In my study of the New Testament I came away with the belief that Jesus had two core messages to his followers:

1. Love Everybody
2. Don’t Be a Dick.

Forget about Paul’s various ramblings to the church in Corinth or the church in Rome. We don’t worship Paul, we worship Jesus and most all of Jesus’s teachings can be boiled down to those two principles.

There are these huge mega churches where the pastor is worth a gazillion dollars… In a city filled with the homeless and the mentally ill. Churches are preaching against homosexuality, immigrants, and every other thing they can come up with to fill seats and collection plates. Somehow or another Modern Christianity seems to have an opinion on everything that they don’t agree with and they don’t hesitate to shout that opinion out to everyone that they can. They always seem to be against something. The one thing that they seem to have forgotten along the way is the Christ’s core message – Love.

That’s what they should be shouting about instead.

LOVE.

Jesus said to love everybody. Love your God, Love your Neighbors, Love your Enemies. Love the Sick, Love the Rich, Love the Poor, Love the Homeless, Love the Crazy, Love the Drunks, Love the Junkies, Love the Sinner, Love the Saint. Love the despicable. Love E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y .

No exceptions.

No qualifiers.

None.

Love Everybody.

It’s not for us to judge who is worthy of that love, our job is simply to love.

This how you find Heaven. This is where your Salvation lies. If your heart is filled with love, there is no room there for fear and in my mind, that is the definition of Heaven – a Heart filled with Love. My definition of Hell is as equally simple – it’s a Heart filled with Fear.

There is no Sin, there is only Love.

If you want to argue the point and insist that sin exists, then the only definition for sin I am willing to accept would be that sin is the absence or rejection of Love.

If I try to stay grateful and to do whatever it is that I can to help somebody else, my life goes really well. When I get all angry and fearful and all locked up in my head, my life quickly turns to shit.

Heaven and Hell.

I don’t think it matters if you are a believer or a non-believer, If you are Atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan or Jew. Love is still the answer. You can either accept love or you can reject love. But it still won’t change the answer.

My personal spiritual belief (I’m a semi-Atheist Southern Buddhist who tries to follow the teachings of Jesus) is that God is Love so therefore mathematically; Love must be God. I don’t believe that God is some magical, invisible being up in the clouds, I believe that God is simply Love. I feel that when I open my heart to Love, I am opening my heart to God. And when I am sharing and spreading that love, I’m doing God’s work. It’s that simple. Love is omnipotent.

Some will tell me that if I don’t follow a certain specific doctrine, then I am bound for Hell. I don’t see how that is possible; Heaven and Hell are right here and now. I don’t know what’s on the other side of death’s door and I don’t really care. I’ll find out when I go through it, but for right now, I believe that we are each and every one a Prophet, and our mission here is to learn how to love and to teach that love to others. That’s our Salvation. It’s our Redemption, our love for each other, and if I’m headed for Hell, I’ll go there with my head held high knowing that I cared about people, that I did what I could to help others, that I tried to love everyone and not be a total and complete dick.