A loving God that instills fear of punishment as His "love"?

don't loving parents sometimes instill fear out of love? i'm scared shitless of hobos now because i got yelled at as a kid not to talk to hobos, not really but you get my point.

 

OK, I'm a devote Christian, and as such..I do believe in a Hell...in fact Jesus often spoke of it. so it is there..but remember..hell was NOT made for sinners..it was made as a prison for Lucifer and all the rebellion angels that followed him. But we will go there if we don not follow the Lord and His word..is this done as punishment...I don't think so..it's our choice to follow the Lord or not..to obey His word....We make the choice to go there or not..God is simply send us there..is a judge cruel by sending a conflicted person to prison?..no, He's just following the word of the law.

So No..I do not believe God instills fear of punishment as love.

 

The fear parents instill, mostly, is to protect and through their own experiences. Some parents are just f'd up and instill their fears into their kids.

I was lucky in a way, my parents tried but in my teens I remember my dad saying to me, "It doesn't matter what I say or do, you're going to do what ever the Hell you want, so go ahead and learn." At the point he said that he was having severe issues with my sister (her running away, pregnant at 14, drugs, etc.) I was the good kid.

 

I adhere tothe free will aspect of life, I say our God wouldn't punish us for our beliefs. Everyone is given the right to believe as they believe, to act as they wish to act, to take whatever path they so choose to take in life. Based on that path, you control the direction, good or bad. As with all things in life, rewards abound with good decisions. We are shown the love of God each and everyday through the birds that sing, the trees that grow, and the pure beauty of our world. I do believe in hell but I see it not as a place of punishment...I see it simply as a place devoid of any of Gods beauty, truth, and love.

 

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Jesus stated the wage for sin is death. Death would be like being disowned/disavowed. I don't necessarily believe it is what you believe in as much as how you believe. We instinctively know what is wrong and what is right. One's actions I believe are far more important than one's words. Jesus stated that many would say they knew him but that he would know them not. I truly believe and have personally seen people who claim to be followers of Christ think because they say that they get a free ticket into Heaven, because ALL their sins are forgiven. Jesus died for our original sin (if you believe in original sin) not for every sin we committed AFTER we claim to have become a follower. To be Christian is to try to live as close to his teachings as possible, none of us is perfect or will get close to being truly "Christlike" in our actions, but to know Christ is to try to do the next right thing and to love each other. Saying you know Christ but being greedy, selfish, judgmental and doing those things that you KNOW are wrong, is not truly "knowing" and accepting Christ.

 

I agree with most of that..except the whole action speak louder then words...in Christ's sermon on the mound..He points out that the righteous in your action depends on your motives for those actions..other then that..you hit the bulleye.

 

Then there is this.... LOL...love the ending.
--- merged: Jan 11, 2012 5:42 AM ---


Maher points out what being a TRUE Christian is supposed to be about.

 

I would just like to add that there seems to be quite a lot of discussion in this thread about "religion," but what seems to actually be meant most of the time is "Christianity."

I am not going to get into quoting verses of Torah, because that seems like an exceptionally silly thing to do to a thread full of atheists. But I will note that the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures, Hebrew Bible...what Christians refer to as "the Old Testament") is Jewish text, written by Jews, for Jews, in the Jewish language, designed to be understood in the context of Jewish tradition, and designed to be interpreted by Jewish exegetical mechanisms.

Judaism is a religion of questions and multiple answers-- there is not necessarily, in our view, such a thing as "the" right answer...to anything. Even Orthodox Judaism is not a practice of Biblical literalism. We are taught that Torah is in two parts: the Written Torah (that is, the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses) and the Oral Torah, which consists of the now-written teachings of the Rabbis concerning how the Written Torah is to be interpreted. And what I mean by that is not that Oral Torah consists merely of a list of glosses about what given verses "actually" mean, but that the Oral Torah consists of lessons and examples in how to learn the art of interpreting Torah, and harmonizing new interpretations with the tradition. Text, in our view, is not supposed to be static, nor is it necessarily to be understood at the simplest literal level, because it was designed to be understood on many levels, to foster multiple interpretations and viewpoints, to be constantly reinterpreted and re-understood (within the bounds that the tradition sets, which are quite wide). (And, as for the rest of the Tanakh, that is not a source of "commandments." The rest of Tanakh is for history, for poetry, for stories and teachings illustrating the development of the theological, ethical, moral, social, and ritual principles founded in Torah, and is all the more so meant to be interpreted.)

By the same token, we have very few inflexible theological dogmas. Chief among them being that there is One God. That God alone created the universe. That God created human beings in His own image (by which we don't mean a physical image, but as a self-aware, thinking creature with free will). That God and the People Israel share a covenant, which is embodied in Torah. There are no inflexible dogmas concerning precisely how God created the universe (what the mechanics were, how long it took, etc. In other words, one may well take Genesis as metaphorical, and some of our greatest authorities have done so, and as most Jews do today), or precisely what the full definitions of "Torah" may include, or whether God might have other covenants with other peoples for other reasons (many have thought that He does, a position which I also embrace-- in other words, that we Jews are chosen to fulfill the covenant of Torah. Other peoples might be chosen for other things, and have their own unique relationships with God. In other words, we are not exclusivists). Nor do we presume that our religion, our theology, our ways are meant for any but ourselves. Not because we are selfish, but because we understand that God may desire many different things, and may give different answers to different people for similar questions.

We are also a religion focused very much on this world. The primary duty that we believe everybody owes to God is to create just societies, to treat one another well, and to alleviate the suffering of the oppressed. Doing so, regardless of what religious tradition it might be couched in, regardless even if it is couched in atheism, is, in our teachings, enough to please God and earn whatever eternal reward there may be. And I say "whatever eternal reward there may be" because while, traditionally, we Jews are obliged to believe in the eternality of the soul, there is not an inflexible dogma concerning what goes on in the afterlife. Our tradition has come up with many answers, some of which have achieved more or less universal adoption (the idea of The World To Come, an afterlife situation roughly analogous to Heaven), and some of which have achieved less popularity (the idea of Gehinnom, a place of punishment roughly analogous to Purgatory-- we have never believed in anything like Hell and its eternal damnation). Our mystics even evolved a doctrine of reincarnation, which, though little known outside esoteric circles until comparatively recently, has begun to be looked at with renewed interest today.

In other words, we are not compelled to believe that God punishes, in the typical Christian sense. Of course, we also have generally not subscribed to a theology that God is omnibenevolent (such a doctrine is actually contrary to our scripture). So, we don't expect that God is only good, only loving and gentle; and yet we believe that He is consistently merciful and willing to forgive those who sincerely repent (huge kudos to Baraka_Guru for pointing out the nature of teshuvah in one of his earlier posts). We believe that God is most concerned for justice, and that concern for justice is tempered by compassion. But we do not believe that, as the annoying bumper sticker declaims, "God Is Love." If nothing else, God is far too complex to be reduced to such a fatuous aphorism, but it also overlooks that what God most wants from us is justice: for the right thing to be done, for its own sake. God is not The Youngbloods, for whom the ideal is merely "c'mon people now/smile on your brother/ everybody get together/ try to love one another right now." Good pop music. Bad theology.

My point in all of this is that it seems very much like those who personally dislike "religion" all too often condemn it because either they equate it with one specific religion (or a particular form of one specific religion, since even Christianity has variations that resist the more problematic theologies that are typically complained of in this thread and others like it I have seen), or they presume that because they have read an English translation of the Hebrew Bible (usually one produced by Christians, translated accordingly, and, if containing comments, interpreted either Christologically or anti-Jewishly to contrast with the supposed loving nature of Jesus in opposition to YHVH God), they know what it means and what Jews believe. But-- and I say this without intending it as a personal attack on anyone, and without intending offense-- such thinking is simplistic and shallow, and does disservice not merely to Judaism, but to the majority of religious thinkers and practitioners, who tend not to be relentless literalists or fundamentalist zealots.

 

so... instead of "religion sucks" people shouldn't condemn all religion (unless they ACTUALLY mean it) and just say "christianity sucks"?

 

Well...yeah, I guess.

Although I kind of hope that rather than saying "Christianity sucks," they might say "I don't believe in Christianity," or "I am not a Christian," or, at worst, "I find a lot of Christian dogma problematic." Since, after all, there are quite a lot of Christian sects, and quite a lot of unaffiliated people who consider themselves Christian, and not all of them are going to interpret their Bible the same way, or share the same theology, or believe the same dogmas, and so forth.

To say that a religion encompassing literally thousands of sects and movements over nearly two millennia of time, involving countless billions over that period, entirely and unilaterally "sucks," is an awfully big statement, especially when one may not be familiar with all the aspects involved. And, of course, all the more so with non-Christian religions, which many people raised in Christian environments know little about. And all the more so than that, when it comes to all religions, en masse, given that the overwhelming majority of the human race practices some kind of religion, and has throughout recorded history....

It's just an extremely...large...statement, don't you think?

 

I so disagree with your point of view Levite, Although you argument is well worded and soundly based. I have been a baptist since I've started my christian training..and you are quite correct to point out the Christianity does have many sects and lots of issues. But I have studied other religions and found that all belief systems from Paganism to Judaism all suffer from this sort division and issues. but "..As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15)

I guess in the long run it's really up to the person to chose who or what they follow. And I actually prefer it that way. There is nothing more tyrannical then one person forcing another to worship their god.

 

in the earlier days of xtianity, things were more open---augustine wrote something somewhere about there being as many churches as believers. and i've long thought that the questions of reference in judiaism were more interestingly framed than they are in the xtian tradition, particularly post-reformation/wars of religion xtianity. one can follow very similar pathways to nominalism. from there the boundary belief/not belief is largely aesthetic; there's no reason to believe or not believe as the names that one uses to focus that belief are merely names. judiaism has a structured pathway(s) to other ways of knowing that depart from there, which i find interesting--but it's also entirely possible to not find the step from arbitrariness of reference to a particular form of mysticism to be obvious. filling in that gap is among the central roles of tradition.

 

I don't think that I was saying that all religious communities don't have their own problems. Of course they do. All communities of any kind have their own problems. And certainly, fundamentalist zealotry is not a phenomenon limited to Christianity. We all know about it in Islam, and yes, we Jews have our own small problem with it as well. For that matter, every religion I can think of has extremist forms in one way or another. I guess what I am really trying to say, even over and above people confusing "Christianity" for "all religion" is that one should not confuse "extremist religion" with "religion."

I certainly never meant to imply that any religion, even Judaism, was entirely free from problems and abusers of the religion.

Only to make the distinction between use of the religion and abuse of the religion.

In that sentiment we are in complete and total agreement. Tolerance leads to peaceful coexistence.

 

While I may disagree with some of what you wrote, I truly appreciate the Judaism lesson. I did not know about the books and oral Torah.

I always thought it interesting that what I know of the "Old Testament" is it seemed like a great history book of the Jews struggles, BUT seemed to be much like the "mythologies" of those ages, where God interferes and punishes people. The only difference is that it was monotheistic. However, if you look at the polytheistic religions (Nordic, Grrek, Egyptian, etc) they all had a "king of gods" (Baldr/Odin, Zeus, Ra/Aten, etc), and the sub gods all dealt with the fates and daily affairs of the people (or in the Abrahamic religions these could be represented by "angels" doing "God's" bidding.

The New Testament however changes the "jealous" interfering "god" into a loving "God" that gives the world hope by "sacrificing" his son. However, IF "God" created EVERYTHING in Heaven and Hell, he could be called all of ours "father" and thus we would all be his children. So by Jesus' calling him "father" and stating "He" was His son, could apply to all of us.

Just a thought to mull over. Again, I do appreciate the lesson in Judaism, I found it quite interesting. I do apologize for rambling.

I think EVERY religion should openly accept and try to answers questions. Blindly following is not giving oneself in voluntarily, Hence the different denominations (sects) in any religion.