An Alternative Approach To God, Spirituality and Christianity

Part 1 : On The Nature Of God

"One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." (Eph 4:6)

If you ask the average person about God, they will give you a similar explanation. An independent being who sits on a throne in a magical land in the clouds. He created us, but one if his other creations got jealous, stepped in, and caused us to do something that upset him which lead him to eternally curse and punish us, casting us out if paradise and into the world. Now we are to live in pain, women are to give birth in pain, and ultimately, we are to die at which time our sins, or the things we have done that have offended this God will be judged and we will either be granted entry into eternal paradise, or heaven, if our sins were forgiven in some way, or we are cast into the fires of hell, to be tormented day in and day out, until the end of time and beyond, for the mistakes of one lifetime.

If your speaking to a protestant, they will tell you that to be saved from this judgement and your sins forgiven, you must say a prayer and accept Jesus Christ as your savior. Their belief is, that Christ's death on the cross was no different from the old testament concept of blood sacrifice to atone for sins, only this was to be the ultimate atonement, to cover the sins of all mankind should he choose to believe. Once a prayer is said accepting this to God, that you believe this, Jesus then enters into your heart (wherever that is, I assume they do not mean the organ) and you are forgiven of your sins by Jesus' death being a substitution atonement for your sins. Basically, instead of you dying for your own sins and being punished, God sent Jesus to die in place of you dying for your sins to save you from the pains of hell and eternal separation from god. Now, this does leave open many questions, such as if God is in fact Jesus, if they are one and the same, it means God himself died to satisfy a rule he himself created and could have undone, as well as if he were all knowing from the start, he would have known we were going to chose to sin, to disobey him in the garden, yet created us anyway. This would mean that every should who did not / does not / will not accept jesus as their personal savior who shall be damned to hell were beings God made knowing they would be damned, yet he chose to make them anyway with the soul purpose of them living a short life of maybe 70 years then being sent to eternal torment. That is the main belief in Calvanism and is known as Limited Atonement, which asserts that only the sins of the elect were atoned for by Jesus's death. This, in my opinion, would be a case of God happening to be insane which j do not believe to be the case. I do not believe the being who was intelligent and creative enough to create our world, in all its beauty and complexity, would be sadistic and petty enough to create souls simply to send them directly to hell do not pass go, do not collect $200, you were created to burn because it suits my fancy. Bullshit. That sure isn't my creator and it isn't yours either. Calvin was insane and couldn't wrap his head around the concept of God, theology and the like and thanks to him, we have people today who actually believe this nonsense.

Then you had the Lutheran sect of protestantism, who believe that individuals receive this gift of salvation through faith in Christ alone. Saving faith is the knowledge of, acceptance of, and trust in the promise of the Gospel. Even faith itself is seen as a gift of God, created in the hearts of Christians by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word and Baptism.

Ok, this is a little better but in a way makes a little less sense. It introduces the concept of free will into the equation, where people may choose to be saved by choosing to believe that Christ died for their sins and if they so believe then they are "saved" , their sins forgiven, and hell avoided. The problem with this, which harkens back to the concept that Calvin couldn't wrap his head around, is that if god is omniscient, or all knowing, he would know ahead of time who would choose to accept his gift of salvation and therefore, he WOULD in fact be creating people with a limited atonement simply because he would already know who was going to choose to accept Christ. It would just have to be, unless God is not omniscient. I personally do not believe God is, but that's for later.

But all of this is based off of a theory that many will be surprised to learn, early Christians did not follow. It is a theory postulated by St. Anselm of Canterbury, and it is called Satisfaction Theory of Atonement or Substitution Theory. This man and his theory took the purpose and message of christ and, instead of focusing on his teachings of love, peace, unity, forgiveness, being one with God, enlightenment, etc, all become secondary to his death which Anslem postulated was the entire purpose of Christ's existence. His teachings became secondary to his death, because he came here predestined to die for the sins of mankind as a substitution for dying for our own sins and going to hell.