Riffin' On Romans 8:28 and Starting to get Suspicious

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

You know that whole phenomena in which if a thing stated is true, implied within it is the entirety of existence? This Bible passage is one of many which invalidates the idea of Hell/damnation as an viable eternal “destination”/state.

If “all things” “work together” “for good”… where is the Devil in this picture? If he even does exist in the sense that he is the source of temptation for selfish/questionable action for beings…apparently he is part of a system in which “all” of the parts “work together” for the sake of what is “good”.

Life is good. Comprehensively. It is perfect as it is. Discontentment is utterly neutered by an effective realization of as much- that the circuit is set up in such a fashion that it pushes of the prospects of our individuals lives higher with the love of a zealous, Universal parent. God will love you in a fashion as direct as your very parents, and he really will support you materially in your life. To engage such a notion with humility, to try to play along as perfectly as possible, to fulfill your universal role…is a short path to both peace and prosperity…which do absolutely go hand in hand.

But wait! What if it’s only like this “for those who love God”? What about those who may not even have been taught him/baptized?!

Anticipating such queries, the phrase “for those who are called according to his purpose” was tacked onto the tail end of this passage. What about strange, dreamy realms…dreams themselves….dimensions with ethereal slug-energy peoples… things that may not have cognition as we understand it… how can we see a world in which the animal and plant life isn’t denied a presence in Heaven because there is somehow spiritual merit to their existence? How could a flower choose to “love God”…and if it can’t, apparently “all things” won’t “work together” “for good” in that flower’s existence…it can’t be saved!

It has nothing there to be saved, is what is implied from the fallacious vantage point…

Everything in the cosmos lives under the natural order…everything is subject to the universe itself and the various conditioning forces found within, both personal and impersonal. Ants do what ants feel compelled to do; plants and humans the very same; we exist, we act intuitively, and across time this somehow actualizes us and teaches us, in a personal way, about out God. Religion is supplementary. Life is the ultimate vehicle.

In that everything in existence lives under some sort of natural order, those things “are called” to “His (God)” “purpose”. Baptism is but a reflection of what was already in place since the advent of your existence… you were born “into” something inherently spiritual, and you have a personal mission that is about you coming to know about God and his personality as well as his plans for Earth… as weird as that sounds to say. This is the “Universal Church”… even the little green men out there in other galaxies living lives unfathomable to us ultimately are under this very same rule. This is the common ground, the equanimity of all life forms…it’s a prerequisite to material embodiment. But I divulge.

I think Satan has been used very poorly by the church in modern times. The lessons I got on it at mass were utterly useless, and they carried on year in and out for like a decade. The root of it seems to be the church approaching it as a very real reality… and that’s not how their tradition is framed. The Bible itself at most uses Lucifer like a herald angel; the surface level of his language is temptation and trickery, but the effect of his person…he comes across as sad and weak and pathetic…but moreso sad…and he comes across as disingenuous when he arrives to tell Jesus that he will be persecuted at the hands of the Romans. It reads as if he’s one of God’s close, close helpers, and that he’s surgically driving the discourse forward with petty “temptations” so as to show God’s will is what directs the cosmos, and self-will can’t scheme over it (it’s not right to try to save Jesus’ life even if they think they might have the power to do so; it seems wrong to let such an important man be arrested and killed but they aren’t to attempt to do anything different, etc.). He’s a sad devil.. an angel in disguise, sent to both comfort and utterly ruin a one Jesus Christ (the temptations themselves are a mirror for what God’s will actually is; the proper reading of the last temptation of the Christ is that Jesus got all of the power in the world by complying to a universal will that’d be next to impossible to force yourself to go along with…the temptation is somehow supposed to comfort Jesus in that it shows what is gained by his sacrifice; the Devil is the choice for a messenger because it mirrors the tone of the overall situation; out of terrible vice and sin will come…redemption/salvation… notice it was never blamed on the Devil either…the Humans did this).

But bullet time…if everything in existence is under the control of the thing that you are under the control of, you have a lot of common ground, and probably are pretty similar to the things and people out there in a deeply unshakable way…so make this world your home. Wear your bath-robe downtown. Show some skin. Break some ice. Because literally “all things” will somehow “work together” for the sake of “good”…apparently they always have but you have to be notified of this to see it reliably and make it your personal reality. That’s why Buddhists said the war was against “ignorance” instead of “sin”…they saw the world, without necessarily looking towards Christianity, as if Christ’s sacrifice on the cross really did save us all from sin forever and ever.

I guess in so many words here the lesson is...follow your bliss! Go play and live awesome lives...because to be happy all you have to do is be yourself/be principled in all that you do...which can be an exhaustive task, but it's meant to be a deeply pleasurable one.

How...did things get so off-track...with this church? Their scripture is a beating heart. I've spent a lot of time with them and near them and they were spouting a lot of outright trash. I don't understand it at all...

They're awesome still but I don't get where they were seeing some of this stuff. They have cited Bible passages which supposedly forbid homosexuality...it's insane how many of the passages they talk about often just absolutely invalidate huge amounts of what they have been up to. They are acting like this is a joke and like religion isn't potentially the singularly most important tool gifted to the society.