Let's start with some questions. Do you believe in God? Do you believe that salvation comes through faith alone? Do you believe that you need to believe that you need faith to believe? This will be for people who answered yes to 1, and yes to either 2 or 3.
Do you think you would be the same religion if you were born somewhere else; for example, in Saudi Arabia? I would think that you would probably be a Muslim. I think that you would agree with me. This means that your place of birth is the reason why you'll be spending eternity in paradise, if you were born in another place, you would be spending eternity in scorching fire.
Your salvation was based solely on luck.
It doesn't take a genius to see there is something wrong with this. Imagine a school where you have to take a test to get in, and black people have to take a much harder test than white people. The majority of people (everyone who isn't a nazi) would realize the absurdity of that system. How does it differ from only allowing one religion into heaven? Because the majority of people are born with a religion and keep it.
My parents, who are Catholic and don't know the faith very well, believe that God will allow good people who never heard of Christianity into heaven. This is not supported biblically, as Jesus clearly stated that the only way to heaven was through him (John 14:6). The only reason why they would believe this is because they can't comprehend how a good, intelligent God would limit salvation to only those who were born into their religion.
It would be fairly easy to see why a religion would say that it's the only way to salvation. Christianity seems as if it was essentially designed to spread as fast as possible. Just think about it: you either spend eternity in paradise or in a raging fire, and the only way to get the former and not the latter is to be in that religion. Do you think it would have spread as fast if the salvation doctrine was "People who did good for the people around them will get rewarded, people who do nothing but good and suffer for the benefit of others get it even better, people who did more bad than good get adequate punishment; nothing extreme, and those who do extreme bad get eternally punished badly"?
It wouldn't have spread like it did, but it's thousands of times more sensible, and would make the world a better place, because a type of salvation that says "yeah ill forgive whatever you did no questions asked if you believe I will" doesn't punish on any basis other than being wrong. It's simply absurd, and harmful.
No comments:
Post a Comment