Getting The Short End Of The Stick

[Ric]

Long before the final grains of "belief" ran from the hourglass, I had questioned the negotiating abilities of whomever got us this "great deal" with God.  Even as a teenager, I saw no advantage in remaining alive for longer than I could even conceive it.  And, work/sickness/suffering/poverty in exchange for being a faithful servant here on earth didn't seem like much of a bargain.

 

Even at this moment, I cannot put any reasonable argument together that would cause me to exchange my life on earth for the vague and empty promises that are currently on the table.

 

Hey!---could I exchange eternity for a "do-over," with a guarantee of good health and hot chicks, and a bottomless bank account?  Hmmm...

 

Or---serve the lord, and your family gets to avoid the disasters and death that the rest of the world has to suffer?

 

I mean, who was SO out-of-touch with reality that they expected the studio audience to give it all up for what's behind curtain number two?  I'm not trying to be silly.  I'm just thinking that in exchange for what is usually a pretty shitty life on earth, we are promised beans without the cornbread, FOREVER. 

 

Singing 'round the throne, forever? 

I've heard some of y'all sing. 

It's not something I'd look forward to.

[mymistake]

How many of us remember sitting in a church service when the pastor went overtime by about 15 to 20 minutes?  You look at your watch.  You turn around and look at the clock on the wall.  Then you look at your watch.  Wasn't it misery?  Oh I just can't wait to get the the church service in the sky that runs a trillion minutes overtime only to do it all over again!  Imagine singing every hymn ever invented a trillion times each.  And listening to every praise for God ever written and it gets repeated a trillion times.  Oh I can't wait!

[mwc]

     Exactly.

 

     You ever see one of those movies or TV shows were people are being forced to be in some room and they finally escape...to the same identical room?  We're led to believe this is some sort of hell they're in but here it's supposed to be heaven?  Where you just keep on doing the same thing over and over and over again with no escape?  You just keep going from some sort of church service to another?  Sing the exit hymn, walk out, press the flesh, but instead of getting into your car and leaving, you just walk up another aisle and start singing the entrance hymn?  Over and over and over?  Forever?  Not even the hope of a small bathroom break exists since you no longer have those bodily urges so it's non-stop and never ending.  It really sounds like a nightmare.

 

          mwc

[Ric]

Guess my point is something like...

At the time, these ridiculous concepts of eternity were, well, "heavenly."  {{snort}}

 

What does that tell us about the quality of life then?

[TheBluegrassSkeptic]

I was always a reader. When our pastor would tell us to turn our bawbles to such and such verse, I wouldn't ever just stop at the one verse. I always ended up reading the whole damn chapter. It always struck me odd how the pastor would speak about how wonderful Heaven was. Being reunited with loved ones. Having our ills stripped away and being whole again. Yadda Yadda.

 

Then I'd read the description of Heaven.

 

Uh, yeah. FUCK. THAT.

 

Eternity as an automaton never attracted me.

[Guest Furball]

It makes you think that all the creatures in heaven that continually bow down saying holy holy holy is the lord god almighty, are nothing more than robots. Seriously, as a freethinker, heaven would be hell. Only if i was programmed for worship and nothing else could i conceive of it being tolerable. How horrible heaven must be, and to think, that nut case god resides there. (Yes he fills all, but for some reason the non humans created heaven as a place where god is more manifest than the rest of the universe.) Man Made non sense. -Cat

[TheOutsider]

Hell. It's heaven rebranded!

 

And might not be eternal depending on who you ask. Heaven's PR branch really needs to step it's game up, I would prefer the potential of being obliterated over eternal worship. Hell, even eternal suffering would be preferable to eternal worship, and I'm not even a masochist... Once you lose mortality pain means nothing. But eternal conscious monotony, that sounds like unbearable torture to me.

 

And hell, if Supernatural has anything right I might get to be a demon eventually, so there's that.

[Justin]

I don't give a damn what it is, doing anything for an eternity would get old real quick, let alone forever church. It's like if you imagine being on a lush, beautiful, tropical island for eternity. Sure it sounds great, but after the first 10,000 years you'd be longing for snow capped mountain vistas and alpine meadows or rolling fields and babbling brooks... But nope. Tropical island forever.

 

Given the puny confines of heaven as listed in the bible, the measurements of which I cannot remember but they are pathetically tiny, crammed shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of millions of other robots.... I'd be looking for the back door within 5 minutes.

[duderonomy]

C'mon guys. What about where the Bible says that in the ages to come God will show us all the neat stuff that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and all of that?

 

1 Corinthians 2:9King James Version (KJV)

9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

 

(Hi Ric, welcome to Ex-C! You sound cool and I hope you stick around. Most of the folks in this thread "know" me, but you don't so I should point out that I'm only playing Jesus' advocate on this one)

[Ric]

Thanks, Dude!

and, you are correct---I am really Super Cool, which you picked-up on, because our spirits have taken this opportunity to bear witness to each other.  My spirit says that you play the Jesus so well, he was confused for just a sec.  Be careful with that!