Would you like to live for all eternity?

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Not to sound preachy or proselytizing, but try to take comfort in the notion of a God who had taken on humanity with all its frailties and weaknesses, took that punishment you so fear, and paid for it with a shameful, prolonged death where he was deserted by God. And yet, pulled off a big win in the end, so none of us have to face any sort of spiritual death and that eternal punishment.
Again, not trying to convert you to anything - my point being, you don't have to fear what happens when the lights turn off for good.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

as usual i was clumsy in my expression. i didn't intend for you to feel insulted by me when that was the furthest thing from my intent. what i'm trying to say, is that 1] you are NOT evil but 2] there are entities that would be happier if you WERE evil. IOW misery loves company. and your description of god is reflective of what you see in other deeply flawed human beings and not something as exalted as one who made all that is. when we look outwards and try to see god all we can see is a reflection of our own limited human comprehension. one has to look deep within to find god. as for religion, they are akin to the buttons on a car radio that select favorite preselected stations/frequencies that fit in certain genres or cubbyholes- one or more religions might stress legalism and procedure [which some people need to make sense of their lives, ain't saying which ones], while other religions might stress esoteric matters of spirit, most fall somewhere between those two extremes. religions aren't necessary to understand what we are here on earth to understand, but they make such understanding easier for some kinds of people. the purpose of a religion is to answer the mysteries of the universe, each religion sees it differently, but if you don't fit in those preselected genres, you can still "tune by hand" and find a custom station just for you that isn't part of any religion. that is what i had to do, as i didn't fit in any religious cubbyhole.


i used to be an agnostic, which was because i didn't have concrete evidence in front of me which would indicate that god was a fact. i just couldn't believe that a loving god would single me out to be nothing but a hopeless dope forever. i couldn't see past my immediate life circumstances. but the reason they call it a"leap of faith" is because one has to take a flying leap past proof, past what one knows, and, well, take it on faith. i had hit rock bottom in my life, i had been homeless and bereft of any material resource [nary a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of] and i was desperate for an answer as to why nothing in my life had worked out despite my best efforts. so out of desperation, i did what i swore i would never do, and give up, to "let go and let god" as the religious types would say. so i prayed to what i thought of as god and asked "why did my life have to be the way it was?" "what had i done wrong?" "why was i being punished?" and other similar questions. i asked for "signs and wonders," i was grasping at straws so i was willing to take very subtle/tangential answers at this point. subtle was not what i got. i quickly got hired as a civil servant [after the bureaucrats at the employment office earlier had told me, "don't hold your breath."], and at the military hospital i was employed in, there was a nurse, an old but very experienced pediatric nurse who glommed onto me because she "strongly felt that [i] was lost and needed answers to the mysteries of the universe." first, she told me that god, the creator of all that is, was way beyond petty human things like good/evil and all other human primitiveness, that if we saw those things in god that we actually were just seeing our own reflections as in a mirror, that one of the universal laws is "we always meet ourself in others." we wouldn't really know god if he fell on top of us. IOW our level of spiritual/ethical development is always reflected in who we encounter in our lives, which can also be expressed as "mediocrity can only know itself." then she told me to pay extra attention to my dreams at night, and that i would find my first answers there. keeping it short, i did indeed find my important answers there, in generalities, the specifics would come with further metaphysical study. the long and short of it was that i found my purpose- unglamorous as it is, it is all mine and i can point to it and say that is why i am on this earth, and that i [along with all the rest of "all that is"] am a teeny weeny part of god or "all that is." as far as love goes, it is up to each of us to learn how to love, it is not for god to coddle us in that respect, god has much more important things to do than micromanage human affairs and assuage every bruised psyche. it is up to us to assuage each other's hurts, to comfort one another. in doing so, we become more worthy of higher realms of existence.