And what if you have faith all your life, but, say, just before your death you're in such agony and so messed up psychologically you lose your faith seconds before you die? The whole thing seemed problematic to me. Plus the whole binary nature of faith/no faith seemed weird, because in real life I'm never 100% certain about anything. So if I had 60% faith but suddenly my faith dropped to below 50%--was that the cutoff point for eternal damnation?
My upbringing stressed the converse -- if you obtained faith just before your death, you were saved.
My theology, such as it is, is this: either (1) God made us as fallible people who fuck up, and, knowing he did that, is cool with our failings, since they're his fault anyway; or (2) God made us as fallible people who fuck up AND THEN even though we can't help it that we fuck up, he decreed that we have to be "good" enough to overcome the way he made us.
If (1) is true, we're all good. If (2) is true, then I don't actually want to follow a god like that, so I'm still good.
I realize there's also option 3: there is no god. In which case, again, we're all good (in terms of not being damned for how we live).
Weirdly, I don't believe in Heaven and Hell, and have a hard time with religion, but I kind of sort of believe in The Rainbow Bridge. [link] So I am clearly a crazy person.
Methodists and most fundamentalist sects believe in salvation by faith alone. Baptists believe in salvation by faith and good works.
And here is where it gets tricky. There are enough different kinds of "Baptists" that I can't keep track of them. I was educated by fundy Baptists who were all faith alone, and I
thought
that Methodists were faith plus good works types.
One of the features of the fundies for urging good works once the faith has brought the eternally secure salvation is the chance to store up treasures in heaven. If you get saved but don't do any good works, you get to go to heaven but you have no treasures in it. If you get saved then obey God and do lots of good works, then you have lots of treasures in heaven. There's a bit in Revelation, talking about the wedding of the church to Jesus, and that gets visualized as believers who are just saved with no good works are in the plainest wedding gown or even naked (but hey, it beats being in hell), but the ones who do lots of good works get to be in the prettiest, fanciest, most wonderful gown.
The main remaining Calvinist sect is Presbyterianism. (I was raised Presbyterian.) Theoretically, you can recognize the Elect by their upright behavior and devotion to god, but no one can know if he is among the Elect. In practice, many Calvinists believe they're among the Elect, which makes them insufferable.
I was raised Presbyterian and I don't recall a single sermon about predestination or the Elect while growing up. In practice, at least our branch of the denomination was basically indistinguishable from the local Methodists from a layperson's point of view.
Edit: Except that we sometimes had bagpipe players at a special service. I think that's the only thing we kept from Scots Calvinism.
I feel like sleep is not working correctly this week. This morning, I walked out of the house wearing my inside shoes, which are a pair of elderly purple suede Crocs. Turned around, got proper shoes, came to work, and promptly dropped my sweater in a puddle.
Fascinating conversation. My cousin is graduating next week from Claremont with her PhD in theology and we have the most interesting discussions. She's Christian and is enormously patient with me and my thousands of questions. It's funny how all religions kind of sounds ridiculous when you're on the outside. This is not to say they *are* ridiculous or that it's wrong for anyone to take part.
My religion is basically Church of Beisbol with a healthy dose of Be Kind. It works for me. I'm kind of like Stephanie in that if God is playing with us, I don't really like the game.
Right, that is not modern-day Presbyterianism. Which IME is closer to Steph's
(1) God made us as fallible people who fuck up, and, knowing he did that, is cool with our failings, since they're his fault anyway;
with an expectation that you will do you best to do better.
