Expert: Griff Ruby - 10/21/2006

Question

Yeah I can go for years exploring this stuff.  I guess that's my "false god," as you call it.  Needing to feel free spirited because of my anxiety disorder that makes me insane and want to do drugs all the time if I TRY to tie my mind down to an exact belief system.  Im evil when I try to be Christian, Im balanced when Im open minded.

And just because it happens to be so that there is another "God" in my life, that doesnt mean that Christian idea is true.  It's pure psychology...everyone has priorities and philosophies to work with...that one fact of human psychology that loosely lines up with that one Christian idea... does that prove anything?  That can just as easily prove that it's only a product of our psyches' need to feel fear and retribution to make life important or..something else for that matter.  But you have the right to your opinion and I thank you for sharing it with me.
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
Dont worry Im not trying to get into an argument...discussion
yes.

Heres my perspective...Dont know anything, way too much info
and stimulus out there undiscovered, and for all I know there is
a higher way of thinking that humans havent met..called blogic
or susie the gay whale....ok?  

My worrying side gets to me though...Ive been raised SDA
christian and have those ideas in the back of my head about
needing faith for heavens sake.  One of the verses supporting
this claim is in Matthew, maybe sixteen or so...in which Jesus
says if you only had faith as big as a mustard seed...

So Im searching for my "mustard seed" to some extent...Im just
trying to insure a place in heaven with just enough faith.  Not
that I believe in it, but I fear it and I wholly believe it's
possible...and I guess you could say I have some trust/faith in its
truth, just not much at all.  So I figure that getting enough facts
and preachy talk will help me keep enough turst in its validity for
a mustard seed worth.  Maybe not though.  I

So preach!  What do you know about getting to heaven?
-----Answer-----
What do you think Heaven is?  Some eternal bribe for being good?  An alternative to the fires of Hell?
So many people seem to think of Heaven and Hell as though they were mere things that happen to one, like winning the lottery or having your house burn down.  But that's not it at all.
Heaven or Hell is what we ourselves become.  In this world you see little bits of both.  You see a bit of Heaven in some kind stranger who helps you on your way when you are stranded far from anywhere, in parents (or other caregivers) who took care of you in your infancy and hopefully beyond, for example by providing for one's education and so forth, in frineds and neighbors who make life worthwhile.  You see a bit of Hell in those who steal you blind, take advantage of you, and so forth.
So, is being heavenly mere niceness or kindness?  While those certainly are part of the picture, that's not enough.  Picture the policeman who is protecting you from the thief.  Can he help you by merely being "nice" to the thief?  Obviously strength is needed too.
The whole study of religion is about attempting to understand what all of this requires, how it works, and most of all why things work the way they do and who is behind it all.  These things as much admit of final and fixed answers as do such questions as what elements in what proportion make up a water molecule or what the square root of 2 is.
Some people mistakenly imagine (and even falsely attempt to define) faith as being one's abiliy to believe in something which is less than fully substantiated.  One then pictures some "prophet" going around asking "Do you believe it?  Do you believe it?"  But that is altogether wrong.  The items of what we are meant to believe (dogmas, doctrines, etc.) are no more open to debate than any standard and established scientific or mathematic finding.  That things get debated is the result of confusion spread by those who want to get away with something, or else those who naively have the misfortune of falling into a trust of those who mislead.
Having Faith is therefore about abandoning the things we want to believe in favor of those things that are true in and of themselves.  To have Faith is therefore to depart from the intellectual confusion and darkness of being able to "believe" anything at all that one wants, having no moorings in one's attempt to understand one's world and even one's own self, and to begin seeking and learning the truth, literally the Truth that sets us free.
It is to start learning the answers to such questions as these:
1)  Why am I here?
2)  What am I put here to do?
3)  What is the right thing to do?
4)  What wrong things must I avoid?
5)  Having learned the answers to (3) and (4), why is it that the wrong things can have so much appeal to me?
6)  How do I overcome my desire for what I know to be wrong?
7)  Who created me, and how can they help me here?
But it's even more than knowing the answers to such questions.  It is about knowing the God who has and is all the answers to these and more questions.  Not merely knowing about him, as one might come to know a lot about some historic figure one reads about, but coming to know as one knows a friend, and having that friend know you as well.
You apparently have this vague fear, what if it all is true?  That's the little red light on your dashboard that tells you that your engine is out of oil or water or some other problem needs attention before some major and costly failure ruins your whole day (in that sense that some bumper stickers used to say that one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day).
But there is no "What if it is true?".  Of course it is.  The real question is, "Why do I so keenly wish it not to be true?"  What false god do you already know you have to give up in order to seek the true one?  Only you know the answer to that question, and that's none of my business, so I won't ask.
What you need now is not more head knowlege ("information") but heart knowlege.  The Scribes and Pharasees of Jesus' day knew much of God, but their money, position, and power meant more to them than God.  The problem wasn't knowlege but lived priorities.  You need to take a hard and critical look at yours.  But whatever it is, since it is not the true God, take your lesson from this illustration:
A young boy wanted to ride a certain carnival ride, and he wanted it so bad that he waited in line all day to get on it.  He wanted it so bad that he could not imagine wanting anything else in life so much.  If only he didn't have to get off the ride after a few minutes!  Be careful what you wish for, as they say.
So he finally gets on and the ride begins.  Whee!  And as the few minutes draws to a close he already begins to mourn for what fun he has been having.  Any moment now it will end, but it doesn't.
After a while it becomes clear that something has happened and the ride operator seems to have wandered off and the ride is going to go on for quite some time  Whee! again, what fun.  And so he enjoys it for a while.
But then sets in the boredom.  OK, That was nice, really really nice.  But I think I've had enough now, and besides all this contiuous motion is beginning to make me feel sick.
"OK, you can stop the ride now!" he shouts, but the ride operator never shows up, so it doesn't stop, not then, not later, and not ever.
So he just keeps going around and around, getting sicker and sicker, both of the motion, and of the boredom as he has come to know every turn and every twist perfectly, for whatever that is worth.  Eventually he is so miserable that he is willing to unstrap himself and jump out, even though it means falling a great distance into the machinery and being ground to bits, but then he finds he can't even to that.  It is as if the "car" he is riding is surrounded with a plastic bubble that won't let him even throw himself from it.  He wants OUT more than anyone could have ever imagined wanting out before.  But there is no OUT.  That is when the supreme horror of horror sets in as he realizes that this is it.  This is going to be his existence from now on, forever.  Even all the fires and sulphures for which Hell is so famous could barely add anything to that.
But that is how it is with anything we choose over God.  It is God alone, and putting Him first that can order our lives for otherwise we are like spoiled children getting what we want but not knowing what there is to want that could truly relieve our boredom where the more disciplined child gave up many immediate pleasures to accept the duties of real life (as parents should and God does provide) and to find in them a source of inexhaustable joy and worthwhile existence.
This is only a beginning, but without clearing this first step all else is to no avail.  Hope this has helped.


Answer
> And just because it happens to be so that there is another "God" in my life, that doesn't mean that Christian idea is true.
Touche!  What it does mean however is that without some false god blinding us we would see (through other means) the truth of the Gospel.  But when something else is our god then we don't want to see the truth and then we won't see it, no matter how compelling the evidences for it.
That is why I focused on that one issue.  First one must clear the path by ousting the false gods from one's psyche, and then the compelling evidences can be examined in their own light and judged on their own merits instead of being merely rejected out of hand for being at variance with our preferred unbeliefs.
> Im evil when I try to be Christian, Im balanced when Im open minded.
To be Christian is to know our true condition, that our own heart is evil and turned to what it wrong.  What you really mean is merely that you can "feel balanced" when you ignore the truth of Christianity and instead define "goodness" in terms of what you already are.  By that criteria, everyone is perfectly good, though unfortunately one person's concept of goodness will necessarily differ from another's due to their personality differences.  If I set my own criteria of goodness based on myself, then by that definition I am perfectly good, and you are not.  if you set your own criteria of goodness based on yourself, then by that definition you are perfectly good and I am not.
Or one can scratch that whole worthless idea of my or your personal definitions of goodness and look to the one objective standard which neither of us fits exactly and know exactly where we each stand and why.
But the real "good news" aspect of the Gospel is not that we are sinners and can't help it, but that God is willing to work with us and lift us out of our own pit of ruin which we ourselves cannot lift ourselves from.  The true standard, though high and difficult, can ultimately be attained and achieved, with God's help.
> Yeah I can go for years exploring this stuff.
This desire on your part is not healthy.  You will squander years or decades of your life or even the whole thing with no real direction in your life to give it purpose.  The years spin by whether you put them to good use or not.  How much of your life has been wasted already?  One can explore fictitious moral "landscapes" endlessly and have nothing to show for it, for either there is a real and objective standard, one which is easily and readily discoverable, or else the one "seeking" is not really seeking at all but merely trying to avoid what they already know to be true.