John 14: 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”
These words of Jesus are used by dim witted Bible thinkers to justify an exclusive understanding of the grace of God. These folk say that a seeker after God, to be worthy of the grace of God, must only come to a saving faith in God through Jesus Christ in this earthly existence. All other searching after God or goodness will prove to be useless and ultimately damming to be punished in the pit of hell.
If this Christian exclusivity is the will of the Father God, then there is no hope for the children of Israel, those who have never heard about Jesus, those who merely practice Christianity as a religious preference, those who have been insulted by the self righteous believers in Jesus and those who claim spiritual authority by following the tenants of any other religion. Christian exclusivity will ultimately leave all of us out, it will damn all of us if damnation was or is in the heart of God. This hell stuff is mere religious verbiage from the religious tyrants of this world.
Jesus is the best, the divinely appointed earthly gate to spiritual wholeness but this wholeness will never be 100% pure for any of us while we are in this world. Those who claim such purity are the victims of self delusion and most in need of the love of God. The journey in this world is a beginning for all of us humans, some of us wake up to spiritual consciousness in our youth while some awaken in their old age. Most of us never awaken in this life for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that the awaking may not yet be in the time sensitive plan of God.
This verse does tell us that Jesus is the ultimate gate to spiritual wholeness for there is a little bit of Jesus in all human quests for spiritual awareness. We are all included in the plan of God. Heaven or what we think of as heaven must be a “grand awakening” for all of us. It is either a grand awakening for all of us or it will be a grand blank space for all of us. In that case, hell may be more attractive.
G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca
