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There’s a line in the Bible that reads something along the lines of “Those that do not have the Word will be judged by the precepts of their own heart”, of course, immediately following it by saying something like the people that do have the word will be judged more leniently, but the idea stands.

Also, the people that love to quote the, I am the way the truth and the light, no man comes unto the Father except through me line tend to happily overlook that the greater part of the world was never contacted by any form of emissary from the Christian religion for like 1400 years minimum after Christ died.

I refuse to believe that God would allow 1400 years of the majority of humanity to be automatically assigned to hell by default, simply because they didn’t follow a rule they had no possibility whatsoever of following.

And I know there are hand-wavy exemptions for all of those things, but it’s hand-wavy, it’s not written down, therefore it doesn’t count.

Plus, I find it highly likely that at the Tower of Babel, not only where the languages changed, but probably the religions also.

Otherwise, us humans being the smart creatures we are probably would have realized that we worship God in exactly the same way we just say different words for it.

If you confuse the religion, the theology, by changing some of the unimportant practices while keeping the core tenets valid, then you can have multiple religions and multiple divisions in humanity that keep them from coming back together and reforming the Tower of Babel.

I realize that this is a heretical thought, but it allows me to learn about and understand the ideologies of multiple religions while still holding true to the one God that I believe in.

And also, it’s not that much of a stretch. I mean Islam is just a branch of Judaism. Christianity is just a branch of Judaism. They are all three Abrahamic religions. So any person that is a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Christian is still beholden to the same core concept.

I don’t know about Mormons, but the majority of the splinter churches for Christianity can just be grouped together, and then, as far as religions that are outside of that, like Shinto and Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, you just learn about them and learn where the commonalities are and how they share different concepts of religion and life and death and good, and evil, and spirituality, and what the reason for life is from all of those myriad viewpoints.

I mean, for instance, I’m Lakota, and there is an entire Lakota religion that is based off of living a good life and walking the Red Road. It has spiritual traditions like the sacred pipe and the hoop dance and the legends of buffalo corn woman and the white buffalo woman who is a harbinger of the apocalypse.

I feel like it would be disrespectful to my birth to abandon the learning and belief of my ancestors just because some people showed up 6,000 years after they came up with their own religious traditions and told them they were wrong.

So yeah, my ideology may be heretical to hardcore Christians, but it is not based out of trying to get a one-up on Christianity, or trying to find a way around the rules and laws of Christianity. I’m not practicing the other religions. I’m not worshipping any other god at all than the Christian God.

But my mentality allows me to talk to Hindu and Muslim people and buddhists and accept their beliefs as true for them and as that what the Creator led them to believe for his own purposes without attempting to shame them or tear them down or terrify them into following what I believe is the religion I’ve been led into for the same general reason.

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Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The main issue here is that you’re basing your theology on how you feel, not on God’s divinely inspired Word -

Romans 1:18-23

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

God reveals Himself to those who’ll truly believe.

Those that do not have the Word will be judged by the precepts of their own heart

And the precepts of everyone’s heart is sin- and the punishment for sin is death. It’s sin in general that condemns you to Hell, Jesus is there to save you from it.

On a personal note- I’ve had the same struggles and thoughts you have. I have grappled with knowing many I love won’t be saved. There are different theologies on hell- personally I believe it ranges from just separation from Heaven to actual torment depending on if those people were extremely evil or just nominally evil. Jesus speaks about different degrees of punishment, and illustrations of both darkness and fire are used. The way the Bible talks about other religions isn’t the same way you talk about them- Islam is barely a branch of Judaism or Christianity. Instead, it’s a faith based on a paedophile self-proclaimed prophet who was also a military leader and used his prophethood to marry nine women (against God’s law of only having one wife) one of which being a six year old child. Mormons follow a similar prophet. The Religious Jews that exist today are the ones who rejected Jesus’ message, like the ones in the old testament. Sure, both groups aren’t doomed per say as anytime they can be reached out to with the Gospel and many have been accepted. But Jesus did put a large emphasis on evangelism, His last command being

Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

So Jesus actively wants us to evangelise- evangelism is in fact the loving thing. If someone is wrong about something so critical, it is in fact hateful to not alert them to their wrongdoing because it is leading them away from salvation. Do you really want to be ascending when Christ comes back into heaven, and seeing your Muslim, Hindu and Atheist friends left behind? Will you say to them “sorry, I didn’t want to be hateful and force my religion on you?”

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- bizarroland@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  God is not a vengeful rules lawyer who’s looking for any excuse he possibly can find to punish every single human being that doesn’t do everything exactly the way a book written 2,000 years ago says it should have been done.
  
  I have been through all of your objections in my own personal walk, and I’m making the choices that feel the most divinely inspired to me.
  
  The greatest rule is love, and against love there is no law. And if I choose to love my neighbor and accept them the way they are, and my faith says that it is okay for them to be who they are, God’s not going to punish them for being the person who he made them to be based off of their life experiences, then I’m going to stick with that regardless of what a book says.
  
  Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
  
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