January 17: Judgment Day

Shortly before the new year, we watched This is the End with my parents.  As you know, it was a deeply thought provoking and serious look at the end times and how they would arrive.  No.  Not really.  It was honestly the stupidest movie I have ever seen in my entire life.  Although I did enjoy the part where James Franco was devoured by cannibals.

Because James Franco

It also got us thinking a little about the apocalypse so when we saw that one of the possible holidays was Judgment Day, we decided it was a good choice for us.  The holiday wasn't exactly what we thought it would be.  Turns out, Judgment Day was less about the apocalypse and more about our own personal judgment.  The holiday was created so that people would pause and contemplate their own lives and whether they were worthy of entering heaven.

Yea - that's exactly as much of a downer as it sounds.  It was also a good exercise.  It is easy to fall into a pattern of rote memorization and forget to really contemplate and consider our lives.  It can be a common problem - recently the Pope spoke out against people simply 'parroting' the words of Catholic prayers instead of focusing on the meditations those prayers are meant to reflect.  So today we reflected on our lives with seriousness of purpose and true focus.

We set out to be a little ambitious with our meditations for the sake of the holiday.  To be blunt - much of the detail of our contemplations are deeply private, so there won't be a lot of detail in this particular entry.  First we thought about and discussed whether, under our current religious beliefs, we would likely go to heaven based on how we're living.  Over the course of the day, we both found ways we could be better people and are both going to help each other work on that.  I will share my main area of focus so people have a general sense of what we discussed.  I can be very impatient and getting easily annoyed with people makes it hard to live up to the call of Mark 12:31 to 'love your neighbor as yourself'.  So I am going to meditate, pray more and work on being more patient with people.

We also decided, as a thought exercise, to look at other religions and see if we would likely go to heaven under those religious teachings.  Now, for the sake of the exercise we made one assumption -- that we believed in the religion for the purpose of the exercise.  See, a good chunk of religions automatically exempt you if you don't believe and that defeated the purpose of the exercise so we removed that issue.  Meaning: "If we were Jewish/Muslim/Hindu etc... would we be living our lives in a way that would lead to heaven or that religion's conception of heaven?".

Here were our conclusions and general explanations based on a great summary site we found:

Atheism:

Moot.

Because Atheism.

Baha'i:

Hell, but eventually Heaven.

The religion focuses very heavily on God's laws and we have very few specific rules or traditions that we follow so we'd be hard-pressed to argue entry after this life.  That said, the religion also believes in the continuous progress of the soul so eventually our souls would make it into heaven.

Buddhism:
Reincarnation - not Nirvana just yet.

Certain parts we work towards - right intentions and meditation.  Other parts we aren't hitting - like living as simply as we can.  We're a ways off from Nirvana still.

Christianity:
Heaven.

Because of the nature of the exercise and the main principle behind Christianity (if you let Jesus into your heart then you are saved), we would be going to heaven just because of the starting condition of belief.  That said, outside of the exercise, we both attempt to live by the words I quoted earlier in the entry - Mark 12:30-31.  In short - love your God above all others and love your neighbor as yourself.  While definitely not perfect, our attempts are genuine.  So there's that.

Confucianism:
Unknowable, but we're doing mediocre since we don't often think as much about our ancestors as we could.

Per the site: "Confucianism concentrates on appropriate behavior in life, not a future heaven. The afterlife is unknowable, so all effort should be made to make this life the best it can be, to honor ancestors, and to respect elders."

Eastern Orthodox:
Purgatory (though not named that) and then hopefully Heaven.

In this denomination, belief is not enough.  Over time, a process called 'theosis' in which the believer alters his or her behavior to be as Christ-like as possible.  While we try to live a good life, we don't do it even close to flawlessly.  The religion believes that those who don't successfully complete theosis go to that middle place and either go to Heaven because enough people pray for them or to Hell because not enough people pray for them.  So... we're hopeful is about the best we could say.

Hinduism:
Reincarnation for a while.

Hinduism believes that over time people are freed from bad karma by ridding themselves of evil intent and evil action.  I would LOVE to claim we are there - fully loving - no anger or evil intent at all.  I can truthfully say that we don't indulge in evil action or intent.  However, who among us doesn't kneejerk to some serious anger in rush hour traffic and/or long meetings?  That impatience is what kills us on this one.  There are also dietary restrictions that we have in no way been following.

Islam:
Hell.

Why?  Because in addition to belief there is a focus on good deeds outweighing the bad.  We undertake very few religious rituals, fasts, etc... which makes it hard to argue we would be saved in Islam.  We could also, if we're being blunt here, do more for charity.  We have the good intention to, but one of the things that came out of our meditations today was that we should do more good works for people - so in a religion that calls on its followers to perform good deeds, it wouldn't make sense for us to believe we were going to Heaven as things stand right now.

Jainism:
Not liberated.

Jainism doesn't have a Heaven in the traditional sense - but instead a state of being in which the soul is cleansed of its bad karma and becomes liberated and perfect.  As we noted in the section on Hinduism - we're still a ways off from that state.

Jehovah's Witnesses:
Hell.

Definitely Hell.  Among other teachings about the limited seating available in Heaven (144,000), there is also a direct call for proselytizing in the religion.  Not only do we both not do that - outside of the exercise - we both directly and specifically choose not to attempt to share our faiths unless we already know the person we're speaking of is receptive to it.  So... Heaven is out in this religion.

Judaism:
Hell.

Again we're stuck on the good deeds and devotion.  As we talked about in the Tu B'Shevat entry, we are not well versed in following spiritual laws and we need to be more charitable.  As I read these, I kind of wonder if Christianity and spirituality spoils us a little bit.  Just saying.

Mormonism:
Second Heaven, but not the Highest Heaven.

We are both baptized and have belief, which is all that is required for the Second Heaven via general salvation.  For the Highest Heaven, there are other requirements.  A person has to be baptized in the Mormon church, believe, be a church member, be the recipient of a laying on of hands, obey several laws of the church and of God and complete certain rituals.  We aren't even CLOSE on that last part.

Roman Catholicism:
Purgatory.

We were both baptized - Justin in the Catholic church and I in the Lutheran church.  While that might seem like it wouldn't count, the church allows for a baptism of desire - meaning wanting desperately to be saved.  Having converted to Christianity later in life, my desire to be Christian is clear.  That said, we have the good works and laws situation again.  Neither of us are particularly great with the law following thing - so if folks could totes pray a lot for us so our stay in Purgatory is short... that would be appreciated.

Scientology:
No salvation.

There are specific procedures required within Scientology to achieve salvation - the clearing of traumas from previous lives through specific rituals - and we haven't done anything even remotely like that.

Sikhism:
Reincarnation.

Similar to Hinduism, except monotheistic.  We don't meditate or pray as much as we could and that is what is required to be freed of additional reincarnations.

Shinto:
Reincarnation.

There used to be a hellish afterlife tradition, but now much of the belief system to Buddhism has been adopted from an afterlife standpoint.  Because of that, our answer is the same as it was for Buddhism.

Taoism:
Reincarnation.

As with Shinto - the afterlife beliefs shifted from what they were to mirroring Buddhism so our answer is again the same.  Taoism had a much more detailed and complex afterlife tradition though where people could eventually become immortal and that was pretty neat.

Unitarian-Universalism:
Heaven.

Unitarianism is very open in its options - there is very little proscribed for practitioners, but they are asked to seek enlightenment and attempt to live a good and moral life.  That is a bar we are hitting pretty solidly.

Wicca:
Reincarnation or Heaven.

There is a believe about being connected with the Goddess, rather than a traditional afterlife.  Similar to many of the eastern religions, there is a believe in reincarnation until a soul becomes connected enough with the Goddess to become one.  Karma enters into things, but not in preventing salvation.  Instead, bad karma is seen as impacting the person three-fold in this lifetime.  We both could meditate a lot more, but this religion is so individualistic, I can't say for sure whether we're close to salvation under its rules or not - so I decided to leave it as possibly either.

Zoroastrianism:
Hell and then Heaven.

Zoroastrianism says that salvation is dependent on righteousness and good works, but it also says that Hell isn't permanent.  So, based on our answers for other parts, our guess is that we'd have to spend some time down in Hell, but would eventually make it up to Heaven.  We definitely try, but we could also be better so I would hesitate to put us straight into Heaven.

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So wow.  Very serious holiday and also a very difficult exercise.  Justin and I both try very hard to be good people, treat each other and the people we know with kindness and respect.  However, when doing an exercise like this, it really made it clear how much more good we could be doing.  We are both going to be thinking about the lessons of this holiday for a long time.  Not promising anything, but we may check back in with this one later (as in after the end of the year).  Neither of us want to distract from the other holidays by looping back to this one, but it was seriously jarring to think about how much more piousness would be required to attain salvation in most religions.

As our holidays go, I honestly believe this one was the most serious and meaningful we've had so far.  I hope reading about it hasn't been too much of a downer, but we wanted to take the opportunity to be as open and honest about our meditations as we felt comfortable with to really explore the purpose of the day.  On a MUCH lighter note - the next holiday is Winnie the Pooh Day - whew!