Um... Afterlife?...

you wont go to hell, personally I dont believe in hell, and if it did exist we are living in it already so there's nothing to be afraid of.

all I can say is you need to find your own path and stop believing in lies and deceit, you dont need a church nor a religion to do the right thing, and if you believe in a God then im pretty sure you will be accepted for who you are regardless

I dont think its a God worth worshiping if you absolutely think hes gonna send you to hell for something you cant control, after all you're born gay, but taught religion, so if I had to find a cure to one of them, its not gonna be the gay option.

If anything it takes a leap of faith to believe in a religion just as much as it does to be an atheist, but in my opinion, you will always be in the right if you just love, maybe even find your own answers and make your beliefs grow from there

 

Firstly, (*hug*)
When I was in primary school, a priest came and gave us the fire and brimstones speech. For the next two years I was scared to go to sleep, and alternated between being sure I was going to hell and doubting that there was an afterlife at all. So I get where you're at, and it is definitely not a good place to be. (Interestingly, this was about a decade before I started thinking that I might like girls, which leads me to suspect that quite a few Christians worry about this one, regardless of sexual orientation.)

If there is a heaven, then I absolutely believe that God is going to let gay people in too. God makes people in his image, ie. perfect, so logically then that means that you are perfect as you are.

The thing about the Levitican laws, is that they have almost completely abondoned by Christianity. Most christians have no problem wearing blended fabrics, or eating shellfish or pork. I don't know of many christians who approve of slavery, or who stone their disobedient children! In fact even majority of Jews no longer adhere as stricly to Leviticus. For many christian denominations, the new testament takes precedence over the old. When Jesus came he gave his own commandment, which was supposed to simplify and supercede the intricate maze of old testament laws. Simplified-love God and love other people as much as you love yourself. Which doesn't exactly read as condemnation of homosexuality!

In the grand scale of things, homosexuality doesn't seem to be of great concern in the bible. It's not part of the 10 commandments, and is only mentioned a few times in passing. Which would lead you to conclude, that even if God had a problem with it (which I don't believe), then that wouldn't be enough to get you thrown out of heaven.

Like most religions, Christianity has evolved over time. The levitican laws were harsh, but they were the product of the harsh world around them. Then Jesus came, preaching love and acceptance (seriously, he wasn't exactly the type to damn others, many of his friends and followers would have been considered as outcasts by society). There is also the fact that it is always hard to be sure of what the originally intended message was, the bible has been retranslated so many times, and different versions can have vastly different interpretations.

By your own words, you are a good person. Personally, I can't see a loving god sending good people to hell.

Hum, that was a bit of a long post. Hope you got something out of it at least.

 

Well, first of all, I think you should not take Leviticus too seriously. If you read through all of it, and everything said in there is true, then very very few people -- if any -- will go to Heaven, as the sentence "and they shall be put to death" has a pretty damn high occurance in it (regarding a whole lot of subjects). Leviticus is really the one part of the Bible I don't read at all.

God made us exactly the way he intended us to be, and he therefore loves us all. He is the one that makes the final decision, not anyone else in this world.

So yes, I really do believe you will go to Heaven regardless of your sexuality. Given, of course, that you're a good person. And I like to believe that's less about the individual things and small details, and more about the whole picture.
Every good person does bad things every now and then.., which is better than a bad person doing good things every now and then. (and mind you, liking guys is definitely not a bad thing in this sense) Really all that matters is whether you're a good person or not.

But that's just my opinion

 

I don't think you're going to Hell, because you like Final Fantasy IX!

I've never really worried about going to Hell because of my sexuality that much, though I do wonder sometimes. I don't think a good god would do that. Then again I don't think the Christian god is a good god so I have many more reasons to believe I'm going to Hell. And I do, sometimes. I grew up believing in God, and went to church since I was 13 at a southern baptist one, like my family. Now I don't believe anymore, but I still have fears of burning in Hell for all eternity. It's not just you, alot of people deal with this. But you do believe in God, so I hope at least you make it.
I've talked myself out on this subject before, so that's all I have to say right now. *hugs*

 

Someone posted a thread in S&A a while ago that you might find comforting:

http://emptyclosets.com/forum/suppo...ice-about-being-lgbt-christian-very-long.html

It's long, but I think it will absolutely help you find some peace with this.

And while, as an atheist, I can't sympathize with the fear of hell on an intuitive level, I'll leave you with this quote from Marcus Aurelius that I really like:

 

I don't believe that orientation will make us go to hell. We are no longer bound by the Old Law, found in Leviticus and other parts of the Old Testament –*we do not have to follow the 613 laws about clothing and diet and all. I believe that, since everyone has done wrong, the only way to Heaven is through faith and being gay has no bearing on that. God loves you for who you are – a person.

 

(Hugs)
Dude, no matter what sin we do, Jesus can handle it! It does say that in old testament, however Jesus said He is the way the truth and the life, Nobody gets to the father except through me. And he said his yoke is easy, that means as you accept him as master he will not be bossy, and that you don't need to fret all the imperfections you do. God said in Genesis he saw man's thoughts were continually corrupt and could not stop, so that is exactly when They decided one day Jesus needed to step in.
WE DO all get to go to hell from our sins, that is, our daily free choices to hate, be cruel to others, and reject God's ways of loving everybody has earned us each eternal separation from good and must be punished. But that is why Jesus died, took that payment for us all ALL, so if ANYBODY believes on him, they are saved from hell. period! So if ALL gays in the world chose to believe Jesus is God, and asked forgiveness, and began to love God 1st in life and then ALL mankind 2nd which is His commands, and forgave everybody, then ALL GAYS would be found in heaven!
It is only the willingly knowledgeable humans who reject the payment of Jesus, and say there must me a different way cuz I don't want to follow you...they are heading to pay the debt of their sins themselves, and the cost is eternity in hell...because we can't pay our debt off we are corrupt. It aint about God being BAD to punish us, we are BAD and a good judge must just apply justice and give sentence for a crime, and that is Jesus' job. a human judge on earth is never BAD cuz he sentences a murderer to prison or death sentence, he is just doing his job of finding guilty person a fair punishment. It is the perpetrator of the crimes that is BAD! The DEVIL is who hell was created for as he rejected God 100%, but then he wants all humans to reject God and good too and offers fake happy here on earth as a better thing. Nah, I still want an eternity with God, and good, not eternal separation from all good, which is God. God is love, he don't want ANYBODY to go to hell, that is why Jesus came to tell us that. It is sad to me when somebody goes to church and does not get that...God is good, it is Devil who is bad, and God wants us to have a happy life here (yeah it will be hard cuz devil will be pissed) and have all eternity happy too. He is not out to hate on you!
So if you are going to church this morning, go ask a pastor if what I said is true...and read for yourself in the book of John! If you are a Believer, and you are gay, I see no reason God will shut you out of heaven and send you to hell. If I did, I would have told you.

 

There's all kinds of other shit in Leviticus that Christians aren't doing. Why zero in on just this one passage? Are you avoiding mixed fibers? Eating shellfish?

If you really sit and think about the things mainstream Christianity subscribes to, you'll come to notice very quickly that people love to pick and choose things from the Bible, depending on what they want to see in Christianity. Therefore, I don't really believe you can use it as an authoritative reference. If you want to figure out what your deity, if any, believes is right...I think the best advice is to go out and figure it out on your own, learn it from nature or the way the world works. That's what I do, anyway. Don't quibble over things in the Bible, they're not very meaningful in the context of how everyone likes to pick and choose.

 

I am a gay christian and have been fighting with these issues for years and still have fears over what god thinks of me but its getting better. If God truly condemned anyone who believes for the sins they committed to hell the truth is heaven would be a very empty place. God knows no one is perfect and we cannot take every word in the bible seriously as it sometimes contradicts itself. If in your heart you believe you are going to heaven and that God loves you than I think you will be ok. I think if God did not want us to be gay we would not even be gay to begin with.

 

Well, not to be too depressing, but I think, if Hell does indeed exist, everyone is going to hell. Every religion claims that the non-believers of that particular religion will be going to hell, and thus every person in the world is included in that.

As Robert Frost said, "I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way." So do what you want.

Or as the people are now saying, "YOLO." Either way, do what you want.

So forget about what happens in the afterlife, because if it does exist, we're all heading to Hell anyways. As one of the posters mentioned earlier, it is rare that anyone heeds every single word of the Bible.

Live your life, and forget about religion. Be yourself, and ignore what others say about you.

 

I've wondered the same thing. I actually came upon this website dealing with the passages of the Bible that seem to condemn homosexuality, but it states that this is actually due to mistranslations (whether accidental or even perhaps deliberate). It goes into an enormous amount of detail about coming to the correct translation, and it's a little over my head at points, but I think it might be worth checking out.

Leviticus 18:22 - Hope Remains: Homosexuality and the Bible

I think it's certainly an interesting point. I believe that, mistranslation or no, the God I believe in created what He created intentionally, including homosexuality. It occurs frequently in nature as well. List of animals displaying homosexual behavior - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The point is, the Golden Rule, the 'if you don't do anything else, do this'. Is to love others as yourself.



Hope this helps.

 

That is a lovely quote, and it sums up the way I think. I am an atheist, but I believe that if there is a God and that if I am a good person, I will get into heaven. And if I don't get into heaven because of something outside of my control (i.e. being gay) then I don't want to go to heaven.

But Owen, despite it being a lovely quote, it's actually not a Marcus Aurelius quote at all! Aurelius wasn't an atheist, but he did say this, of which your quote seems to be a rehash of:

As far as I know, the source of the rehash is unknown.

 

I just want to say that I understand this question (but I don't have an answer). I frequently have dreams where it is very dark, and all I can feel is that I am burning, but I can't move, and I can't scream, and usually when I wake up I'm pretty sure that that dream is a foretaste of hell.

I also have been having dreams lately where I'm going away to that convent I wanted to go to, and it's blissful and I feel different - complete, holy, whatever - and I wake up with so much desire and confusion in my heart that it almost breaks me.

Now, I could go with a mystical explanation of this, and say that spirits are visiting me to warn me that my choice to be OUT and open and proud will lead me away from my true destiny and into hell...

or I could go with the, I think, more rational explanation that years of conditioning and an obsession with the fear of hell leaks out of my subconscious mind in the form of dreams occasionally... and that my lingering desire for the convent is just a desire for the stone unturned, so to speak - one that my subconscious mind, again, is reminding me of in my dreams - particularly after an evening at Mass.

I guess, what ultimately swayed me, is this: we don't, and we can't, know for sure what the afterlife will be like. We have no way to know for sure who is right - atheists, christians, pagans, whoever else - we just don't know.

what we do know, is that we definitely do have this life, here and now where we can choose how to live. we don't get to choose to be gay or not, we just are. but we do get to choose if we want to be happy - what will it take for you to have happiness in your life? As far as I'm concerned, we should pursue that happiness we know exists, strive to always harm none, and try not to worry so much about things no one can prove or disprove.

 

Well, my personal response may not be the one you are looking for.

I have basically decided to follow my own personal moral compass. If I cannot see the harm in an act it is not sin to me. Loving someone of the same sex does no harm to anyone. In fact, we live in an over populated world with people starving. Same sex couples often adopt children, which I think gives it a wonderful potential to be a beautiful thing. An "anti-sin" if you will =P

Not to mention that for every person that coming out doesn't just effect you. It effects everyone around you. It raises awareness so that other people might not have to face persecution down the road.

I for one believe at this point in our society, we should be beyond caring what some ancient book has to say. God did not descend from the Heavens and write it. It was written by men. Homophobic, superstitious men that knew nothing about how our world operated, so they had to make up excuses for why they were being punished by God. So they came up with rules like "Being gay is a sin," "You shouldn't sit on the same chair as a woman did if she is having her period," and "Eating pork and shell fish are a sin." People just pick and choose which rules matter. The bible even has instructions on how to properly treat your slaves!

Don't misunderstand me though. I believe in an afterlife. I believe there's got to be some grand design. I just don't pretend to understand things more than anyone else. Blind faith leads man astray.

When I was a kid I was told that it was wrong to want to be the opposite sex because God made us all in his image. So why does every God fearing Christian stick braces on their kids teeth? Shouldn't they just be taught to love their crooked messed up teeth? Hypocrisy is all around us. But I played along, I was too afraid to tell anyone the feelings I was having. I just lied in bed and prayed to God and usually Mary. Not even praying really, more like begging. I gave up on ever pursuing the issue because I was too afraid of going to Hell.

But ask yourself, if their is an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God out there, don't you think he has more important things to worry about then what humans are doing with their genitals? If two men want to start a family and give children a warm home with love and food, what kind of god would send them to hell?

Not a god deserving of my worship.

 

There is a point here... Not that I fully agree with this but I definitely agree that MOST people in the world pick and choose what they want to believe so... they're frankly hypocrites.

Also I have read the most of the Bible many times and the whole concept of burning in hell isn't really there. The word is there but not the idea of eternal torture. Actually it really only describes eternal destruction. As in, eternally dead. Never coming back. Not existing. Does this make a point? Plus there are numerous scriptures describing death as if you are asleep.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 - "For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, the are conscious of nothing at all..." or in King James, "the dead know not anything..."

Ecclesiastes 9:10 - "All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going..." In most Bibles Sheol is translated into Hell. No work, devising, or knowledge in hell? Hmm. Sounds like... Gee nothing.

Psalms 146: 4 - "His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish."

Ezekiel 18:4 - "The soul that is sinning --it itself will die."

Hell is in the Bible but people have been taught it is some kind of terrible place of torture. All it means is you die. It is a symbolic place or condition people "go" once they are dead. You are just dead. No do not exist. If it was a burning fiery place, then why would Job, a person in the Bible described as faithful to God, pray to be preserved in Hell? Job 14:13.

Mathew 25 describes the eternal punishment thing... Okay the word in Greek used for it is translated as "lopping off" or "cutting off." That sounds like a quick, one time deal. Not being eternally tortured. Eternal punishment means you will forever be dead and you can't be granted resurrection to heaven or any of that.

So anyway this whole long rant thing is just because I don't want any of you to ever worry about being put in hell. If you die, you just die. Technically being in heaven isn't "dead." They're described as living souls in heaven too. So really I'm just explaining that if you die tomorrow, once your heart stops beating, you have nothing to worry about after that point. You wouldn't know a thing... because your dead. So please stop stressing about some horrible fate. It upsets me to see people needlessly worry about some BS that was twisted and adopted to scare people into staying in the church. If you don't believe me, I can absolutely tell you this, the whole concept of Hellfire as most of us know it today, comes from non-Christian roots. Egyptian, Babylonian and even Buddhist teachings are some of its origins. If this view of hellfire were accurate, the scriptures I posted certainly don't agree with it.

 

I haven't read any of the responses you've received. However, I was once in your shoes as I am sure many others were. I grew up deeply religious and faithful, and I was utterly tormented with the fear of going to hell.

Without going into too much detail - it would derail your thread and is somewhat irrelevant to your problem - it was this fear that sent me on a journey to discover more about the Bible and what it means to be gay. Ultimately, it ended with me becoming an Atheist, not because of anything related to being gay, but because I was raised to take the Bible literally and view it as a literal history of the world. When I could no longer do that, I lost my faith, and eventually ended up as an Atheist. However, that doesn't erase what I learned about the Bible through my journey.

First of all, you can toss out Leviticus. Pretty much no Christian, not even the Pope, observes those laws. They were made irrelevant by the New Covenant which is discussed in the New Testament. However, it is true that Christians like to whip that one out.

Second, you can ignore Sodom and Gomorrah because the Bible itself is pretty much explicit about the sins there, and they have nothing to do with being gay. The Bible repeatedly talks about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah in both the Old and New Testament. No serious Biblical Scholar believes that Sodom and Gomorrah has anything to do with being gay.

Third, there are some points in the New Testament where there is specific mention of gays. If you actually read those passages in context, you're going to find that it is almost certainly talking about idolatry. Basically, to understand why that is the case you have to understand the previous view of same-gender sexuality. The duality of heterosexuality and homosexuality is a relative recent understanding. There have been many views on homosexuality throughout history, but generally during the New Testament era everyone was considered to be completely straight. When someone had sex with someone of the same gender, it wasn't viewed as "homosexual" as we'd view it today, it was viewed as someone with an extreme amount of sexual lust.

In other words, what the Bible is actually saying, is that committing idolatry corrupts a culture, it infuses within people an abundance of sexual lust. They were pointing to people engaged in same-sex lovin' as an example of that over-abundance of lust.

The Bible in general isn't a document that smiles on sex, though if you actually read it - you'd feel more sorry for straight people. The Bible overwhelmingly spends its time telling straight people how and when they should have sex, and what their relationships should look like, for us - it's completely silent - primarily because the era in which it was written didn't see us as distinct from heterosexuals.

It's a bit like looking back in time at some old archaic thinking that someone with a mental disorder - say schizophrenia - was possessed by a demon. They lacked the understanding that we have today, and so they approached something through an entirely different lens and culture.

Now, in order to believe that you're going to hell you have to accept the following premises.

First, you have to accept that God created the Universe. If you accept this premise then you have to accept that he also created gay people. Not only gay humans, mind you, but also homosexual animals because we know it exists in other animals outside of humanity. So, you have a God that not only created gay humans, but also gay animals.

Second, you have to believe that this God hates his creation. In fact, you have to believe that God hates his creation so much he wants to punish it.

Third, you have to believe that this God is worthy of worship. This is an issue, because if you believe the two previous statements, then you have to question whether or not God is a benevolent deity. If God is not a benevolent deity, then you have to question whether or not he deserves to be worshiped.

Those are the three conclusions you must start with before you even ask the question: "Does God want to send gay people to hell?"

I could go on about how Hell isn't really what people commonly believe it to be - most people envision some place similar to Dante's Inferno. However, that isn't Biblical.

My advice? Go read the Bible. That's what I did. Start in the beginning and work your way to the end. As you read along question what is happening, why it was put there, and the greater meaning behind it.

By the way, it's also important to keep in mind that most straight people who use the Bible against us are hiding behind religion. They are using their religion as an excuse, but the truth of the matter is they're just bigots. Those that aren't bigots are conflicted by what they've been taught and what they feel is the right thing to do (accept LGBT people). Even if the Bible said NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING even REMOTELY linked to gay people, a bigot would just find another excuse.

They are bigots for a reason, and they simply believe that by hiding behind religion that it shields them from criticism. They can say, "Gay people are disgusting and immoral!" Then when confronted they can say, "I didn't make the rules! The Bible did!"

Of course, even if the Bible DID say that, people ALWAYS have a choice in what they believe, and therefore people who hold that belief are choosing to hold bigoted beliefs. Wrapping it up in religion doesn't make it less bigoted, nor does it protect them from criticism as they seemingly believe.

Anyway, I know what you're going through. It sucks. I've been there, and those feelings drove me into a deep depression. Don't do that to yourself.

If you believe in God, if you believe God created you, if you believe God loves you and is benevolent, then why would he make you gay only to punish you and send you to hell? Does that make sense? It doesn't, but in order to believe you are going to hell you must embrace that logic.