eternal life will receive something far better than we can ever even imagine. And eternally! I'd rather be the poorest man in the world today and a recipient of this particular gift than the richest man in the world and a non-recipient of this gift that is to come!

We might already have easy eternal life, thank you. And with good faith, I can feel like we do. No Jesus was necessary and we are allowed to do anything within our capability. As such, it is good to know and do good. Foolish desirous people are not aware of this, and are thus easily ensnared by their imaginations.
Awaken and become eternally aware! I'd rather be the poorest in spirit, then to be ensnared by particular gifts like a fish to a hook and a lamb to the slaughter (the only place they are taken is being used and consumed).

[LuminousTruth]

Originally Posted by snj90

Well, they're wrong. The Bible clearly teaches that salvation is through faith alone.

Ephesians 2:8-9

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast."


So salvation is:

-through faith alone
-through grace alone

Note also that faith itself is a gift from God. Salvific faith is a gift from God. It is not of anyone's own doing.
....

Far be it for me to defend the Christians from the Christians, but

As if though people don't boast of gifts. Often, they are more willing to boast of gifts than of what they work hard for and justly and fairly deserve in a good world.