Talking Them Bible Blues

Ah what a day to have a soul!  And to know it's the only part of me that isn't mine, it's my Creator's.  I know He'll return at His "second coming", which is the hour of my death, and retrieve what he placed in me at my conception.  I know my soul needs not my belief in it to exist, just as God doesn't.  It's a plain, simple, yet miraculous event - being alive and so close to God.  In the Bible He said He would always be with us.  I take these words and use them, they help guide and direct me, and I believe that is what the Bible is truly for.  It was never meant to be taken word for word, I believe.   

I can't say I'm staunchly religious, since I'm not a literalist when it comes to the Bible, as most people surely aren't.  Organized religion makes me nervous.  But I love and worship my God and try hard to be merciful and giving to others.  Tolerate the intolerable.  Endure the unendurable.  I don't always make it to Church.  I don't always remember the "dearly departed" - but I never forget to pray, it's ingrained in my being.  It would be like forgetting to wake up.   

So many parables, like the "eye for an eye" and the "ascend to my Father..."  That reminds me, in my reading of theological views and facts, I continually find that one word, "ascend" has been mis-translated almost from the start, from Aramaic.  It would seem Our Lord had actually instructed Mary Magdelene not to touch Him, as He had yet to "join in being" with His Father.  In Greek, it starts to gets muddy,and in Hebrew it becomes another translation altogether.  It always interested me why Jesus would need to ascend, to "go up" to "arise" anyway, since that would mean He was headed toward a place, we mighy immediately think "heaven" and that heaven was somewhere "up there" which of course it can't be.  I don't know what state we'll exist in after we lose these fleshy shells but I know it won't be physical, since God and everything involving Him is spiritual and personal, intimate to each person in their way.  My way is that my soul, my "God-part", will return into the Great Transcending Power that is God and join all other souls who've come before me.  Something deep within wants to believe I'll recognize them, but that's just the natural urge to be anthropomorphic.  Not a mistake.

Heaven and hell are spoken of as places, so if they exist we'd require a physical body of some kind after we die.  I don't think that will happen, and though I find many great truths and peace from reading my Bible, my heart knows there's a whole world of the spirit I could never fathom.  The realm of God is beyond the human understanding of it, no one I know on earth understands God or why He does what He does, especially for those of us who suffer daily in what seems to be useless pain.  Yet we go on, we're like warriors this way, because we have the one thing necessary for life:  FAITH.  

I recently read of imagining a God who plays favorites - that of course, would be a Creator who sends souls to "lakes of fire" and dooms them to "eternal damnation", that's certainly not a wise and merciful Deity at all.  Perhaps it's difficult for us to believe in just being with God, being a part of Him, after we die, because we continually hear and use those words, heaven and hell, giving us a preconceived idea that they must exist, as places.  I don't believe they do, of course.  But then again, as with all of us, no one has the answers.  We can only Love Him and be kind to others, that's all I feel we need to complete our spirituality.  Love God and be nice.  All the other complications that go along with those two tenets are details, and will work themselves out during our lives. 

If heaven is somewhere "up there", is hell beneath our feet?  Without making light of this, I want to put forth that science can only answer so much before we find cause to retreat to our blind faith, and not worry about such things.  

Places, actually physical places for reward and punishment don't correspond to any of the qualities of the merciful, perfect Deity I believe in.  God to me, is not a person, but a Power - not a lover but the essence of Pure Love itself!  Imagine!  I love God and believe in His mercy, just as He believes in me and the mercies I've learned to show in my life.  Part of this I gleamed from the Bible, it is an incredibly inspiring and useful tool to navigate and understand many of life's complexities.  It is also overflowing with many beautiful stories of how others loved God while they lived, and it can make one cry.  The Bible directs, it teaches, but never, I believe, was it meant to be a literally worded testament in every regard.  Imagine how confusing things would be!  We'd become caught and entangled in all the contradictions, without learning the true meaning of the passage itself.  We'd lose the initial thought, or lesson.   

I say, take from these miraculous writings all the wisdom you need, all that helps you better explain in your heart why things happen as they do.  You won't get an answer for everything, and of course were never meant to.  That will happen when God returns for us, each individually, in His Time in His Way.