pseudo boethius

2024-03-29 Good Friday, originally published

2024-12-15 Sunday, revised

"Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.  A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

- Matthew 22:34-40, New Living Translation, 2nd Edition

The bad news is that Christianity is definitely a religion where it's really all about "what you know” and “who you know”; then applying that knowledge to your life. 

The good news is that the knowledge you need to get saved is unbelievably simple and straightforward, literally a child can understand it. It's us adults with our hurts, pains and betrayals that have a hard time with the Christian message, and then we go off and build ultra-complicated religions to make it even more difficult on ourselves. 

Here, at last, is a complete and total listing of all the propositional knowledge you need to know to be saved and go to heaven: 

1. Love God first and foremost. 

2. Love other people as best as you can. 

That's it.  Those are all the propositional truths you need to know to go to heaven.  

Of course there are a lot of other "truths" out there in Christianity, on a wide assortment of subjects.  But the most basic truth of all is that of the love of God, it is the foundation upon which all other stand. 

You may be asking yourself who is this “dod" that we speak of? Well, He is Love and Being itself. All other beings proceed from Him, because he's creative and loves making things. In a very real and tangible way, everything we see, feel taste and touch, is God expressing himself to us, out of his love for us.  

We can take Jesus' response to the Pharisees, and boil it down to just two essential axioms you need in order to get saved: 

1. God is love. 

2. God is being itself, and the cause of all beings. 

Hence, we have to love God, because God is love. And we have to love everyone else (to the best of our abilities), because all these other beings we experience, as well as ourselves, all came from God, and are a very real part of God. 

The crucifixion of Jesus is nothing more than the proof of the first axiom: God saying to us "Hey, I love you all so much, I'm willing to die for you to prove it!" The resurrection is the proof of the second axiom: God is being itself (i.e. "existence") and hence he can never be destroyed, because as every child who has ever read a comic book knows, you can't kill a god. Normally, axioms are beyond needing proof, but not in God's economy. He's the mathematician who can prove his own axioms. 

Does that mean that we, who are expressions of God's own existence, can never be truly destroyed or wiped out?  Yes it does.  Death is not the end of us, just a transition point where we go back to where we came from...or not.  You see, whether or not you get to go back to the source of all things, depends entirely on whether or not there is any true love for God and man in your life.  People who prefer to be angry, bitter, resentful, and unforgiving do not get to go back to the source of all things.  Rather, there is a special holding place for them, and it's a place you would rather not be, if you can avoid it, which, of course, you can.   

You need not concern yourself with Noah and flood, the Garden of Eden, or a young earth hypothesis, in order to be saved, but you can contemplate those things if you like: those stories have tremendous wisdom embedded in them.   Yet the only real concern for each and every soul on this planet, is whether or not there is any love and compassion for God and others.   

Here is hard part: you have to put into practice the first and second propositions whether you feel like it or not, and stay with them until your miserable little life on this God forsaken planet comes to a complete end. Then, you finally get to meet the Big Guy himself, and see just how creative he truly is. I hear he's a real wiz with math, but more importantly, he is ultimate love.   

To make this 'Game of Life' a lot more interesting, God did, in fact, introduce malevolent entities into this world, for no other reason than to give you a choice. The simple truth is, you cannot choose to love, if you don't have a choice not to love. Hence, the wonderful world of binaries and dualities that surround us like a big ocean, are far more necessary and essential to our existence than any of us realize. Hence, the mystery of "free will", which is nothing more than the ability to choose between "A" and "B". If we are only ever given "A", and never "B", then there's nothing for us to choose, is there? And there would be no free will. But there is, embedded in us, the ability to choose, think of it as God's logic gate. It's both a gift, and a curse, because our eternity depends on making the right choice.  

Satan is the guy who given the choice to choose between "A" and "B", will always go with "B" no matter what. Angels always go with "A" no matter what. Only us puny humans have the built-in ability to look at the A/B switch and choose, and we can fiddle with that switch as much as we want. A, B, B, A, A, A, B, A, B, B, B, B, B, A, A, etc, etc. But to be saved, you really need to keep that A/B switch on “A” and then don’t touch the dial. But what if you do touch the dial, and switch it to “B”? Well, then you repent, say you're sorry, then set the switch back to “A” and leave it there.  It's really no more complicated than that.  

Sorry about all the confusion created by religion. It sucks, there's no doubt about it. So just do what I do: ignore it all, and I mean all of it, and just focus on the fundamentals, and you'll be just fine. 

There is no real argument that can cause force someone to cross the line to salvation. You either choose to love, or not. If you don't want to pursue love to its fullest conclusion, that's perfectly fine, you don't have to. The choice, is up to you, and no one else can force you to make it. Just be willing to forgive those who constantly make the wrong choice.