Ron's Letter to his church elder Ted,
(This started out to be a letter to you, but turned out to be a letter to me also. This is the first time I have actually sat down and put my thoughts into this amount of detail)
I appreciate the kind words you shared with me on Sunday morning. I am glad that you consider me to be a good person; however I perceived that you implied a condition to this statement. In other words, it seemed to me that you were saying, “Ron, I know you are a good person, but…” Ted, I also consider you to be a very good man and I am convinced that you have a genuine concern for me and for all other people for that matter.
You mentioned that we should sit down together and talk. That will be fine with me. Before we meet however, I feel that it would be worthwhile for me to share with you; where I am at this point in my life as far as my religious beliefs are concerned, as well as where I once was and how this change took place. This will not only allow me to carefully choose what I say and how I wish to say it, but it will likely keep me from omitting several points that I would otherwise forget. I also feel that if you are aware of my beliefs, our meeting will be much more an exchange of thoughts and ideas rather than a time of discovery.
I look forward to hearing your personal testimony – as you shared that you experienced a long period of separation from the church. I found this to be a bit of a shock, but I am certain that I can identify with you to some degree. I have no doubt that you will continue to think of me as a good person and hopefully you will accept that my beliefs are not based on a shallow rejection of what I have been taught and had once believed. Rather, they were formulated over a period of years of intense thought and study.
I have tried my hardest to keep this essay very respectful and free of things that I know will hurt you or offend you. However, having been a Christian for most of my life, I will understand if some of this seems negative or a bit cynical. For this I apologize in advance. My respect for you and your beliefs are profound, and I know that I can count on that same respect from you.
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First, I’ll share some of my personal history in regards to religion. My mother, whom you have met, is one of the most faithful people I know. She believes without a doubt (at least as far as I know) that everything in the bible is literally true and is an accurate depiction of history. As I’m sure you know, this perception of the bible is identified as fundamentalism. I suspect that my dad believes the same way, but he seldom talks about his beliefs or religion in general. Their belief is based on the Southern Baptist theology – of which I do not know all of the intricate details.
Like most everyone else in the bible-belt, I was brought up in the church, and believed that the bible made perfect sense and was in fact perfect itself, because it was written by God. At this point, my belief in God was not unlike my belief in Santa Claus. Please don’t read more into this analogy than it may seem that I am implying. It is meant to explain how children tend to believe, without question, whatever the people that they trust may tell them. I can see this even more clearly now in my own children.
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I was taught that a person who had faith could ask God for something, and if that person truly believed that it would happen, God could answer the prayer. When I was about ten years old I decided to put this to the test. If God could move mountains, then I deducted that he could surely do a small miracle for me. So I started with a light switch. In my bedroom, with the door closed, I began to ask God to turn my light off. I prayed fervently that God would simply flip my light switch to “off”. After ten minutes or so (which is a relatively long time for a ten-year-old), I thought that God must need a little help, so I went to my light switch and carefully positioned it in the halfway position. This was an old “click-click” switch that was spring loaded, so it was quiet hard to find the sweet-spot – the slightest nudge would send it to one of its designed positions. With the switch fixed in this delicate equilibrium, I returned to my bed and began to beg God to finish the job that I had started. Of course it never happened. Instead of assuming that God did not exist, I just figured that I was not doing something right or that I did not have enough faith. It was my fault for asking him for such a silly thing. I now realize that this type of supposition tends to have a negative effect on one’s self worth.
I continued in my faith and was baptized when I was thirteen, a few days after my grandmother died. When I went up in front of my church that Sunday morning, I remember that I did feel a great deal of relief, but I think this mostly was a result of having pleased my parents and the people in the church who loved me so. Of coarse the fact that I was now going to heaven instead of hell was welcomed too. (I believe that when we are faced with a near death experience or the death of a loved one, we naturally begin to think of our own mortality. This often leads us to make things right according to our belief system. This probably had something to do with the timing of my decision).
Although the light switch incident didn’t damage my core faith at the time, it did diminish my belief in prayer somewhat. From that point, I reserved prayers for the really important stuff, like healing people and so forth. Unfortunately the results seemed to be the same. Back then, I did pray to thank God for my blessings and before meals. (Even now, my family prays before each meal, although I seldom lead them. I feel very dishonest to myself and especially to my two small children when I voice prayers that I believe have no meaning).
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I remember that the first time I heard someone say that they did not wholeheartedly believe in the bible and its God was a pivotal moment in my life. It was similar to the first time that one of my classmates told me that they didn’t believe in Santa. I thought that everyone (who was not a complete idiot and/or satanic) believed - why wouldn’t they? The bible plainly tells us exactly who God is and what he wants us to do and believe about him. And I had received presents under the tree every December 25th. These were undeniable proofs. (I did not believe in Santa by this time).
This person who confessed that he was not a believer, in the fundamentalist sense of the word, was a person whom I greatly respected (and knew very well). He was a very loving person, fair, and one of the best fathers I have witnessed to date. Subconsciously (or maybe not), I had been taught that an unbeliever was evil to the core and was fit to be imprisoned or worse. Later I would realize that this idea came both from my mother and from the bible. After all, these people were headed straight to hell and rightly so. But my respected friend’s view changed everything. My beliefs forced me to accept that one of the nicest, most sincere people I knew was going to burn forever. Hell was no longer reserved for the satanic, rapists, and murderers, or outright atheists who were out to destroy Christianity at any cost. Hell must now include people whom I thought to be morally superior to many Christians I knew.
A quick note that just occurred to me (before I forget): Paul, in Romans 2, seems to me to imply that the gentiles who kept the law by being good people were justified even though they didn’t know what the law said. But Christianity no longer hangs justification on being good, but on believing. This is good for believers, but not so good for billions of good people who choose not to believe or were never given a chance to believe due to the family, social system, or time period they were born into.
This tiny pinhole of doubt opened the floodgates for me. Why would any reasonable person doubt? If some people do not believe, does this mean that I could be wrong? Could the chance that there was no God be the reason that no miracles happen today? Have they ever happened? If God could cause miracles 2000 years ago to help people believe, why would he not apply the tiniest nudge to a young boy’s light switch - teetering ever so precariously in its unnatural position? But my indoctrination would not allow me to deny God. After all 99.9% of the people that I knew believed – so it must be true!
I reasoned that God must have changed or somehow be different now. This of course is contradictory to what the bible says about God. So I assumed that God had a good reason for ceasing all of the supernatural events that he so commonly performed - either to prove himself or to advance his plans for the world he created. Again, it was my fault for not understanding this. Another check mark on the “I don’t have enough faith or I’m not smart enough to figure it out” list is chalked. I now realize that I had to become what I now know is called an apologist - a person who must make excuses or apologies to himself and others on behalf of God. At this point I never questioned why a perfect God would need us poor, ignorant, human beings to make excuses for him – we just did.
So my faith was still relatively strong as far as believing that God existed. I just had to except that I didn’t understand him. I attended church regularly, waited on the Lord’s Table, lead prayer in church, etc. Then, when I was about eighteen, I began to attend church less often, until I seldom went at all. Although I was not going to church, I was not living a rebellious life by most standards. I did not drink or use drugs etc. In fact, I never drank an alcoholic beverage until age 24. Surprisingly, I did not feel guilty with respect to God for not going to church (my guilt was more with respect to disappointing my mother). Perhaps it was my Baptist beliefs that once you are saved you are always saved (as long as you kept the faith) that freed me from guilt.
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When I married Melanie in 1990, I began to attend a conservative COC. That was an awakening experience - as I was never told of their belief system. The first few years were quiet offensive to my faith. Almost every sermon was centered on why the COC was right and everyone else is wrong. Then it began to occur to me, or more accurately - began to be brainwashed into me, “What if they are right?” After a hundred or so of the same types of sermons, even the strongest of your beliefs can be challenged. This was gradually taking me from believing once saved always saved to; if I belong to the COC and I don’t sin between communions, then maybe, just maybe, possibly, by the skin of my teeth, I would be saved. The list of people going to hell is getting longer.
We now have an updated list of the people who are going to burn forever:
1: The satanic, rapists, murderers, baby killers, homosexuals, and the evil atheists.
2: The morally good people who don’t believe in God or the correct concept of God.
3: All of Christianity except for certain COC’s, including my parents and most of my family.
4: The members of the true COC, who did not commit a sin between the last communion and their final breath.
Almost everyone I knew were now going to burn for eternity in Hell.
A side note:
Since I started attending the COC, I have never officially joined or have partaken in the communion ritual. I feel that I am a very honest person and I have trouble pretending to be what I am not. Even when I had a degree of faith in God, I had no faith in myself or anyone else to figure him out enough for me to identify myself with a particular church in a capacity that would lead people to think that I believed like they did. I suppose that most of my fellow churchgoers assume that I am struggling with the usual - a sinful life that I do not want to give up, or a fear of being humble or letting my guards down. Anyone who really knows me will tell you that I am open, honest, not afraid to show emotion, and that I do not live an immoral life.
You may ask, “Then why have you faithfully attended church for the past 13 years?” That is simple. Melanie and I love each other very much. We have the best marriage/friendship that I can imagine any two people having. My attendance at church with my family is important to her, so it is important to me. I very much enjoy seeing her fulfill her spiritual needs. I also enjoy the friendships that we have formed with many of the members of 7MPR. This is a group of people who I believe have a very genuine love for one another and I do enjoy fellowship with them. I attend church, but I don’t pretend to be someone I am not. I must say though, that I do feel that I am being dishonest with my children to a degree – but I am working on a way to deal with this problem when I feel they are old enough and when Melanie and I can agree on a solution.
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With my list of the condemned getting longer and longer, I decided that I must take action. I must study the bible. There must be a simple explanation for all of this. People have simply overlooked something. We are talking about sending billions of good (and bad) people to hell here. The bible is the word of God - it says so itself. God would surely write down how to be saved in an easy-to-understand format. Why can’t people agree on one way?
So study I did and here are a few examples of what I found:
Okay, here it is – you are saved by faith, not of works.
No wait a minute – you must be baptized – is that faith or works?
Are sins forgiven when you believe or when you are baptized?
Faith without works is not really faith – so it must be faith and works.
Now I’ve found it – grace saves us by believing regardless of whether we sin or do the works of the law!
But you mustn’t sin, and there are certain rules we must follow.
So grace only works if you try your hardest not to sin and follow a few rules?
We are freed from sin, we can sin no more – but be careful that you don’t sin.
You are dead to sin – but don’t sin or you won’t be dead any more and you will die.
Can we get two chapters of the bible to agree on salvation – let alone 27 books?
I have always been taught that the bible has no errors – it never contradicts itself. But even the basics of salvation run around in circles. Any two people could read the bible and come to quiet different ideas on how to avoid being burned forever in hell. But God is perfect and so is the bible, so it must be us ignorant, sinful humans who are messing everything up. If we can’t agree on what the bible says it’s our fault for not having strong enough faith. The more I studied the more confused I became. And the Christian study guides that I consulted were full of excuses and apologies for a perfect God.
My studies also uncovered many more difficult questions. More miracles that challenged my knowledge of the laws of physics and science arose. The need to make more and more excuses for God, Jesus, and the authors of the bible became evident. The gospels that I had been told agreed perfectly on all points could not get the concept of Jesus right - not to mentions the stories of his birth or death and resurrection. Many of the New Testament claims of messianic prophecies fulfilled were followed only to go down dead-end streets. The study guides were silent on many of my questions. Was I the first to ask them, or were these Christian scholars just avoiding the difficult issues to focus on the one’s that made sense to modern western Christianity? How can the all loving, all knowing God of modern Christianity be the same murderous, deceitful, male-chauvinistic, racist, bloodthirsty God, who endorses slavery? How can my bible be talking about the same God? At this point I was ready to give up.
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Another pivotal moment in my belief system happened when I was browsing through the Christian section at a book store and a title caught my eye. It read. “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” by John Shelby Spong. I peeked inside and some of exact questions that had been bouncing around in my head for years were being addressed. Things like miracles, conflicting doctrines, apparent contradictions, and the inerrancy of the bible are dealt with in detail. It was as if this book was written specifically for me. I had previously thought that I must have been the only idiot out here that was having this problem. But here was a writer (a Christian) who had apparently been through these same thought processes. (I later learned that thousands of Christians are asking, and have asked, these same questions for hundreds of years).
Spong’s answers to my questions violated the very core of my faith. I was very skeptical of his theories as they were attempting to tear apart the fundamental beliefs that I had been trying to hold onto since childhood. But these explanations provided the only view of God that I could honestly accept at this point in my journey. (Most of his material is not based on his opinion alone but on facts that scholars have known about the bible for many years - facts that the average churchgoer is not aware of). When many of the difficult questions that I had been asking myself were tested against Spong’s view of the bible, they became as clear as crystal to me. Every pill he suggested that I swallow would be carefully examined under the scrutiny of my own study and reasoning – then many of them were swallowed eagerly.
Spong’s personal beliefs about God are basically that He is not a father-like, supernatural being in the sky. He is not watching over our every move - ready to dispense a miracle and cause the natural laws of science and reason to bend to fit his will, or to answer the prayers of his believers. Spong calls God, “The ground of all being”. I’m not exactly sure what he means by this, but it seems to me that he believes that God is present in all people. But this is not really what had drawn me into his book.
What I was interested in is how can we explain the bible? Why was the bible so complex and ever-changing through the ages? Why was God depicted as a God of only the Jews in the Old Testament? Why did he order the slaughter of millions of the non-Jewish race? Why did God command “do not kill” and then command the Israelites to kill men, women, and innocent children? Why did he say that he would not punish children for the sins of their parents and then kill David’s baby boy with a slow death because David had sinned? How could the bible writers disagree or not get their story straight if they were guided to write by a perfect God? Why did the view of Jesus change from one gospel to the next? Why didn’t Paul mention the Christmas and Easter stories, which are so vitally important to the Christian faith, in his letters?
The reason for all of these discrepancies, I believe, is found in the history of the bible. I was amazed to find out that the earliest known Christian writings are those of Paul. I guess I had always taken it for granted that the gospels were written within a few months after Jesus died, and that all of the other books of the New Testament were written to farther explain these gospels. I had imagined that when Paul was writing his letters to the various churches, he would carefully study the four gospels, and then enlighten the readers based on what he understood about Jesus. In reality it was probably the other way around. After a great deal of study, I can accept the idea that the gospel writers based their stories on the work of Paul and on oral traditions. When the bible is studied with this in mind, these concepts make perfect sense.
It never occurred to me that Mark was probably not written by an eyewitness of Jesus but was based on oral traditions that were from 15-30 years old. I was amazed to discover that Mathew and Luke were written much later and mostly copied Mark (or all three relied on an unknown manuscript known by bible scholars as “Q”) and then added their own versions of the birth and Easter stories – which do not agree. The Gospel of John has, by far, the most modern and fully developed theological concepts of Jesus – which stands to reason when you consider that John’s Gospel was not penned until 60-100 years after Jesus has died – giving it plenty of time to adapt to the rapidly changing world around Jerusalem.
So what do I believe about the bible? I believe that the Old Testament was an attempt by the Jews to justify their slaughter of entire nations and races. It justified their use of slavery and the treatment of women as property. It justified any act that they felt would better their race by saying that they were the chosen people of God. With an all powerful God on their side, who could be against them? Would we have supported Hitler if we had thought God was on his side? Maybe so, if he was destroying what we would have considered infidels. Hitler’s escapades pale in comparison to what the Jews did under the specific instructions of God.
Of coarse no race can be dominant forever, so how can we explain the years of slavery and captivity? That is easy – God was angry at them. They were not paying God enough attention so he turned his back on them. This is the only way to explain why a race with an all-powerful God on their side could loose for a while. We now know that the army with the most resources and the best weapons has the upper hand.
Like most other religions, the bible also attempts to explain all of the things that people don’t understand. How did the world get here? Where does rain and bad weather come from? How could all races that started with Adam and Eve have different languages? If God is perfect, why is there evil? All of this and most everything else that people didn’t understand 3000 years ago is explained in the bible as being caused or allowed to happen by God. The good stuff was made by God, and the bad stuff is man’s fault. The bible has its own apologetics built right in. I often hear a person explain something to their child by saying, “That’s just the way God made it”, when there is a perfectly good scientific reason for it. God has always been a substitute for knowledge and understanding.
What about Jesus and the New Testament? I think that Jesus was a person who wanted to love everyone – regardless of how rich or powerful they were (as long as they agreed with his theology). He wanted to have compassion on the less fortunate in the world and even criminals (as long as they agreed with his theology). He understood that sickness and mental illness was not a curse from God, and that these people were people too. He understood that an “unclean” woman who touched him would not make him unclean. He loved the people that the religious leaders hated. He thought that the law that prevented even a good deed on the Sabbath was a stupid idea. I suspect that, to Jesus, the Torah was looking less like it was from a supreme being and more like a tool that used superstition to control people and an excuse to mistreat people. The law to him was becoming more and more ancient and out of touch with an increasingly intercultural environment. He still looked at the world through the eyes of someone who lived 2000 years ago, but I believe that Jesus thought that the world be a better place without the Torah.
Jesus wanted to change the world, and that he did. But religion is always threatened by change and people like Jesus are considered to be heretics. Up until a few hundred years ago, these kinds of people were either forced to change their views or killed. Jesus would not change – so he died a religious heretic.
I can imagine that Paul may have been going through the same kind of process that I have been through when he heard about Jesus. Paul stated that he had knowledge of the Jewish law beyond most people his age – so he was not a casual believer and would not be easily converted. Perhaps through all of this study, he realized that this Torah and his concept of God were getting harder and harder to accept. Maybe like me, the more he studied, the more questions he asked – but this religion was so deeply seeded in him it would not easily let go.
When Paul first heard of Christianity, it was likely infiltrated with propaganda. Paul, did you know that these Christians are saying there is no God? They are actually saying that Jesus was God and that God is in them! They are claiming to possess the power of God! I’m sure that he only heard the worst. Like most Christians react when they hear an atheist on television laughing at their belief system, Paul became infuriated – angry to the core. With the powerful Jewish leadership behind him, he could inflict pain on these people. His intention was to stamp out this heresy!
Then Paul must have realized that Christianity provided relief from many of the questions that were tormenting him. He was fighting the very thing that could offer an explanation for the unexplainable. In fact, if interpreted carefully, Jesus’ teachings could be used to free Paul from the Jewish law that was torturing him from within. This must have hit Paul like a blinding light (pun intended).
So Paul took the concept of love and inclusion of Jesus, and incorporated it into the Jewish religious system. Perhaps Paul knew that he could never completely replace the Jewish religion, but maybe he could make it better – by putting an end to the racist God who only loved the Jews. Since God now loved the Gentiles also, there would be no need for God to kill everyone anymore. Paul would no longer be required to hate his fellow human beings just because they were not of his race. God was no longer a racist, murdering, bloodthirsty supreme being to Paul. He was now a spirit who could live in anyone – Jew or Gentile.
But haw can Paul make this thing catch on? Why would people want to change their way of thinking? Why would people not be happy to just love one another for the sake of loving, or just keep on believing whatever they believed already? It must have been obvious to Paul that God was not going to send down fire from Heaven or miraculously come to the aid of his new religion. But there must be a way to bring God into this somehow. Of course...Hell! God can punish all the folks who don’t believe what I tell them, later - after they die. What a great idea! If you don’t believe in Paul’s religion, you will not only die, but you will be raised again and then tortured and killed like they used to do it back in the good-old-days. But wait, after you die the second time, you will experience pain and torment for millions and millions of years. If this won’t convert them, nothing will.
A thought just occurred to me, so I will place it here. The old God would bless his people and offer them miraculous assistance only when they had strong faith and believed only in him. He would strike evil plagues on their enemies as long as his people were obedient. OPn the other hand ,when the Jews lost their faith or worshipped other gods, they would not get divine assistance and even get direct punishment from God. They were left alone to fight their own battles and suffered great losses.
The new God seemed to be quiet the opposite. The Christians who had the strongest faith were stoned, hanged, crucified, and fed to the lions, whilst their God sat lovingly on his throne watching everything. The Christians who abandoned their faith could simply live out their lives with no apparent form of punishment from God. If God would have sent down a few thunderbolts to strike the tormentors of his new favorite people, it would have helped things quite a bit. Such stories are probably not in the bible because religious people no longer had complete control of history. There were now people who were recording history without a religious bias. So the biblical writers stuck to things that could not be disproved or refuted by an ‘uninspired” writer.
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So where did I go from here? I spent another couple of years studying both sides of the story. I read Christian commentaries and apologetics as well as critical Christian writings. The more I study, the more I believe that Christianity is a man-made religion, nothing more - nothing less.
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Many Christians think that without Christianity, there is nothing to keep us from going out killing, raping, and committing all kinds of atrocities – for there is no fear of hell! This in my mind is the most repulsive thing about Christianity. To think that I have to be threatened with punishment to love my fellow man and all living things is an insult to my nature. The idea that there is a God who will punish us for not believing in him is so detestable. I could go on and on here, but this subject is my hot button, so to speak, so I will stop.
Quite contrary to the effect that I thought the absence of heaven and hell would have on me, it has been one the most awesome experiences of my life. When I was a Christian, I loved people with what is will describe here as my version of “Christian love”.
(A): A Christian who believes just like me: I can really love this person because they have it all figured out - like me. We could just be friends because there was no need to try to change them. What a wonderful love. I’ll see you in heaven brother/sister!
(B): A Christian who did not agree with me: I can love them, but I sure wish they would see things my way. I think we could really be good friends if they would just wake up. I think that they will make a good “A” someday after they study the bible more and understand it better. If these folks make it heaven, they will see that I was right.
(C): A believer that has gone astray: I really love this guy but in a pitiful kind of way. He must be really bitter or have a lot of sin in his life that he can’t deal with. I hope I can do something to bring this person back in, so I can love him like A or B above. It really bothers me to think about what will happen to him if he dies before he comes back.
(D): An out-right unbeliever: This is a tough one. I love him and it bothers me that he is going to hell, but it’s his decision - the bible is very plain. If he won’t listen to me, then…well, let him go to hell where he belongs. He seems pretty convinced, so he’s probably never going be an “A” anyway, so I’ll not let it bother me too much.
(E): A believer in a different god: This is the toughest one of all. These people not only believe in a false god, they think my God is false! Can you believe that their religion has actually caused some of its most radical believers to commit murder? I think that all of us A’s, B’s, and C’s should get together and destroy them all, and the D’s can join in too if they want!
(F): A Jew: Those darn Jews are probably going to heaven no matter what, because they are God’s chosen people. I hope not though, because a person who thinks they are God’s chosen seems kind of arrogant to me. And let’s not forget they killed Jesus.
To me this is a very twisted kind of love and I’m not saying that all Christians feel this way, but even this somewhat liberal (ex) Christian has been there.
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Without heaven and hell and the feeling of superiority it brings, I now can love everyone without these attachments. It is one of the greatest feelings I have ever experienced to be free from this. Even though I told myself that I loved everyone when I believed (and I think that I was as capable of loving people as unconditionally as any Christian) I still could not see people except through the filter of religion.
I now cherish my relationship with my wife more than I ever have. I value the time I spend with my children more that ever before. I can love homosexuals without the baggage that used to tag along. I have a greater appreciation for nature, art, and music. I no longer feel the need to qualify people before I decide if they can be a true friend, or a person I need to befriend in order to be in a better position to change them to my way of thinking.
I am tempted to do things that will hurt other people less than when I was a Christian. I think it is easier for a Christian to forgive himself for hurting someone if he knows that God will forgive him too. In other words, “I’ll go ahead and do this because I will get forgiveness and go to heaven anyway”. I believe that a sin against your wife, or anyone for that matter, is worse than a sin against God who will just wipe it away with no guilt attached. Hurting people should not be taken so lightly. Taking this a step further, if God hates homosexuals and people with different religious beliefs, then a Christian should certainly be entitled to do so. So hurting the feelings of one of these evil-doers would not have bothered me as a Christians the way it would now.
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Many think that having only our lives here on earth as being a depressing thought. I think that this may have been on of the things that I was hesitant to let go of. But again, the alternative is even better than I had imagined. To know that this is our one chance to live, gives me a drive to appreciate this life even more than before. Every minute is appreciated – every experience (good or bad) is worthwhile. A new appreciation and respect for my aging parents has developed. The memories of my wonderful nephew who died in a car crash in 2000 are much sweeter now. Every chance to be nice to someone is cherished. The list goes on and on.
Do I miss the thought of heaven? Not really. The thought of living forever, even in bliss, is not an attractive thought to me. Bliss is relative. The exhilarating vibrations from a massage chair become a nuisance after a while. The buzz from smoking a cigarette is gone after a few smokes and you are left only with the addiction. What could God come up with after the first 10,000 years that would keep us awake? And the sound of all of that wailing and gnashing of teeth would be more than I can handle. To become like God as he is depicted in the bible would be a curse.
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My hope is that this letter will not offend you. I love you and Cathy very much and will always do so. I also hope that you will understand my reasoning, even if you do not agree. I am not aggressive with my beliefs, as I have not made any attempts to de-convert anyone. In fact, you are the first person at 7MPR that I have shared this with – but this is only because of what you said to me Sunday.
Thanks for making it to the end of this letter!
Respectfully,
Ron
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