Guardian of Darkness said:
I found this quite an interesting read. Your experience seems far-fetched, although I'm certain that you aren't lying. I believe however that, even if there is a creature which has lost all good and light, this doesn't necessarily mean that it has lost a 'higher being' as well.
I think that Christianity is a state of mind (as are all religions). A reliance on a form of higher being, comforting the person when times are bad. This is however a weakness, not a strength. Relying on anything is a weakness. Relying on something that can't be logically proven is even more of a weakness, although Christians obviously don't share the same views about that. I'm sure that many Christians have complete trust and belief of Christ. There's nothing I can say to these people, because their views won't be changed. If something I'd trusted and believed in all my life, was suddenly disproven, I'd be crushed, confused and generally hurt. But I'd still encourage these people to open their eyes, and at least be slightly logical.
This sense of evil you felt, may have just been perceived as being evil by you. Everything is about perception. I don't believe there is such thing as 'pure evil' but having not shared your experience, I am perhaps not the best person to say.
I see. Well first of all thanks for not playing a fool and getting all up in my "grill" about me supposedly lying or whatnot the way some people do.
I can relate it - in a very small sense of course - to, say....... hearing heavy metal for the first time.
Most of your viewpoint sounds the same as mine before I delved deeper...so while a bit of a confusing map, it's easy to understand. I will try and go in order responding to your
comments.
About the being... Hell as described in Scripture is an existence seperated from God, and of course God is known as the master, the very ESSENCE of all that is good and of light and love. So in that case, bowing to the other extreme end of the spectrum, the thing was indeed "hellish" if you will - that is, with no quality or essence of God flowing through it, and without any of the yin, there is only the yang, so to speak. Thus pure evil, simply by existence, and of course, it's very hard to understand that - because we have no experience with it. No matter how far you "feel" from God you are never truly abandoned. Also from a more "philisophical" standpoint, everything we know can eventually be boiled down to that simple duality of right and wrong or good and evil, et al - much much more then it can be boiled down to a bunch of ugly shades of gray in the middle.
Belief in the truth of Christ is a state of mind - but also a state of heart and soul... and as a matter of fact, it was logic that brought me to believe what I did in the first place. Every man has a certain law in him, and with that a "keyhole" as I mentioned, and when I got rid of the "religious" things diluting my negative opinion of God, Christ, etc, I found many things in Scripture that pertained to and made sense of all those strange inhibitions that can't quite be explained - the missing link. With this I studied bibical history and many different forms of philosophy - my own and others' - and other "religions" and such and ended up coming full circle and accepting Christ as the truth. And that's when I trusted God for who he is and his promises and etc. So, it has never been a crutch or just throwing something into my life in order to make it full. Christ can fit any keyhole - but the fence riders and "religious" people do not realize theirs is needing to be filled, they are selfish, scared, superficial, and without true faith, therefore you see none of God's light in them because they haven't truly accepted him. In that case only, their relying IS a weakness. In asking for more "physical" proof of God or whatnot, of course we have nothing of that but the nature and world around us (though there are advances being made in that field linked to a Creator, thankfully!) - but in my view perhaps this is a better thing, as to keep us wondering, wanting to learn more, and help keep us on a true faithful WALK with God, that's why it's called a walk, that kind of spiritual life is a true progression, all the time. Also, there are many many things that cannot be "proven" in a technical sense - technically we can't even prove we're not all in some gigantic matrix that only encompasses about 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe...and so on.. But another point to look at is that the knowledge of that isn't quite as important as the knowledge presented with the idea of salvation. Because I trust in the Gospels due to the extraordinary way the messages have spoken to me in my life on various levels, this led me to accepting the salvation presented. And it is much more productive, and enriching to the soul, to follow this sort of faith, which at least has some sort of enduring promise - the biggest, most glorious, and in actuality if one does enough research - logical, promise - rather then things we pretty much know for a fact are temporary and superficial. If in the case - and I don't believe this is possible - but let's just say, fictionally speaking, in the instance there comes some gigantic, completely logical and proved conclusion that every single aspect we know about life and everything I know about God and spirituality is wrong. Well, that's terrible, but at least it was better then spending time on 1 lie then 200. A marraige may not work out eventually, but at least you did your best, stayed true, and placed your faith in the most stable thing you knew, rather then spread it around to 100 partners in the same timespan and making a bigger error. I am not at
ALL saying I just settled for the best thing there was available, or that anyone should, so please nobody take me wrong on that, but it is only coming from the viewpoint of a critical thinker, communicating with another critical thinker (yourself), and attempting to strike some different points and chords to those outside of my own viewpoint and without as much faith, in order to help rationalize what I am saying a bit more - placed in that fictional setting I created.
Hope this is enlightening to your questions.
) It's very hard to be logical with religion, you can't rely on logic everytime, however i'm not saying that a god does exist. They are beliefs, feelings and as you may know you can't explain what you feel sometimes.
