@ElonGates666
The belief in life / God before and after earth is core biblical belief - from the beginning of John's Gospel to Genesis we are told that God existed pre-earth, and there is plenty within Jesus' teachings through to Revelation on post-earth.
In the Old Testament (same as Jewish scriptures) there is reference to e.g. prophets being taken up to be with God, so Jews will have been very familiar with the concept from an early time...
how we see the modern definition of Heaven and Hell - well that seems to vary, so some will have a biblical view and others not.
@GalaApples
"All we need is Love, and Jesus is the most perfect expression of love. If we just focus on Jesus who was love incarnate, and follow him, that is all that is needed."
Sorry - that really is not the Bible in summary. The clever thing about that philosophy (and it is not an uncommon one) is that of course it is accurate that Jesus talked about the new commandments and love - for God and for one another, but the reductionist view loses all the detail and subtlety inherent in Jesus's teachings.
"I decided only to follow his example and teachings, from the gospels, rather than the bible as a whole. Much simpler, but losing nothing of spiritual importance."
We are told very clearly that all God's word is God inspired / breathed and that we are not to add to or remove from it - that means that we need the Old Testament, we need the epistles, we need the difficult books such as Revelations - they are all a part of God's word for us - to pick the bits you like and which are easy to follow is not to follow Jesus / God, but to build your own image of God and follow that.
I can understand why it is tempting, and especially in a world of so many things which are fundamentally wrong and broken there is a temptation to focus only on love as a counterpoint - but that is not what Jesus tells us to do.
As mentioned above - it can be tricky, but we should all look to be discerning when we come across any form of organisation, such as a church, and continually hold up its teachings to the bible for clarity and accuracy - if we find that the teachings don't sit comfortably alongside what the bible tells us, then it is possible that there is an issue there...
"Early on I realised that the bible was totally dense and confusing, contradictory, inconsistent and hard to reconcile with a loving and equitable God, which I believed and still do, that Jesus is. Evangelicals tend to stress the importance of the bible including the Old Testament as the "inerrant" word of God, which leads them into all kinds of hardline, unloving prescriptions and restrictions and imo, intolerance. The very fact of Jesus as the reason for being Christian tends to get lost among the biblical prescriptions and proscriptions (most of which are man-made rules anyway)"
The Bible isn't dense and confusing - it is wonderfully complex and detailed, and so much so that a life time of study will still leave you wanting to discover more, it is not contradictory, inconsistent or hard to reconcile with a loving and equitable God - the whole consistent theme of the Bible is an amazing creator God who loves his people so much that he keeps on trying to find ways to stay in relationship with them as they continually disobey / wander off away from God - so much so that he sends his own son to die so that we can have that relationship. Even if you were to simply compare the Christian God against all Gods from all religions, there isn't a single other God who offers redemption and salvation completely and totally free - not sure how you could invent a more loving God! As for an equitable God - what is more equitable than a God so perfect that imperfection can't be tolerated, so he sends his son to die to allow the imperfect to be with Him? A God who has absolute clarity about how to be in relationship with Him and then instead of making people jump through hoops, at personal cost makes that door wide open and available to absolutely everyone - free of charge or cost. How much more equitable can you be than to provide eternity with God free of charge, but also to provide absolute clarity that those who choose otherwise will in complete fairness get what they want - eternity without Him.
No evangelicals I know have hardline or unloving prescriptions / restrictions or intolerance - they simply go to the bible to see what God's perspective / instruction might be and teach that - as such they are not man-made rules. If you are getting hit with a whole load of man made rules, then (back to the comment above) you need to be challenging those with reference to the bible.
And finally - Jesus isn't really the reason for being Christian... The reason for being Christian is to acknowledge the triune God (father, son, Holy Spirit) as the creator who made us to be in relationship with Him - a relationship which collapses through sin - historic and individual - and where Jesus dying for us becomes the way in which that relationship can be restored. Jesus's role within the trinity is varied, from being intrinsically involved in the creation (John 1) to being the living embodiment of God the Father (if you know me you know the father), to being the sacrificial lamb who dies for us to allow that relationship to be rebuilt, to being our advocate in Heaven at judgement. What Jesus isn't is the whole story in isolation of God the father / Holy Spirit.