God's holy place

The Holy Place

 

The great question facing religion today as always is: "  Where is God's holy place?"

The question appears in the book of Psalms in a very clear way and virtually screams out of every word  of the Bible. I would go so far as to say that the purpose  of the Bible is to reveal the holy place of God.

A person who doesn't seek the answer to this question will be quite disappointed and will wonder why the Bible is such a popular book.

It's popular because there are obviously many people at all times in history, primitive times and modern, who want to know where is God's holy place.

Of course the Bible doesn't tarry with the answer and gives it straight away; God's holy place is the Garden of Eden.

There's no beating around the bush. Plane and simple, the holy place of God is The Garden of Eden and Man was in it and as long as he was perfectly good he was entitled to be there and like everything else over there he was immortal.

The Bible encourages man to search for immortality by searching for God's Holy Place.

I think that one can safely say that, in the physical world, the world of the 5 senses, man has resigned himself to the fact of death. Modern science may lengthen the span of life but I don't think any scientist thinks that immortality is attainable in the physical world.

All religions, however, promise immortality – of the soul. According to them man has a soul and if he is religious it is immortal. If he isn't religious – well, either he doesn't have a soul or, anyhow it doesn't  matter because a soul that isn't immortal isn't worth having.

This is the basis for the religious justification of the death penalty and in fact for all punishment. Because by committing a crime a person damages his soul and it needs to be repaired by punishment.

Having chosen to eat the fruit of Eve man is expelled from The Garden of Eden. In other words the eating of the fruit of Eve has made him imperfect and not entitled to be immortal.

Religion, however, comes to his rescue, to save his soul, as it were. It offers him an alternative holy place and a myriad of tools for repairing his damaged soul; sacrifices, ceremonies, prohibitions of certain types of behavior, foods, cloths etc.