The Focus of Our Beliefs
The beliefs below are the central areas of discussion for Our Human Church. We are fundamentally focused on each persons’ view of their personal salvation. We acknowledge their are many people who do not accept the concept of salvation but we (adherents to OHC’s philosophy) believe our individual opinions and attitudes regarding salvation are central to how we live our life. Once having a concept of time and mortality, humans have yearned for some clue to the completion of their existence. We do not offer any great truth to this quest: we merely present options and a purposeful, thoughtful avenue for sharing our beliefs and their implications. [Click on a banner to view more]
What is Soteriology?
Soteriology is the study of salvation. The fundamental goal of Our Human Church is to confirm our individual, personal assurance that we have attained salvation, whatever it means to us. OHC believes our sense of salvation is personal and is revealed directly by God to us. There are universal truths regarding our salvation, but the ultimate realization is only attained when our life is in harmony with the essence that God is.
What is salvation?
OHC defines salvation as a return to the original state in which we were intended to exist. This can be defined in many ways according to our culture and beliefs. Salvation may be the remediation of Life’s pain and suffering; living in a society free of intolerance, bigotry, greed, and strife; the end of sickness, poverty, hatred, and grief; eternal life ; or many other idyllic visions for what we think a perfect existence may be.
Some merely see salvation as a personal state whereby we have inner peace and equanimity having obtained a psyche that enables us to live our life in a calm acceptance of how we see reality.
However we define salvation: whether a means by which we have ‘happiness’ in this life, a re-emergence after death to a new, better state of being, or a seemingly infinte quest for perfection, salvation is our inner goal. It is only through clearly defining what it means to us that we can obtain it.
What is God?
OHC believes God is the totality of all that exists, has existed, and will exist. God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. God has no gender, no persona, and no essence of which we as humans can experience. God is represented to humans through his spiritual manifestation as the Holy Spirit and his physical presence as Jesus of Nazareth. The Trinity as expressed in the Christian Bible is the combined nature of God as expressed to humanity in this realm we colloquially call the “Universe”. We achieve salvation when we have been reborn into the spiritual and physical conceptualization of God and rejoined in communion with the Church and the Divinity.
What is the Church?
The Church is all of humanity, especially we who have learned of and acknowledged the authority of Jesus Christ over this realm we call the Universe. All humanity is a part of this body and are subject to the rule of Christ whose nature is love, peace, mercy, redemption and joy. The Church as portrayed in history is the result of human flaws and weaknesses and represents the growing pains of the free will and precarious nature of humankind. All people are part of the Church, whether or not their culture or history was shaped by the blood of Christ.
As we come to know the enlightenment and peace resulting from a life of a Christ-like nature, we mature in God’s grace and vision for us, and being shaped by the power of His holy Spirit, we come to a realization of our truest self. Once matured in the essence of our inner Christ, we act with compassion, strength, forgiveness, and direction.
Is there a Heaven and Hell?
“On Earth, as in Heaven”. Earth is the physical realm God created for this Universe. Heaven is the spiritual realm. Some equate this life as Hell. To others, Hell is a fire-filled purgatory. For some Hell is eternal. For some Hell is temporary. Hell is real but its reality is beyond our comprehension. It may be a physical place, a spiritual place, or a metaphorical place. Heaven is similar. Heaven is separate from Earth in a metaphysical aspect but they are the same in a spiritual aspect. Heaven is wherever God is: and, God is everywhere. It is only when we come to the knowledge that Heaven is our sense of peace we obtain when we feel: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spirituality, that we are in the presence and sanctuary of God.
The Christ
The Christos (Christ) has many names and many connotations. Our belief is that Jesus of Nazareth was both human and divine. His human nature was not the creation of a mystical union between Mary and the Holy Spirit but the inception of the Spirit as a special agent within the human Jesus to enable the universal God to be made manifest on Earth. Jesus of Nazareth was an historical agent for the Divine and focused on the Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures. The Christos is the universal representation of the Logos of God. The Logos is the message of God’s law of Love and peace to a world separated from God by sin.
The Christian scope of Jesus as ruler of the Universe illustrates the supremacy of God’s divine grace and justice over the totality of this universe as we know it. The Christos’ dominion can be expressed through various modalities of moral, ethical, and metaphysical messages expressed in various prophets, teachers, and other messengers carrying the singular idea of the universal power of God’s forgiving grace and love to re-unify his lost creation to Himself.
The Salvation of “Non-christians”
The universal force of all the world’s religions is our errant state as the “children of God” separated by a phenomenon called “sin”. Sin is the causal factor of our human inability to claim divine status. Our lack of Divinity causes death, disease, poverty, inhumaneness, and all the other malicious and abhorent issues affecting all humans. Our Human Church believes this experience we call life is just a by-way on a greater journey God has planned for us. God provides to all His creation the knowledge and ability to grow beyond the limitations into which we are born, to gain an understanding of the Divine nature of what God is, and the meaning of our individual life within the context of His eternal history.
As a “Christian”, my individual beliefs focus on the persona of Jesus and his path to salvation. Those who are not defined as christian in the traditional concept are only different in that their cultural definition of the “Christos” uses a different word and a different aspect of God’s universal salvation to all. Our Human Church seeks to bring a more holistic view of what it means to be human and to help mend the long-standing schisms alienating us from ourselves.