Belief != Truth

A Failure to Communicate

One of the biggest mistakes people make in religion is the attempt to define God.  At first they ask questions like, "Who is God?  What is God?  What does God want?".  It's an easy mistake to make but unfortunately these questions are not the ones that you need to ask to find out the truth.

You cannot name or describe something that is infinite.  Naming something makes it small and finite.  You are not your name.  You are not your description.  If you can't even define a physical human being, that has a beginning and end, how can you name or describe something that is infinite and beyond description?

What God "wants" is a silly question.  You KNOW the answer.  You also have the free will to listen and act on it, or to ignore it.  You have the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil.

Since you can't ever answer the question of what God "is", the best you can do is to discover what God "isn't".  Finite things are easy to define.  Anything that is infinite cannot be described.  Try to write down the number infinity.  You can't!  And that is only a simple number.  How do you expect to define God?

The only way to even begin understanding God, is do define what is not-God.  Finite things are things that have a beginning and an end.  Since God has no beginning and no end, anything that is finite is not-God.

Belief is Doubt

All the talk about whether people "believe" in God or "believe" in Jesus is meaningless.  To say that you "believe" something implies that it can be doubted.  Believing or not-believing is meaningless to God.  God exists and no human "belief" changes that.

When is the last time you told someone, "I BELIEVE the sky is blue"?  That sounds ridiculous.  You say, "The sky IS blue."

Do you teach your kids, "I THINK the sun will rise tomorrow." when they are overwhelmed with something that is happening right now and you want them to know it will get better?  NO!  "Believing" implies there is margin for doubt.

You tell them, "The sun WILL rise tomorrow.  There WILL be a new day."  Not only do you speak this to comfort them, you speak it with authority.  You don't 'believe' the sun will rise.  You "KNOW" the sun will rise.  And it doesn't make a damn if all the other 7 billion people on the planet believe it will happen or not.

It is ridiculous that we speak trivial things with authority and without doubt, but when it comes to the important things we say "I believe..";  Belief comes from the mind.  Belief leaves room for doubt.

Your beliefs have a beginning, and an ending.  Your beliefs are subject to change.  Your beliefs are not-God.

Religions are not-God

Religions have beginnings and endings.  Religions change.  Religions elevate themselves and their followers above others.  Religions only serve God when they inspire and heal and comfort.  The first time a religion says that even one person is undeserving of God's love, or that one person will be punished or that one person cannot know the presence with God without it, that religion becomes blasphemous.  

Does God care about blasphemy?  Why would he?  Blasphemy is a label invented by humans to convince people that they know what God wants.  The words of a group of miniscule, finite, ignorant humans do not change the unchangeable.  However, those words DO change the changeable and hurt people.  Religion that hurts people, or that excludes people, is not-God.  Hurt is not-God.

Hell

 

If hell is defined as a lake of fire that will burn people for eternity after they are dead, then it is a lie.  The spirit does not feel pain.  Ask any one of the millions of people whose bodies have "died" that got to experience their spirit for a brief time before returning.  THERE IS NO PHYSICAL PAIN AFTER DEATH.  

Pain is the result of chemical signals from the body to the brain so that the brain knows to stop doing whatever it is telling the body to do.  Pain requires a physical body, a physical nervous system and a conscious brain.  All these things stop existing at death.  They are finite.  Pain is not-God.  

Since the body and pain have a beginning and end, there is no way to inflict it upon a spirit that has no body.

The lake of eternal fire is a scare tactic invented four hundred years after Jesus' death because people were falling away from "the church".  The lake of fire is a man-made fairy tale inserted into history to scare people back into church.  

This does not mean, however, that a place of torment doesn't exist.  Some people who have died and returned report that there is a "place" of despair and sadness where some go when they die.  This place is not forced on anyone, and they can choose of their own free will to remain or leave.  

Those who are there are working through terrible things that happened to them during their lifetime, or the terrible things they did while human.  Some of them are not even aware of others around them and they are in a place of loneliness.  This place is not eternal, though.  

You will never be 'sent' to this place against your will.  Free will applies to the afterlife as well as it does here.  If you find yourself 'there' when you die it is crucial to remember that you are free to leave, or free to stay, if you need to.  God gave free will.  If it was ever taken away that would mean God is a liar.  Lies are not-God.

Being "Saved"

 

This brings me to my last point for this post, but I am far from done.

Christians use the word "salvation" to try and prove that their way is the only way to "get" salvation.  However, salvation in the fundamentalist sense and usage, is at best a misunderstanding, and at worse an insidious lie.

To actually read the words of Christ, and discern them, unveils the true meaning of "saved".  He explained to his apostles over and over, in plain language, what they were being saved from.  Salvation is not some abstract reward in the afterlife for seeing how many people you can convert to your personal beliefs.  It is not something that any person, or church or preacher can give or take away.

Salvation is something that is available right now, and right here.  You will never hear a Megachurch TV evangelist scream to the crowd, "The Kingdom of God is within you!"  If the church members heard this, and understood it, they would never come back to that church!

Being saved means to be freed from your suffering due to your doubts, your misplaced beliefs, your fear and your hate RIGHT NOW, not when you die.  Being saved means understanding that all of these feelings are NOT REAL, and you don't need them!  

In fact. when you burn away the ignorance, fear, hate, condemnation, anxiety, sadness... You truly understand that these are not-God.  Truly following the teachings of Christ requires you destroy those things in you that cause doubt.  

When you throw away all the garbage that causes you misery and pain; when you use your free will to do what Christ tells you - strip away your 'clothing' to reveal what is within and what is truly you, you are saved - not from "damnation" but from all the things that are keeping you from feeling love and loving others!

In fact, when you get rid of EVERYTHING that you've discovered that is not-God, you will finally understand (as much as is possible in a human mind) what God actually is.  It's not a mystery or a secret for a chosen few.  It is something that is right in front of your face, spoken and written and practiced for thousands of years.  God IS love.  Anything that is not-love is not-God.

You don't need to be "saved" to go to heaven.  You will go there because that is your home.  That's where you came from, and that's where you return when this game ends.

You don't need to be "saved" from a make believe eternal fire pit.  It is not real, and therefore not-God.

You need to be saved from your own ignorance and prejudice.  You need to be saved from the lies you've been told your whole life from humans that have a beginning and end, that are not-God.  You need to be saved from your doubts, your feelings, your 'beliefs', your 'faith'.

Love is infinite.  Love has no beginning and no end.  Love is unrequited.  Love is not dependent upon your beliefs or even on your refusal to accept it.  Anything that doesn't have these properties is not-Love.

Finally, remember that you are given the authority find the truth.  You are given the authority to speak the truth.  The truth has no beginning.  The truth was always there and it is within every single person.  The truth does not require belief, or faith or justification.  

The Truth IS faith.  Faith is infinite, without beginning or end.  Faith isn't hope.  Faith isn't belief.  Faith isn't knowledge.  Faith is not arbitrary.  Faith cannot be defined, either by a church or a religion.  Faith is what you DO when you are "saved" from doubt because you KNOW the Truth.

There is a quote by a great author that tells it exactly how it is:

"Faith: to push forward, aggressively, and without ceasing, in total trust and reliance in God."