The demons know who Jesus is and fear him but so many humans have issues with him Well the hour is late and you better figure it out or you’ll spend eternity in Hell 🔥
A couple of weeks ago, I was walking with my sister along a paved path. I was agonizing over my inability to wake my friend of 50 years as to the harms of the shots. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a piece of paper on the ground.
On it was written in someone’s handwriting:
“Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’”
Isaiah 41:10
Some may say, what a coincidence! But I no longer believe in coincidences. 🥰🥰🥰
Interesting. Thanks for the comment. How did it choose you, exactly? And how do you square your belief that God doesn't care what path we follow with Jesus's statement in John 14:6?
“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’”
It chose me because I had rejected it for many years quite emphatically. I was a complete materialist. But I had some experiences that gradually and subtly wore away at me until I gradually accepted that consciousness is not just a matter of neurons and synapses. From there I slowly decided to go back to the faith of my youth, not because I thought it was the only path to God, but because it was the one familiar to me. Jesus's words in John 14 are colored for me by several intellectual strands. The writer of John was not John the apostle and was writing 50 years after Jesus's death, so who knows where that pericope came from, and furthermore, those words come from a time when it was by no means clear in Christianity that there was a "trinity." That was decided much later, when anything that challenged that notion was pruned, or "censored" as it were, by "church fathers." John himself seems to have been a bit of a gnostic, so he seems to have thought Jesus was separate from "the Father" and had a role as a sort of secondarily divine figure whose job was to introduce humans to the nature of God and the virtues He valued, as well as to emphasize that humans by themselves are broken, but are still loved. Acts makes clear that ALL humans around the world are included in this, so to me it is pretty clear that Jesus was not about "rules" and "restrictions," (those were for the Pharisees) but about getting all humans to see that (unlike the way God is portrayed in the OT) God is actually loving, accepting and self-sacrificing. Over and over in the gospels Jesus's reaction to sin, or missing the mark, is to accept the sinner and direct him or her onto a better path. The church that was founded in Jesus's name has unfortunately done exactly the opposite of that throughout most of its history.
So, which orthodox Christian doctrines do you agree with? Is Jesus the Son of God? If so, what does that mean? Was he sinless? How do people who don’t put their faith in Jesus as the sacrifice for their sins come to God, exactly? Which other books of the Bible are “colored,” and what does that mean, exactly? Completely unreliable and ignorable? Partially? If so, which parts?
1. I'm not a believer in points of "orthodoxy" or "doctrines," because from fairly early in the Christian church doctrines have been developed and used as a way to divide, demonize and even genocide other people, which I don't believe is God's will. Just as today, humans come up with fine points of belief in order to virtue signal and distinguish themselves from other people they don't feel "measure up" in some way. I think this tendency is evil because it is self-involved and self-promoting.
2. I don't think it matters whether one believes that Jesus is God, or that Jesus is not God but somehow God's son, or that he was simply a man who was somehow more in tune with God than other humans. Again these are differences that have been used to point at other people and shout heretic! right before killing them.
3. I believe Jesus was sinless in that he lived a God-directed rather than self-directed life. I think most other religions teach the same thing about the nature of good and evil, and that that is the most important thing. Other peoples have come to the gradual understanding of what God is, and what good and evil is, and I believe God recognizes that and will gather fallible but good-intentioned people to himself after our lives are over. I don't think God cares how people came to that knowledge.
4. I think Christian people come to God through recognizing that Jesus sacrificed himself for the truth, and for other humans. Jesus taught us how to live: living in tune with God means being other-focused rather than self-focused, because self-focus leads to both minor and egregious sins and crimes.
5. Everything we read and everything we do is colored by our knowledge and experience. So all books of the Bible are "colored" for every reader to the extent that we understand the history of the texts, and because we have our own prior life experience. If John's gospel were written by John the apostle and NOT written by someone who thought the Roman Empire was literally satanic, and NOT written by a Gnostic who believed in the forces of light fighting against the forces of darkness, then we would read it differently--it would be "colored differently for us. I don't think this has anything to do with being unreliable or ignorable; it is just in the nature of reading and understanding. All the biblical texts (even those disavowed and censored by church fathers in later centuries) have value, but the more we understand about them, the more their purpose for each of us becomes clear. That is why some people become theologians, to devote themselves entirely to reading and understanding such spiritual texts.
6. Just for comparison, another example of texts that can be "colored" by our knowledge and understanding of their history are the Mosaic texts of the OT. We know, for example, that there was a time in Hebrew history when the Israelites worshipped the same pantheon of gods that their Mesopotamian neighbors worshipped. Yahweh was just one of those, known as "the destroyer." That is why Yahweh in the Mosaic texts does so many things we consider repellent today: in his early history he was not considered to be The Creator God, or what we picture today as the One God. But in Israelite history there was a spiritual upheaval: during the time of Samuel, a priest of Yahweh, who had great influence over the child king Josiah, Samuel convinced Josiah to destroy all temples of the other gods, kill all their priests, destroy their sacred groves and all the people who refused to give up the worship of those other gods. To Samuel, Yahweh was to become the ONLY god. Thus was born Israelite monotheism, out of a genocide. During that same period the Mosaic texts were revised to reflect this new reality, sometimes rather clumsily. After that the understanding of what this one God was changed slowly over time. Later prophets clearly had quite a different idea of what God was than had been expressed hundreds of years earlier when Yahweh had demanded booty and virgins after directing his followers go to war and wipe out every man, woman and child, even as far as dashing the infants's heads against stones. The ultimate example of this evolution of the idea of God was Jesus, who by the first century was calling God "father" and talking about God's love and care rather than a god who demanded obedience or death and a slavish devotion to a set of rules such as the Pharisees and Sadducees followed. How can one's reading of the OT not be "colored" by that knowledge of the history of those texts and beliefs?
Well, all people believe doctrines of some sort, whether those are common doctrines shared by others or just their own. And major religions are defined by their major doctrines. They typically also have minor doctrines that separate various factions or denominations (e.g., Catholic vs. Protestant, Shia vs. Sunni, etc.). To say that somebody is "Christian," "Muslim," "Buddhist," etc., is to suggest that that person's beliefs conform with at least the major doctrines of those religions.
But it sounds like you reject the major doctrines that have come to define Christianity (e.g., broadly, those touched upon in the Nicene and Apostles Creeds). So, why do you consider yourself a "Christian?" Do you attend a Christian church on a regular basis? If so, which one?
I consider myself a Christian because I follow Christ, not because I belong to a particular sect, which I consider something totally different. In fact, I consider the Christian sects by and large to be hopelessly corrupt and barely, if at all, Christian. The Apostle's Creed and Nicene Creed were both written hundreds of years after Christ, when the church was already in the business of cancelling, killing and burning "heretics." Your words "came to define" are very apt. They have nothing to do with Christ and everything to do with the human tendency to define themselves into self-satisfaction and misplaced judgment of others. Do you think that is something Christ would have approved of?
I was raised by a Catholic mother and a Methodist father. As an adult I have at various times attended Episcopal and Lutheran churches, the latter for years. I have also from time to time, attended Evangelical churches with friends who worshipped there. For a time I had a friend who was a Jehovah's witness and another who was a Mormon. Without exception I have found these sects to be mired in trivia and internal spats. Members were anything but Christian to each other and especially to those outside the church. The Jehovah's witnesses came the closest to following Christ in their lives and treating others with love.
The demons know who Jesus is and fear him but so many humans have issues with him Well the hour is late and you better figure it out or you’ll spend eternity in Hell 🔥
A couple of weeks ago, I was walking with my sister along a paved path. I was agonizing over my inability to wake my friend of 50 years as to the harms of the shots. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a piece of paper on the ground.
On it was written in someone’s handwriting:
“Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’”
Isaiah 41:10
Some may say, what a coincidence! But I no longer believe in coincidences. 🥰🥰🥰
God knows what we need. When we humble ourselves, he'll make sure we get it just as it's required.
I did not choose Christianity--it chose me. However, I don't believe God, or the Universal Consciousness, cares what path we follow.
Interesting. Thanks for the comment. How did it choose you, exactly? And how do you square your belief that God doesn't care what path we follow with Jesus's statement in John 14:6?
“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’”
It chose me because I had rejected it for many years quite emphatically. I was a complete materialist. But I had some experiences that gradually and subtly wore away at me until I gradually accepted that consciousness is not just a matter of neurons and synapses. From there I slowly decided to go back to the faith of my youth, not because I thought it was the only path to God, but because it was the one familiar to me. Jesus's words in John 14 are colored for me by several intellectual strands. The writer of John was not John the apostle and was writing 50 years after Jesus's death, so who knows where that pericope came from, and furthermore, those words come from a time when it was by no means clear in Christianity that there was a "trinity." That was decided much later, when anything that challenged that notion was pruned, or "censored" as it were, by "church fathers." John himself seems to have been a bit of a gnostic, so he seems to have thought Jesus was separate from "the Father" and had a role as a sort of secondarily divine figure whose job was to introduce humans to the nature of God and the virtues He valued, as well as to emphasize that humans by themselves are broken, but are still loved. Acts makes clear that ALL humans around the world are included in this, so to me it is pretty clear that Jesus was not about "rules" and "restrictions," (those were for the Pharisees) but about getting all humans to see that (unlike the way God is portrayed in the OT) God is actually loving, accepting and self-sacrificing. Over and over in the gospels Jesus's reaction to sin, or missing the mark, is to accept the sinner and direct him or her onto a better path. The church that was founded in Jesus's name has unfortunately done exactly the opposite of that throughout most of its history.
So, which orthodox Christian doctrines do you agree with? Is Jesus the Son of God? If so, what does that mean? Was he sinless? How do people who don’t put their faith in Jesus as the sacrifice for their sins come to God, exactly? Which other books of the Bible are “colored,” and what does that mean, exactly? Completely unreliable and ignorable? Partially? If so, which parts?
1. I'm not a believer in points of "orthodoxy" or "doctrines," because from fairly early in the Christian church doctrines have been developed and used as a way to divide, demonize and even genocide other people, which I don't believe is God's will. Just as today, humans come up with fine points of belief in order to virtue signal and distinguish themselves from other people they don't feel "measure up" in some way. I think this tendency is evil because it is self-involved and self-promoting.
2. I don't think it matters whether one believes that Jesus is God, or that Jesus is not God but somehow God's son, or that he was simply a man who was somehow more in tune with God than other humans. Again these are differences that have been used to point at other people and shout heretic! right before killing them.
3. I believe Jesus was sinless in that he lived a God-directed rather than self-directed life. I think most other religions teach the same thing about the nature of good and evil, and that that is the most important thing. Other peoples have come to the gradual understanding of what God is, and what good and evil is, and I believe God recognizes that and will gather fallible but good-intentioned people to himself after our lives are over. I don't think God cares how people came to that knowledge.
4. I think Christian people come to God through recognizing that Jesus sacrificed himself for the truth, and for other humans. Jesus taught us how to live: living in tune with God means being other-focused rather than self-focused, because self-focus leads to both minor and egregious sins and crimes.
5. Everything we read and everything we do is colored by our knowledge and experience. So all books of the Bible are "colored" for every reader to the extent that we understand the history of the texts, and because we have our own prior life experience. If John's gospel were written by John the apostle and NOT written by someone who thought the Roman Empire was literally satanic, and NOT written by a Gnostic who believed in the forces of light fighting against the forces of darkness, then we would read it differently--it would be "colored differently for us. I don't think this has anything to do with being unreliable or ignorable; it is just in the nature of reading and understanding. All the biblical texts (even those disavowed and censored by church fathers in later centuries) have value, but the more we understand about them, the more their purpose for each of us becomes clear. That is why some people become theologians, to devote themselves entirely to reading and understanding such spiritual texts.
6. Just for comparison, another example of texts that can be "colored" by our knowledge and understanding of their history are the Mosaic texts of the OT. We know, for example, that there was a time in Hebrew history when the Israelites worshipped the same pantheon of gods that their Mesopotamian neighbors worshipped. Yahweh was just one of those, known as "the destroyer." That is why Yahweh in the Mosaic texts does so many things we consider repellent today: in his early history he was not considered to be The Creator God, or what we picture today as the One God. But in Israelite history there was a spiritual upheaval: during the time of Samuel, a priest of Yahweh, who had great influence over the child king Josiah, Samuel convinced Josiah to destroy all temples of the other gods, kill all their priests, destroy their sacred groves and all the people who refused to give up the worship of those other gods. To Samuel, Yahweh was to become the ONLY god. Thus was born Israelite monotheism, out of a genocide. During that same period the Mosaic texts were revised to reflect this new reality, sometimes rather clumsily. After that the understanding of what this one God was changed slowly over time. Later prophets clearly had quite a different idea of what God was than had been expressed hundreds of years earlier when Yahweh had demanded booty and virgins after directing his followers go to war and wipe out every man, woman and child, even as far as dashing the infants's heads against stones. The ultimate example of this evolution of the idea of God was Jesus, who by the first century was calling God "father" and talking about God's love and care rather than a god who demanded obedience or death and a slavish devotion to a set of rules such as the Pharisees and Sadducees followed. How can one's reading of the OT not be "colored" by that knowledge of the history of those texts and beliefs?
Well, all people believe doctrines of some sort, whether those are common doctrines shared by others or just their own. And major religions are defined by their major doctrines. They typically also have minor doctrines that separate various factions or denominations (e.g., Catholic vs. Protestant, Shia vs. Sunni, etc.). To say that somebody is "Christian," "Muslim," "Buddhist," etc., is to suggest that that person's beliefs conform with at least the major doctrines of those religions.
But it sounds like you reject the major doctrines that have come to define Christianity (e.g., broadly, those touched upon in the Nicene and Apostles Creeds). So, why do you consider yourself a "Christian?" Do you attend a Christian church on a regular basis? If so, which one?
I consider myself a Christian because I follow Christ, not because I belong to a particular sect, which I consider something totally different. In fact, I consider the Christian sects by and large to be hopelessly corrupt and barely, if at all, Christian. The Apostle's Creed and Nicene Creed were both written hundreds of years after Christ, when the church was already in the business of cancelling, killing and burning "heretics." Your words "came to define" are very apt. They have nothing to do with Christ and everything to do with the human tendency to define themselves into self-satisfaction and misplaced judgment of others. Do you think that is something Christ would have approved of?
I was raised by a Catholic mother and a Methodist father. As an adult I have at various times attended Episcopal and Lutheran churches, the latter for years. I have also from time to time, attended Evangelical churches with friends who worshipped there. For a time I had a friend who was a Jehovah's witness and another who was a Mormon. Without exception I have found these sects to be mired in trivia and internal spats. Members were anything but Christian to each other and especially to those outside the church. The Jehovah's witnesses came the closest to following Christ in their lives and treating others with love.
Thank you. Nicely said.