Thursday, June 3, 2010
Litmus
People who are concerned with your salvation should just show you this picture and if you laugh, you're going to Hell anyway. They needn't bother.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Like living in a glass prison
I had a very nice man come to the house preaching the Mormon ideals today (I have had the same type of interactions with Baptists, so I'm not singling out Mormons). With him, I couldn't agree despite the best of his intentions. The first thing that he laid out and hit me with was a fear argument. I despise fear motivating arguments the most, they are in fact very aggressive and deceitful and the people propagating them probably don't even realize it. I will never accept fear as a doctrine on which to base my beliefs. Did someone teach him this to keep him in fear too? If it's all he knows then I truly feel sorry for him because I can imagine what his prison is like, he can't even see the bars from the inside.
He said, "Don't you love your daughter? How would you feel if she were not there in eternity with you? You should get baptized."
Here are some arguments:
1) He is right. I will be alone forever, not in Hell but in some sort of inferior place to a higher heaven. I will miss my daughter terribly for eternity.
2) The church will baptize me anyway in the temple whether I give them permission to or not so my bases are covered.
3) What if in fact you are baptized and do accept the savior but then never attend any church your whole life, are you still saved? Will people still try to get you to go to church or if you just say, Yeah, I've been baptized, will they leave you alone? It is not assumed that church sessions and membership follow baptism. If it's solely the act of baptism that saves you and you accepting a savior, then why not just do that. Is it encouraged and sought by members just to recruit more members ultimately. Someone please enlighten me.
4) If there is a God and he was one who would punish people with this kind of eternal misery because they didn't go "pay" (as in tithings or whatever) to be a member of a church, so they could get baptized to be a member of his club. This is a God I would not want to believe in anyway.
5) If there is an eternity and a God, I've got to believe he is a loving God and the Universe is not static. When I die I will not have missed my last chance. If I have eternity to live and baptism was really that important of a step, then surely there is a baptismal font at the gates of Heaven for last minute takers. God is not a "Gotcha God". He is all merciful right? People have more of a motivation to see you baptized while you're on Earth. After that, it's too late according to them!
I really do not worry about where I will go or where my family will go when we die. It's sad to me that he would use this as a motivator. As if I was some sort of fretting ninny, like Oh My Gosh where is the nearest pool of holy water, I don't want to be alone forever sitting in God's dunce corner!!
Neither did I fret over who my birth mother would be or how much the labor process would suck or who I would spend life on Earth with and so I figure it shall be with my time after death. I can't prove or disprove the existence of God or of an afterlife. The Universe is such an amazing place that I'm sure there are all kinds of surprises in store for us if we do continue on. I am so very hopeful and optimistic about my eternal future that not even an Earth religion can bring me down.
He said, "Don't you love your daughter? How would you feel if she were not there in eternity with you? You should get baptized."
Here are some arguments:
1) He is right. I will be alone forever, not in Hell but in some sort of inferior place to a higher heaven. I will miss my daughter terribly for eternity.
2) The church will baptize me anyway in the temple whether I give them permission to or not so my bases are covered.
3) What if in fact you are baptized and do accept the savior but then never attend any church your whole life, are you still saved? Will people still try to get you to go to church or if you just say, Yeah, I've been baptized, will they leave you alone? It is not assumed that church sessions and membership follow baptism. If it's solely the act of baptism that saves you and you accepting a savior, then why not just do that. Is it encouraged and sought by members just to recruit more members ultimately. Someone please enlighten me.
4) If there is a God and he was one who would punish people with this kind of eternal misery because they didn't go "pay" (as in tithings or whatever) to be a member of a church, so they could get baptized to be a member of his club. This is a God I would not want to believe in anyway.
5) If there is an eternity and a God, I've got to believe he is a loving God and the Universe is not static. When I die I will not have missed my last chance. If I have eternity to live and baptism was really that important of a step, then surely there is a baptismal font at the gates of Heaven for last minute takers. God is not a "Gotcha God". He is all merciful right? People have more of a motivation to see you baptized while you're on Earth. After that, it's too late according to them!
I really do not worry about where I will go or where my family will go when we die. It's sad to me that he would use this as a motivator. As if I was some sort of fretting ninny, like Oh My Gosh where is the nearest pool of holy water, I don't want to be alone forever sitting in God's dunce corner!!
Neither did I fret over who my birth mother would be or how much the labor process would suck or who I would spend life on Earth with and so I figure it shall be with my time after death. I can't prove or disprove the existence of God or of an afterlife. The Universe is such an amazing place that I'm sure there are all kinds of surprises in store for us if we do continue on. I am so very hopeful and optimistic about my eternal future that not even an Earth religion can bring me down.
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