[asa] Theological extrapolations 4: life after death

[Continued from Theological extrapolations 3: Sin and salvation.]

                                                    Death
 
     1. Thoughts of death gave some humans an overriding sense of guilt. Death for
          them could only be punishment for something they had done wrong.
     2. Death is an integral aspect of creation and not punishment for sin.
     3. Death serves a second purpose: It motivates search for meaning beyond the
         self. In absence of death few if any humans would bother to turn from their
         daily pursuits to God.
 
                                              Life after death

     1. God can be true to himself only if the commitments he makes are permanent.
          Love, including the search for intimacy through sex, entails commitment.
          Therefore he will not abandon us.
     2. (Not everyone can be saved; even under the best of circumstances ego will
          lead some to rebel. Think of fallen angels.)
     3. In the age to come Christ will join himself to his Church in marriage.
           a. The Church is a female person comprising God's children from all his
                wives.
           b. As in every marriage there will be sex, but in that case sex will not be
               physical.
           c. God's wives on earth are not preserved as distinct spiritual entities. Their
               constituent children are so preserved.

     At present God expresses his sexuality in ways other than explicit marriage to the
Church(es). Among others, he harvests where he has not sown.
     Is God's behavior the moral equivalent of that of a playboy? A crucial difference
is that God's love is inseparable from commitment. God's behavior yields meaning
and life; playboy behavior yields dissipation.
     The way we should think of God's behavior is as follows: The world's human
population has split into many groups. God sees some of these groups as spiritual
entities distinct from one another. To God, these are the world's females. He seeks
intimacy (sex) with them, to offer them his identity and enclose them within himself.
When he succeeds, all parties benefit.
 
Don
 
 
 

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Received on Tue Mar 13 02:18:20 2007