No Stupid Questions @lemmy.world Don_Dickle @lemmy.world 2w ago

I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging

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Nope. Lots of stuff commonly believed by Christians isn't from the Bible. (Though sometimes they'll do a lot of mental gymnastics to assert that what they believe is from "the only reasonable interpretation" of the Bible.)

Just a few other things commonly believed by Christians not (or at least only dubiously) from the Bible:

The seven deadly sins

The nine circles of hell

The seven levels of heaven

Transubstantiation

The trinity
- Transubstantiation is kind of in the Bible. Matthew 26:26-28
  
  While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”
  
  Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the[a] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
  
  The discussion of transubstantiation is just how literal "my body/blood" is.
  
  Transubstantiation is the doctrine that it ceases being bread and wine. Which St Paul kind of debunks in his first letter to the Corinthians at Chapter 11, where he refers to it as bread.
  
  "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes."
  
  What you're talking about is consubstantiation, which is where the body and blood physically coexist in the bread and wine, which can be derived from the Bible.
  
  Is it possible Paul is referring to the accidents, not the substance?
- There's a surprising amount of modern Christian lore that actually comes from The Divine Comedy, the granddaddy of all ascended fanfic.
  
  Don't forget Paradise Lost, also a great hit
- That humans eventually become angels.
  
  Though, there was one human who did, in an apocryphal book. And then was elevated yet again to being a second diety; there were apparently strains of Christianity which were DUOtheistic! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch
  
  Matthew 20:30
  
  "At resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."
  
  I think that's where the sentiment comes from. It's explicit in Mormonism (I think). In mainstream Christianity the saved don't become angels, they become like angels.
  
  ... they become like angels.
  
  In the sense that they no longer have sexual or romantic urges, would be my reading of that passage. Angels have no belly buttons!
  
  Yes that's the context - Jesus saying no one will be married in heaven. Either angels are asexual or they're all male. The latter is a little more likely given all angels in the bible are presented as male. Which if that's the case has weird implications for what female Christians become when they're resurrected. Some weird male equivalent? So now we're "all like the angels"?
  
  Women don't go to heaven. What a silly question
  
  All male. So no marriage, only sex.
  
  Ha that was my thought too. Joking aside, it's actually one of the weirder anti-gay arguments from the new testament, that the reason Jesus is saying "obviously" there's no marriage in heaven is that everyone is like the angels, who are all male. So Jesus was appealing to the "absurdity" of male-male marriage.
  
  Not the strongest argument but definitely one of the weirder ones I've heard...
  
  Wow, haven't heard that one yet, yeah, that's pretty weird. What would even angels be male for? Oh, I'm thinking too much, this is not meant to be logical, right? Thanks for showing me another bizzare corner of religious thoughts.
  
  There is some logic to it.. or so the thinking goes:
  
  In the bible maleness is a God thing before it's a human thing. It's not that God chooses to be male, it's the other way round, what we call male conveys something fundamental to the reality of God that has existed for all time and independent of everything else. When God makes the first human, he's male, because he's in God's image (not that God invented maleness to create Adam, instead God's imprinting something of his eternal self onto his creation, and we call that eternal quality "male"). Likewise when the Word becomes flesh, he's male.
  
  Stands to reason that all the other heavenly creations of God (his messengers, "angels", including the "angel of the lord" which always appears as a man) are all what we'd call male. But this isn't in a procreation sense, that's something that was given to Adam. Rather the idea is that there's something fundamentally "ideal" about the pure essence of masculinity in ancient Jewish thought.
  
  Want a rabbit hole of apocryphal knowledge, start digging into gnosticism. It's like more internally consistent Christianity. Also depending on which flavor and particular interpretation, you could arrive at such truths as: Satan runs the church. God(old testament) is an asshole and a fool. Jesus (specifically the divine aspect Christ) is on a rescue mission to save God's mom, Sophia, from the prison world that is earth, that God made specifically to trap her. Judas is a tragic hero who has to kill his friend, Jesus, so that Christ can escape the prison world.
  
  It's wild, it's a more interesting story than Christianity, and I can ABSOLUTELY see why most of these books were branded heresy.
- my favourite misbelief is that people are already in heaven, and that hell is a 'place'.
  
  What the bible claims will happen: second coming of Jesus happens; believers are resurrected, believers are raptured, and then war breaks out. Jesus fucks off with the angels and everyone left on Earth is "in hell" (permanently separated from God).
  
  Everything about hell being a demonic underworld is from Dante's Divine Comedy.
  
  Oh so we are all already in hell. Got it.
  
  If you're an atheist: we're in hell, literally.
  
  If you're a Christian: we're where hell will be, when Jesus comes back with cigarettes and half a bottle of bourbon.
  
  I already suspected as much.
- I love transubstantiation. It's basically mandatory to believe it to be a catholic. A lot don't understand it though. But if you find one that does, ask them to explain why it's not cannibalism.
  
  Well, you see, Jesus is all god, but also all man. And we literally eat his flesh.
  But it isn't cannibalism because ... look it just isn't, OK?
  What a weird fucking question!
  
  Try this - We're humans, but Jesus is an aasimar. Depending on what rule set he's on, he's probably something like a divine soul sorcerer, too.
  
  Because shut up, that's why.
- This is much more of a list of stuff commonly believed by Catholics, not so much by Christianity as a whole.
- Purgatory aswell
  
  https://www.britannica.com/topic/purgatory-Roman-Catholicism
  
  Presumably Limbo too, then
  
  Limbo for unbaptized infants is a theological opinion that has fallen out of popularity in favour of other, more merciful theories.
- The Trinity is clearly taught in the Bible. Sure, not in explicit Athanasius creed form, but Jesus even said "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19).
  
  Notice how "Name" is singular, implying the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one thing, or at least equal. Jesus is referred to as God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are also. And it's made clear that there is one God. The Athanasius Creed is just the Trinity clearly defined in a single text. Clarifying interpretation (like the Nicene Creed).
  
  Seven deadly sins are based off of various sins listed in the Bible, but most of it has kind of been overhyped and overemphasized. It's useful for giving a rough idea of what sin is, but it's been meddled with over time.
  
  Like watching people argue fanfic canon in here. 😅
  
  Minimize it all you like, but no one ever started a bloody war over "Encounter at Hotpoint". Yes, all human culture is alike in some ways. Very clever observation. I think you will find that most of the people engaged in this discussion are not even Christian. It's still significant and meaningful, if not to us personally, to the world we exist in.
  
  This is one of the more interesting, informative and respectful discussions I have seen in a few days. Why shit on it. The age of edgy Internet atheism has passed. It's okay just to BE an atheist now. No one is coming for you. You can stop fighting.
  
  You mean Encounter at Farpoint? Or is that just some reference I'm missing. I'm not gonna rule out starting a war over Encounter at Farpoint at some point in the furture though, if for no other reason than the sheer irony.
  
  That's exactly it, and I'm surprised more people don't see it that way. For such fiction, there will almost always be a bigger nerd that eclipses your own knowledge on any particular aspect of canon, and yet someone pays half-attention to a child's curriculum or reads a Dawkins or Hitchens book and it's treated as an insult to their intelligence to politely inform them of something they may have missed.
  
  At least fanfic arguments tend to lean more civil, and are generally seen as an expression of zeal between peers who all enjoy the same thing, albeit with differing opinions on the details.
- The seven heavens is an extension of the seven named heavens of Judaism. Islam also has seven named heavens.
  
  There is a reference to a third heaven in the Bible and a reference of ten heavens in a book that was not included by the Council of Nicaea.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell is also commonly believed, but not actually in the bible, if I recall right.
  
  Most of the punishment around Hell in the Bible is less about Hell itself, and more about not being able to enter Heaven and join God, and all of that, as oppose to Hell itself being punishment.
- So is "God helps those who help themselves"
  
  The sentiment is there though..
  
  2 Thessalonians 3:10 "While we were with you, this we commanded you: If someone won't work, then neither shall they eat"
  
  I always liked Stephen King's version better. Pray for rain all you want, but dig a well while you wait.

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