The life blood of any religious institution is its aggregation of followers. Followers equate to power, wealth, and most importantly relevancy. Since western religion traditionally reserves study and interpretation of the scripture to the clergy, attracting followers with a really strong spiritual seeking message isn’t very effective. The message needs to be that just right combination of easy to do and compelling that only makes sense when viewed from a marketing perspective.
Take the Christianity salvation belief for example. How did the teacher who said “And unto him that smites you on the one cheek offer also the other; and he that takes away your cloak forbid not to take your coat also” become the terrible tyrant who will condemn you to a lake of fire for all eternity for the seemingly insignificant slight of not formally declaring him as your personal savior?
It really never says that outright in the Bible. It all begins with the seemingly benign quote “Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by me.” This harsher salvation principle is developed by inference from this saying in combination other things in the Bible outside the context of this one, but this salvation principle is what many if not all Christians believe.
Since it wasn't specifically stated, who made this salvation principle revelation, and by what logic, did it become the cornerstone of the Christian belief? The call was made by very mortal religious leaders centuries after Christ was crucified by cherry-picking Bible verses (the content of the Bible was also decided years after the crucifixion). It is no coincidence this salvation principle revelation reinforced the religious leadership's existing power structure.
“No one reaches the Father but through me” was been embellished into ‘believe in me or suffer horribly for all eternity in the afterlife’. This embellished message has no real spiritual value, but it does have great marketing potential because it is very easy (i.e. all you do is believe and support the belief support institution) and what could be more compelling than the gut wrenching threat of burning for all eternity in the lake of fire. In short, it is very effective in getting followers and keeping them in the fold.
The message really isn’t even very well thought out. Certainly the prospect of burning for all eternity in the lake of fire is frightening for anyone with a body, but probably does not present much of a threat to the spirit after the body dies. This weakness has never been a real problem for this message because so far no one has ever come back from this torment to report on that and likely never will.
Additionally, it seems inconceivable that a loving god could do such a terrible, cruel thing. Condemning anyone to a terrible torture for all the remainder of eternity is certainly terrible, but it is unthinkable that the warning of these dire consequences is so cryptically stated in the Bible that it has to be interpreted from numerous disjointed verses. The very least a 'loving' god could do is spell it out in one place and move it up to the front of the Bible in bold print.
It is not uncommon to hear Christians justify their faith by saying ‘what if they are right?’ This statement is a clear indication of the effectiveness of this salvation message as a marketing strategy. This salvation principle is clearly more the contrivance of mortal men who want to get and control follower and not the intent of the Divine. This salvation message seems incredibly inconsistent with other Bible quotes that have been carefully overlooked in the collection of quotes used to support the justification for this salvation story such as:
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
A set of parallel notions to this salvation principle is the contention that the one and only god is a 'jealous' god [“For you shall worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god”] that does not want you to have any other gods before you. In fact, he hands down a commandment to Moses that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”.
Why would the almighty creator of the universe who purposely seems to be staying out of the obvious picture be jealous of other gods that don't exist? Isn't it more likely that religious leaders who like the power and advantage afforded by a flock of believers are the ones who are jealous?
Jealousy, wrath and any other petty quality attributed to the Divine are qualities of shallow, mortal men. They do not apply to the Divine.
This question about the fairness of this salvation principle is not new. Universal Reconciliation is a doctrine that all lost souls will eventually be reconciled by god’s divine love. In this controversial doctrine (it is generally rejected by most Christians), those who created this doctrine generously allow some truth to the ‘believe in me or suffer horribly for all eternity in the afterlife’ notion, but they expect that love directed Divine intervention will eventually forgive all these lost souls and welcome them into heaven.
The Universal Reconciliation doctrine is being very generous. This ridiculous notion was intentionally contrived by mortal men with the specific intent to garner and control followers through fear and intimidation.
Fear and intimidation are not the Divine intention.
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