Sorry to disagree, but I must. Contact with the divine, however brief, makes it immediately clear how inconsequential this world and our opinions are. Laughter is the only response that's not insane.
Of course they feel that way. They believe they’ll go to hell if they don’t. The whole religion is built on fear.
That's a lie of just about the worst sort.
We matter more than you obviously imagine.
The wrong kind of divine minimizes humans. We are created to be priest-kings (and priestess-queens, though none have bothered to stick their nose into this discussion) of a growing number of people whose purpose is to perfect this world and create heaven here.
Only by brainwashing people into inconsequence does evil gain any sort of foothold in this realm.
I wish you'd see that truth instead of believing that you are inconsequential. That makes me very sad to hear.
I didn't say **_we_** are unimportant - only that opinions are. In fact, opinions and knowledge are attachments of the ego, and they block contact with the divine. Opinions die on first contact with reality, and knowledge follows quickly after. The closer you draw to God, the further from self you go. Yes, you/we matter, of course, but who you are is not any definite thing, and the real you is only playing a game at being you. Its a performance. Enjoy it.
Hell isn't even a biblical concept. Its literally made up. Where people think the Bible talks about hell, it says "lake of fire." That's an Egyptian concept that has been wildly taken out of context. Rebirth is entering the lake of fire. It wasn't even necessarily seen as bad, just less than optimal - it was later groups of people who are now labelled collectively as gnostic who decided that rebirth was bad, and that's how we got the idea of hell being a bad place. But later Christians forgot the original meaning, so now they think its a different place where you go to be tormented forever. That's already happening. Its here, now. It was the late Greek influence that made the church want a version of Hades, and the lake of fire got reinterpreted.
Similarly, heaven was never a separate place that you go to. Jesus said unambiguously where heaven is - right here, right now. These are not opposite concepts. They are the same.
Jesus would say he’s basing his beliefs on love? A radical idea in his time.
No thanks. That's shallow and selfish thinking. Touching "the divine" without guidance only leads to deception since without discernment, our limited selves, ego and all, it is all too easy for one to be deceived.
Knowledge is not an attachment of the ego. Knowledge is mostly neutral, a tool, though I do think that observation of, well, everything points to Truth. Anything else is a false dichotomy.
I am definite thing. You are, too. If you and I were not, then we could not *be.* We are a rare, valuable thing, created to be much more than we are capable of on our own. Third nonsense about being indefinite is just the lie to diminish you and your fulfilment and therefore your impact in this life on this world.
You couldn't make contact without God's help. There's your guide. Its impossible. Jesus said the same.
OP said the texts were bastardized and mistranslated. You’re confirming his stance.
That's correct, though "mistranslated" isn't quite as right as misinterpreted.
Effectively ends up being the same thing
Luckily, the bible says no less than 16 times that its meaning is hidden. Well, not so explicitly, but basically.
Why would god intentionally hide his message?
I can't say with certainty that God did. These books were written by human hands.
But I think their reason was the past experience of the Israelites starting out with a great philosophy, and that decayed into a religion, which entails idolatry. Ezekiel makes it clear that the loss of meaning is not okay. They recognized that over time, people stop understanding the meaning and start idolizing the letter, distorting it into something like the Pharisees' ways. Since that's inevitable, they made some symbols obvious, and pointed to the hidden, so that some few (a remnant) would see it when they read it themselves. That remnant is the true church. Every single church you've ever heard of is a false church. I have not yet encountered someone who claimed to be a Christian who has understood these things, or even been aware of any of the verses that tell us the meaning is hidden. Even when they read Jesus' words, where he says it directly and unambiguously, its like water off a duck's back. They aren't called, so they can't see it.
Contact with what (or whom) specifically?
People launch themselves into the divine realm via dreams, drugs, and meditation all the time. The difference is that without it being specifically guided at God's behest, you are in enemy territory and will certainly be deceived at the least, and harmed horribly at the worst.
You can't meet God without Him meeting you, if that's what you mean.
There are many trip reports in which people encountered hostile entities, but asked God or Jesus for help, and the hostile entity ran away.
I wouldn't know if this is real. I'm just a researcher.
Yup. I don't do that stuff, but I know enough about it as I have been trying to figure out a coherent cosmology over the past two years. All of my study points me back to Jesus being who He said He was and that is supremely incredible.
Jesus was/is God, and he resurrected after dying on the cross. There, that should allay any fears that I'm a demon. I'm skeptical of Paul's story, but that's an easy heuristic to pass.
But. What does it mean? Every word in that sentence was symbolic in at least two ways. That's not to say its not real or didn't physically happen. If you get the symbolism and then recapitulate it, then you're saved. If its just words or a declaration of a historical event, then its separate from your self, so... No beans.
