keys to heaven

from google:

this makes no sense to me.

If i were in heaven, why would anything need to be locked?

in an ideal world, I wouldn’t need a housekey, carkey, etc… there would be no need for this protection.

we lock the doors because we are afraid. Would one be afraid in heaven? Perhaps fear is a motivator, and necessitates something to overcome (gives purpose)

I think not though. This is probably a false choice, but I don’t know if I would prefer a heaven without fear or a heaven without purpose

Its the same as, ‘as above, so below’. so what is made here will be also made there. Imho we are all already there and this world is a tangent, the sandman which turns out to be smoke and vanishes.

Way I see it, FPS games need doors keys and secrets to keep it interesting. Heaven seems like a monotonous joy, like dying from laughing gas.

My ideal heaven would have lesbians with drama, there would be plotting and scheming, gossip and drama, fighting and punching in the nose, but overall hot sex would be had.

“Bound” as in a marriage, covenant, contract, or partnership. Properly bound, a gathering naturally holds together because that which would divide it, “devils”, are kept away.

I think what this means is that Matthew was the gatekeeper. As such, Jesus is just saying, “anything you allow in the mortal realm will also happen in Heaven as well.” Which doesn’t make any sense to me, because if there was an immortal realm I can’t possibly see entropic existences being involved within it.

I hope your response to this is satirical. The “Gates of Heaven” could definitely have keys. I mean, the Mormons believe magic under garments and secret words will unlock the fruitful gates of the divine. My problem with that quote doesn’t focus with the keys as much as it deals with interactions between the mortal and immortal realms. I kind of see it as an, “all or nothing” approach. Either you are fully alive, in the mortal realm, or you are full dead, and you might go to a divine realm.

Anyone who ‘supposedly’ saw God in a near-death experience have to realize that for every person who says that they experienced such things (including Hell) there are like ten instances of people who said that they were void of all life. In fact, less pressure is given to the ones who don’t believe, because all the petty things they did in this life doesn’t really matter to them. The ones that believe that everything they do will be judged and that there are indeed metaphorical “keys” to Heaven are themselves terrified, especially when they get in a situation of near-death.

… “mostly we form community through demonizing and exclusion, that is, we bond with each other more on the basis of what we are against and what we hate than on the basis of what we are for and hold precious.”

                                                         Recent article in America Magazine ... Grant Kaplan

JSS … your statement implies … “other”= devil

if ‘haters’ and the ‘hated’ see each other as ‘devils’ … doesn’t that make us all devils.

the “other” has always been considered the enemy … simply for being “other”

at the time Matthew wrote his gospel there were competing groups … Matthew is simply doing what Surreptitious so astutely mentioned in another OP … “a desire to solve existing problems is what drives human progress”

Matthew was attempting to add substance to his view of the existing differentiation among the peoples of his place and time.

The “heaven/gatekeeper” story … as flaky as it is … was concocted to elevate the status of Matthew’s community.

Oddly enough this flaky story still survives … seems to address our desire for a life/existence beyond our physical body limits.

/rant on

That is so true. When I watch YouTube the left and the right viciously attack each other to score brownie points within their community. 90% of the time they never talk about their own point of view, and the 10% of the time that they do, they use certain key phrases. Everybody is either far-left or far-right, nobody is in the pragmatic center. The same can be said with religion. You either believe or you don’t believe, and if you believe you better believe what I believe bullshit.

YouTube had its “atheist phase” from like 2010 to 2015, and now it’s going through an “anti-SJW phase” where YouTubers like Blaire White and Shoe0nHead are becoming successful. Both atheist and anti-SJW is more of an exclusion than inclusion into community. Atheists typically don’t go to church, they usually don’t have their own groups like the religious, and SJW is a prop term created by anti-feminists to mock what feminism has become rather than what it originally stood for. Many feminists have their own groups and meetings, whereas anti-SJWs don’t. They feel the need to be vocal about what they stand for and the only community they have to use at their immediate disposal is the Internet and sites like YouTube.

Getting back on topic…

What is a religion geared around: DOING things, or NOT DOING things? If they focus on doing good, they are usually the type in include people, whereas if they are a religion that focuses on not doing harmful things, they are usually the type to exclude people. Being “bound” usually means doing good things, so by this, I think what James is trying to say is that doing good by being bound keeps the bad things, like the devil, at bay. Your response is to say that people always focus on what they aren’t (like the devil) more than what they are, and to that I would say it goes both ways. Typically smaller sects of political and religious organization often stress how they are “not” something, because the mainstream is to believe in something else. On the other hand, if you were an Evangelical Conservative Christian in the 80s you typically didn’t have much backlash from many people, and were free to express yourself the way you see fit. The very vocal people like to ridicule and demonize the masses, but there’s always that, “silent majority” many people don’t talk about.

Anyways, enough ranting.

/rant off.

youtube.com/watch?v=2k_9mXpNdgU#t=03m30s

The “keys” represent absolute authority. Peter was/is looked on as the first leader of christianity later to become the Roman Catholic Church. He was the first pope.
As amorphos said, as above, so below.
I take it to mean that Christ was saying that as the first leader of Christianity, Peter’s authority and decisions would always be in harmony with and become perfectly agreeable with the will of God.

I would disagree with as above, so below. Above is pure. Middle Earth is not pure. And the below goes down way farther down than this Earth realm and it’s not where happy endings are forged.

Give the guy a break. Does everything you say make sense?

i guess thats fair

I looked up this with a variety of bible /sect words
biblehub.com/matthew/16-19.htm

The word loosed is interesting. You loose a demon on earth and that sucker might be in heaven , or. What???

It is referring to arranging for the ideal to be on Earth, “Heaven on Earth”. If the ideal involves having demons around, then Peter is in a position to arrange that. But it isn’t likely that the ideal, the Heaven, involves demons or devils, considering their nature.

Im a demon on Earth, rest assured it is no heaven for me, nothing but rules and regs putting a damping on all fun to be had.

Demons are simply fallen angels, simply kicked and banned for refusing to prostrate against false gods.

…quite the opposite. But then what would one expect for a demon to say and/or think.

You would expect a demon to say the tree of knowledge and ultimate philosophy.

I don’t think there is any such thing as demons, the original meaning refers to ‘the deceiver’ ~ illusions. So heaven would be a place without such illusions. Maybe they get played out here, hence the need for here.
as above so below, would thence translate as, the same thing in heaven as earth but without the illusions e.g. death. after all, if when you die you find yourself still existing then obviously death is an illusion.

It didn’t, questioning if it does now. It can be the case that the demons are not necessary, or necessary