My Religion - Part 1: Life and Death
Before you start reading, a few things. A lot of my beliefs here are based off of figuring out what the original Greek and Hebrew words of the Bible actually mean. As such, you need an accurate translation. In this post, I will be using the Concordant Literal Version of the Bible for reference. It is the version I refer to for study but, being very literal, it is also somewhat hard to read. I will be using the CLV for scripture references).
(In addition, I will be referring to the Old and New Testaments as the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek Scriptures. The terms Old and New Testaments are problematic because they imply that one is more important than the other. They are both significant, even if the rules of the Hebrew Scriptures do not apply to modern Christians. The term Old Testament is also particularly offensive to millions of Jewish believers, who regard it as the sacred and living Tanakh. It is not old, it is the living, breathing, word of God.)
Spirituality means something different for every human. Some people are Muslim, some people are Buddhist, some people practice Wicca, and some are Jewish. For many people, they might practice a mixture of different religious traditions. Religion is a natural part of the human experience. Not only does it fulfill our deepest questions of what life is and why it is, it also fulfills our need for community and for belonging. Many people identify strongly with their faith community.
I however do not have a physical faith community to identify with. After lots and lots of soul-searching, I have found that no single organized religious tradition is calling me. But that does not mean that I do not believe. Today, I want to examine a little of my own religious history and explain what my current spiritual views are now. They are constantly in flux, and yet there is always a solid bedrock that my faith is built on. That unchanging bedrock is my faith in the teachings, tribulation, sacrifice, and ultimate resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Panentheism
First off. What do I think about God? Well, I like to think of Him as something like the Force in Star Wars. In the movies, the Force is a phenomenon that binds every living thing in the galaxy together. That’s what I feel God acts as. I feel He is the most fundamental layer of reality. The reason for existence and for life. From Him, existence sprang forth. Colossians 1:17 says that “He is before all, and all has its cohesion in Him”. Without Him, there is no existence. I feel Him in the world itself, in nature, far more than in any church building, no matter how beautiful and cozy they might be. I feel Him in the breeze, in the water, in the living creatures around me, in the vegetation, and quite simply in the air.
This belief is called Panentheism. This is different from the more well known belief of Pantheism. Pantheism is the idea that God and the Universe are one thing. Panentheism on the other hand is the belief that God and the Universe are distinct, but that the Universe is wholly dependent, and intersected, by its Creator, the universal, living, consciousness that is the reason for existence itself. He is outside space and time, for space and time spring forth from His Word.
Bad Translations
I feel like I should do some explaining. How could I be a believer in Jesus and the Bible without believing in the church? Well, that is because I believe that the current Christian church and community have strayed too much from what the Bible originally taught. I think that most mainstream/orthodox Christian doctrines are wrong and contradictory. Not to mention the immense harm the deeply unchristian “Christian” church has caused over the years. I intend to explain point by point which orthodox doctrines are wrong, why they’re wrong, and what the Bible actually says. This is too much to be done in one post, so please stay tuned. This one will mostly focus on what death is and what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
I think the biggest reason for the departure away from truth is bad translations. Most modern translations of the Bible went through literal millennia of translation from Greek to Latin to Old English all the way through to Modern English. As you can imagine, it is inevitable that some important words would be changed. Just a few words getting changed and misinterpreted out of their original context have led to entire belief systems being changed. In my opinion, this leads to beliefs that aren’t even Christian. I think the first and most fundamental of these beliefs is the question of what happens after death.
Death
The most common Christian concept of death is that when you die, your soul goes to either Heaven or Hell based on whether you had accepted Christ as your personal savior or not. This is, in my opinion, one of the most fundamental things that traditional Christianity gets wrong. Throughout the Bible, there is little to no mention of souls living on after death. I think before I go any further, I should explain what a soul actually is biblically.
Soul in the Bible is commonly translated as “nephesh” in Hebrew and in Greek “psuche” (Where the modern word “Psyche” comes from). Its most common meaning is simply “a living being” as in 1 Kings 19:4, Acts 2:41, and Rom. 13:1. A soul is simply what happens when you combine a spirit and a body, as stated in Gen. 2:7. In this verse, God builds humans out of “soil” (Physical matter) and breathes from His nostrils “the breath of the living” (the spirit) into the bodies and the human becomes a living soul. The soul is the consciousness, and the Bible says that the consciousness can die.
The world “nephesh” is described as being killed or being dead in Joshua 20:3, Numbers 31:19, Numbers 6:6 and Ezekiel 18:4. “Psuche” is used in the same way in verses such as in Matthew 10:28, Mark 3:4, James 5:20, and Revelation 16:3. These verses show that the soul (consciousness) can be killed and be dead, that is, be in a state of non-existence. Your soul/consciousness dies with you when you die, and the only way for it to come back is when we are brought back to life by our Lord (Romans 8:11).
“Heaven” or “the heavens” is spoken of as simply being the sky. Not some other dimension. Genesis 1:20 mentions “the flyer” (probably birds) flying in the “atmosphere of the heavens”. The word used for “heavens in this passage is the Hebrew word “šāmayim”, which usually means the sky. No where is it spoken of as another plane of reality where good or believing spirits go, or whatever popular consensus has it as. It is simply the sky and space above us.
Satan himself and his demons are in Heaven right now according to Ephesians 6:12. The verse says that “for it is not ours to wrestle with blood and flesh, but with the sovereignties, with the authorities, with the world-mights of this darkness, with the spiritual forces of wickedness among the celestials”. Celestials means the sky. The fabled “Fall of Lucifer” doesn’t actually happen until the future “war in Heaven”, where Satan and his demons will be kicked out of Heaven and fall to Earth as stated in Revelation 12:7-9.
Universalism
But what exactly is Hell, then. It’s mentioned in the Bible, after all. Well, as you may have guessed, it’s a little more complicated than that. I always thought the traditional Christian idea of Hell was very odd and contradictory to what I thought God was in the Bible. But the Bible mentioned eternal hell often, so I just shrugged and accepted it as part of my life. I would say that the idea of our just and loving God torturing people forever has caused more people to abandon Christianity than anything else. Why would you follow a deity like that? Eternal violent punishment is something our fallen human species would do, not our divine Creator. So I thought, anyway.
Over the years, as I grew up and began learning more about my professed faith, the fear of Hell grew in me more and more. I never really thought that I would end up there because I was a good Catholic boy who never did anything wrong (haha). But I had a lot of family and friends who weren’t believers, and I worried about them deeply. The thought that they could end up burning forever, and I couldn’t do anything about it, was too much for me to bear. But I found one verse in the Greek Scriptures (New Testament) that gave me permanent doubt of the idea of permanent punishment, 1 Timothy 4:10.
“For this we both labor and are reproached, because we hope on the living God, who is Savior of all men—especially of those believing.” This is the rendering of 1 Timothy 4:10 in the Literal Standard Version of the Bible. We hope on the living God, who is the savior of all men, especially of those who believe. God saves all men, the Living God saves all, but he especially saves those who believe.
This led to me to believe that Hell as an idea is not what most people think and that there is more to it then meets the eye. So what is it? Why does Jesus use the word Hell in my translation of the Bible? Here’s why. Jesus never actually talks about the traditional idea of Hell at all. He never mentions eternal damnation and torture, in fact no one in the Bible does. The word translated from Greek to English as Hell in verses such as Luke 16:23, Matthew 16:18, Luke 10:15, and Act 2:27 is actually Hades. Hades is defined by Strong’s dictionary as “the adobe of departed spirits” or “the Unseen world”. In the CLV, Hades and an equivalent word in the Hebrew Scriptures, Sheol, is translated as “the Unseen”, because that’s what the “realm of the dead” is, it is unseen. Your soul disappears when you die, it is Unseen. Hades/Sheol does not include any torture or fire. It is simply the state of nonexistence that will come to us all.
Hades/Sheol is not the only place commonly confused as Hell in the Greek Scriptures. Verses such as Matthew 10:28, Mark 9:43, Luke 12:5, and James 3:6 speak of “hell” and mention being “set aflame”, and the “unquenchable fire”. That sounds like Hell right? It doesn’t sound like an unseen state of nonexistence like Hades/Sheol. That’s because it isn’t. The world translated as Hell in most versions would better be translated as “Gehenna”. Now what the hell, err Gehenna, is Gehenna? Gehenna is a real place in the Holy Land. It is a trench, just south of Jerusalem, that the ancient Israelites would throw trash, the corpses of those who were executed, and on rare occasions, babies who had been sacrificed to other gods. Quite a ghastly place. It’s actually really beautiful today.
But there is one more place in the Bible often confused with the traditional concept of Hell, The Lake of Fire. “And if anyone was not found written in the scroll of life, he was cast into the lake of fire” – Revelation 20:15. That sounds pretty hellish right. A lake of fire that bad people get thrown into. Here is the thing about that though, anyone thrown into it is already dead. Rev 21:8 tells us that certain people whose name is not in the scroll of life will be thrown into the lake “burning with fire and sulfur”, a common description of traditional hell. But it goes on to say that being thrown into the lake is termed “the second death”. What have we already established about death? That it is non-existence. The lake of fire could possibly be the same place as Gehenna, but that is up for debate.
It was at this point that I realized that I needed to explain what exactly the scroll of life is. Let’s examine Revelation 20:11-15. In it, John sees a “great white throne”, before it, he sees “the dead, the great, and the small, standing before the throne”. He goes on to describe how a “scroll of life was opened”, he says that the dead were judged “by that which is written in the scrolls in accord to their acts”. He says that “the sea gives up the dead in it, and death and the unseen give up the dead in them. And they were condemned each in accord with their acts”. The fate of unbelievers will be decided by their actions. Believers have been saved by Christ, they skip the great white throne entirely (Ephesians 1:3-8, Colossians 1:12-14). Our sins have been forgiven. The judgment at the great white throne is for those who have not accepted Christ, good and bad, dead and alive. They will be judged on their deeds, not their belief. If it was about belief, the whole scroll of life thing would be redundant and confusing.
But wait. Matthew 25:41 mentions “eternal fire”, so does Matthew 18:8, and Jude 1:7. What gives? I thought eternal punishment wasn’t a thing. Well. It’s not. Surprise, Surprise, this is yet again a case of mistranslation. The word used here for “eternal” (Which is also used in the verses speaking of eternal life like the ever famous John 3:16), in the original Greek is “eonian”. Eonian comes from the word “eon” which means “a very long period of time” according to Merriam-Webster. An equivalent English word would be “age”. Ages have ends. The “eternal fire” will have an end. The fire is what happens to the bodies of people who are not in the book of life. Their soul disappears, and their bodies are burned for ages. But they will be brought back when death itself is defeated. But wait, if the fire is only for a certain period of time, what about the eternal (eonian) life that’s mentioned all the time?
Eonian Life
Eonian life is simply, life for the ages. It is a gift given to those who believe. This is what Timothy 4:10 means when it says “especially of those believing”. Believers will be seated together with Christ “among the celestials” according to Ephesians 1:20. Believers will be seated with Christ and with other spiritual beings “the celestials”. What this will entail is unknown. So what happens at the end of the ages? The ages end when Jesus gives up all His rule to God so that God can be all in all. Then it will no longer be eonian life, everyone will simply be alive. It will be the end of the ages. The end of God’s history. The ultimate happy ending to reality that will go on forever.
I should mention something. Yes. The word “eonian” can in some cases mean eternal. That is one of the definitions of the word given in Strong's Concordance. BUT, I have another peace of evidence that renders the theory that when the writers of the Greek scriptures used “eonian” they really meant “eternal” highly improbable. There is a similar sounding Greek word ”aidios” that means eternal and only eternal. If the writers actually meant eternal, wouldn't they use aidios instead of eonian? Well, they did! I give you Romans 1:20. In the NIV translation this passage reads ”For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse”. They use the word that actually, only means eternal to describe the actual, only thing that actually is eternal, God himself. You know, calling eonian life “eternal” doesn't even make any sense because the word “eternal” means ”without a beginning or an end”. Eonian life begins when you believe, so it can't possibly be eternal.
I think one of the strongest passages in the Bible in favor of universal salvation is 1 Corinthians 20-28. Among the highlights from this post, a few verses stand out. “For even as, in Adam, all are dying, thus also, in Christ, shall all be vivified. — 1 Corinthians 15:22. What the Gehenna does vivified mean? It simply means, made alive, or remade. Notice how it says all. If all who are in sin and death because of Adam (All of humanity), then why would it change to only some being vivified because of Christ. It doesn’t make sense. But the most important part is the next few verses. The next verse says that each will be made alive “in his own order”. First it will be Christ, then His followers. Then, Jesus will eventually give all power and dominion He has back to God. Christ will be reigning until all of his enemies are placed under his feet. The last of these will be death. Then everything and everyone in every inch of the universe will be subject to the ultimate creator. God will be all in all. All in All. It speaks for itself. All will live forever and all will rejoice.
If you asked me “Hey Joey, what do you need to do in order to be saved?”, I would say something like ”You will be saved no matter what you do”. But if you asked me ”Hey Joey, what do you need to do in order to be saved early?”, I would reply with this video. I don't recall exactly where I got that clip from, but it is short and to the point. I believe that it is all you need to believe in order to experience immediate vivification with Christ when He returns. Just the simple fact that Christ (truly) died for our sake and came back. It's the truly part that slips people up.
So that is a very, very, limited explanation of the Christian concept of universal salvation and of soul sleep. Why did I write this? Well my religious beliefs are a little out of the ordinary. There are other things I believe that I will probably write about in the future, but soul sleep and universal salvation are the most important ones I feel. These two doctrines are the two crucial ones for understanding the Gospel in my opinion.
If you would like to read more about the points I made here and similar Bible truths you won't really find in modern Churches, check out this book by Drew Costen. Drew's blog is a big part of what lead me to finding out the truth and I pray that it leads you to it too. Also check out Andrew's book here. Andrew's posts have also been a big influence on my theological beliefs. But most importantly, never stop praying, never stop reading, do your own research, come to your own conclusions. Do not rely solely on what other people have done. Happy Easter!!