Liz mentioned the Sarah McLaughlan song on Facebook, though she'd had no idea about its roots.
My ideas on heaven vs. hell vs. whatever, and judgement, are... hard to describe now that I'm trying to do so. Much more ethereal? First of all, my concept of God is bigger than the old-man-in-the-sky picture, so it's not like Someone scrutinizing my every move. It's more... God IS. It's (He's, She's, They're, whatever) the underlying Order of the Universe, and It's a Force of Being, Creation, ISness, and-- separating my impressions from more indifferent impressions-- LOVE. Being the best person you can be, the best YOU you can be-- it's getting in touch with this ISness, allowing It to work through you. The more you fight and/or deny this connection, the farther you get from the Source of true life and joy and love-- so you create your own hell, basically, the hell of being forever separated from this source of Being. God doesn't want anyone lost, but people get themselves lost.
That was part of what I was trying to get across in this post, too-- that there are many kinds of spirituality, but too many times people see it in the extremes-- there's the fundamentalist pious You-Must-Follow-The-Law-to-the-Letter types, and there's the atheists who think this sort of thinking represents all religion. But what about Eastern religions? What about liberals in Western religions? What about the millions, perhaps billions, of people who think a billions-of-years-old universe that uses evolution and natural selection CAN coexist with the concept of a Creator God-- it's just a different kind of Creating than the literal interpretation the Creationists have in their heads?
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My ideas on heaven vs. hell vs. whatever, and judgement, are... hard to describe now that I'm trying to do so. Much more ethereal? First of all, my concept of God is bigger than the old-man-in-the-sky picture, so it's not like Someone scrutinizing my every move. It's more... God IS. It's (He's, She's, They're, whatever) the underlying Order of the Universe, and It's a Force of Being, Creation, ISness, and-- separating my impressions from more indifferent impressions-- LOVE. Being the best person you can be, the best YOU you can be-- it's getting in touch with this ISness, allowing It to work through you. The more you fight and/or deny this connection, the farther you get from the Source of true life and joy and love-- so you create your own hell, basically, the hell of being forever separated from this source of Being. God doesn't want anyone lost, but people get themselves lost.
That was part of what I was trying to get across in this post, too-- that there are many kinds of spirituality, but too many times people see it in the extremes-- there's the fundamentalist pious You-Must-Follow-The-Law-to-the-Letter types, and there's the atheists who think this sort of thinking represents all religion. But what about Eastern religions? What about liberals in Western religions? What about the millions, perhaps billions, of people who think a billions-of-years-old universe that uses evolution and natural selection CAN coexist with the concept of a Creator God-- it's just a different kind of Creating than the literal interpretation the Creationists have in their heads?