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.

with an expectation that you will do you best to do better.

Oh, yeah, that too.

Allergy sufferers, you have my great sympathy.

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.

This is very much my stance. In another place when I described the thought process that took me from Fundie-liciousness to "If that's how God works, I want nothing to do with Him. I'm not sure what I believe sometimes, but ... I believe in cats. And sometimes I see the powerful love behind cats as Divine. And sometimes I see the Divine as a gentle, loving Parent, not too dissimilar to what I was taught in some parts of Sunday School, but who is gentle and loving to all and sundry " - someone replied "What a lovely conversion story!" And I realized that indeed, a shaky belief in Love and Mercy was better than the most rock-solid faith in the Fundie God.

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.

Huh, so that must be the basis of the Mormon belief in a hierarchical heaven, Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial. Celestial is where you go if you've punched all the holes on your Mormon ticket, Terrestrial is where you go if you've been mostly worthy, and Telestial is where you go if you haven't done anything Hell-worthy but the Mormons won't have you/You won't have the Mormons.

Protip: you can take the "once-daily" antihistamines, like Claritin, Zyrtec, or Allegra, twice a day if your allergies are really bad. Don't do it forever, but a couple of weeks of twice-daily Claritin is fine.

Oh, good to know! I've always been afraid to do that, and Claritin seems to be the thing that works best for me when my allergies are at my worst, so that's an excellent tool to have.