Darth Dane

"Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do" - Jesus

As one of the last things Jesus says, he says this.

Jesus in one huge stroke of genious thinking, absolves everyones sin.

We don't have to ask for forgiveness, because Jesus, already did this on our behalf.

It is not designated in Time or place who is forgiven.

If I don't believe in God, then I don't know what I am doing, and so I am forgiven. If I knew what I was doing I would believe in God right?
So if you believe in God you are saved, and if you are an atheist you are also saved.

Another angle is that, only Jesus(God) knows what "God" is doing, and so all of us humans, will be forgiven, because if we knew what were doing, we would be as Jesus or perfect, which we aren't right?

So all are forgiven and all go to heaven .




Waddya say?





DD - Love Spliff

ManM

Perhaps heaven will be hellish for some folks.

JCS

So he was speaking of those that nailed his dumb ass to the plank, what does that have to do with here and now.

Pointless, since there is nothing for which I need to ask forgiveness for, and in the event that I do, I will address that directly with the person I would need to recieve forgiveness from.

Save from what? A mythological curse handed down from one generation to the next? The one religion that cuts you than offers to sell you the bandaid.

Jebus is perfectly dead.

Only if I can have a cell with a view and all the pizza I can eat.

ex-preacher

As the Bible describes it, heaven will be a place of perfection and praise. In other words, no pain, no achievement, no surprise, no overcoming, no competition, no argument, no obstacles, no success.

Instead, you spend all your time singing eternal praise to an egoist who never gets tired of hearing how wonderful he is.

Sounds quite hellish.

ManM

Where does the bible describe heaven in this way?

ex-preacher

The Book of Revelation

ManM

Doesn't that conflict with Jesus's claim that the kingdom of God is within us? (I forget the location of the verse)

hingers

Good question. It's slightly different. The Bible says that the Temple of God lives within us, and that the Kingdom of God is coming, however I can't think of a time where he actually says that Heaven is within us.

ex-preacher

I would agree with the many scholars who suggest that the Jesus recorded in the synoptics had no idea of what later theologians termed "heaven."

Jesus spoke in Mark's gospel of the "kingdom of God" as an imminent eschatological onrushing of new world order. Later, the author of Matthew carefully changed every instance of "kingdom of God" to "kingdom of heaven."

He/she/they did this not because of a conception of a "heaven" but because it was considered blasphemy by many Jews to use God's name in that way. "Heaven" was a euphemism for "God" in much the same way that "for heaven's sake" is a nicer way of saying "for God's sake."

exnihilo

Theatricality is the style of the bible, as the authors were always careful to be as general and abstract as possible--as the creators of all good cults do--so that their words would appeal to as many people as possible. Kinda like a horrorscope.
Unfortunately Jesus is supposed to be God incarnate, so his appeal to God (himself) to "forgive them father they know not what they do" seems to pose some ontological problems.
1. Either he is not God, for since God is omnipotent he would obviously know what he himself is thinking and thus would have to be told by Jesus (himself), which would mean that Jesus is just some babbling victim of the gallows.
2. Wasn't that the plan all along anyway, for God to descend to earth and become the savior of all humanity, so once again these words--as well as the action itself considering god's aforementioned omnipotence--are strangely superfolous.
OR
3. It is a literary device used to speak to the reader and tell them something not obvious in the text, similar to a solliquy in a play or the words of an omniscient narrator in a novel.

With the first two, we are left with a character who is definitely either suffering from a split-personality or delusions of granduer, while the third simply gives us just another hackneyed savior figure, who doesn't posses half the realism as Homer's Achilles, Aeschylus' Clytaemestra or Sophocles Antigone.

Either way the events portrayed are cliched as hell, but I guess one can judge a people by the fictional characters they look up to huh ...

--exnihilo