the ability to make our own decisions, and on the other hand, if we make decisions contraty to what
God wants, we will be rebuked and punished.
So in using the interpreations of religion, we never really have been given free will, or at best it is very conditional in its usage.
Bit are we not Spirits or souls of God? Do we not have the power of God within us every step of our journey on this earth plane? Of course these answers are YES!
But, how can we have free will and accountability
and yet be governed by man inspired rules that strip us of that ability? It is quite "nervy", I think, to preach about free will from God and then be told we are offending God by using this gift given to us.
Then on top of that, if we do make an offence, then we must show atonement for the offence, or we are cooked, literally, forever.
Does anyone remember growing up and being given an "either- or" choice by our parents? Do you remember how unjust it seemed when the choice we made was not of their choosing and we were perhaps punished for this? The irrantionality of humankind is expected. We put up with it.
But now were being led to believe that God is alos subject to this basic human flaw of being irrational.
Isn't God supposed to be above all of this and better than all of this? If God is as weak and irrational as we are, what do we have to look forward to in
"heaven?"
Well, we as Spiritualist, know this is not the case.
We are of the Spirit of God and we are of the Essence of God. We are all above and better than it all.
What we have to look forward to is a continual journey in Spirit, not serving God but being connected to the Spirit and Will of God and continual life in the adventures of the Spirit.
In the meantime, just be careful when driving by a church and seeing ATM on the sign. Do not go in expecting to be able to withdraw a fast $20.00!!!
Blessings to all!!
Atonement
Here's A Psoer!
Under that were the tree letters that read:
A-Atonement T-Temperance M-Mercy
I drove on by and was quite disturbed by the whole thing. Earlier that day, in the morning paper, I read Billy Graham's column. A reader had written in and asked him about heaven. The reader stated that it sounded like heaven was a pretty boring place, as they have read about it, and were not sure they really wanted to go there. In Mr.Graham's response, he assured them that heaven is not boring as God and
Christ will be present and we will have plenty to do,
serving them!
What??!!?? To me, that actually did not make it seem much better. So then I got going again on thiis Atonement deal. Atonement literally translates to being AT ONE. However, in much of religious thinking it is not thought of as such. Atonement in their respect, is making up for something we did wrong. Basically, payback. Whatever we do, we need to pay something back to be forgiven for the misdeed. Atonement is used as the catalyst for sin in the orthodox community. If one sins, one must make atonement for that sin (or someone does, as in the case of Jesus.) Sin is based upon making a judgement call and taking action for something in our life and making a choice. The wrong or right choice is pretty much determined by the religious community. The wrong choices are then called sins. This is all pretty heavy stuff .But none of it really makes sense in taking in account we have Free Will We were "given" this to enable us to make decisions and live by the experience of the consequences of those decisions.
The consequences may or may not be in our hgihest interests, but we must accept them live our lives
accordingly.
We must accept them because we used our will to bring about these consequences. So if we have this ability, then can we really make bad decisions? We can only make decisions that we must now have to live in accordance with the outcomes of our decisions.
I can understand the need for laws to keep our lives in accordance to certain principles of behavior towards each other. However, the religious community also intervens with their interpretations of right and wrong, based upon what inspiration they are recieving from God. And based upon their interpretation, God judges us as well.