Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:09 Welcome to Lessons from The Helpful Dead, where you'll learn the world is not what it seems, and you how much more than you think you are. Here you'll learn about positive and reassuring messages from supposedly dead people whose main purpose is to help us find out what happens after we die, why we're here, how we got here, where we're going, and discover that you are really a powerful, eternal spirit. I'm Dan McInerney. Today we'll discuss why the idea of Christ not being crucified is so important to us. I'll start by asking you to think for a moment. Uh, what if as a kid you wanted to be a dancer, but someone told you you can't be a dancer. Uh, you just don't have the abilities. You're not capable. You'd have to be saved by someone else in order to be a dancer and you just don't have it.
Speaker 1 00:01:00 Or if you wanted to be a chef and someone said, no, you can't be a chef. You don't have the knowledge and the capabilities to be a chef, you'd never make it on your own. So forget about it. Or a football player, well, you're just a weak kid and, uh, you know, no sense you're thinking about ever being a football player. No way you can ever be anything more than a, a weak individual who needs someone else to save you. Or maybe you wanted to be a doctor and somebody said, forget about being a doctor. That takes a lot more talent bilities than you have. You're just a, a weak person who needs someone else to save you in order for you to become a doctor. So forget about it. Well, those examples have a lot to do with why it's important for us to understand that Christ was not crucified as long as you believe Christ was crucified.
Speaker 1 00:01:46 It implies you believe in a God who created just this one world. And when things went horribly wrong, which he was powerless to prevent, he had to give a physical, had to have his physical son come down, right? And, uh, he had to, that son had to undergo tremendous pain and suffering, which would be tortured by today's standards. Um, he'd have to undergo that in order to get things right. So it implies you believe that God is a male, not a female, which implies that he has some sort of a body, maybe a physical body, and that he impregnated at least one woman we know about in a physical body on this earth. Now, even more important, it also implies that God believes in reward and punishment of humans according to strict codes of conduct and belief, despite the fact that those humans are born with varying degrees of virtue into a wide range of environments, some of, some of them being conducive to obeying God's commands and some of them not right?
Speaker 1 00:02:54 It implies that we're all naturally flawed with very limited abilities to control our own destinies, much less take a hand in the creation of what we experience by co-creating our reality. We must rely on the goodwill of our creator in order to experience quote heaven, which is a kind of eternal bliss, but we really have no idea what that actually means. Or on the other hand, we all have different ideas about what that means, right? Well, it also implies we believe in hell where fellow creatures who didn't make the grade must suffer eternally. And that's not a very good, very comfortable feeling unless we can manage to totally plan it out of our, out of our minds, right? While we enjoy the good afterlife. Now, I don't know about you, but personally I doubt I could be happy in heaven knowing that a lot of my fellow humans were suffering torment and pain each and every day, day after day for eternity.
Speaker 1 00:03:59 Now, I I'd ask myself if God knew they would end up like that. Why did he even bother to create them? Now, um, from my part, I have to believe God's a whole lot better than that. More merciful, more loving. Now, if you do not believe in reincarnation than the Christ crucified drama also implies that you get just this one chance to make a go of it. And if you don't make the grade, well then it's eternal hell for you. Now, interestingly, the Catholic Church apparently did not condemn the concept of souls existing before being born on Earth until the second ecumenical ecumenical council of Con Stanton Noble in the year 5 53 when it condemned the teachings of origin. But the Catholic Church also claimed that origin wrote against reincarnation not for it. Now, theologians might go through some quite complex reasoning to come to conclusions other than those that I've mentioned here, but to the average person, if we think about it, these are the implications of a Christ who was crucified.
Speaker 1 00:05:13 Like I said, uh, in the most recent podcast, limits, limits, limits, that's what it all comes down to. A male God who couldn't create anything better than what we see all around us. A son who was doomed to a life-ending in torture, pain, and suffering a planet people by creatures with inherently flawed natures, natures that meant we, we couldn't possibly improve, right? We couldn't improve our lot unless we carefully followed all the conduct requirements that were stipulated by a very strict and vengeful male God. Well, in my opinion, that's the kind of a belief system that shortchanges the real nature of God, the real nature of Jesus Christ, and the real, real nature of us, right? Compare the glooming scenario described above with the implications of what we've learned from those who've come back to tell us what it's like after we die physically.
Speaker 1 00:06:11 Before doing that though, it's important to emphasize again, all the wonderful works of charity and the unconditional love by people who followed the Christ crucified drama. Just in the Catholic church alone, the church in which I was raised Catholic charities, the St. Vincent DePaul Society, missionaries and many others have helped countless people who sorely needed the help they provide. And I assume that Protestants did much the same thing. And it isn't just these beautiful acts of love and compassion that make all of our lives richer. Um, <laugh>, I I'm a big fan of the Gaither Gospel Hour. Their music lifts my spirits. And many of the hens like the old rugged Cross, and I believe in Calgary, they've, they've inspired a lot of people. Now, the contributions of Catholic and Christian colleges and universities shouldn't be overlooked either. As, uh, you know, I might have mentioned in the past, it's a little bit ironic that I graduated from the College of the Holy Cross where my roommate and many other fine individuals went on to become doctors and helped untold thousands.
Speaker 1 00:07:18 So with so many millions of positive contributions over the past 2000 years by people believing in Christ crucified you, you might ask, well, what could possibly be wrong with the teaching that Christ was crucified? Well, until now, there hasn't been a whole lot wrong with it. In fact, many people needed that framework and its limits to guide them toward living a good life where the importance of serving other people is understood. But now, now it's time for us to acknowledge the powerful eternal spirits that we are, and that in turn requires believing in the different God and the different reality than the one we've, uh, relied on for for so long. So let's turn to a comparison of the glooming gloomy scenario implied by Christ crucified to that of Christ, simply leaving his body at will because he wants no part of the old Hebrew reward punishment framework.
Speaker 1 00:08:19 So at the risk of, uh, repeating myself, let's take a little time now to compare the two worlds. One is a world where it's a world of people who believe that a powerful God is ready to punish us. If we don't, uh, believe, believe or behave according to his standards, that they're at the mercy of events over which they have no control, that some of them will suffer eternal punishment, that a devil exists outside of God who has the power to tempt us and then direct our eternal punishment. If he's successful, that this one life is all anyone has to either make it or fail and be judged regardless of the conditions of their birth. Now, a lot of people who believe these things, they have trouble reconciling all the evil and the eternal suffering of some people with the notion of a kind, benevolent, caring creator.
Speaker 1 00:09:13 Many stop their thinking at that point. They decide to explain that God had to give us free will, so he has to let us act as we will according to that free will a problem that God apparently couldn't solve without having his son subjected to pain and torture. Now, regardless of those thoughts and beliefs, even more important is the kind of mindset that creates for humanity. The implications are clear that we're flawed. We need to be saved by some powers we don't really understand, and we're quite limited in terms of our own power to create the reality that we want to experience. And we're limited in our ability to quote, save our own souls close. Whatever souls are in this mindset viewed from this perspective, we're insignificant creatures compared to God and the angels, and compared to the physical universe, which is so gigantic and longer lasting than we are now, that kind of mindset is very limiting.
Speaker 1 00:10:17 It's not the kind of mindset that's conducive to creating the best possible world that we can experience. It doesn't give you a, a comforting sense of power over your own destiny. It doesn't encourage you to believe you can create the kind of ideal environment that you'd like to live in. Instead, it's a mindset that leads to operating from fear and from insecurity holding this notion of a judgemental, vengeful, punishment oriented God would have us placing limits on ourselves so that we think of ourselves as nothing more than miserable sinners who must beg for eternal salvation. Not because we deserve it, but because an all powerful God grants it to us instead of sending us to hell for eternal punishment as he sends the unlucky ones. All right, well, that's one world. Now let's consider the other world, a world of Christ triumphant who did not need to be crucified, who did not want to promote the idea of a reward punishment, God.
Speaker 1 00:11:24 Now this is a world as discussed in a number of the previous uh, podcasts. This is a world where we're all active co-creators of the world. We experience, we know we're already eternal and powerful spiritual beings who are willing to take responsibility for what we create. And that right now we're focused on our stage of development, where we're learning to use our co-creative abilities wisely. We understand the supposedly awesome universe is just an illusion that we help co-create. That's it's a real illusion that we help co-create and it's temporary. Whereas we are eternal. We understand that those of us spirits who've chosen to experience the incarnation existence will physically quote die many times. But that death is just an expansion of our conscious awareness so that we're able to perceive and experience many spiritual realities before returning for another incarnation. If we choose to do so, we are not afraid of punishment.
Speaker 1 00:12:28 We know that we will be the ones to judge ourselves. We'll judge our performance in a particular lifetime ourselves. We know that many different action avenues are available to us when we choose how we'll go about improving that life, or when we go about selecting future experiences that will help compensate for what we decide is behavior in that particular lifetime that needs some form of correction or some further development. Okay? What does that mindset lead to? Well, obviously it leads to a sense of empowerment, right? To say the least, A feeling of greater love for all souls, regardless of how atrociously one of its focused personalities behaved in a particular lifetime. It fosters a determination to create the most exciting and fulfilling and love-filled world for all the spirits who choose to inhabit earth at the same time, we do now imagine that, huh? The challenges will be primarily challenges of conceiving and then creating all sorts of wonderful new worlds with new realms of experience, new realms of emotions and feelings and relationships that are so rewarding and so fulfilling that we can hardly comprehend them right now, at least to understanding that while the presence of evil seems plenty real enough in our human time space, illusion that we have chosen to experience once we're no longer participating in the earth game, it ceases to exist for us and does not affect our existence.
Speaker 1 00:14:03 Now, that is very reassuring, knowing we are eternal, that we're always a part of God, and that we can co-create realities with spirits even more powerful than we are, we gain that peace of mind, peace of mind that comes from knowing we will always be experiencing some sort of satisfying, enjoyable existence. And that's true. Whether it's existence in physical bodies like we are now or in different forms, forms that range from degrees of intensity of positive feelings and emotions to musical notes that are part of a great symphony to electric charges that produce fantastic light shows to pure spirits who enjoy the challenge of continually creating new relationships with other conscious spirits that will in turn lead to the creation of new worlds. So please give a lot of thought to these two alternative alternative realities, right? There's the world of Christ crucified in the world of Christ triumphant.
Speaker 1 00:15:07 You can decide for yourself which one you want, but rest assured you can't make a bad choice because outside of our little time space illusion, time doesn't exist and you're already enjoying all those worlds and experiences that I've just described. In other words, you won't just get there. You're already there because time doesn't exist outside of our human time space illusion. And that's regardless of which version of Christ you choose to believe in at this present moment. So just relax and enjoy it all. Now, I believe that, uh, this is an ideal time for us humans in human time space illusion to base our development on a strong belief in Christ's triumphant and a strong belief in the kind of God that implies. So we're gonna get there, uh, with a minimum, minimum of pain and a maximum of sp speed and enjoyment, I believe with the latter set of beliefs.
Speaker 1 00:16:06 Now, eventually you'll know what happened to Christ on the probable physical earth that we inhabit, and what happened in the world of thought reality eventually is now because there's no time, right? And from a different perspective in that now, which Seth always called the spacious present, which means everything, it won't matter all that much. It's just that it's time we started giving ourselves credit for being the powerful eternal spirits that we are. It's time that we started to give Christ credit for having more power than to participate in the old fashioned notion of a reward, punishment, God. And it's time we started giving God it's due. All that is love and creator of trillions of universes and conscious beings. A God capable of creating universes that have no evil with no Satan or other evil being who exist outside of God and challenges God for dominance over the world.
Speaker 1 00:17:10 Remember, as that Jesuit on the plane told me many years ago, nothing can exist outside of God. And I agree with that. That includes us. So here's to us the powerful spirits that we are and to Jesus Christ who's come in so many times to guide us and to a loving God who does not need to have sons or to ask them to undergo crucifixion in order to set the score straight with him. Cheers. Bravo wallah. True cause for celebration. Alright, that concludes, uh, today's discussion. And once again, I'm Dan McEnany bringing you lessons, lessons from the Hopeful Dead.
