Exactly, and especially if he understood that Christ, on calvary, absorbed each and every one of hitler's sins and all the shame and all the wrath of God against such hateful deeds, took it all on him, for Hitler, as a fallen person incapable of anything else than wickedness as a son of man. Some just hide/control it better than others.

Clean and Unclean

1The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. 3(The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. 4When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.^a)

5So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?”

6He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me.

7They worship me in vain;

their teachings are but rules taught by men.’^b

8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”

9And he said to them: “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe^c your own traditions! 10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’^d and, ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’^e 11But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban’ (that is, a gift devoted to God), 12then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. 13Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

14Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.’^f”

17After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18“Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? 19For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”)

20He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ 21For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’”

If there will be an afterlive than it will be a place with hundred of naked womas. Yeah Detah cant come soon enough.

I am afraid I do not understand; was Jesus being philosophical? The Pharisees and teachers didn't seem to understand why they were cleaning their hands, cups, etc. It would seem to me those practices are to prevent unsanitary conditions leading to sicknesses.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious I'm not well versed with the Bible. Like Kasz said, I realized before I posted the OP that the thought was hardly original; I was merely curious what you folks think of it.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the logic with that, but is it right that a leader of a powerful nation can start committing genocide and still get into heaven so long as he feels bad about it? That he can start the genocide feeling bad and end it feeling bad, yet still gets to go to heaven?

To help answer the question, I'll bring up another similar verse that makes it really clear that the pharisees were about the image rather than the essense (in this case holiness). In fact what they were striving for was righteousness, being not guilty (of sin), by washing their hands ceremoniously. 

Six Woes

37When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.

39Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41But give what is inside [the dish]^j to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

42“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

43“Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.

44“Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it.”

45One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”

46Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

47“Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. 48So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. 49Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ 50Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, 51from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.

52“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

53When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, 54waiting to catch him in something he might say.

So if you look at the bolded, Jesus knowing the hearts (he can see the heart) judged the pharisees as being animated by the spirit that murdered the prophets before him. In essense what Jesus is saying is that the Pharisees were focusing on human tradition (the washing of hands by tradition, the giving of a tenth of their earnings) all the while also performing evil in their hearts (in other places it mentions they wanted to have Jesus killed). So they were being clean on the outside (in appearance), but inside they were full of violence and murder, in their hearts. And Jesus could see it.

Behind the tradition there was probably a desire for cleanliness and avoiding unhealthy bacteria from being ingested, but it became religious in that if they did not obey the traditions, they felt like they were disobeing God. All the while, in psalms God says "I do not delight in sacrifice but in a contrite heart."

In other words their priorities were out of place.

Then there are parallels that can be drawn to today: both religious and political. Not to say every religious person is like the Pharisees, of course.

Definitely! In any scheme of power you will have people who have their priorities in the WRONG places, and religious organizations are no exception to this.

For the group not to fall into legalism (that's what it's called, having the rules before the heart), they would need to be much more in tune with the sufferings of people and understand the emotions of others. It's no wonder that Jesus was first a carpenter and then a Rabbi without home, while the pharisees held the high positions, let alone being born in a manger.

The Cost of Following Jesus

18When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”

20Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

 That's why I created the thread why I love Jesus but hate religion. It's because though Christ was a man of faith, he wasn't a legalist. His heart was first and foremost with his father in heaven (God), and second with his fellow man, and then all the rest. His priorities were in the right order. So even if Christianity is a religion, in order to distinguish Christ's ways from all the other forms of religion, including christian legalism, one is only left with expressions like "I love Jesus" as the best way to describe his faith, so as to contrast with legalism, e.g. deeds leading to salvation/holiness, which according to the apostle Paul are as good as menstrual rags.

It's how it is and evil made its way through even the purest of things (the Christian faith). And this is no new tactic of sin, as can be seen in the book of romans regarding the Mosaic law. In other words utter corruption by taking the sacred things and using them as a means for evil (in this case below the law of Moses, in the case of your post the law of Christ and the Christian teachings).

Struggling With Sin

7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”^b 8But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

I quite like this, but the problem with it is that being a good person has nothing to do with getting into heaven. You could save thousands of lives as a doctor, volunteer, give blood and donate to charity, but if you don't accept Jesus as your saviour, it's hell for you.

The reverse is also true.

I would have no problem with the idea of a heaven where you are judged on the goodness of your actions in theory, except that morality is relative, so who would judge? It doesn't really chime with that atheist idea of morality at all.

To be fair, the New Testament is simply a "Best Sellers" list of texts used to teach Christians. The list was used well in advance of the Council of Nicea, and well before Christianity was legal in the Roman empire.

In fact, by 200 AD - just 80 years after the (arguable) completition of writings, you had the Muratorian Fragment, which points to the fact that most churches had already adopted what we accept as cannon - it was simply later on that it officially cannonized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muratorian_fragment

As for Constantine and the Catholic Church - that's an argument for a different day, and probably worth it.

It depends on how you look at it.

Christianity is inherently about following God's law through the life and testimony of Jesus Christ. Salvation is about the forgiveness of sins, and coming into a relationship with God, absolving one of their sins. Becoming a true Christian involves works. A good bit of the New Testament points to it.

In the case of Hitler, I think you get into arguments of blasphemy and election that would heavily weigh against someone like Hitler being in heaven. That is, he was so hateful and wicked, that his likelihood to call on Jesus was incredibly unlikely.

That isn't to say that it's impossible, of course. Paul was a mass-murderer and wrote most of the New Testament. Joeseph Blayhi was a genocidal rebel leader that killed 20,000 people in the Liberian Civil War. He's now a preacher working with former enemies to rehabilitate child soldiers.

This is a great great question... When the criminal on the cross realized who Christ was and the sin he was guilty of, its his FAITH that got him to paradise. He realized that the person he had in front of him was God, and that he was the savior. In essence, to realize his depravity and the endless power of Christ, as well as his desire to change his attitude (unlike the other criminal), and of course the actual sacrifice of Christ (above and beyond the penitent man's choice) are the recipes for that person's deliverance form the bonds of sin and entry into the kingdom of heaven.

The greater the sin, the greater the need for redemption, the harder to forgive yourself and let Christ bear your sin.

It's probably as difficult for a self-righteous man to enter the kingdom of heaven, as he is not aware of his depravity.

Now that that's cleared up, ultimately salvation is a creative process. In essence it's meant to make a new creation in the believer, something that DID NOT EXIST before. As such, that new creation is meant to be the new life the believer nourishes from that point forward. Therefore, no matter the sin of the old man, the new creation is able to live according to the will of God since it is birthed from the blood and the spirit of God.

16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin^a for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In the end, someone paid for the sins of the old man. In every case, it's Christ that pays. Christ paid for ALL sins already, no matter the choices of men. The only difference is that those who believe will be in paradise, and those who don't will go to the grave. As such, Jesus absorbed the punishment and the shame for ALL sins committed by all men for all time, and as such no sin is to be judged against a person, since Jesus was already punished for all sins past, present and future.