BIH2

Now I can’t say if all Catechism classes were like mine but from talking with other classes, I think they were close. About 85% of the teachers (the nuns in particular) were real big on the BIH bit. I remember it scaring the living bejesus out of me when I was 6 and 7 but after awhile it began to fuel the strange imagination I had. Its no wonder I love to read and write fantasy and such. Their descriptions of Hell were incredibly detailed and very vivid. Considering the list of things that earned you your ticket to Hell and how easy it is to write that ticket, I’d consider it another miracle if there were more than 20 people in Heaven. What eventually put me onto the game was the time and effort put into presenting the negative side and just how little playing time Heaven got. The stick was definitely favored over the carrot.
Not surprising when one considers the rest of the story. First they emphasized that it was pretty much all about the hereafter. This was just a testing ground, tryouts for the big time. Worldly things were to be taken with a grain of salt (except your weekly tithe) and one was to concentrate on living a pure life so you could get to Heaven. Inevitably followed with the grim admonition about BIH. I definitely got the impression that one should behave properly not for the reward but because the alternative was so gruesome. I will grant there were those who did focus more on the positive benevolent nature of God but they were clearly a minority.

So this set a new pattern for the emerging mind to follow. The contradictions. The Bible is loaded with them. Catholic dogma even more so. I started to wonder about them and by the time I was 14 I was called to a special plenary session with both pastors. I think my telling a bishop he was full of male bovine feces, in church, may have had something to do with it. Father Andy was your basic old school, hard-line, Polish priest. Father Bertheum was fresh from the seminary. We had a rousing hour of discussion that ended with Father Andy telling me I was going to BIH unless I gave up my intellectual pride. (And a faintly veiled suggestion I refrain from showing my face to him until I did). Father Bertheum told me, after Father Andy had departed, that I would make a fine Jesuit. All I needed to do was accept on pure faith. I didn’t go back to church or catechism, which frightened my mother to no end because Father Andy had called her.
Being young and immortal, I wasn’t terribly worried about what the Church said about my soul or its probable destination. But it did set a life long pattern, a quest of sorts, to try and reconcile what my heart learned from the basic teaching of Yeshua and the policies of various Christian religions. It included studying the history of Israel in his time. There is amazingly little information there. Very odd considering both the Roman and Jewish penchant for record keeping. Greek too for that matter. That lead to the history of how the Church formed, how it grew, how it evolved through the centuries. Pretty heady stuff and much of it colored heavily because the winners get to write the history. It has only been in the past century that conflicting presentations were tolerated. Then the Dead Sea scrolls, the discovery of the writings at Nag Hamadi, the discovery of the Gospels of Mary and Judas. So it was back to the early history and the books deemed not ready for prime time by the Council of Nicaea.

If I thought there were contradictions in the Bible before, those banned books made it even worse. But the ideas, the patterns have begun to flow. For which, I am certain, I will BIH. Probably a good thing there isn’t a human on the planet who really gets a vote on that one. For decades I thought my predilection for, my need to find patterns was a curse. It certainly plays hob with day-to-day life. But there is a method to the madness.

How about copying and pasting this second thread into a reply on your original thread? This way members can fully respond to what you have to say, without running duel threads.

reply to post by chissler


I am but an egg. Thanks for the tip.

Further comments on this can be directed to the thread below.

BIH

Closing thread...