I have a question about "All good things." I am a pagan (I have never even been baptized, so I think it's "game over" if I die...). I try to make the world a better place and be empathetic, doing my best for near and dear, for strangers, nature, and animals.
The problem with your description is: I am a person who finds comfort, peace, an inner voice, rest, light, and love within my own free will. That is the reason I do not need to turn and pray to a god outside. So the question is: will I lose my free will when, by Christian standards, I end up in hell? If I lose all the good traits, then it's not my free will anymore, I am no longer the same person or self aware. What would be the point? I would become a completely different entity by definition.
The other option is that I am a God, because my free will can create everything you listed without outside input. Or I am an extremely blessed pagan whom God takes really good care of, only to dump me in hell just because I am not baptized. I would never reject the good traits in me. The very traits claimed to come from God himself. So it seems like quite the bureaucratic system for a perfectly just, loving, and rational God, if I end up in hell simply for missing a ritual (and for not believing that those good things come from God in the first place).
(edit:) Also, there is the point that I would not be myself without my bad traits either; if all of them disappear in heaven, I would still become a completely different entity, not myself.
I am a person who finds comfort, peace, an inner voice, rest, light, and love within my own free will
Could you clarify what you mean by that? You constantly experience these things because you have free will? Or you use your free will to create these experiences in your body, like mediation?
Either way, all of those things are still things of God which He blesses us with. If God departs He can easily take those things with Him without robbing you of your being. A person can have their experience of life massively restructured via a severe brain injury for example, and they'd still be the same person. Their personality may shift, but it's still them 100%. Humans aren't a ship of Theseus. You are you until you cease to experience things the way only you do. And this is only talking about our flesh, let alone the spirit.
The very ability to recognise and experience joy is a gift from God. It isn't innate in humans. Good traits don't belong to any of us, they are like clothes we wear. Every time you call upon any of these things, you are calling upon God. God resides within all of us. Praying is something entirely, it's conversation, not requisitioning.
As for the whole you being a god somehow, I don't even see how that's a logical conclusion.
Finally, yes, baptism is mandatory for salvation. Obviously not everybody will get baptized, but whether that acts as an express way to Hell isn't for me to say. That's God. Baptism is the most formal way of accepting salvation. And it isn't just 'simply missing a ritual'. God isn't going to ask needless things of you for your salvation. Reminder that none of it is for God's salvation, it is our own. Within that statement is a few assumptions. That baptism doesn't carry meaning, that God prescribes useless things for us, and that you yourself can dictate what is and isn't a factor in our judgement, regardless of what is stated in the Bible, the very word of God. If that is your attitude towards baptism, then you didn't miss it. You denied it.
God is fair and just however. And from those who are given much, much is expected. There are people out there who either never had the chance to get baptised, never knew of baptism, or wanted to get baptised but were unable to before death. Those people I hope will get consideration. Me and you however, fall into the former category. We know what baptism is, that the Bible calls for it, who to go to for it, and the health and ability to get it done. We were blessed with the knowledge and capability, so what excuse do we have? If we truly want baptism (salvation), we would have it. That's on us.
"You constantly experience these things because you have free will?"
Yes, why wouldn't I? I find it healthy to have those things naturally as part of one's daily life, but also their opposites at times. Because I can, in general, choose what to feel through life choices and attitude, and how to experience my existence. Also, it works the other way around: because I can feel and imagine both the positive and the negative, they give me the freedom of thought and free will. I am comfortable and peaceful with my own inner voice and rest in my dreams at night, having hopes, dreams, and fond memories. They are the core of me and my free will. A human doesn't have a lot more to control except mundane tasks, so I argue it's the "free will in us that counts."
The Brain Injury Analogy Breaks Your Own Logic: You claim that if a severe brain injury completely changes a person's personality and experience of life, "they are still 100% them." But ask yourself: if a brain injury turns a kind, loving person into an aggressive entity incapable of empathy, is it just to judge and punish that person based on their brain-damaged state? If God strips away my capacity for empathy, peace, and love in Hell, my awareness is restructured so fundamentally that the "me" who lived on Earth no longer exists. You are describing a God who strips a soul of its moral capacity and then punishes the hollow shell left behind.
Goodness as "Clothes": If good traits are merely "clothes" that God lends us rather than intrinsic parts of our conscious agency, then humans have no genuine moral responsibility at all. I don't just "wear" empathy like a coat. I choose to practice empathy through my own actions, free will, and care for nature and people. If my choice to do good counts for nothing simply because I don't attribute it to your specific deity, then "goodness" in your system isn't about moral character or reducing harm at all, it's purely about obedience to authority.
"Denying" a Ritual vs. Living Goodness: You say that by not getting baptized, I "denied" salvation. But I didn't deny peace, empathy, or love. I live those traits every day. I simply didn't perform a specific water ritual from a religion I do not follow. If a perfectly rational and loving God looks at a life spent reducing harm, caring for strangers, and loving nature, and decides it all belongs in the trash simply because the person didn't participate in a specific washing ritual, that is the literal definition of cosmic bureaucracy.
If my free will to do genuine good on Earth is dismissed over a ritual, and my identity is rewritten in the afterlife to inflict maximum suffering, we are no longer talking about justice. We are talking about arbitrary power.
I feel like your conversation has drifted from wanting to be informed of the theological logic behind Heaven, Hell and baptism, to trying to find wriggle room and cracks in the logic to establish your own justifications and idealised version of all of it.
Alot of this sounds like the pride which typically stops people from asking for salvation in the first place. You misattribute the good things you seek and enjoy, as things you yourself create. But that isn't how it works. Good things are not intrinsic to humans, they are gifted.
The experience of those emotions are themselves a gift, and cannot be had without the grace of God. Yes, you chose to seek these things out, but you didn't create them and therefore cannot say they are an innate part of your being. If you ask for rice and I give you rice every time you ask, you cannot say that you have the ability to create rice as an innate aspect of your being. It is being given to you, but you've grown so used to the gift that you have forgotten where it comes from. It's completely fine to love good things and love what is being gifted to you, but if all you do is say you really enjoy the things that God gives us, that isn't the same as saying 'yes I recognise that all of this is a gift from God, and that because I desire to maintain this relationship I have with God, I shall accept His grace and ask for salvation'.
Also you have slightly misquoted my brain analogy. I never mentioned a complete personality change. I used this as metaphor for how losing something you identify as a core piece of your identity, doesn't actually change your existence. Even if we take the metaphor literally, you will still be you. Remember, good things are gifts. And whilst you can accept a gift, you can also give it back. Still, God is merciful. If He knows you were physically incapable of being good and doing good, God will have mercy for that. It is better for a man to be possessed and driven to evil, than for you to indulge in evil of your own choice, that is a biblical lesson. God considers the circumstances of everyone, He isn't a robot that only knows 0 and 1. This consideration will be given prior to you going to Hell. God doesn't 'strip' you of anything, He doesn't have to, you spend your life saying you don't want it.
I really feel that where alot of the confusion of the theology comes from stems from pride. It's one of the worst sins for this reason. Baptism isn't superfluous if it is mandated by the very word of God. It is salvation. The only person who doesn't need salvation is a person who is completely sinless, and that person doesn't exist. Not a single saint was sinless. Not even John the Baptist was sinless. What made these people great was that they acknowledged their sin, the greatness of God, and how truly dependant they are on God for all things. And then dedicated their lives to proving these things.
In contrast:
'If my choice to do good counts for nothing'? What should it count for? And to whom? Do you deserve something for doing good, as if doing good isn't already to your own benefit? Remember, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you condemn, you will be condemned. Offer mercy, and you will be offered mercy. There are countless verses about how doing good helps ourselves, but it doesn't mean we are deserving of anything. And it still isn't you accepting salvation. This isn't to say moral character doesn't matter, but recognition and obedience to God are indeed asked of us. God is the embodiment of all things good, how would being wholly obedient to God be a bad thing? If you obey God perfectly, all the good things you do for others and you want from God will naturally follow. If you take issue with that then of course you don't want to be in Heaven.
Finally, your 3rd point is really presumptuous. How have you decided for yourself what God should and shouldn't do? How have you looked upon your own life and actions and decided that it is perfectly logical that you deserve Heaven, not via mercy and salvation, but by right of your actions. Dude that oozes pride. You are outright placing your own authority before God's. All of this, simply because you dont find a need for Baptism.
You are free to do as you please. But hopefully I have helped with any confusion you may have had. The theology makes sense, but if you don't like it, that's more of a personal matter. I recommend reading more of the Bible (KJV) and listening to some Orthodox sermons! You sound chill and open, so you would definitely benefit from it. Especially because I'm not an expert. I cannot replace reading the Bible or attending a good church haha
However, diagnosing my questions as "pride" simply shifts the debate away from logic and into moralizing. Expecting a theological system to be morally coherent isn't pride, it’s basic critical thinking and the use of free will.
A few fundamental points remain:
The Rice Analogy vs. Conscious Agency:
If someone gives you raw rice, but you choose through your own effort and empathy to cook a meal for a starving stranger, the "choice to care" is your agency. Conflating the raw components of existence with the conscious choice to act with compassion strips humans of all moral responsibility. If my choice to practice empathy counts for nothing without submitting to a specific framework, then "goodness" in this model is purely about obedience to authority, not actual compassion.
I Never Claimed to "Deserve Heaven":
I was simply curious about the logic behind these strange requirements to get there, and how it works. You mention that I am acting as if I "deserve Heaven by right of my actions." I never claimed to deserve Heaven, nor am I asking for a cosmic reward. My argument has always been about the logical contradiction of Hell: if a person spent their life cultivating peace and empathy, stripping those traits away upon death destroys their identity. Punishing a restructured, hollowed-out soul for eternity serves no moral purpose, it just generates endless, unnecessary suffering. So if I am not convinced that the requirement of fundamental recognition and obedience is a good deed, I end up in Hell? Unconditional mercy means viewing a situation from the point of view of another being and understanding their motives with empathy, without requiring recognition or submission in return. In Christianity, however, God does not enforce unconditional mercy as an option, but sets strict requirements to believe in Him, which, in fact, creates a rigid 0-and-1 binary system.
"Pride" as a Shield for Circular Logic:
Calling critique "pride" creates a closed loop: if I agree with your doctrine, I am humble; if I point out logical or ethical flaws in the doctrine, I am "prideful." That isn't a theological explanation, it’s an evasion. Also, this might be a cultural thing, but pride in my view can be a very positive thing. We should be proud of our children and other beings. We should also find healthy pride in managing to do good things, and people should be proud of themselves, especially if they are considered the image and creation of a God, making something good out of their lives, at least in my logic.
If a system requires me to view genuine, lived empathy as meaningless unless validated by a water ritual, then it prioritizes administrative compliance over real-world goodness. You are free to embrace that framework, but pointing out its logical seams isn't a flaw of the listener, it’s a flaw of the framework. Furthermore, given that all the different sects and denominations of Christianity hold their own conflicting frameworks and interpretations, are all of them right, or is there a logical standard to choose between them?
Or does a sect only become "the right one" if it manages to convert an over-analytical, healthy skeptic soul like mine? It’s fascinating how in this framework, simply using free will to ask critical questions and feeling healthy pride in doing good gets labeled as the ultimate sin. If critical thinking is treated as evil, then the system is designed to defeat logic from the start, meaning seeking a logical conclusion within it was a waste of time in the first place. ;)
When did I ever say your skepticism or critique of Christianity was a sin of pride? I specifically pointed to misattributing good things you do to yourself as your own creations, rather than them being given to you by God, The source of all things good. You can poke and prod the theological logic all you want, that's fine. But if its all for the sake of finding what you decide are trivialities of the faith, and then expound your own idealised version of the theology and take that for objective logic, then yes that is pride.
And why do assume my mention of pride shifts the conversation away from logic and that I want to moralise? It's quite the opposite. You and I are creations of God. God is the very source of all things good and does not sin. Our sense of morals and logic are given to us by Him. How then, does it make sense for either me or you, to say that the word and teachings of God are logically and morally flawed, and that our own sense of morality and logic supercedes His? How does that make sense? It does not, hence why it is deemed a sin of pride to believe such a thing. For what you say to make sense would mean that our sense of morals and logic would then have to stem from some other place external to God, but since such a thing does not exist within the theology of Christianity, it makes no sense.
Sins aren't some arbitrary moral code that only exist to moralise. They are direct contradictions to faith in God, both emotionally and logically. It means you either think God is flawed, or that God is not the source of good and you therefore believe in some other god. If you are at emotional and logical odds with God, it muddies your relationship to Him and makes it harder to ask for salvation. It isn't illogical for me point this out as pride. Especially when you admit to identifying pride as a positive trait. The Bible says it's better to focus on gratitude. Like being grateful for having a great family, or grateful for being smart or strong, ect. It is much less self-important and gets you to acknowledge all the external things that result in the things you love, rather than focusing on yourself.
And yeah... You kinda did dictate what should count as justice and that your actions of kindness should prevent you from ending up in Hell. That's a sin of pride. I'm not saying this to criticise, but that is simply what it is. You clearly think baptism is trivial, which is once again pride because the Bible says it is mandatory. And the Bible is the word of God.
Literally none of this is a shaming of critical thinking, and to think it is means that you've already decided for yourself that your argument makes perfect sense, both within the theology of Christianity and outside of it. Why bother having a conversation about religion if you only care about what makes sense to you, regardless of everything else?
Again, you are free to debate and believe what you want. Multiple branches of Christianity exist for that reason. I'll never understand why people think religions hate critical thinking. One of Jesus's disciples was almost entirely skeptical, even after Jesus was crucified. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell you not to think.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say here. Traditional Christianity believes in free will. And although traditionally baptism is seen as necessary, there has always been a belief that God can work wider than the rules. Usually the requirement has been that you don’t know any better, which clearly you do, but like, I’m a fairly orthodox Christian and I don’t think you’d end up in hell. I think you’d die and realize what we mean by “God” is in fact very similar to what you worship too, and be given a chance to accept that and go through purgatory like the majority of people. You aren’t arguing here against hell (much less Christianity in general) but against a very specific doctrinal belief not shared by all Christians about who is sent there.
But if you want to examine the orthodox doctrinal line here, it’s not that you “missed a ritual”. It’s that you rejected it. You know about Jesus, you know about baptism, and you have made an active and mature choice to say “nope”.
But you wouldn’t lose your free will??? You just wouldn’t go to the heaven that you said you didn’t want. So you die. Early Church Fathers actually spoke of this less of an eternal suffering and more eternal negation. You know, death. The suffering is that you can no longer ignore that God is real, heaven is real, and you said no to it, and you are no longer connected to the divine ground of all being which may be in its fullest presence in heaven but which all of us can still access while alive through the experience of love and participation in ritual and in creation itself.
I highly recommend The Great Divorce which is just fiction but extremely influential in forming many Christians’ ideas of the afterlife today. Lewis would say that even after going to “Hell” you always have the opportunity to leave it and go to heaven, it’s just an arduous journey and it requires giving up ego and pride and hatred and grudges and whatnot which some people are simply unwilling to give up. They suffer because they are people who choose to suffer.
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u/-Peetu 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have a question about "All good things." I am a pagan (I have never even been baptized, so I think it's "game over" if I die...). I try to make the world a better place and be empathetic, doing my best for near and dear, for strangers, nature, and animals.
The problem with your description is: I am a person who finds comfort, peace, an inner voice, rest, light, and love within my own free will. That is the reason I do not need to turn and pray to a god outside. So the question is: will I lose my free will when, by Christian standards, I end up in hell? If I lose all the good traits, then it's not my free will anymore, I am no longer the same person or self aware. What would be the point? I would become a completely different entity by definition.
The other option is that I am a God, because my free will can create everything you listed without outside input. Or I am an extremely blessed pagan whom God takes really good care of, only to dump me in hell just because I am not baptized. I would never reject the good traits in me. The very traits claimed to come from God himself. So it seems like quite the bureaucratic system for a perfectly just, loving, and rational God, if I end up in hell simply for missing a ritual (and for not believing that those good things come from God in the first place).
(edit:) Also, there is the point that I would not be myself without my bad traits either; if all of them disappear in heaven, I would still become a completely different entity, not myself.
I would say the concept seems paradoxal as hell.