General religious discussion thread

[Frustration]

3 hours ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

Wait what

So like, I choose to believe in Jesus Christ, and then become a better person through believing in Jesus Christ?

Do you just have to believe in Jesus or do specifically have to believe in Mormon Jesus?

And if it is about becoming a better person through jesus christ, what if you were already a very good person, just without Jesus, then what?

Or am I just misinterpreting all of this?

Sorry if sounds woefully ignorant, I am just trying to understand.

Well there's no such thing as "Mormon Jesus." As much as people try and make it a thing.

I found one guy saying that we believe Jesus was a blond surfer dude, which is just wrong.

And none of us can achieve the state of being that we must hold to enter the Kingdom of God without Jesus Christ. Without Him we'd all be condemned utterly despite our best efforts.

Being merely good isn't enough, our ultimate goal is perfection. Anything less is insufficient.

2 minutes ago, Mystic said:

Yes, a catholic would have to convert(but that’s slightly different from going to paradise or prison) As I said, it’s a step in the right direction from just not believing at all, but it’s not everything. There are things a catholic would still have to learn, still things they would have to do, and change they’d have to work at. That’s true of everyone, if I died tomorrow, I would still have things to work on and to learn.

As for going to paradise or prison. The dividing line there(To my knowledge, maybe @Frustration can confirm this) is whether or not you’ve repented. Jesus died for all our sins(whether you repent or not) but you don’t have to accept that, you can still decide to take the punishment for your sins(think refusing to let a friend pay the bill for your ice cream) and you let him do that by repenting. Because if don’t repent and let the atonement do its job, then you have to do the paying(you have to pay for the ice cream) and that’s what spirit prison is for(along with providing a place for people to learn the gospel). So a Catholic is perfectly capable of going through the repentance process, but it highly depends on the Catholic.

Regardless though, to me it doesn’t matter too much(not a satisfying answer I know) because spirit prison/paradise is temporary and doesn’t really effect what kingdom of glory you go to

Yeah Paradise is for those who have received the ordinances, but ultimately isn't a big deal as it's a temporary condition.

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

Heaven and Hell are tools to create desires. The person telling you what Hell is like and what Heaven is like tends to have a certain idea of what those desires out to be.

Notice how @Mysticis talking about owed debts that must be repaid. Do you think you owe a debt for your being born, or do you think you are owed a debt for the agony of existing? I know which I feel.

In my view, the real Hell is the cycle of abuse and revenge. When people are hurt in such a way that they are helpless but to hurt others in turn, they are in and of Hell. When people choose to meet violence with greater violence, they are in and of Hell. Humanity is yet to spend a single day in Heaven, because such would be a world where we are all free of the horrible rebirths of our faults.

When you die, in my view, you become part of the vast dead God. You are without feeling and without thought, but every molecule of your body is given over to the myriad other things which have longed to embrace you as hungering mouths. When people grieve you, they lend their heart to you and you are felt once more. When people remember you, you are once more given a brain to be thought with. Sadly, even the greatest of noble heroes are forgotten or misremembered with time, but this great cycle of flows is beautiful in part because there is always a chance for something new to come about.

[Mystic He/Him]

16 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Heaven and Hell are tools to create desires. The person telling you what Hell is like and what Heaven is like tends to have a certain idea of what those desires out to be.

That’s why we believe in agency. It’s a central part of our beliefs that everyone is free to choose what they believe. Even in the kingdoms of glory, you are the one who ultimately decides what kingdoms you end up in. You are not going to be forced to be in a kingdom that you will not be happy in.

If you do not think you want to be in the celestial kingdom, you do not have to be, that is your choice. Everything I’ve said is under the assumption that you do want to go to the celestial kingdom. If you don’t then that’s a completely different conversation. 

19 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Notice how @Mysticis talking about owed debts that must be repaid. Do you think you owe a debt for your being born, or do you think you are owed a debt for the agony of existing? I know which I feel.

It’s more of like laws. As an imperfect being, I make mistakes. And just like if I break a countries law, there is a consequence of that. God’s laws also require a punishment for the mistakes and things I do wrong.

And yeah, we exist as imperfect beings, no matter what we do we will inevitably break those laws in some way or another. Which is why the plan has Jesus Christ. So that we don’t have to have the consequences of it. Jesus suffered for all our mistakes and sins. But we technically don’t have to let his sacrifice count for us, though to me that seems like a weird thing to do. Heavenly Father’s plan takes care of all aspects so that while there is a debt that needs to be payed, we don’t have to worry about it.

God knew we would make mistakes, and he accounted for that when making his plan. Everything’s taken care of if we let it be. 

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

Individual agency is a fiction. it is sometimes useful, and sometimes empowering, but it is a fiction. We are not perfectly unfree, but we are not perfectly free either. To say a person is one or the other is to call them an angel or a demon; obviously no mortal soul is so. I would prefer if people opened their eyes to how to help one another gain freedom, to have a sense of what chains and unchains themselves, than to hear another person make a definitive statement.

The laws of any society are made by either the assent of the members of that society (in the good case) or imposed by the will of some fraction, minority, or singularity of that society (in the bad case). You are supposing what I see as the bad case is the case for the Heavenly order, and thus I am once again glad I am supposed to have the option to depart your eternal Omelas after affirming my own nature in the highest of places.

I must ask: Why speak of a debt already paid? Heaven and Hell I get as ways to interact with the parts of the brain that act in accordance with anticipated rewards and punishments, but why remind people of a debt already done? I would simply prefer to imagine the debt is the other way around: We are owed our chance to leave a mark upon the world by the horror of being brought into it. It is only delusion which allows someone to imagine themself as eternal. It is this very folly that creates a debt owned to the self that is then projected onto the hidden places of the world in error, but its true resting place is behind your eyes.

[Mystic He/Him]

2 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

I must ask: Why speak of a debt already paid? Heaven and Hell I get as ways to interact with the parts of the brain that act in accordance with anticipated rewards and punishments, but why remind people of a debt already done? I would simply prefer to imagine the debt is the other way around: We are owed our chance to leave a mark upon the world by the horror of being brought into it. It is only delusion which allows someone to imagine themself as eternal. It is this very folly that creates a debt owned to the self that is then projected onto the hidden places of the world in error, but its true resting place is behind your eyes.

Because of agency(if you do not think we have it, that’s okay, but I do). You do not have to accept Jesus’s sacrifice to pay it. That is your choice and no one can make it for you. That’s why we remind people. So they can make the choice. If you do not know that his sacrifice is there, then how can you choose to let it fulfill the law for you?

As I’ve said, no one will force you or make you or decide for you that Jesus’s sacrifice fulfills the law for you. Not God not Jesus, not the law. We remind you so that you can make that choice.

 

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

I do not speak for my own ears to hear. I write so others can read.

All you can say is "you may", and then you defer to another authority for the why and why not, or you pose a hypothetical of massive reward and disreward in an unseen place.

But here I am, survivor of what many say ought kill a soul, and I proffer the path of a heaven before living eyes. I could show you a page that illustrates hell, written in my own hand, for I have survived that too.

I see the true thing to accept in Jesus is that even a faultless soul must accept being the sacrifice for others; Even a perfect saint must die and become dirt. But then dirt may become soil, and soil may become a field of precious flowers.

The biggest flaw of the monumentality of Christ, outside of the evil done in his name, is that his act of transmuting a God who was like a binding curse upon his people, forcing them to live in rigid patterns, into a God who forgives and would build another world to make right what was lacking in this one has been made inaccessible to anyone else. We all ought be able to spend our lives remaking the concept of God or the gods.

[Mystic He/Him]

6 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

I do not speak for my own ears to hear. I write so others can read.

That’s fair. It’s important to share what you believe. That said, that doesn’t really help a discussion thread.

8 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

All you can say is "you may", and then you defer to another authority for the why and why not, or you pose a hypothetical of massive reward and disreward in an unseen place.

Well of course. I can’t force anyone. And I don’t want to either. I believe in agency, and that means all I can say is “you may” because it’s not my choice.

I would like to know though, would you rather that Jesus’s sacrifice was forced on you?(sorry about the clunky phrasing)

As for unseen rewards. I’ve seen Heavenly Father’s hand in my life. And I’ve seen him fulfill his promises to me. So I trust him when he tells me, through the scriptures and prophets, about what happens after we die. 

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

24 minutes ago, Mystic said:

I would like to know though, would you rather that Jesus’s sacrifice was forced on you?

Oh, I have a poem for this precise notion. 

Earth, Tezcatlipoca Christ
Gaze up to see that one most 
worthy sacrifice.
Know that, by his death,
all of the stinking 
rust of mankind 
is made new soil.

And that is part of a set of other poems that express very deeply held feelings of mine. It is a poem that I use specifically to dissociate from the desires for an individual yet joyous death that have been part of inner world since I was in the 7th grade. I tell myself that it is impossible that my death could make the world better than any effort on my part to help others while still living. If you recall my earlier words, I was previously one to go and hand deliver food to the poor on the street until I had been told that such actions carry the risk of death. And death means no more helping people, and thus such things are self-defeating. I am instead joining a local organization that does community gardening and food distribution, hoping that there is a safer way in numbers.

Were it that my death would remake God into what I think would be a form worthy of the ideals I hold for such, I would try my best to accept the horrors. But I cannot let myself think such things, lest I bring horrible despair to my grandmother.

Also, on seeing the hand of God, I have had two events which I have later come to understand as mundane but which felt of such miracles in the moment. The first was when I was about 5 years old and at a park. I saw a patch of blue sky that seemed to stand in front of a bit of the play park for but a fleeting moment. It was such a curious thing to me that, when I found a strange adult woman and told her that I could not find my mother and also of that patch of blue, she told me it was my guardian angel. Having no counter argument, I accepted that until such a time as I learned how the brain and the eye work better. At that point I realized I was simply experiencing a slight optical illusion, but it was also a small miracle that nothing bad happened. The second event happened to me more recently, I composed a poem, which went thus:
If I can make penance,
and I can make amends,
then I can live with myself
as long as it takes.

and I observed what I took to be the real version of creationspren, the dance of white lines swirling around me amidst the act of creation. But I assumed this was but a trick of my mind had in the moment of creative flow, and then later I saw a mote of dust falling in the air and realized that my mind had been simply turning the cumulative motion of dust into trails of light.

These two cases are a way to say that the Hand of God is, to me, a preference in ways of seeing instead of a reality. The choice to call a series of events lining up just so a coincidence or a synchronicity lies in the mind of the observer, though again there are ways to make someone unable to have this freedom of thought through coercive means.

The fear of a bad afterlife is such a coercive means. That straying from the path after being started on it is to be met with divine punishment is a fault in many religions. The faith for which my sacrifice could be splendid would be one where the point of paths is that each person is meant to wander freely towards the act of creating the union of Heaven and Earth, rather than seeing themselves as being due a Heaven after death.

Death is the second end point of life for me, and thus every moment before it is one over the sum of moments that exist between birth and death. Were there to be an infinite life beyond death, it would reduce to nothing the moments of life in their value as irreplaceable things.

What is a million years of hardship to a true immortal? Less than a day of my life.

[NameIess]

  

On 7/4/2026 at 3:05 AM, ParaTulip said:

To see God as a Lord, as a being of innate hierarchy, is to malform (and often male-form) God. This pollutes the metaphorical system before one even picks up the bible. I suppose we must instead imagine God as being a hurt and pathetic thing which must be either healed or remade in order to truly be worthy of the notion.

I would think that reading the Bible with any preconceived notion of what God should be like would pollute the metaphorical system. And I would posit that God as the Lord is clear in the Bible.

On 7/4/2026 at 3:05 AM, ParaTulip said:

This is why I suppose that God, as a transcendent being, is a bad idea. I think all ought instead see all actualized thing as being equal members of God's being. We, as conscious beings who might possess the seemingly hallucinated and thus quasi-virtual existence of an inner world, are the lonely things which exist outside of this God, and yet are also as Mary to God: a mortal maker of God. To make God is to realize the potential to be beyond sin. Either in ourselves or in another who we help raise up as our child, it does not matter. @NameIess, dare you let me amend the Word before you? May I try to write a fix-it fic of your scripture, or would you cry "Demon" or "Blasphemer" for my attempt?

I don't believe the Bible needs any amending, nor do I see any reason to believe any amendments to what I believe is infallible, but I would not call you a demon for it. As for blasphemy, it's no less or more blasphemy than you've said already.

On 7/4/2026 at 3:05 AM, ParaTulip said:

Perhaps another frame? Who is the superior follow of Jesus? The one who goes to give out bread and biscuits in the night hoping they will get to enter an eternal heaven as a living spirit, or the one who does that and says "Surely, this charity is buys either nothing or at most the slightest hesitation of my spirit being condemned to Hell"? Did not Christ have to spend three cycles of light and dark in Hell to free the souls there? Do you think we are beyond the cycles of light and dark yet? I think it is Saturday, and that certain Sunday might never come.

Ah, I should've elaborated more. Actually my earlier post is straight-up inaccurate. When I said, "although there is more to salvation than works" I should've said that salvation is not based on works. I agree that the second is better, for the first is doing good works out of hope for personal gain. But you do not gain salvation based on works. I am already condemned by the very parable I mentioned, not to mention any of the other laws I have broken. I have certainly not helped the helpless as much as I could have. But in Christ I have salvation apart from good works. I am commanded to do good works, but my salvation is not based on doing them. I cannot 'earn' salvation. Christ earned it for me on the cross.

On 7/4/2026 at 3:05 AM, ParaTulip said:

I see the gospels thus as like any history: They are trying to tell a certain story to bring about a certain conception of events that might not have even happened. I think it is high time we tell better stories, ones that accept disbelief and yet also belief, not disbelief or belief, as the contraction and expansion of the muscle. I think the worthy story of salvation is one where there is only salvation of this world because to postpone the balancing of scales to the afterlife is a dangerous delusion.

I think that you mistake human nature if you think there can be salvation of this world. We humans are evil. The root of evil is not money or any social structure. It is me and you and every human in this world. Only in Christ is there redemption, and only when He returns to make new Heaven and Earth will that evil finally be healed.

On 7/4/2026 at 3:05 AM, ParaTulip said:

Yes, I am some kind of crazy person. I have bipolar and PTSD and more. Please, if me being possessed by madness disqualifies me then feel free to ignore this all. I respect your freedom more than anyone who speaks of a final judgement. But I have felt the world as one where every other God-maker, every person, was a serious threat conspiring against me, and my response was only that I might be delicate towards them all. 

I hope you do not see me as conspiring against you. I want nothing more or less for you than that you should know Christ as I do, a God who willingly became flesh, suffered, died, and rose again to save you from your sins. 

On 7/4/2026 at 8:12 AM, Frustration said:

After the Resurrection everyone us assigned to one of three Kingdoms of Glory based on what they have in effect chosen.

The Telestial Kingdom which is set aside for Murderers, liars, and all those who rejected the prophets.

The Terrestrial Kingdom which is set aside for both the Honorable men of the earth as well as for those who believed but were not valiant in their testimony of Jesus.

And the Celestial Kingdom for all those who were obedient, and for "Just men made perfect through Jesus"

Each of these kingdoms have ascending levels of glory, such that even the Telestial Kingdom defies all description.

What's the point in categorizing the kinds of people in the three kingdoms if one can change their destination in the afterlife?

(also, speaking back to our earlier debate, I'd say the views on the afterlife are a very major distinction between LDS and Protestant/Catholic/Orthodox Christians)

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

@NameIess, I have only one reply for your many fragmented words:

Behold the Hell of my witness.

Edited yesterday at 08:47 AM by ParaTulip

[Frustration]

6 hours ago, NameIess said:

What's the point in categorizing the kinds of people in the three kingdoms if one can change their destination in the afterlife?

One can change up until the Resurrection. But I do believe that giving the chance to people after death is necessary,especially for those who never had the opportunity to hear the name of Christ during their mortal life.

6 hours ago, NameIess said:

(also, speaking back to our earlier debate, I'd say the views on the afterlife are a very major distinction between LDS and Protestant/Catholic/Orthodox Christians)

That's true, but there are also differences between Catholic and Protestant afterlifes.

I am of course assuming that you, like most Protestants, don't believe in Purgatory, Limbo or other afterlife destinations in Catholic theology. If I am wrong in such an assumption please correct me.

Edited yesterday at 11:41 AM by Frustration

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

Removing the option of purgatory was a big part of the initial protestant shift. The whole deal with indulgences was that they were supposed to buy off the time remaining on the path to Heaven for a dead person who had sinned. This dynamic eventually made it so that purgatory was this thousands of years long thing for some people who were still reasonably decent Christians.

Sell an indulgence for a living person was a corruption even in the eyes of the church of the time, in my recollection.

I think everyone has cancelled limbo out? Unbaptized infants just get a free pass into Heaven even for catholics.

[NameIess]

10 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

@NameIess, I have only one reply for your many fragmented words:

Behold the Hell of my witness.

Interesting. For the record, I do not see human hate as justice, nor do I try to see honest questions as attacks. (If you meant this depiction of hell to be your personal experience of it, not to be generalized, then I apologize. But if it is generalized, then I don’t think I fit into it)

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

One can change up until the Resurrection. But I do believe that giving the chance to people after death is necessary,especially for those who never had the opportunity to hear the name of Christ during their mortal life.

That's true, but there are also differences between Catholic and Protestant afterlifes.

I am of course assuming that you, like most Protestants, don't believe in Purgatory, Limbo or other afterlife destinations in Catholic theology. If I am wrong in such an assumption please correct me.

I don’t believe in purgatory, no. But while purgatory is a difference, both Catholics and Protestants agree that the righteous in Christ go to heaven and the sinners go to hell, even if we disagree on how long it’ll take to get there. Your beliefs on the final destination are very different.

[Frustration]

52 minutes ago, NameIess said:

I don’t believe in purgatory, no. But while purgatory is a difference, both Catholics and Protestants agree that the righteous in Christ go to heaven and the sinners go to hell, even if we disagree on how long it’ll take to get there. Your beliefs on the final destination are very different.

Not really, we call the kingdoms by different names, but the Bible itself says there are three Heavens: 2 Corinthians 12:2.

It's really just a variation of universalism(the idea that after a period of time in Hell even the unrepentant will eventually be reconciled with God) which many Protestant churches hold.

[Mint11 she/her]

a lot of what's being discussed is kind of going over my head so apologies if I'm mistakenly touching on things people haven't said. I also don't know if I'm the target audience for these points (muslim, not christian). but my personal belief with regards to suffering is that its something that is taken into account in God's judgement of a person/in the objective morality of a person (I believe that God is the source of objective morality, so to me there isn't much of a distinction here). in islam, believers' sins are forgiven whenever they experience pain, but I assume that the general point of "pain counts for something when judging someone's character" is a common view among religious people and people in general

also as someone who has experienced abuse, it does not take away agency from your own person. this is maybe not true exactly in the way that a lot of people unfamiliar with abuse might believe it to be. there's a survival mode and also just... a twisting of your thought processes that mean you can't really judge the actions of someone experiencing abuse in the same way you'd judge them in a freer context. but honestly... you can still judge them. a survivor still has free will. life is just a little more complicated than a stage where we can expect everyone to make the same choices. that doesn't mean everything is moot though

21 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

The fear of a bad afterlife is such a coercive means. That straying from the path after being started on it is to be met with divine punishment is a fault in many religions. The faith for which my sacrifice could be splendid would be one where the point of paths is that each person is meant to wander freely towards the act of creating the union of Heaven and Earth, rather than seeing themselves as being due a Heaven after death.

Death is the second end point of life for me, and thus every moment before it is one over the sum of moments that exist between birth and death. Were there to be an infinite life beyond death, it would reduce to nothing the moments of life in their value as irreplaceable things.

I fundamentally disagree that the afterlife as motivation is flawed wholesale, but this kind of reminded me of a sufi poem by Rabia Al-Barsi (RA)

Quote

I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that voyagers to God can rip the veils
And see the real goal.

 

 

 

 

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

@NameIessI made that page over a month ago. It is my personal experience with Hell.

@Mint11, I keep feeling like Muslims are far more reasonable people about this stuff. For example, my trauma-induced perception of a world of a dead God is actually the one thing I am strongly confident that the Quran accounts for due to having gotten exactly far enough into a digital copy translated into English in my freshman year of high school to get frustrated, as a stupid teenager would, by the idea of the wool over the eyes of a non-believer. Having come to terms with my trauma having genuinely blinded me in other ways, mostly to body language but sometimes to other things, I find this very sensible.

I would hear more of your ideas on how and why the use of the afterlife as a means of promoting righteous actions is a worthy thing, even if it might be deceptive. I heard once of a buddhist notion which says that it is fine to lie to the less enlightened so long as it is for a merciful end, just as a parent might tell their children the Ice Cream truck is outside so they should hurry up and get out for it when really the house is on fire but the parent is worried that will merely produce panic.

I assume there is something about how a tradition of poetry instead of iconography has produced an alignment? For all that is splendid in my handwriting, I still can't illustrate things beyond abstractions. I would be very interested to hear how you feel about my various poems. I will try to post more of them here 

when I think my composition of them is worth being shown off.

Edited 21 hours ago by ParaTulip

[Mint11 she/her]

17 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

@Mint11, I keep feeling like Muslims are far more reasonable people about this stuff. For example, my trauma-induced perception of a world of a dead God is actually the one thing I am strongly confident that the Quran accounts for due to having gotten exactly far enough into a digital copy translated into English in my freshman year of high school to get frustrated, as a stupid teenager would, by the idea of the wool over the eyes of a non-believer. Having come to terms with my trauma having genuinely blinded me in other ways, mostly to body language but sometimes to other things, I find this very sensible.

I'm not totally sure I understand your "perception of a world of a dead God" is/was (I think you mentioned it in earlier posts, but I didn't get a good grasp of it). but generally I'd be cautious though about being confident in an understanding of islam by reading the quran straight, or even an understanding of the quran itself. people flip the order ("I'll read the quran to learn about islam") but personally I think it works better the other way round

there are also some practical issues of translation and knowing the context in which a certain verse was revealed. accompanying hadith (sayings of the Prophet SAW). etc.

17 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

I would hear more of your ideas on how and why the use of the afterlife as a means of promoting righteous actions is a worthy thing, even if it might be deceptive.

if by deceptive, you mean that it's a trick or doesn't really exist, then I don't believe that. I fully believe in heaven and hell.

personally I just don't think that reward and punishment lack merit as methods of motivation, even if its not ideal as the primary motivation

17 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

I assume there is something about how a tradition of poetry instead of iconography has produced an alignment?

could you say more? not sure what you're referring to here

I like writing and reading it on occasion, but tbh I'm not super into poetry in general. I also don't really think of sufi poetry in the same way of other poetry. to me its more like spiritual learning than literature

[NameIess]

23 hours ago, Frustration said:

Not really, we call the kingdoms by different names, but the Bible itself says there are three Heavens: 2 Corinthians 12:2.

It's really just a variation of universalism(the idea that after a period of time in Hell even the unrepentant will eventually be reconciled with God) which many Protestant churches hold.

I believe the third heaven refers to the heaven where God is, as opposed to the sky where birds are (first heaven) or space where the stars are (second heaven). Seems a better explanation than Paul referring to multiple heavenly kingdoms as an aside, a concept never expanded on anywhere in the Bible.

And I do think universalism is wrong. Evil cannot exist in God’s presence and so those who reject Jesus’ sacrifice will be eternally cast out of His presence. I do understand why Christians would want to believe Universalism, and I don’t think it’s irrational to hope that many more people will be saved than it appears in this world, but I don’t think we have any indication of universalism in the Bible.