christians-when judgment day comes and the good go to heaven and the rest of us go elsewhere?

Question

what happens then? what was the point of it all? an experiment by god for gods amusement? is that it? all the war all the human caused misery torture famine and unspeakable horrors over all the long years,in the end was just a test to see if,with a minimum amount of evidence,we'd believe? can any religious person explain this to me in laymans terms? without the use of scripture or bible quotes? because theyre 2000 yrs old and i find it hard to derive any meaning or sense. ps this is a genuine question.

could i get a believers veiwpoint on this?

Answer 1

The most common response to this I've heard over the years is that essentially, Earth was one big fat test. God was lonely, and wanted to create beings in his own image that he could essentially raise and love as his own children. But as the saying goes, if you love something, set it free. So he creates this extremely intricate world, fills it with life, all kinds of distractions and such, then turns man loose. The ones that come back to him are the ones he keeps. The ones who don't come back to him, he respects their decision and lets them live their lives. In the end though, the ones who strayed will ultimately destroy the world so badly that no more good can come from it, at which point God ends the world and takes the faithful with him to Heaven to start his little family.

That's not 100% accurate, but in laymans terms it's pretty close.

Answer 2

See, this is my biggst problem with real "Christian-type" Christians. What I mean by that is, real, true-blue Christians who believe with their whole heart that Jesus exists and they will get to spend eternity in heaven someday, are the ones who really do concentrate on just being the best people they can be in their time on earth, and try to love people and have an open mind. That's the kind of Christianity we need. The Christians you're referring to in your question, however, are the kind I can't stand- the preachy, pious ones who treat life as a game show and seem to only go to church, read the Bible, etc. to attempt to score brownie points for Judgment Day. To me, these people don't grasp the concept of what Christianity should really be all about- love, tolerance, peace, and goodwill. I think everyone would have far less of a problem with Christianity as a religion and Jesus as a god or a concept or whatever you want to call Him if His followers tended to practice what they preach, as it were, rather than trying to convince others that they need to be "saved," that their God, or lack thereof, is somehow inferior or unreal, and that their religion is the only right one. That's not how it should be at all.

Answer 3

When judegment day comes and we all stand before God neither the good or the "rest of us" as you stated will spend eternity with Him...Only those who have confessed with their mouth, believed in their hearts, and sincerely receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior into their lives and in spreading message of Christ and His love, and practice living a life of obedience, righteousness and holiness will be saved from spending eternity in darkenss separated from God.

We all have a choice/ will...to serve and worship the True and Living God through Jesus Christ or we can choose to reject Him. God has a purpose for you, but it's up to you(us) to seek Him to find out what your purpose is... What kind of God would He be if He "made" us worship Him? Instead He gives us all a choice...and regardless of what choice(s) we make He loves us unconditionally...But that doesn't mean that there won't be consequences for our choices. Famine, suffering, hatred, war, etc... was not for the original intent of us being created. God wanted to have a relationship with us(you), and it was so until sin entered this world because of deception and disobedience. But now God has sent His only Son Jesus Christ into the world so that through Jesus we can have a relationship with God. Jesus, who was sinless, died for sinners so that people like you and I can have joy, peace, and come to know God's love by trusting in Him. Nothing that God created is an experiment...There's a reason to everything God allowed and did...But we will never know, because our human brains wouldn't and couldn't comprehend it.

We don't get to heaven by being a good person or by doing good deeds...There's a way that seems right to a man, but at the end is death.... man's heart is deceitful...

Answer 4

I look at the Lord as more of a grandparent figure. If vengance is the main goal, then yes, the whole experience is painful and without reason. But view God as a loving grandparent. No matter how many grandchildren one has, they can love them all. They can love them to the point of crying when the child hurts themself. And despite pain, they want their grandchild to experience life and see the good. And He wants us to do our best to live good lives. I can't take the Bible as a literal truth, and I feel justified in saying that. It was written by men; men are fallible. The earth, I don't believe, was created in 7 days. Days are an arbitrary measurment, it depends on the standard. I feel that wars, torture, famine, are all causes of men, not of God. If God prevented all suffering, what would the point be then? If life was "perfect", then nothing would be appreciated or perfect. Think, if we all had a million dollars, what would its value be then. I know it seems dumb, but that's how I see it. For there to be enlightenment and appreciation, we have to live on free will and suffer.

Answer 5

God made paradise on earth. But the devil deceived Adam and you have what we see today. God has a heaven for those who should not have to pay the consequences of Adams sin. Nobody has to go to hell. They go because they love their sin. They love to do bad and to disobey. Every human being is like this until they ask for forgiveness from Christ and receive the Spirit which will fight against the part of us that wants to do bad. Humans are evil. If you don't believe that then just read the newspaper.

Answer 6

This setup here about a judgment day and afterlife based on this life is the best way that Christians have understood and understand it all, but even Jesus himself has already been proven wrong about it. He often said that the people who could hear him at that time would still be alive when the Son of Man came on a cloud in glory to judge humanity. He was wrong about the central prophecy of his ministry, there's no reaosn to suppose his knowledge was absolutely perfect at any given time on any given subject or that it was handed down and recorded faithfully enough to form the basis of an unchanging understanding.

Further, the internal logic of Hevane and Hell breaks down horribly. For example, I love many non-believing, pagan people. If they suffer for eternity for choices made from behind an opaque veil then how can I ever have eternal bliss? I couldn't. Some people reply that God will wipe away all tears and make it so that I don't care. Which means both that I cease to exist as an individual with free will and have profited nothing in the end and that Heaven is the absence of Love. Clearly something in the explanations and metaphors has gone wrong.

The usual metaphors of Heaven and Hell and afterlife can be understood in an entirely different, grown up way.

If you choose to live and act in love toward all others then your spirit, soul, anima, what have you is connected to the universe and the ground of our existence. Upon death all those memories and preferences and hang ups will remain in your brain cells like data on a hard drive but that spiritual energy, the electricity firing yoru nervous system, the thing animating you is eternal (energy changes forms but never just goes away). To the extent that energy is positively charged it will be right at home in the universe. But to the extent it is negatively charged, from a life lived in fear and hate or even just routine selfishness, that energy that we are wll have a hard time bonding or adhering to the universe, it will be alien and isolated even in the midst of all others who are right at home.

That's very abstract and even that explanation is contained within human-created languages and therefore can't capture even our experience of the reality, which we don't know. So, humans create metaphors for expressing these things. All metaphors break down at some level of analysis and I fear the afterlife is one where it breaks down very early.

The best solution to this post modern (not postmodern, though) problem, I think, is to think of Christianity solely in terms of this life. Living eternally IS loving your neighbor and being connected to that spiritual energy, that which I believe is made mysteriously available to us and which is represented in our God who claims a victory as he is tortured and beaten to death. Would that we all felt that way about each other!

Hope that helps some.

Answer 7

Human thawt -
a mysterious mix of intellect and emotion . . .
After years of study, and even more years of life experience,
I have come to know that
ALL religious systems (christian, jewish, protestant, etc)
are built totally on HUMAN constructs . . .
and succeed in fulfilling the HUMAN need to 'belong' (herding),
and assuage the need to satisfy the realm of the 'unknown' afterlife. . .

If there is such a reality as 'divine'?

This should be known in each individual's being...
beyond and removed from 'books' and 'proofs'. . .

Answer 8

Don't all children think the reason for their parents' existence is to torture them? Children (until they mature) think that all parents want to do is ruin their lives and tell them what to do. We are children of God and those that are still immature (in faith... not mental capability) think He's only out to get them when if you could see things through the eyes of the parent (i.e. God) you would see the story completely different.

Answer 9

It's just another example of why the god that the faithful proclaim is either non-sensical or downright cruel.


Edit: I'm gonna have to admit that PI Joe's answer does make sense.

Answer 10

You keep saying "when" when you mean "if"...

And actually, yours is a point I've been making for years -- that the Christian attitude is an insult to the achievements and accomplishments of humanity, since this life "doesn't really count" and "Oh, Jesus could do it better, anyway"...

And even worse, the Abrahamic religions teach that it is a VIRTUE to remain comfortable and complacent in our ignorance, rather than trying to explore and understand the universe we live in...