Baptism and Purgatory

I have been thinking a lot about my grandpa’s last wish for me. He wanted me to baptize my two year old daughter. Now, at one point I had told my parents that I would baptize her just to keep the peace, but that I didn’t have the same beliefs that they did and I would basically be lying. The only thing that my mom had to go on was the fact that if something were to happen to my daughter she would be welcome into Heaven. Well, now the Church has decided that there is no more “in limbo”, where children and babies would be if something were to happen and they weren’t baptized before they died. So now that the Church has decided that, does that mean that all of the little souls that were “in limbo” get a free pass into Heaven? Same goes for Purgatory. A few years back it was declared by the same Church that Purgatory no longer exists. Now, I went to a Catholic elementary school where we learned all about Purgatory. It’s where a soul went to repent before going to Heaven. The soul had to be pure, so when a loved one died we were supposed to pray for them and that would help them out of Purgatory and into Heaven. I was a little girl, and in order for me to really process that information I imagined that my prayers were like tokens, and when my loved one got enough tokens then he/she could buy their way out of Purgatory. So, like I told my husband, what happened to all of those souls when the Church decided that there was no more Purgatory. Did they get into Heaven on good behavior? If anyone knows I would be MORE than happy to hear what they have to say. Thanks!

God, Omniscience and Ethics

We are taught that the god of the Bible is omniscient (all knowing). This certainly presents some philosophical and ethical problems. Theses are not the type of problems that can easily be explained away by simply yelling, “Freewill!” Even if it was god who endowed us with freewill, he certainly did not wish us to exercise it, as he did not endow us with the knowledge of good and evil (that was imparted to us through Adam and Eve eating a mysterious fruit, oddly enough). Some will say that the ability to disobey is evidence of freewill, but is it? Would Adam and Eve have taken the same actions had they known the difference between good and evil? Or if they had fully understood the consequences of those actions? Let’s also keep in mind one basic fact; god knew the outcome of the experiment before the wheels were put into motion. Read more

Pulling it Together

Just a quick post tonight. First, I hope everyone finds that the redesign is a little easier on the eyes.

This post is simply to tie together In the Beginning parts 1 and 2 as well as Original Crime and Punishment. In the Christian realm, you have the Fundamentalists: the Bible is God’s word as it is. Then you have more liberal Christians: yes, it is god’s word but some of it is allegorical. Many of today’s Christians believe that the creation story(s) found in Genesis are allegorical in nature. If this is true, then there truly is no such thing as “original sin” and, hence, no need for a savior.

However, if you are to go with the fundamentalist view, creation happened just as laid out in Genesis. If this is the case, one has to question certain attributes that we have assigned to the Biblical god. Example: if God is indeed omniscient, surely he knew how the events were going to unfold. Now, before people scream, “FREEWILL,” the fact that God knew what was about to happen before he even created the Earth is evidenced by 1Peter 1:19-20:

19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: 20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,

So, do we go with the idea that God knowingly created a world which would be forever in turmoil due to sin, or the idea that some parts of the Bible are allegorical? If we go with the former, why isn’t God held up to the same scrutiny that we would examine a case of any pre-meditated crime? If the latter is true, how do we distinguish the literal from the allegorical?

Original Crime and Punishment

Original sin; the foundation for Christian belief that salvation is necessary. The idea for this dogma is that due to Adam’s fall, we are all sinners destined for hell and in need of a savior. (Romans 5:12)

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

However, let us examine the original crime and punishment and see if this dogma holds true. First, does God himself believe that we should be damned for the sins of our ancestors? The Bible supports both ideas; yes and no. If you wish to serve a god which is more unjust than our legal system, here are your supporting verses:

Gen. 9:21-25 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father …. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan [Ham's son]; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

Exodus 20:5 I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Exodus 34:7 Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children unto the third and to the fourth generation

Num. 14:18 Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Jer. 16:10-11 Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? … Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the Lord.

If you wish to believe that the god you serve is more ethical than that, here are your supporting verses:

Deut. 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

2 Kings 14:6 But the children of the murderers he slew not: according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

Jer. 31:29-30 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity.

Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Now, let us examine just what Adam’s punishment was:

Gen. 3:17-19 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Hmmm. No mention of separation from god, or hell for that matter. And I believe that god’s original intent for Adam, before he sinned, was to “dress and keep” the Garden of Eden. (Gen. 2:15) So, Adam’s punishment is to do what god intended him to do in the first place. Okay. As a matter of fact, the Earth gets cursed by god due to Adam’s sin. Eve’s punishment is merely one verse:

Gen. 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Apparently, before the whole apple ordeal, popping a watermelon out of a hole the size of a grape would not have hurt! That’s right, we had no nerve endings or pain receptors before sin entered the world. And to love your husband is a punishment forced on to the woman as well (and thy desire shall be to thy husband).

Keep in mind that in not one place in the verses concerning Adam’s punishment does the Bible mention hell or the concept of his posterity being “born into sin” and, thusly, damned to hell. As a matter of fact, there is no mention of hell anywhere in the Old Testament. Every single place that you find the word “hell” in the Old Testament has been mistranslated. The original Hebrew in its rightful place is “sheol,” which in most of the OT refers to the grave and in some places refers to the underworld below Earth. The ideology of a “hellfire and brimstone” hell comes to us from the New Testament.

And, after all, should you choose to believe in a god that would not punish a man for the sins of the father (as shown by the above scriptures), how could you believe that that same god would damn you to eternal suffering for 75 years of “sin?” Seems like quite the unjust price to pay as our own legal system, while far from perfect, is more lenient than that.