Here’s the theology that I came up with: Jesus was a man just like every other. It was through his life and righteousness that he became one with God. This requires defeating sin (no longer sinning) and doing God’s will. This allows the person to perform miracles. This is basically the Catholic concept of a Saint. He called others his brothers and sisters and said he wanted them to be one with God like he was. So when Satan temped him he was a man and through his oneness with God he defeated death. It wasn’t his death on the cross that freed humans, it was his teachings and righteously lived life that gave us an example to follow.
We were once all God and everything was God. Then he exploded and we are each a small part of God but have forgotten. Each human soul is immortal. We live multiple lives coming back through reincarnation. In each life we refine ourselves on our spiritual journal that will end when we become all good or all evil. When we become all good and defeat sin we will become angels when we die. Meanwhile all evil people will become demons and wait to be defeated by God and destroyed on judgement day. This is God’s process of purifying himself by breaking into pieces and sorting each piece. And we are reincarnated as a descendant of our past selves. So while we parent our children we should be aware that we will return as great-grandchild. So the process of becoming one with God is an inter-generational process of improvements. We are not individuals, we are connected, and we need each other to birth and raise the next generation and continue the process. And hopefully we don’t have to start all over from scratch with each generation but are given the collective knowledge of the past to remind us of what we learned in previous lives, so that we can improve upon it and pass that down to the next. Like a game of leap frog.
Then one day God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven, everyone will complete their spiritual journey, evil will be destroyed, and we will become one with God aka heaven.
Pleasure is a distraction at best and evil at worse. Fulfillment is the feeling we get when we are working towards the kingdom. That is the sacrifice we are called the make, to give up pleasure and embrace fulfillment activities. We give up momentary pleasure and do activities that are often painful like childbirth. But we know deep down in our hearts what is right and what is wrong that is completely different from what our evolutionarily driven base instincts are. There must be something beyond the physical bodies that have biological explanations for.
I also believe that without a human doing his bidding, God’s powers are limited. He can not intervene in ways that break the rules of reality. He is trapped within his creation. When he shattered he gave each of us a piece of his power. It is only when we realize our oneness with God that we can tap into our power. This explains the problem of evil. He is limited to trying to talk to us and influence us but we only hear him if we are listening. He can not communicate with us without our consent. Same with Satan, who lies to us and tries to trick us into doing evil and not doing good but we can choose not to listen.
I also believe that we will be judged on our actions and not our beliefs. It isn’t a test to see who got the right theology. But what we believe can have an impact on our actions. Some theology systems are closer to correct, and the more correct the more those beliefs will help us to act according to God’s will. But a person of any religion can be a good person and do good. But correct religion is helpful in facilitating our spiritual journey.
I'm trying to understand how I can reconcile your teaching with a view of history that does not allow for time travel quantum manipulation by our future descendants, and a view of metaphysics which doesn't need to posit there's a higher intelligence that created the universe, whether we call it God or the Simulation Creators or whatever. And I want to avoid any sense there's some kind of teleological force that guides us.
And I think you can maybe get there via evolutionary selection! Like any civilization that doesn't make it that doesn't make it past the great filter didn't get the right messages. We don't know if we one of those or not but if we imagine, if we hope that we are, then the messages that we've got are the messages that will take us to the future. So our future descendants aren't guiding our development but--conditional on us having a glorious future filling the light cone--the prophets that have steered our direction are exactly the ones we needed to get to that glorious future. They were selected because we're selected by a galactic evolutionary process.
Faith is the choice we make to believe that we are the ones the universe will select for surviving the Great Filter.
I'm curious whether that view is consistent with yours or maybe distinct from what you're trying to express.
Here’s the theology that I came up with: Jesus was a man just like every other. It was through his life and righteousness that he became one with God. This requires defeating sin (no longer sinning) and doing God’s will. This allows the person to perform miracles. This is basically the Catholic concept of a Saint. He called others his brothers and sisters and said he wanted them to be one with God like he was. So when Satan temped him he was a man and through his oneness with God he defeated death. It wasn’t his death on the cross that freed humans, it was his teachings and righteously lived life that gave us an example to follow.
We were once all God and everything was God. Then he exploded and we are each a small part of God but have forgotten. Each human soul is immortal. We live multiple lives coming back through reincarnation. In each life we refine ourselves on our spiritual journal that will end when we become all good or all evil. When we become all good and defeat sin we will become angels when we die. Meanwhile all evil people will become demons and wait to be defeated by God and destroyed on judgement day. This is God’s process of purifying himself by breaking into pieces and sorting each piece. And we are reincarnated as a descendant of our past selves. So while we parent our children we should be aware that we will return as great-grandchild. So the process of becoming one with God is an inter-generational process of improvements. We are not individuals, we are connected, and we need each other to birth and raise the next generation and continue the process. And hopefully we don’t have to start all over from scratch with each generation but are given the collective knowledge of the past to remind us of what we learned in previous lives, so that we can improve upon it and pass that down to the next. Like a game of leap frog.
Then one day God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven, everyone will complete their spiritual journey, evil will be destroyed, and we will become one with God aka heaven.
Pleasure is a distraction at best and evil at worse. Fulfillment is the feeling we get when we are working towards the kingdom. That is the sacrifice we are called the make, to give up pleasure and embrace fulfillment activities. We give up momentary pleasure and do activities that are often painful like childbirth. But we know deep down in our hearts what is right and what is wrong that is completely different from what our evolutionarily driven base instincts are. There must be something beyond the physical bodies that have biological explanations for.
I also believe that without a human doing his bidding, God’s powers are limited. He can not intervene in ways that break the rules of reality. He is trapped within his creation. When he shattered he gave each of us a piece of his power. It is only when we realize our oneness with God that we can tap into our power. This explains the problem of evil. He is limited to trying to talk to us and influence us but we only hear him if we are listening. He can not communicate with us without our consent. Same with Satan, who lies to us and tries to trick us into doing evil and not doing good but we can choose not to listen.
I also believe that we will be judged on our actions and not our beliefs. It isn’t a test to see who got the right theology. But what we believe can have an impact on our actions. Some theology systems are closer to correct, and the more correct the more those beliefs will help us to act according to God’s will. But a person of any religion can be a good person and do good. But correct religion is helpful in facilitating our spiritual journey.
lol
Very curious on what grounds you discount Baháʼu'lláh's contributions?
I'm trying to understand how I can reconcile your teaching with a view of history that does not allow for time travel quantum manipulation by our future descendants, and a view of metaphysics which doesn't need to posit there's a higher intelligence that created the universe, whether we call it God or the Simulation Creators or whatever. And I want to avoid any sense there's some kind of teleological force that guides us.
And I think you can maybe get there via evolutionary selection! Like any civilization that doesn't make it that doesn't make it past the great filter didn't get the right messages. We don't know if we one of those or not but if we imagine, if we hope that we are, then the messages that we've got are the messages that will take us to the future. So our future descendants aren't guiding our development but--conditional on us having a glorious future filling the light cone--the prophets that have steered our direction are exactly the ones we needed to get to that glorious future. They were selected because we're selected by a galactic evolutionary process.
Faith is the choice we make to believe that we are the ones the universe will select for surviving the Great Filter.
I'm curious whether that view is consistent with yours or maybe distinct from what you're trying to express.