1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes
2. Does enlightenment exist?
No, but enlivenment does.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
Yes and subjective reality.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
If you hit your thumb with a hammer it will hurt and if you do it again it will also hurt again. Likewise, if you jump of a tall building it will likely not end well. Subjectively if you think negatively and approach every situation with fear, hate, vulnerability then you will likely get walked over but if you stand strong and positive then you will be approached differently and see the world with more opportunity, perhaps.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
No
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
To be at one with Christ.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
It is a relationship with something more than the material world
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Not at all as long as there are mentors and teachers to show you how it works.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
It helps.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
Jesus you mean? He was probably like Jordan Peterson or Eckhart Tolle or Alan Watts or..., for a while and it all got out of hand.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Not sure, something innate that I cannot explain.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Not really but trust that we are better than we are programmed to believe is.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Very little.
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
70/30
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
I go to support family members and can often be found visiting the more ancient of buildings next to a yew tree just for solace and quietude.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
It is a question of intelligence vs intellect. Example; Intellectually I don’t feel that relevant with much of the back and forth in this thread but I do feel comfortable in my intelligence to not be afraid and answer.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
Knowledge is revelation, when you get it you get it and not before.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
All that and more, if I had the time and inclination then I would delve deeper. I think it is an analogy for existence with lots of stuff encoded in it; maths, geometry, physics, astro stuff. Oh and stories just for shits and giggles.
21. Is it the word of God?
No
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Don’t Know
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
Don’t Know, but would intuit that there are many gods mixed up in it.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
Don’t care they are just people.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
No, but it’s his/her/its shout.
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
No, there are plenty of other valid passages in many other books.
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
Again, I don’t care about such a thing. I will always judge by my own standards and if someone wants to preach gospel i will listen, if I am in the mood. I might learn something, you know, a revelation.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
This is similar to question 8. Once Christ is defined in a general sense that everyone can agree upon then maybe.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
I think so, but not to be confused with the ego.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It is the feeling of life and existence within something unfathomable.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
No
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Darkness is part of the all, and a path for some who may wish to take it or have to experience it to know something more. If god is all then it is, light and dark, evil and good, love and fear, and much more between. Evil does not come from god in as much that it is god.
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
See Q34 I suppose.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
We can choose to be right with the universal god and converse with it in some way, then we see which way we go based on our relationship. We can likely not comprehend hear and now.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Both internally and externally.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
See Q36
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
See Q36
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
It Can!
That was exhausting, but ultimately worth the experience. Ask me again in 2 weeks and I’ll have a different set of answers.
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
I suspect this is a spectrum. What seems like a before/after divide to an individual might be a new beginning, not an arrival point. The apophatic way of casting off the unnecessary and divesting oneself of illusions may be a prelude to deeper reengagment in life and society.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
I adhere to the Traditionalist great chain of being, so yes. I'm an idealist. There's no matter independent from consciousness. Reality is malleable by consciousness to a limited degree; freedom within laws.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
Reason, experience and probably grace, as something approaching awareness of objective reality in its totality is usually beyond our ken, for good reason.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Increasingly, yes, especially as a totalising evil surfaces in the world. Christ has rescued me from some dark encounters. I hesitate to say yes because my default is to despise the common run of humanity so much that I sometimes question whether I view them with eyes that have more of the demonic than the loving heart of Christ. Doing no or little harm is relatively easy. The 'sins' speak so much louder than the essence or higher potential of so many. My ego is sometimes downright Luciferian too. Struggling to accept my probable fate as a small node of light. Reincarnation has always made more sense to me than a one and done situation too.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
To be United to God's will, or seek that.
To know and do the difficult good instead of the expedient evil.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
I don't believe in the possibility of being fully God and fully human. Christ was fully human and more than human, but not fully God., else he couldn't have felt forsaken. The human vehicle cannot contain the higher in its entirety but can partake of its nature, and perfectly so in Christ’s case.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Do unto others...external
Considering, when I have the strength and presence of
Mind.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Ultimately, yes, because people will make a God of something, always, but this isn't to praise the historical iterations of God based communities.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It means that God is not simply all that is or indifferent to what happens. It means God has agency and will and has qualities.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
Indirectly, in the same way a parent knows that having a child will create suffering.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Both. If God could not do so, his agency would be less than man's. God is not sub-human.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Creation is a hierarchy. The higher encompasses the lower. The lower cannot encompass the higher. God can only become as much 'God-man' as the nature of man can allow but God can do so pefectly. God without creation is incomplete. "Eternity is in love with the productions of time'
so far the closest to a half-way or liminal POV which allows for both perspectives to co-exist (faith & nihilism); I would question the idea that God has qualities, & have just been reading Maimonides on this. Qualities require finiteness. (Is infinite then a quality?)
If anthropomorphising God is a mistake, stripping God down to bare being without an essence is a bigger one, IMHO. Qualities we can speak of are analogical, but not meaningless.
I think atttibutes can be United in such a way that they don’t imply composition or contradiction. I also don’t think they imply limitation. Quality is more important than quantity. A necessity to spew out all possible potentials would be a limitation on volition. That sort of infinity would be an imperfection. Huge topic obviously.
Maimonides, again (who is almost unreadable) makes the point that only negative attributes can be given to God, ie, what He is not. The main point, which I fully agree with, is that all attributes are metaphorical descriptions of ACTS. Ie, God is not compassionate, but actions of God can be interpreted, anthropomorphically, as such. Etc. God it seems cannot be perceived or understood as being, but only doing.
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Certainly.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Seems like it.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
The word “objective,” carries a lot of weight there. Even the most hard-core idealist assumes a shared reality, and thus would advise his friends to be careful when visiting San Francisco or Chicago, and might ask who won the football game. Somewhere beyond that, things occasionally become strange.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Yes.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
Love God and Jesus with all your heart and all your mind; love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t resist evil actively. Repent of your sins. A few more things.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
All of the above.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Today, a Christian needs a Bible or a good teacher, and probably both.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Generally no, though there are probably some bad choices.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes in general.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
Feels like this is a question we are supposed to be asking, even if the answer is not relevant (assuming resurrection).
12. What is the basis for your morality?
The great wisdom in “Love your neighbor as yourself, do not resist evil actively.”
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Probably, although there appears to be an ongoing experiment to develop a substitute basis for society.
14. Do you own a Bible?
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
Yes. On average, at least four times a week in the morning. For the past two years, I have been reading a chapter of a Gospel together with a commentary. Over the long haul, my interest is evenly divided.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
Yes.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
At least some knowledge - the right knowledge - must be central to wisdom or enlightenment. I pray that God helps me find that knowledge amongst all of the crap that I’ve learned.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
It appears to be central. The philosophers who have tried to find a basis for knowledge without God all seem to have given up or at least gotten stuck.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
All of the above, plus attempts by various authors to process events that affected them greatly, and try to persuade others about the meaning of those events.
21. Is it the word of God?
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
God hasn’t told me.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Most of the Old Testament, plus some other materials, are necessary context for the New Testament.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
Wow, the possibility of a hijacking (God-jacking) had never occurred to me. Still pondering.
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
Selecting the world’s most literate tribe to be one’s special advocates on Earth seems like a shrewd choice.
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
Potentially, depending on the book and the passage.
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
It’s not inherently wrong, and is necessary on some level, as the Bible is a collection of books that were selected (with different selections for different Christian sects) based on judgments about the degree to which they were divinely inspired. On a personal level, picking and choosing passages within the books is fraught with peril.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
Historically, it is certainly enough to have heard the good news. As to the “saintly” from ancient Greece, interesting question but it’s hard to see relevance to us.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
Feels like theology that originated in Orange County in the 1980s.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Interesting questions. I’m also struggling to understand why they matter in a concrete way to me. To others have suffered a great deal more than me and arguably deserve answers, is demanding the answer the best response to your situation?
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
It seems that they overlap to the extent that original sin includes neglect or failure to take sufficient care to avoid harming others.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
Word is that we must be selected for Heaven. I suppose that even a person who chose good over evil generally may not have done so often enough, or with the right intention.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Yes, you can ask him.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
Having a clear conscience sure feels better than the alternative. Beyond that, we must have faith.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
You are missing a huge piece of the puzzle without the Holy Quran. The Bible is a mix of inspired and fabricated text this necessitated the revelation of the Holy Quran. There is a deep seated bias against Islam in the west. There is simply no reasonable counter narrative as to its origin. The Quran was revealed to one illiterate man out of order over the course of 23 years. We have copies of the Quran, (originally an oral tradition) that date from within 50 years of the Holy Prophet’s ﷺ lifetime. There are nearly one million Hadith of various quality attesting to his words and deeds. Muslims span from Malaysia to the Caucus Mountains.
The earliest copy of the Old Testament we currently have is from the 1300s! The Bible has conservatively 41 authors. It’s a mess and I honor anyone who can derive faith from it. I’ve read through the entire Bible recently with my Evangelical mother. The Quran is know as the Furqan or criterion, through my knowledge of the Quran I could make much more sense from the Bible. God wants us to find the truth which is simple. In the words of Jesus (as) “to love your lord God with all your heart and love thy neighbor as thy self”. Putting these words into action are at the core of mystery of our existence…
(hey Jasun and all-- late to the game here, but here goes)
1. Does God exist? sure.
1a. Is “God” a useful word? as useful/useless as any other word, i suppose.
2. Does enlightenment exist? sure.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality? sure.
4. If so, how can we know it? through honest & sincere relationship.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian? no.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
not really sure, but i'll take a stab at it: you try your best to be like Jesus?
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else? all of those sound about right to me
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
probably absolutely essential.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
probably absolutely essential.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
can't say. certainly seems that if it isn't, it should be.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
big question....i'd have to say more "like us" than not, else he'd not have affected us so deeply.
12. What is the basis for your morality? a generally-present feeling of love in my heart.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations? no.
14. Do you own a Bible? no.
15. If so, how often on average do you read it? i grew up within christianity so lots of it is permanently inside my head.
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments? i both value and disregard things in both of these.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
i am not a church-goer but i do go sometimes (and suffer through it) whenever imploringly invited by family or friends.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
wisdom is attainable through learning from mistakes, that is, if you want it. Seems to me the other two just kinda happen or they don't.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge? for some kinds of knowledge (unless trial-and-error counts as "revelation"), not at all essential. for other kinds of knowledge, absolutely essential.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
hmmm....interesting question. all of the above? gun to my head, i'd say "something else" for sure. let's say that if i wanted to capture and control the minds of lost/confused humanity, i'd try to come up with something very much like the bible. my feeling is that in the end, god does not want mindless follower-type people clogging up heaven who out of cowardice/fear "stick strictly to the manual". which means that if god is responsible for writing the bible, then he put all kinds of sneaky stuff in there to screw you up.
21. Is it the word of God? some of it, sure. how else would i get you to believe that i am god and get you to abandon your own independent mind to follow and serve me?
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%? of those three, i'd say 50% is probably the closest.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity? where christianity is mind-control, absolutely essential. where christianity is liberation, not so much.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)? no idea.
25. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
never understood that one. chosen for what? being "chosen" doesn't necessarily mean "favored".
26. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
seems silly doesn't it?
27. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity? no.
28. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
it is okay to burn the damned thing and live your life learning things by your own wits and experience.
29. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
sure, if "being christian" means "to live by compassion/love". an old rabbi once looked me in the eye and told me that i was a jew. brightly, he said "ah! i see that you are a jew!" i told him i wasn't jewish, nor was i even religious. he said "do you live by loving & honoring yourself and your fellow man?" i said "i think so, yes, most of the time anyway". he waved, playfully dismissing me. "okay then, you are a jew!"
30. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
personal experience tells me "yes".
31. What does “personal God” mean to you?
hmmm.....nothing too heavy i guess. god as "rock-star level best friend"? albeit one that only shows up once in a great while 'cuz they're always out on tour. you wish you had more time with them but just to have them stop by at all means everything.
32. Did God create Satan and evil? yes, but only as "effects" after the fact, if we are to accept that creation was a deliberate act "thought out and planned in advance" which is something i have a hard time with. seems to me more likely that what we call "creation" or "cosmos" is the result of some kind of divine bowel movement that needed to happen due to unknown energetic properties of consciousness/being that have always existed in a wild kind of kaleidoscopic, chaos/order state of permanent change. once multiple independent conscious beings appeared on the scene, satan soon followed. jesus took a bit longer 'cuz you know, satan turns up and puts banana peels down everywhere. which is how jesus learnt to walk on water-- from all that banana peel practice.
33. If so, why? no reason-- goes with the existential territory of consciousness where free choice is always available otherwise there could not be consciousness.
34. If not, where did they come from?
again, from the energetic realm of free will/power of choice inherent in consciousness. all conscious beings exist on a "spirit spectrum" of energy flow/resistance where ones' only real choice is to "surrender/flow/dance with" or "fight/subdue/control" the energetic tide of chaos/order. whatever path a spirit chooses most of the time determines their location on that spectrum. the best "flow-ers" become "christ-like" beings and the best "fighters" become "satanic" beings.
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
i do not really understand the concept "original sin", can't speak to that-- but "free will" is only the mind-space where the choice to "flow or fight" occurs and is not itself the "cause of evil". within the mind of the chooser lies the "cause of evil" which is, as i see it, usually a mind/body/spirit in pain, ie, in states of frustration/anger/fear/confusion/helplessness/loneliness, etc. here one may find comfort/freedom from pain within their power to cause suffering to others.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
if "good" means being "in the rivers' flow" and "evil" means being "stuck and frozen, clinging to a rock" this sounds about right, yes.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
not like a puppet master pulls strings, if that's what you mean. by "the world" i'm not sure if you mean "the world of humans and their affairs" or you mean strictly planet earth weather and earthquakes and volcanoes and such. i will say that my understanding of "god as active benevolent guiding force" only acts on the world through those human beings who've created an inner bodily space where divinely inspired thoughts/feelings can be heard/felt and acted upon.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad? 39. If not, why not?
no. again, "good/bad" to me means, "flowing vs. fighting" the energetic currents within the river of conscious being. the very obvious consequences of choosing to flow with or fight this river (a power that is clearly much stronger than any given beings' ability to commandeer/control it), should preclude any need for punishment/reward as means to guide human behavior.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
seems to me that's the whole point.
alright, that's where my head is at these days. down the road it may be somewhere else?
Yes, God is the Most High "Being". He is a person and personal. Everything else you have learned about God is just a concept you have chosen to believe without any proof.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It means He cares about and loves you, personally. You can nurture a relationship with Him, like any other relationship, or not.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
God created some beings "in His image", which means beings that have the capacity to choose with their God given freewill, just like God has the freedom to choose. With this capacity, God knew there was the possiblity for created beings to rebel against Him and His Laws because they are not perfect and omni-everything like He is. This is why God created the plan of Salvation before He began Creation. He knew things might go bad, but He decided it was worth the risk for Him to have a loving family. He could have created a perfect world where nothing rebelled against Him or His Laws, but then everything would simply be robotic, dead, and not made in His image with the capacity for loving relationships. Robots do not have the ability to love, to choose between good and evil, to be alive. They can only follow their programming without choice. God wants a family that chooses to love each other and Him in His eternal Kingdom. In order for somone to love they have to have freewill to make that loving choice. There is always the possibility they will choose evil and rebel against God. Even for the enlightened. The enlightened think. They reason. They make choices for which they will be held accountable to God. Satan made his choice, as we all have the capacity to do. It's all about our choices. Do we choose good, or evil. Satan, or Jesus. Life, or death.
God is the origin of life. To rebel against, or disobey God, is to choose death, as Satan has. So Satan will have eternal separation from God, who is life. That is the possible choice that comes with freewill and being made in God's image. The Bible is the guide to help us make the right logical choice to be a member of God's eternal family. It is our birthright, our inheritance.
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Explained above.
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
No, freewill gives the "possibility/freedom" to rebel, choose evil, or disobey God, which was the original sin when Eve was seduced, lied to, by Satan to disobey God's command to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
Yes, that is what we are doing here in this sifting wheat from chaff process called life on earth as a human. Choosing whether we go to Heaven and be in God's family, or Hell to be forever separate from God/Life. It is always our choice. God doesn't force anyone to Hell, or Heaven. We choose our eternal destination. That's why Hell is Justice. Bear in mind it is God who has the final decision in this matter.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
All of the above according to His Will and the situation.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
It depends on each situation. If what is considered "bad behavior" is truly evil, or a rebellion against God, it will be punished, otherwise God would not be a Just God. If someone murders your loved ones, should they not be punished? It might not be in this lifetime, but it is certain after death. What is considered good behavior might not be rewarded in this life, or even after death. It might not even actually be good behavior. Only God knows the intentions of the heart. Salvation is a gift of Grace. We cannot earn it by works/good behavior. Although the Bible does speak of rewards in Heaven.
Salvation through belief in Jesus is what saves us from the punishment of our bad behavior. Salvation is its own reward. In fact, it is the pearl of great price, which is a parable in the Bible. It is priceless. Nothing compares in value. Jesus paid for all of our bad behavior on the Cross. Good behavior does not grant us Salvation as Salvation is a gift of Grace. It is unearned. Salvation is not something we can earn through good behavior, but only by believing in Jesus. There is nothing we can do, no works, or behavior, can make us holy enough to be in God's Perfect Holy presence, where we belong. So it is only a gift of God's Grace that will make us so. Without Jesus we stand zero chance of belonging in that Holy perfection. Even the most enlightened fall far short of the Perfect Holiness of God. We all NEED Jesus' Salvation. That's just the objective reality of our situation that is beyond enlightenment.
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
Explained above.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Yes, He did and His name is Jesus. That was His plan of Salvation before Creation began. Creating us in His image meant He knew He might need an escape plan if what He Created went bad. He crafted the plan with Jesus to pay for our sins, our wrong choices. They must be paid for, punished, or there would be no justice.
Bear in mind not only God can be a man, or a woman.
Hebrews 13:1-2 "1Let brotherly love continue. 2Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
So be good for goodness sakes, bro.
A great and thought provoking list of intelligent questions, bro.
Do not plenty of idiots, rogues and scoundrels believe in jesus but act like slobs, idiots, rogues or scoundrels? Is their belief also enough to save them?
what about circumcision? is that also a metaphor? or just a really bad idea prescribed by the Bible?
I should have expected some challenging questions, shouldn't I?
"Do not plenty of idiots, rogues and scoundrels believe in jesus but act like slobs, idiots, rogues or scoundrels? Is their belief also enough to save them?"
Only God knows their hearts and their intentions, but I would say idiots, rogues and scoundrels that say they believe in Jesus but act like slobs don't really believe in Jesus. Their behavior clearly displays they have no fear of the Lord, or sense of humility/shame, or gratitude for what Jesus has done for them. Paul ran into this kind of thing.
Romans 6:1-23 "1What then shall we say? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2Certainly not! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer? 3Or aren’t you aware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.
5For if we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. 6We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. 7For anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. 10The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. 11So you too must count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. 13Do not present the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and present the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
The Wages of Sin
15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not! 16Do you not know that when you offer yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin leading to death, or to obedience leading to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were committed. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to escalating wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
20For when you were slaves to sin, you were free of obligation to righteousness. 21What fruit did you reap at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The outcome of those things is death. 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap leads to holiness, and the outcome is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
"What about circumcision? is that also a metaphor? or just a really bad idea prescribed by the Bible?"
Circumcision was also practiced by other cultures at that time. Egypt being one. A lot of the Muslim nations still practice it today, even on their women. So it wasn't prescribed by the Bible but was a cultural practice. For the Jews circumcision was a reminder, to the men and the women with them, of the supernatural Grace of God who started their nation with Abraham. It was a sign that granted admission to the community that had exclusive revelation from the true living God and it served as a reminder of their supernatural covenant with Yahweh and their need to have circumcised hearts - to believe. Really, not much different from the piercing of a tattoo, or other things pagans do with their bodies. Women could become members of the community of the true God by marriage to one of the circumcised men. If you weren't circumcised you were not allowed access to the revelations of the true living God of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph. This maintained the purity of the membership of the community. No foreskinned flakes allowed. Membership in the community was important because only that community had the Truth and the oracles of God. Only Israel had the truth in the nature of the true God amongst all Gods of the nations. Only those in the community could be rightly related to Him. Only Israel knew the Way of Salvation from Yahweh. Circumcision merely meant access to these truths. It didn't save them. It only granted them access to the community that had the Way of Salvation at that point in time. It was also done in other cultures for whatever their reasons were, so not out of the norm at all in that part of the world.
Thousands of years later it seems incredulous to our culture. That's one of the reasons why context is king. I'm sure there are many things about many cultures of that time we would consider quite strange now days.
"Really, not much different from the piercing of a tattoo, or other things pagans do with their bodies. "
You just jumped the OR (objective reality) shark there Bruce.
Circumcision, esp Metzitzah B’peh, the still-current Jewish ritual of sucking the baby's penis after slicing the foreskin off (allegedly responsible for the spread of infant STDs), is as objectively abusive as sodomy is rectally traumatic.
No need to copy & paste whole swathes of the Bible in the comments; a citation will suffice.
I was unaware of that. Never heard of it before in my life. I don't stand for the "misguided" Jews who hate Jesus and Christianity. The Bible is full of them. Their opposition to Jesus is quite common. Jesus spoke of those Jews as having Satan as their father.
I copy and paste passages of the Bible so you can see for yourself that I am not making it up.
Revelation 3:9 "Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you."
The point you seem to be dodging is that there are passages in the Tanakh that are indefensible by all current (Christian) standards. David Clines (a Christian from Sheffield) did a good job of demonstrating how the Bible is anything but free of the ideology of its time and how it is foolish to take it as "the word of God" when if many of the sentiments expressed would be obviously unacceptable if presented within any other context. (Unfortunately, Clines went "woke" before he died: his eye for ideology didn't protect him from contamination.)
Your views are well expressed and there is some nuance, but by and large they adhere to fairly conventional Christian views which, as you admit, are often a matter of faith and not logic. At Children of Job the aim is to go deeper. Faith, like Job's, must be tested. & where it is found to rest on mere belief in doctrine and dogma, it will not withstand the whirlwind.
I'm not dodging anything, bro. I would agree with Clines, other than he didn't seem to be able to resolve his dilemma with the Bible being as he thought it should be. It is a 2000 year old middle eastern cultural context that is not relevant to our western culture today, 2000 years later. Things like circumcision are no longer relevant to our culture. The Word of God is relevant, but not the cultural influences in the Bible which were being practiced at the time of its writing. God didn't wipe the writers' minds clean of all human cultural context and ideology to get His messages to mankind across through them. The writers weren't writing to people 2000 years in the future. They were writing to the people of their time and their culture to save their souls. It is not a channeled book where only the spirit of God comes through perfectly cleansed of all human influence only to satisfy a people 2000 years after its writing. It is a collection of books written by humans, over a 1500 year period, who were guided by God through their cultures and experiences to be an instrument of His Word.
Is it logical to expect your cat to be a dog? No. Then why expect the Bible to be a text book of scientific, or enlightenment truth? It is God's Word as it is. Not as we think it should be.
It is illogical to "expect" it to be written to perfectly satisfy a 2000 year in the future worldview of what someone thinks "should be" God's Word. I suspect Clines had these imaginary expectations. That would be like Job expecting God to be as Job thinks God should be, would it not? Didn't God kind of completely humble him? That was the point of the story. Job couldn't logically comprehend the vastness of all that was spiritually going on with his limited, logical, intellectual, three dimensional, human mind. One must have faith. Not because God is cruel and doesn't want humans to understand, but because we cannot logically comprehend what is really going on in the bigger spiritual picture, or Reality. That's way above our pay grade until we dwell in our resurrected bodies. Then we will see as Jesus sees. Until then it is through a glass darkly. Faith is a must, as the Bible teaches.
1 Corinthians 13:12 Amplified Bible (AMP) "For now [in this time of imperfection] we see in a mirror dimly [a blurred reflection, a riddle, an enigma], but then [when the time of perfection comes we will see reality] face to face. Now I know in part [just in fragments], but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known [by God]."
"Your views are well expressed and there is some nuance, but by and large they adhere to fairly conventional Christian views which, as you admit, are often a matter of faith and not logic. At Children of Job the aim is to go deeper. Faith, like Job's, must be tested. & where it is found to rest on mere belief in doctrine and dogma, it will not withstand the whirlwind."
Thank you. Yours are intelligently challenging, which is a good thing. I'm not a Biblical scholar, just a believer.
The virgin birth is not logical. Paul's road to Damascus experience of Jesus is not logical. Yet, the entire story understood in it's completeness is perfectly logical for the story of Mankind and all of our personal stories within it. It perfectly describes how society has become what it has.
Heiser suggests reading the Bible like an epic work of fiction, rather than like a science text book because the mind is then in the right mode to get the messages and connect the dots, as one naturally does in a good work of fiction because it is the author's intention for that to happen.. Throughout history truth has been given through good story telling. That's what the Bible is, an epic story and should be read that way. It just happens to be historically true.
IMHO, believing in Jesus goes vastly deeper than the skeptical mind's ability to excrete what it believes is BS from the Bible. Good exegeting of the Bible leads to believing in Jesus. It's good to be critical, but good critical thinking leads to believing what is beyond the critical mind. Believing and having faith are not exclusive to critical thinking.
John Lennox. the professor of Mathematics at Oxford University.
Yes, in the sense that God inspired the writers to use their intellect, reason, and experience to write it. It is NOT a channeled work where some spirit takes control of the writer, like Crowley's Book of the Law, or the Book of Urantia, or a Course in Miracles, or the Quran, etc. It was written by people consciously using their intellect and reason, whose entire lives were providentially guided by God to make it so.
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
100% written by people providentially guided by God who molded their intellects and memories to be perfect for writing down God's Word. Exposing them to whatever they needed to be exposed to, other religious/spiritual writings, etc., to be an instrument for God's Word and set the entire record straight.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Absolutely essential. The Old Testament is the foundation, the back story, the context, for everything that happens in the New Testament. How essential is the first 3/4 of any meaningful epic? The last 1/4 means nothing, has no context, without the foundational first 3/4.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
Yes. Yahweh, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the three members of the Triune Godhead of the Bible, all one and the same God - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
Yahweh, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the Triune Godhead of Christianity. The Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. All one and the same uncreated eternal God. Although all analogies fall short in spiritual speak, one analogy I saw on Bill Mahr's Religulous show that stumped him was ice, water and steam. Three different states of one and the same thing. Just an inadequate analogy, as the members of the Trinity are not different "states", they are different beings, yet all the same being. It's paradoxical, but helps paint the picture.
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
Yes they were and are. Abraham was chosen by God to start a new nation, the Jews, that would bring about His incarnation in the flesh for the plan of Salvation. He made covanents with the Jews and keeps His promises. That's why the Jews are the most blessed and the most cursed people on earth. Blessed when they obey and cursed when they rebel, according to the covenants they made with Yahweh. God decided to create his own nation because humans kept worshiping false gods that were misleading them into sin and rebellion against God. So, God inspired Abraham and Sarah, two people who were too old to have children, to have a child and start the nation of Israel. All would know it could only be a miracle of God for them to have a child. The same goes for the virgin Mary.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
Yes, but Jews are not considered descendants of Abraham by God if they reject Jesus, their Messiah. Only those who believe in Jesus are, Jew or gentile. There are passages in the Bible where jews are considered "not my people" because of their sinful disobedience. Jews might be chosen and God's elect, but if they do not obey God they will be cast out. Gentiles that obey are grafted in to God's chosen family.
If you notice throughout the Bible there is some knowledge of DNA strains without even knowing what DNA is. There is an importance of being "unblemished" and a taboo of forbidden mixtures. The Messiah had to be born in the lineage of David. The most notable is in Genesis 6 when the sons of God had intercourse with human women and created the nephilim - half human half divine beings. Most races on earth have their mythological versions of this. The Mahabharata was one I used to study. Same deal, the gods had sex with human women and they bore divine warriors, kings and rulers. Great men of renown. The Greeks and Romans also display this in their myths, as well as many other nations and races. DNA and blood lines seems to have some kind of importance, as you well know. All other nations thought the false gods' influence on them was awesome and beneficial, but the Jews thought entirely differently about it because of their revelations from the True Most High God. To them it would only lead to corruption of everything on earth. As it has. You are aware of this.
John 8:42-44 (ESV) "Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
Jews are not God's chosen if they reject Jesus/Yahweh/Holy Spirit. Only those who accept Jesus are God's chosen, Jew or gentile.
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
Yes. It is in the canon - that by which everything else is measered by, including the enlightened.
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
No it is not okay. If it wasn't important and true, it would not be in the Bible. It is important to understand that there are many types of textual genres in the Bible, poetic, metaphorical, allegorical, literal, figurative, etc. For example, when it is stated that they will nurse on the breasts of kings, that is not literal. Not to be taken as literally true. This is just common sense.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
Yes, God has written His Law on the heart of every person. If a person obeys that Law, whether they know it or not, they are following the Christian Way and being a Christian - a follower of Christ. If what they do conflicts with the Bible they are not obeying that Law written on their hearts and not being a Christian.
If a guy hasn't been exposed to the Bible, but decides not to cheat on his wife, he is following God's Law written on his heart. He is "being" a Christian.
Romans 2:14-15 "14 Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. 15 They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right."
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
FUNDAMENTALLY different. This is what He was trying to get across to the jewish rabbis when He told them in John 10:34-36 "Jesus replied, Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’? 35If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36then what about the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? How then can you accuse Me of blasphemy for stating that I am the Son of God?"
By this He was saying that they all knew, due to their own scriptures, that there were beings among them that were more than just human. Jesus was saying He was not only one of those "more than human" beings, but that He is the Most High Being . He is God, the Lord of all beings. He is infinitely more than them. After this they tore their garments because they knew He was saying He was God, not a mere human like them. How often do you see a human walk on water, or raise the dead?
Jesus willingly surrendered His true state of omni-everything to become as limited as a human is. To have the human experience. So, although He was and is always the Most High God, He was also a completely limited human being as everyone else is. It's a paradox.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Excellent question. The Bible's teachings. In fact this is the basis for all morality because God wrote His Laws on everyone's heart. The Bible is the revelation of those Laws. Atheists, or the enlightened, who claim there is no absolute morality, but just blind meaningless existence, contradict themselves when they get all bent out of shape about things being unfair, or not right, or unequal, as the woke community does. How could they judge it as being right, or wrong, if they don't have the morals they got from the Bible, or God's Law written on their hearts to know the difference between right from wrong in the first place? Their worldview is completely incoherent, therefore distorted.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Yes, without a belief in being held to a higher source of accountability, immorality and lawlessness are guaranteed. Even with a belief in God it is hard not to be seduced to do evil in the influence of a group because people are born into a fallen state of existence. The spirit and the flesh are at war and we must choose what side we will follow and obey. There are also all of the spiritual influences trying to seduce us into sin and immorality. The Bible is a record of all the ways God's chosen people failed miserably to follow God's Laws to live in a harmonious community/family. This is why we all need Jesus' Salvation.
Yes, two. One I purchased with large font and my deceased mother's.
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Rarely. I plan to read it from cover to cover eventually. I have read most of it. I do have a constant daily input of Christian material from scholars, testimonies from believers, or other Christian based material through the internet. Michael Heiser has been my main guiding scholar as he brings the supernatural enchantment and mystery back into the Bible because it has been stripped out for centuries. It just seems correct to me and he provides lots of logical reasons/evidence as to why it is correct, with his reincorporation of the Divine Council and the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
1:1. They are equal. You can't get a rose without a seed. Without the seed there is no rose. The rose is not more important than the seed. The seed is not more important than the rose. They are equal in importance.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
I don't, but I would if I could find one that provides good content. After studying scholars like Michael Heiser most of the stuff preached in churches is like going to Sunday school, fairly shallow and meaningless with poor understanding and often cluelessly ignorant. Church has been pretty disappointing for me so far. But it could also be just me.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
It is essential. Without knowledge you could not be aware of, or recognize, wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation. You could experience these things, but you wouldn't know what you were experiencing. A fish doesn't know what water is. It has no knowledge of it, thus no recognition of it, although it lives in it for its entire life. If it had the knowledge of what water is it could possibly recognize it everywhere, or have a revelation that he is and always has been living in water.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
It's essential. Without revelation you can not "know" what knowledge is relating to. This is why we all follow our belief systems, for the most part. Some have revelations and therefore "know" what knowledge is relating to. That is actually the proper use of the word gnosis.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
It is not a science text book. It is a spiritual guide book, or manual. A collection of books inspired by God who providentially worked throughout the lives of the writers so they would be capable in their task to use their intellect, reason and experience to write God's Word. So, it is a manual, a moral code, in some passages a revelation and possibly a doorway to the Holy Spirit as well.
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes, God exists and God is a useful word that represents the most sacred, holy, and powerful essence of all. The absolute truth. Perfection. That which is the essence of all meaning, purpose and life. THE TRUTH is a being and His name is Jesus.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Yes and enlightenment is a useful word for those who have seen it, otherwise it is fairly useless because there is no way to relate to it, other than imaginary concepts of what it might be like. If one hasn't had the experience of water, one cannot know or understand what someone means when they speak of water. The word water doesn't mean anything relatable to them. The same goes for God and enlightenment. All they can do is imagine what it might be. All they can know and speak about is imaginary concepts about it.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
Yes, "reality" is objective, but most people are lost in their subjective imaginings about themselves and their reality, so can't be objective, or see reality. Apparently, after death, reality becomes objectively clear. I've never been dead so I don't know for certain. I have seen enlightenment so I can see that the enlightened can make mistakes, be wrong, make wrong choices, sin, etc.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
It is our everyday experience when we are not lost in our imagination reflecting on our conceptual identities and are simply being aware of what actually is. This includes being aware of imaginings, but not believing the stories they tell as being reality, or true. Recognizing they are imaginings and not sensory perceptions of objective reality as it is in the moment. I did not spend enough time in this experience, only about 3 to 6 months, to become objectively aware of what is in the spiritual realms of existence. Only this earthly realm, which was pretty awesome while it lasted.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Yes.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
It means you believe that Jesus is who He said He is, a member of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God who sacrificed Himself for your Salvation from sin and Hell. You follow and obey Jesus out of gratitude for His sacrificial payment for your rebellion and sins against God, which you have to pay for or there would be no Justice. You have a healthy fear of God because the choice to disobey Him lands you in Hell. It's the only thing that can keep us on the straight and narrow. Plus, it's simply the true reality He is trying to warn us about. This is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is wise to choose to not go to Hell forever. I know this is a story that I have "chosen" to believe. One I have "faith" in. It is where my hope/treasure is, not of this earth where moth and rust destroy.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
It is a matter of loyally believing in Jesus and obeying His commands. If you sincerely believe in Jesus, everything else eventually conforms, falls into line, with that belief. The same goes for a person who believes in enlightenment, Buddha, Satan, atheism, etc. Our worldviews are all beliefs in concepts we have learned. The rest of your life follows your beliefs. The concept of Jesus being the Son of God just happens to be the absolute truth and reality, according to the Bible. What concepts you believe in is your freewill choice.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Apparently it is very important. I prefer studying/researching those who have put in decades of study and learning from their efforts and discoveries. Michael Heiser is my favorite Christian scholar and it is clear he saved me years and years of misunderstanding and time. It would be fair to say I never would have understood Christianity if I just read the Bible on my own. Yes, I would have got the moral messaging, etc., and possibly guidance from the Holy Spirit, but Heiser made it clear to me that if I didn't understand the worldview at the time the Bible was written I couldn't understand what it was really about. It would be like reading a physics text book without the context of understanding math. A math teacher would help understanding physics immeasurably. Studying Michael Heiser helped me with logical evidences of why to believe in Christianity. Now, when I read the Bible it makes perfect sense, but I had to learn a lot on the shoulders of giants for that to be so. We have no worldview context for a book that was written thousands of years ago. Without that context it seems fairly illogical. In context it makes perfect logical sense. It is perfect logic, but we can't see it because we are thousands of years removed from the context. Through the filter of our secular, occult, scientific, modern worldview we can't see the perfection and beauty of the Bible. Which is exactly what our secular, occult, scientific, modern worldview has been manipulated to do - to blind us to the truth of our eternal Salvation through Jesus. There are forces, beings, powers and principalities in high places behind this manipulation, as the Bible has explained, the false gods of the other nations. The story of the Bible explains how the Jews were freed from their enslavement by the one true living God.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Apparently it's good for support. The Bible highly encourages it, but I don't consider it essential at this point in time. I could be dead wrong about this. I haven't found a good church yet. Usually for me, it's like going to Sunday school, but it could be me with the problem. I've become somewhat of an introvert as I grow older.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
I would say yes, but completely unnecessary. Since enlightenment is the objective seeing of selflessness it is right in line with all Christian values taught in the Bible. You can be enlightened and not Christian, which is worthless. You cannot be Christian if you do not believe in, follow and obey, Jesus, which is the only thing that has true value that carries into the afterlife. A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ and as Jesus said in John 14:15 "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." Most of the enlightened do not do as Jesus commanded. Most enlightened rebel against what Jesus commands, or they don't believe in Jesus at all. Thus, they NEED Salvation, as everyone else does. IMO, DeRuiter is enlightened, but he is not Saved. He is not a Christian because he disobeys Jesus. He has become inflated, in the Jungian sense - overwhelmed by the contents of the collective unconscious (autonomous spiritual forces), thus developed a distorted view of himself, a messiah complex. If he obeyed Jesus he would not be in the position he is now. He certainly would not have let anyone worship him or think that "he" is the doorway to truth. A common inflation of the enlightened, possibly the influence of the same spiritual forces. Spiritual groups always seem to follow the same paradigm of guru as savior and devotees that need him to be saved. I think it's a spiritual paradigm. Jesus said the only one worthy of worship is Yahweh.
This is an interesting new direction that runs strangely parallel to a lot of thoughts I have had lately. Question: you mentioned a particular book on Job you read, though I can't remember the author. What is it, and what other reading recommendations do you have?
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
No. And yes. This is a trick question. The word ‘God’ is a useful distraction. Of course, my ability to perceive let alone understand the existence of god is minimal at best. So, it might be more accurate to say that the existence/non-existence of god doesn’t really matter as it has little practical value in reducing suffering. And, in fact, is likely one of the greatest contributors to the mess we are in.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Define ‘enlightenment! Lately I have been somatically understanding ‘enlightenment’ as the experience of some kind of mostly ineffable awareness that has made being alive lighter — meaning brighter and less heavy. That awareness tends to be associated with releasing the ideologies and unconscious stuff that has impeded my ability to see what really is in my experience. And here, I use experience to include non-physical ‘events’ that create or diminish my ability to see with more clarity.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
No.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
N/A
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
No, although I am aware that Christianity has been infused into me osmotically because of the culture I was born into, the books that I read, the media I have been exposed to, etc.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
I have no idea. From Jimmy Swaggart to Jordan Peterson; from the Pope to Luther. From Naomi Wolff to Tammy Faye Baker. WTF??? Perhaps, reading a bit between the lines, and noticing that very likely JC had been contaminated by a Buddhist approach, that he means to be true to one’s own inner heart/spirit/energy and to follow no one.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
Likely, from my limited understanding of some of what JC says, I would suggest that anyone who identifies in the ways you have delineated has automatically distanced themselves from being a ‘true’ Christian.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
The truth that can be read is not the true truth. I don’t think that reading the Bible is a requirement.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Likely not belonging to a church would be a great help.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
Human.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
William Blake
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Interesting question. No. It is likely more important that the ego step down from pretending it’s god is way more important. I suggest that the perception that the presence of god creates more effective communities is not because of God, but that the ‘proper’ belief in God keeps the ego in check.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes and no. Since becoming a covid refugee I have enlightened my self of 99.9% of my books. I think that the Bible was one I ambivalent about keeping. Now I don’t remember if it is stored or not.
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Infrequently. I recently revisited it on-line to look at the book of Job. And occasionally something I read will prompt me to revisit it to better understand what someone has been conveying.
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
Indifferent.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
I do not. I would not consider *attending* attend. Visit only for special occasions. I recently begun attending, now twice a week, two Cha’n Koan Meditation ‘churches’. One on-line, one in person.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
Theoretically, for me, technically attaining knowledge is likely not required. At least that is what I have been told and have read. However, having been born into a community deeply poisoned by knowledge as God and a religious belief in it, attaining the knowledge required to remove our knowledge requirement seems to be the condition our knowledge requirements are in.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
What do you mean by ‘revelation’? To me this is very ‘christian’ word. Without looking it up, I will take it to mean having been shown, in some way by god or other, a truth that was not obtained by the study of knowledge or past teachers. In a way, this is an invalid question unless you mean the knowledge that knowledge is not the means to best experience being alive.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
Something else, a combination of all of these things. Recently I’ve come to think of it as a preliminary guide book to keep people obedient to an overarching power structure that sees themselves as, if not god, then the next best thing, having dominion over the rest of the undeserving.
21. Is it the word of God?
Hmmmm. No.God doesn’t really exist, or at least not in this way.
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
N/a
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
I don’t know. I think important, because my limited understanding of Christ was an effort to transform a corrupt society, largely built on Old Testament ideologies. And so, in a way, the Old Testament is the structure on which Christ built his ideas. (I confess that my depth of knowledge here is weak, and comes from snippet reading across a diversity of sources.)
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
No. And Yes: see Q21.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
N/a
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
I think that his is a fake question, and part of the obedience to authority psyop I refer to in Q20.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
RoTFL. Sorry, that just seemed too funny to me. Oddly(?) enough, the Moslems have taken that idea from the bible, and now apply it to themselves and have encoded as religious requirement the killing of the Jews. See the interesting discussion “ The Truth About Islam | Mikhaila Peterson & Apostate Prophet” https://youtu.be/EoSKE9QzRw8?si=13mBOfQg6OAITnww
00:49:50 Prophecy Against Jews
00:55:40 Christianity and Islam
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
No
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
Yes, because everyone does it to justify anything they want. Oops. I have just invalidated that? LoL!
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
Yes.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
No. The questions assumes an objective world, one in which this thing called Guy is separate in some way from the expression of life. I am not separate and so a personal god makes no sense. Perhaps I am expressing god would be a more accurate way of describing the situation, assuming the viability of the ‘god’ idea.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It has no meaning to me.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
No.
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Satan and evil are a particular manifestation of energy, human energy. Perhaps the manifestation of fear. It may be more interesting to ask where fear came from how it was made. Or why?
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
Yes.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
No. Heaven and hell do not exist outside of my personal (each of our) personal experiences.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Both because we are god embodied.
38. Does God reward good behaviour and punish bad?
No.
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
Reward and punishment is a misunderstanding of how the energy of manifestation works.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
I'd love to think your one word answer to # 4 is a post-mod joke, but I fear not.
So if there is no OR, why muscle test (or what is being muscle-tested)?
In my subjective view, Objective Reality is a tautology, and subjective reality an oxymoron.
Ergo the need to acknowledge the existence of God (or "God," if you prefer).
This is what (my version of) the Book of Job is all about: Job's problem is that he has a subjective "personal" idea of God (taken from scripture), and so has a rude encounter with OR, the Real God (courtesy of the Satan).
Reap it and weep. I suspect you are the perfect stand-in for Job, Guy. Prepare to meet thy whirlwind!
(And why did you think that I might truly/fully deny object reality?! Sheesh. I have had the 'objective' experience of chronic pain in various guises for much of my life. Still today, as I steadily continue to diminish it. Something we have shared, if not in the specifics, then at least in the 'object' reality of pain as an experience of 'objective' reality. Or is pain objective?!) And by some measure, you are correct about being a 'perfect stand-in for Job.' And then, by that standard, all of us are.
And this came to mind as well after I posted the reply. I thought I might have included it before you read it.
The trouble with most poetry is that
it is either subjective or objective.
Basho. *News of the Universe: Poems of Two-Fold Consciousness*, ed. Robert Bly. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980, p. 209.
And by your response I am to infer that I am okay to move my response into my own essay thread? It might bring a few more interested people to you effort here.
And I recently wrote out to someone who seemed to be 'new agey' the story of the disciple who was thrown by a rampaging elephant because his guru told him that everything was god and so he didn't need to fear the elephant.
The guru said, 'And I needed to tell you to listen to the mahoot to get out of the way, too?!'
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
God must exist if God is the fundament of reality.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Yes. I believe Dave Oshana has it. But maybe there are lesser degrees that have sufficiently "broke thru"
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
I believe reality, and that we get the subjective half, but its still reality isnt it? (Hm)
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
I believe we can escape "subjected" reality by eschewing falseness, which is as close as we can wish for.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
No, but one must pick a lane.. i can only see myself trying to align myself more with the teachings of Jesus, even if I never moniker myself as one.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
Having Jesus as your teacher, and believing in the cosmic force of his advocacy. Most importantly, that one is tethered.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
I think the term is best used to describe a community. But to follow Jesus is to take personal action.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Not the most.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Not at all, but it could be very helpful
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
I think he was a man, who was enlightened, and became avatar of cosmic love.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
My father, patience, charity, fear of god/hatred of lies
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
I think we take for granted that the concept of God is still present, if only lingering, in the world. And we would sorely want it back if it were entirely eroded, much more than we do now.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Listened to a reading of 2 of the gospels maybe a couple months ago, haven't picked up my bible in maybe 2 years
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
80% new
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
No, did until high school. I would consider It. Maybe a non-liberalized protestant or orthodox.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
I think we have to learn in order to unlearn, so yes. It would be much less important if we lived in our natural harmony
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
Thats the best view of it, that God reveals himself, and that one must stay watching and attuned to receive.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
Mamy truthful things are kept alive by it, maybe by divine providence. But Jesus' words are the most preserved pieces of revelation. Jesus' life was a painting that if you only kept one piece you could extrapolate the whole
21. Is it the word of God?
The Jesus parts, sure haha. The rest I suppose got to us like everything else did, so by God. Of course things have been nefariously obscured.
I realize going down this list I still have a very God-is-Universe mentality which feels like a copout. I like your term God of Reality more
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
Literally? 0?
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
I thinks Jews had the right idea with the 1-God thing, at least. I can't confidently say.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
If God is the Law, then it can be cruel. They can be compatible but not every iteration that appears in the old testament.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
God can have many faces, but the God the Jews recount telling them to commit genocides-I dont buy it.
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
No, no
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
No
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
No
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
By studying its history, which I haven't done, you can have a healthy skepticism. But more importantly, if it rings true in one's heart.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Without knowing it?
One could be Christlike without knowing Christ. The more distracting the world becomes, the bible becomes more necessary.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
I guess necessarily If we are persons, and the search for God requires inner seeking.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
God as being felt as a real, guiding force in one's life, the feeling of dwelling within God's love.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
I think God necessarily must encompass everything.
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
--
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
Free will couldnt be if there weren't an adversary to rebuke
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
Thats a good question and my easy answer is yes, but most would feel that didn't have that choice until too late. Someone who's ruined their mind and body with drugs, would they have any hope? They didn't make an informed decision to let in evil, did they?
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
If God is the word and law of all reality, it must encompass inner and outer life without differentiation. I have a hard time thinking of God having a personality, or "intervening" in his own system.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
Karma is a good rule of thumb and generally holds true
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
I think most commonly we harden our hearts when we do things we know are bad, and we dig ourselves deeper.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Again I have a hard time with the idea God has a personality, or a personal will. I think a man or woman can walk on the path and so be an embodiment of God.
Ive attended one tai chi course, and no others. Mostly because of not keeping the 72hr sobriety rule. Rest of my exposure to him is thru you and his emails
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes
2. Does enlightenment exist?
As defined as 'illumination by the Holy Spirit', yes
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
In God, yes. For the human mind alone, no: the mind is invariably darkened and distorted by sin and the consequences of the Fall. The mind must be illumined by the Holy Spirit for this 'objective' reality to be perceived and processed properly. True knowledge is inextricable from repentance.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
We know reality through repentance, which is humiliation of the mind and spirit, and partaking in the holy sacraments. Through repentance it is possible to heal the nous and obtain the Holy Spirit.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Yes
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
To imitate Christ and obey His commandments, the chief of which is love of the neighbor
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
It means that person has surrendered their life to Christ. This is a spiritual act, yet it can be known in a person through the fruits of the spirit - patience, love, long-suffering, otherworldly joy, etc
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Essential in a liturgical context. It can be unhelpful as a rationalistic, individualistic endeavor. One must have a mind of prayer to approach holy scripture.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
We see the establishment of the Church in the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and the Book of Acts: belonging to that particular corporate body (organism, the Body of Christ) is essential. The Body of Christ is a discrete physical being one either is or isn't part of.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Christianity is the fulfillment of enlightenment, though this fulfillment is fundamentally different from the concept as defined by the far east.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
False dichotomy. Christ has two natures: He was fully human and fully God. He was both like us -- in every identifiable way -- and unlike us, in being co-eternal with the Father. We possesses within ourselves the divine image and through repentance may come to participate in the Godhead.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Christ and His commandments.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
It is deeply assumed by the act of language and sense-making.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Every day
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
Equal
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
Yes
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
Depends on the person. Great minds often need to be tamed through knowledge - humiliated in a labyrinth - before they can come to repentance. But once they obtain repentance, they are in the same lot as the illiterate farmer.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
Practical knowledge does not require revelation. Revelation is true knowledge exactly, as in, the knowledge by which to live and understand oneself.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
It depends on the book. As a whole, given by the Church, it is to be taken as a liturgical resource: the Bible helps us pray and know God. Some of these books are histories, some of them prophecies, yet they are all coherent together, in light of the living body of the Church, serving the end of a liturgical life.
21. Is it the word of God?
Yes, in the sense that everything was written and compiled by God-filled men
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
Every book was written by God-illumined men. There's no percentage. That comes from a mistaken view of the manner in which the Bible is "holy" and the word of God.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Absolutely essential. It is one covenant. Israel/The Temple is the Church.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
Yes
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
Christ explicitly speaks of Himself as that God, and the fulfillment of the scriptures
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
As a nation they were "grafted" out of the covenant, per Saint Paul. The Church *is* the same chosen body as the Israelites. Any Jew may be grafted back into this covenant, yet it requires becoming a Christian.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
Yes
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Men can obtain theosis (deification) through prayer, repentance, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That is, in fact, the whole end of the Christian life: to restore the divine image in the soul and rejoin oneself to God. Just as Christ was fully human and fully God, we may be fully ourselves, in eternity, yet fully united to God.
I mean these are all very well rehearsed, pitch-perfect 'Orthodox' Church answers with this one exception; 'Christ is in two persons'. Don't you mean two natures, one person?
that one stood out for me also, since it seemed internally contradictory (like much within Christian dogma, tho not in the Gospel) - if Christ was both human and God, where we are only human, then Christ was not like us; in this case you can't have it both ways
Christ is indeed like us in the most essential way. We are both fallen individual humans and yet possessors of the divine image -- we have been given 'the Pearl of Great Price'. If we inherit heaven, we will, like Christ, possess both our human nature and the divine life. We are not annihilated in God's abyss. We resurrect in our bodies, which are, like Christ's body, made holy. You can indeed 'have it both ways'. We are not 'only human'. The very promise of the Holy Spirit is that we, by right of this divine likeness, may also live in Christ, becoming Him while also remaining ourselves.
The logic of the Incarnation has a special significance for us, with regards to salvation. Cyril of Alexandria: “We are made partakers of the divine nature and are said to be sons of God. . . not only because we are exalted by grace to supernatural glory, but also because we have God dwelling in us.”
The theology developed out of close reading of scripture, made necessary by distorted readings of scripture.
Where Christ promises the Comforter, He promises the Holy Spirit, who is the ultimate arbiter in these matters. We also see tradition being handed down to the apostles in the Gospels; then, in Acts, we see the Holy Spirit descend on the entire Body, promised to that Body. These parts are not to be ignored, while the Sermon on the Mount is painted in gold -- everything Christ taught in the Gospels is related to the life of the Church (His mystical Body, to which we can join ourselves) and the promise of the Holy Spirit. The later language of the Church Fathers was given to the Church, by the Holy Spirit, to guide the faithful to correct understanding when a variety of heresies were cropping up, causing much confusion and debate. It is not so much a language given to convert others as a language to defend the Church against attackers, who love philosophy above all. If I could do without the later Greek philosophical terms, and just stick to my Gospel, I would, but these bits of dogma, so expressed, are necessary for cutting the Gordian knots of bad theology.
Orthodox Christology denies any human person to Christ.
He was not 'a man'; he was 'man'. The second person of the Trinity 'assumed' universal human nature in the platonic sense. The same human nature that we all share. This is how we partake in 'God' - according to them.
He was truly 'a man', as in one particular human being, born to a particular woman, and at the same time, God. There is 'One person', with 'two natures'. The human nature involves this particularity.
If we unite ourselves to God, we remain ourselves, as well. Within the theology of God's personhood is something indicative of our own human salvation.
thanks for clarification; i take it from this that Christ started out a man like us but ended up as something else? this is implied by Rudolf Steiner's shockingly original version of the incarnation, which is that Jesus was born an ordinary man but at the Jordan baptism, when the dove descended, became fused with (a) God. Not saying I believe it, but at some point there seems necessary a fusion of theological faith with factual history (metaphysics)...
so far there certainly is a wide spectrum of perspectives, almost as wide as possible to imagine.
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes
2. Does enlightenment exist?
No, but enlivenment does.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
Yes and subjective reality.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
If you hit your thumb with a hammer it will hurt and if you do it again it will also hurt again. Likewise, if you jump of a tall building it will likely not end well. Subjectively if you think negatively and approach every situation with fear, hate, vulnerability then you will likely get walked over but if you stand strong and positive then you will be approached differently and see the world with more opportunity, perhaps.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
No
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
To be at one with Christ.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
It is a relationship with something more than the material world
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Not at all as long as there are mentors and teachers to show you how it works.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
It helps.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
Jesus you mean? He was probably like Jordan Peterson or Eckhart Tolle or Alan Watts or..., for a while and it all got out of hand.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Not sure, something innate that I cannot explain.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Not really but trust that we are better than we are programmed to believe is.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Very little.
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
70/30
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
I go to support family members and can often be found visiting the more ancient of buildings next to a yew tree just for solace and quietude.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
It is a question of intelligence vs intellect. Example; Intellectually I don’t feel that relevant with much of the back and forth in this thread but I do feel comfortable in my intelligence to not be afraid and answer.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
Knowledge is revelation, when you get it you get it and not before.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
All that and more, if I had the time and inclination then I would delve deeper. I think it is an analogy for existence with lots of stuff encoded in it; maths, geometry, physics, astro stuff. Oh and stories just for shits and giggles.
21. Is it the word of God?
No
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Don’t Know
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
Don’t Know, but would intuit that there are many gods mixed up in it.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
Don’t care they are just people.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
No, but it’s his/her/its shout.
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
No, there are plenty of other valid passages in many other books.
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
Again, I don’t care about such a thing. I will always judge by my own standards and if someone wants to preach gospel i will listen, if I am in the mood. I might learn something, you know, a revelation.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
This is similar to question 8. Once Christ is defined in a general sense that everyone can agree upon then maybe.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
I think so, but not to be confused with the ego.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It is the feeling of life and existence within something unfathomable.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
No
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Darkness is part of the all, and a path for some who may wish to take it or have to experience it to know something more. If god is all then it is, light and dark, evil and good, love and fear, and much more between. Evil does not come from god in as much that it is god.
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
See Q34 I suppose.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
We can choose to be right with the universal god and converse with it in some way, then we see which way we go based on our relationship. We can likely not comprehend hear and now.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Both internally and externally.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
See Q36
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
See Q36
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
It Can!
That was exhausting, but ultimately worth the experience. Ask me again in 2 weeks and I’ll have a different set of answers.
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
I suspect this is a spectrum. What seems like a before/after divide to an individual might be a new beginning, not an arrival point. The apophatic way of casting off the unnecessary and divesting oneself of illusions may be a prelude to deeper reengagment in life and society.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
I adhere to the Traditionalist great chain of being, so yes. I'm an idealist. There's no matter independent from consciousness. Reality is malleable by consciousness to a limited degree; freedom within laws.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
Reason, experience and probably grace, as something approaching awareness of objective reality in its totality is usually beyond our ken, for good reason.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Increasingly, yes, especially as a totalising evil surfaces in the world. Christ has rescued me from some dark encounters. I hesitate to say yes because my default is to despise the common run of humanity so much that I sometimes question whether I view them with eyes that have more of the demonic than the loving heart of Christ. Doing no or little harm is relatively easy. The 'sins' speak so much louder than the essence or higher potential of so many. My ego is sometimes downright Luciferian too. Struggling to accept my probable fate as a small node of light. Reincarnation has always made more sense to me than a one and done situation too.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
To be United to God's will, or seek that.
To know and do the difficult good instead of the expedient evil.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
I don't believe in the possibility of being fully God and fully human. Christ was fully human and more than human, but not fully God., else he couldn't have felt forsaken. The human vehicle cannot contain the higher in its entirety but can partake of its nature, and perfectly so in Christ’s case.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Do unto others...external
Considering, when I have the strength and presence of
Mind.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Ultimately, yes, because people will make a God of something, always, but this isn't to praise the historical iterations of God based communities.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It means that God is not simply all that is or indifferent to what happens. It means God has agency and will and has qualities.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
Indirectly, in the same way a parent knows that having a child will create suffering.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Both. If God could not do so, his agency would be less than man's. God is not sub-human.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Creation is a hierarchy. The higher encompasses the lower. The lower cannot encompass the higher. God can only become as much 'God-man' as the nature of man can allow but God can do so pefectly. God without creation is incomplete. "Eternity is in love with the productions of time'
so far the closest to a half-way or liminal POV which allows for both perspectives to co-exist (faith & nihilism); I would question the idea that God has qualities, & have just been reading Maimonides on this. Qualities require finiteness. (Is infinite then a quality?)
If anthropomorphising God is a mistake, stripping God down to bare being without an essence is a bigger one, IMHO. Qualities we can speak of are analogical, but not meaningless.
I think atttibutes can be United in such a way that they don’t imply composition or contradiction. I also don’t think they imply limitation. Quality is more important than quantity. A necessity to spew out all possible potentials would be a limitation on volition. That sort of infinity would be an imperfection. Huge topic obviously.
Maimonides, again (who is almost unreadable) makes the point that only negative attributes can be given to God, ie, what He is not. The main point, which I fully agree with, is that all attributes are metaphorical descriptions of ACTS. Ie, God is not compassionate, but actions of God can be interpreted, anthropomorphically, as such. Etc. God it seems cannot be perceived or understood as being, but only doing.
entry panel box order - hughbradley@gmail.com - Gmail
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
God as love-intelligence exists as all there is
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Enlightenment exists as a knowing of what is true.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
There is reality but not as an object/s or as something.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
We can know it in silence.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
No
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
A devotee of Christ Jesus
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
It is a group affiliation with shared beliefs and goals.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Non essential as Jesus didn’t refer much to the bible.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Some people take strength from it.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes …we can see Jesus as an enlightened human.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
He was fundamentally different in his unequivocal grip on reality
12. What is the basis for your morality?
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
No
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Never
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
I have no interest
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
21. Is it the word of God?
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament?
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
I believe that the words of the Bible as passed down are an unreliable guide.
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
No.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
The idea of favourites is incompatible with Gods omnipresence.
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
No
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
People pick and choose according to where their attention goes.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
Yes
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
God and personal are oxymora. The personal denies God.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
Personal god implies my special persons gog.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
I don’t know about Satan. As Evil exists it is part of creation.
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Evil is a label that we put of events that have an apparent bad effect on us or others. It implies malcontent which is un verifiable.
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
Doctrine of original sin …I would disagree with
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
We have no choice in anything.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
God is that in which all happens - all spontaneously
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
Good and bad behaviour ..like evil are all judged only from an individuaLs perspective. God doesn’t have a perspective or ‘point’ of view.
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
Reward can come as grace where ones limited perspective can disappear and truth is known.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Gender relates only to bodies.
this is a "genius" (and/or holy fool) reply:
"8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Non essential as Jesus didn’t refer much to the bible."
James, thanks for sharing. It's good to know that I'm not alone in the struggle with all of this.
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Certainly.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Seems like it.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
The word “objective,” carries a lot of weight there. Even the most hard-core idealist assumes a shared reality, and thus would advise his friends to be careful when visiting San Francisco or Chicago, and might ask who won the football game. Somewhere beyond that, things occasionally become strange.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Yes.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
Love God and Jesus with all your heart and all your mind; love your neighbor as yourself. Don’t resist evil actively. Repent of your sins. A few more things.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
All of the above.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Today, a Christian needs a Bible or a good teacher, and probably both.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Generally no, though there are probably some bad choices.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes in general.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
Feels like this is a question we are supposed to be asking, even if the answer is not relevant (assuming resurrection).
12. What is the basis for your morality?
The great wisdom in “Love your neighbor as yourself, do not resist evil actively.”
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Probably, although there appears to be an ongoing experiment to develop a substitute basis for society.
14. Do you own a Bible?
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
Yes. On average, at least four times a week in the morning. For the past two years, I have been reading a chapter of a Gospel together with a commentary. Over the long haul, my interest is evenly divided.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
Yes.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
At least some knowledge - the right knowledge - must be central to wisdom or enlightenment. I pray that God helps me find that knowledge amongst all of the crap that I’ve learned.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
It appears to be central. The philosophers who have tried to find a basis for knowledge without God all seem to have given up or at least gotten stuck.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
All of the above, plus attempts by various authors to process events that affected them greatly, and try to persuade others about the meaning of those events.
21. Is it the word of God?
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
God hasn’t told me.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Most of the Old Testament, plus some other materials, are necessary context for the New Testament.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
Wow, the possibility of a hijacking (God-jacking) had never occurred to me. Still pondering.
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
Selecting the world’s most literate tribe to be one’s special advocates on Earth seems like a shrewd choice.
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
Potentially, depending on the book and the passage.
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
It’s not inherently wrong, and is necessary on some level, as the Bible is a collection of books that were selected (with different selections for different Christian sects) based on judgments about the degree to which they were divinely inspired. On a personal level, picking and choosing passages within the books is fraught with peril.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
Historically, it is certainly enough to have heard the good news. As to the “saintly” from ancient Greece, interesting question but it’s hard to see relevance to us.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
Feels like theology that originated in Orange County in the 1980s.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Interesting questions. I’m also struggling to understand why they matter in a concrete way to me. To others have suffered a great deal more than me and arguably deserve answers, is demanding the answer the best response to your situation?
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
It seems that they overlap to the extent that original sin includes neglect or failure to take sufficient care to avoid harming others.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
Word is that we must be selected for Heaven. I suppose that even a person who chose good over evil generally may not have done so often enough, or with the right intention.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Yes, you can ask him.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
Having a clear conscience sure feels better than the alternative. Beyond that, we must have faith.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Potentially.
Refreshingly (and reassuringly) sober responses from a self-Id-ed Christian. Suggest there's hope for the bridge I am building.
"is demanding the answer the best response to your situation?"
Ask Job.
You are missing a huge piece of the puzzle without the Holy Quran. The Bible is a mix of inspired and fabricated text this necessitated the revelation of the Holy Quran. There is a deep seated bias against Islam in the west. There is simply no reasonable counter narrative as to its origin. The Quran was revealed to one illiterate man out of order over the course of 23 years. We have copies of the Quran, (originally an oral tradition) that date from within 50 years of the Holy Prophet’s ﷺ lifetime. There are nearly one million Hadith of various quality attesting to his words and deeds. Muslims span from Malaysia to the Caucus Mountains.
The earliest copy of the Old Testament we currently have is from the 1300s! The Bible has conservatively 41 authors. It’s a mess and I honor anyone who can derive faith from it. I’ve read through the entire Bible recently with my Evangelical mother. The Quran is know as the Furqan or criterion, through my knowledge of the Quran I could make much more sense from the Bible. God wants us to find the truth which is simple. In the words of Jesus (as) “to love your lord God with all your heart and love thy neighbor as thy self”. Putting these words into action are at the core of mystery of our existence…
(hey Jasun and all-- late to the game here, but here goes)
1. Does God exist? sure.
1a. Is “God” a useful word? as useful/useless as any other word, i suppose.
2. Does enlightenment exist? sure.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality? sure.
4. If so, how can we know it? through honest & sincere relationship.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian? no.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
not really sure, but i'll take a stab at it: you try your best to be like Jesus?
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else? all of those sound about right to me
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
probably absolutely essential.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
probably absolutely essential.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
can't say. certainly seems that if it isn't, it should be.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
big question....i'd have to say more "like us" than not, else he'd not have affected us so deeply.
12. What is the basis for your morality? a generally-present feeling of love in my heart.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations? no.
14. Do you own a Bible? no.
15. If so, how often on average do you read it? i grew up within christianity so lots of it is permanently inside my head.
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments? i both value and disregard things in both of these.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
i am not a church-goer but i do go sometimes (and suffer through it) whenever imploringly invited by family or friends.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
wisdom is attainable through learning from mistakes, that is, if you want it. Seems to me the other two just kinda happen or they don't.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge? for some kinds of knowledge (unless trial-and-error counts as "revelation"), not at all essential. for other kinds of knowledge, absolutely essential.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
hmmm....interesting question. all of the above? gun to my head, i'd say "something else" for sure. let's say that if i wanted to capture and control the minds of lost/confused humanity, i'd try to come up with something very much like the bible. my feeling is that in the end, god does not want mindless follower-type people clogging up heaven who out of cowardice/fear "stick strictly to the manual". which means that if god is responsible for writing the bible, then he put all kinds of sneaky stuff in there to screw you up.
21. Is it the word of God? some of it, sure. how else would i get you to believe that i am god and get you to abandon your own independent mind to follow and serve me?
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%? of those three, i'd say 50% is probably the closest.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity? where christianity is mind-control, absolutely essential. where christianity is liberation, not so much.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)? no idea.
25. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
never understood that one. chosen for what? being "chosen" doesn't necessarily mean "favored".
26. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
seems silly doesn't it?
27. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity? no.
28. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
it is okay to burn the damned thing and live your life learning things by your own wits and experience.
29. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
sure, if "being christian" means "to live by compassion/love". an old rabbi once looked me in the eye and told me that i was a jew. brightly, he said "ah! i see that you are a jew!" i told him i wasn't jewish, nor was i even religious. he said "do you live by loving & honoring yourself and your fellow man?" i said "i think so, yes, most of the time anyway". he waved, playfully dismissing me. "okay then, you are a jew!"
30. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
personal experience tells me "yes".
31. What does “personal God” mean to you?
hmmm.....nothing too heavy i guess. god as "rock-star level best friend"? albeit one that only shows up once in a great while 'cuz they're always out on tour. you wish you had more time with them but just to have them stop by at all means everything.
32. Did God create Satan and evil? yes, but only as "effects" after the fact, if we are to accept that creation was a deliberate act "thought out and planned in advance" which is something i have a hard time with. seems to me more likely that what we call "creation" or "cosmos" is the result of some kind of divine bowel movement that needed to happen due to unknown energetic properties of consciousness/being that have always existed in a wild kind of kaleidoscopic, chaos/order state of permanent change. once multiple independent conscious beings appeared on the scene, satan soon followed. jesus took a bit longer 'cuz you know, satan turns up and puts banana peels down everywhere. which is how jesus learnt to walk on water-- from all that banana peel practice.
33. If so, why? no reason-- goes with the existential territory of consciousness where free choice is always available otherwise there could not be consciousness.
34. If not, where did they come from?
again, from the energetic realm of free will/power of choice inherent in consciousness. all conscious beings exist on a "spirit spectrum" of energy flow/resistance where ones' only real choice is to "surrender/flow/dance with" or "fight/subdue/control" the energetic tide of chaos/order. whatever path a spirit chooses most of the time determines their location on that spectrum. the best "flow-ers" become "christ-like" beings and the best "fighters" become "satanic" beings.
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
i do not really understand the concept "original sin", can't speak to that-- but "free will" is only the mind-space where the choice to "flow or fight" occurs and is not itself the "cause of evil". within the mind of the chooser lies the "cause of evil" which is, as i see it, usually a mind/body/spirit in pain, ie, in states of frustration/anger/fear/confusion/helplessness/loneliness, etc. here one may find comfort/freedom from pain within their power to cause suffering to others.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
if "good" means being "in the rivers' flow" and "evil" means being "stuck and frozen, clinging to a rock" this sounds about right, yes.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
not like a puppet master pulls strings, if that's what you mean. by "the world" i'm not sure if you mean "the world of humans and their affairs" or you mean strictly planet earth weather and earthquakes and volcanoes and such. i will say that my understanding of "god as active benevolent guiding force" only acts on the world through those human beings who've created an inner bodily space where divinely inspired thoughts/feelings can be heard/felt and acted upon.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad? 39. If not, why not?
no. again, "good/bad" to me means, "flowing vs. fighting" the energetic currents within the river of conscious being. the very obvious consequences of choosing to flow with or fight this river (a power that is clearly much stronger than any given beings' ability to commandeer/control it), should preclude any need for punishment/reward as means to guide human behavior.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
seems to me that's the whole point.
alright, that's where my head is at these days. down the road it may be somewhere else?
Thanks Jasun. Been busy lately, but will check it out.
Here's an image of the cross references in the Bible with a short explanation of the graph.
https://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/visualizations/BibleViz
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
Yes, God is the Most High "Being". He is a person and personal. Everything else you have learned about God is just a concept you have chosen to believe without any proof.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It means He cares about and loves you, personally. You can nurture a relationship with Him, like any other relationship, or not.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
God created some beings "in His image", which means beings that have the capacity to choose with their God given freewill, just like God has the freedom to choose. With this capacity, God knew there was the possiblity for created beings to rebel against Him and His Laws because they are not perfect and omni-everything like He is. This is why God created the plan of Salvation before He began Creation. He knew things might go bad, but He decided it was worth the risk for Him to have a loving family. He could have created a perfect world where nothing rebelled against Him or His Laws, but then everything would simply be robotic, dead, and not made in His image with the capacity for loving relationships. Robots do not have the ability to love, to choose between good and evil, to be alive. They can only follow their programming without choice. God wants a family that chooses to love each other and Him in His eternal Kingdom. In order for somone to love they have to have freewill to make that loving choice. There is always the possibility they will choose evil and rebel against God. Even for the enlightened. The enlightened think. They reason. They make choices for which they will be held accountable to God. Satan made his choice, as we all have the capacity to do. It's all about our choices. Do we choose good, or evil. Satan, or Jesus. Life, or death.
God is the origin of life. To rebel against, or disobey God, is to choose death, as Satan has. So Satan will have eternal separation from God, who is life. That is the possible choice that comes with freewill and being made in God's image. The Bible is the guide to help us make the right logical choice to be a member of God's eternal family. It is our birthright, our inheritance.
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Explained above.
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
No, freewill gives the "possibility/freedom" to rebel, choose evil, or disobey God, which was the original sin when Eve was seduced, lied to, by Satan to disobey God's command to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
Yes, that is what we are doing here in this sifting wheat from chaff process called life on earth as a human. Choosing whether we go to Heaven and be in God's family, or Hell to be forever separate from God/Life. It is always our choice. God doesn't force anyone to Hell, or Heaven. We choose our eternal destination. That's why Hell is Justice. Bear in mind it is God who has the final decision in this matter.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
All of the above according to His Will and the situation.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
It depends on each situation. If what is considered "bad behavior" is truly evil, or a rebellion against God, it will be punished, otherwise God would not be a Just God. If someone murders your loved ones, should they not be punished? It might not be in this lifetime, but it is certain after death. What is considered good behavior might not be rewarded in this life, or even after death. It might not even actually be good behavior. Only God knows the intentions of the heart. Salvation is a gift of Grace. We cannot earn it by works/good behavior. Although the Bible does speak of rewards in Heaven.
Salvation through belief in Jesus is what saves us from the punishment of our bad behavior. Salvation is its own reward. In fact, it is the pearl of great price, which is a parable in the Bible. It is priceless. Nothing compares in value. Jesus paid for all of our bad behavior on the Cross. Good behavior does not grant us Salvation as Salvation is a gift of Grace. It is unearned. Salvation is not something we can earn through good behavior, but only by believing in Jesus. There is nothing we can do, no works, or behavior, can make us holy enough to be in God's Perfect Holy presence, where we belong. So it is only a gift of God's Grace that will make us so. Without Jesus we stand zero chance of belonging in that Holy perfection. Even the most enlightened fall far short of the Perfect Holiness of God. We all NEED Jesus' Salvation. That's just the objective reality of our situation that is beyond enlightenment.
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
Explained above.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Yes, He did and His name is Jesus. That was His plan of Salvation before Creation began. Creating us in His image meant He knew He might need an escape plan if what He Created went bad. He crafted the plan with Jesus to pay for our sins, our wrong choices. They must be paid for, punished, or there would be no justice.
Bear in mind not only God can be a man, or a woman.
Hebrews 13:1-2 "1Let brotherly love continue. 2Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
So be good for goodness sakes, bro.
A great and thought provoking list of intelligent questions, bro.
Best,
zenfish
2 more questions, since you did so well:
Do not plenty of idiots, rogues and scoundrels believe in jesus but act like slobs, idiots, rogues or scoundrels? Is their belief also enough to save them?
what about circumcision? is that also a metaphor? or just a really bad idea prescribed by the Bible?
I should have expected some challenging questions, shouldn't I?
"Do not plenty of idiots, rogues and scoundrels believe in jesus but act like slobs, idiots, rogues or scoundrels? Is their belief also enough to save them?"
Only God knows their hearts and their intentions, but I would say idiots, rogues and scoundrels that say they believe in Jesus but act like slobs don't really believe in Jesus. Their behavior clearly displays they have no fear of the Lord, or sense of humility/shame, or gratitude for what Jesus has done for them. Paul ran into this kind of thing.
Romans 6:1-23 "1What then shall we say? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2Certainly not! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer? 3Or aren’t you aware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.
5For if we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. 6We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. 7For anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. 10The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. 11So you too must count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. 13Do not present the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and present the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
The Wages of Sin
15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not! 16Do you not know that when you offer yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin leading to death, or to obedience leading to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were committed. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to escalating wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
20For when you were slaves to sin, you were free of obligation to righteousness. 21What fruit did you reap at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The outcome of those things is death. 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap leads to holiness, and the outcome is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
"What about circumcision? is that also a metaphor? or just a really bad idea prescribed by the Bible?"
Circumcision was also practiced by other cultures at that time. Egypt being one. A lot of the Muslim nations still practice it today, even on their women. So it wasn't prescribed by the Bible but was a cultural practice. For the Jews circumcision was a reminder, to the men and the women with them, of the supernatural Grace of God who started their nation with Abraham. It was a sign that granted admission to the community that had exclusive revelation from the true living God and it served as a reminder of their supernatural covenant with Yahweh and their need to have circumcised hearts - to believe. Really, not much different from the piercing of a tattoo, or other things pagans do with their bodies. Women could become members of the community of the true God by marriage to one of the circumcised men. If you weren't circumcised you were not allowed access to the revelations of the true living God of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph. This maintained the purity of the membership of the community. No foreskinned flakes allowed. Membership in the community was important because only that community had the Truth and the oracles of God. Only Israel had the truth in the nature of the true God amongst all Gods of the nations. Only those in the community could be rightly related to Him. Only Israel knew the Way of Salvation from Yahweh. Circumcision merely meant access to these truths. It didn't save them. It only granted them access to the community that had the Way of Salvation at that point in time. It was also done in other cultures for whatever their reasons were, so not out of the norm at all in that part of the world.
Thousands of years later it seems incredulous to our culture. That's one of the reasons why context is king. I'm sure there are many things about many cultures of that time we would consider quite strange now days.
"Really, not much different from the piercing of a tattoo, or other things pagans do with their bodies. "
You just jumped the OR (objective reality) shark there Bruce.
Circumcision, esp Metzitzah B’peh, the still-current Jewish ritual of sucking the baby's penis after slicing the foreskin off (allegedly responsible for the spread of infant STDs), is as objectively abusive as sodomy is rectally traumatic.
No need to copy & paste whole swathes of the Bible in the comments; a citation will suffice.
I was unaware of that. Never heard of it before in my life. I don't stand for the "misguided" Jews who hate Jesus and Christianity. The Bible is full of them. Their opposition to Jesus is quite common. Jesus spoke of those Jews as having Satan as their father.
I copy and paste passages of the Bible so you can see for yourself that I am not making it up.
Revelation 3:9 "Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you."
The point you seem to be dodging is that there are passages in the Tanakh that are indefensible by all current (Christian) standards. David Clines (a Christian from Sheffield) did a good job of demonstrating how the Bible is anything but free of the ideology of its time and how it is foolish to take it as "the word of God" when if many of the sentiments expressed would be obviously unacceptable if presented within any other context. (Unfortunately, Clines went "woke" before he died: his eye for ideology didn't protect him from contamination.)
Your views are well expressed and there is some nuance, but by and large they adhere to fairly conventional Christian views which, as you admit, are often a matter of faith and not logic. At Children of Job the aim is to go deeper. Faith, like Job's, must be tested. & where it is found to rest on mere belief in doctrine and dogma, it will not withstand the whirlwind.
I'm not dodging anything, bro. I would agree with Clines, other than he didn't seem to be able to resolve his dilemma with the Bible being as he thought it should be. It is a 2000 year old middle eastern cultural context that is not relevant to our western culture today, 2000 years later. Things like circumcision are no longer relevant to our culture. The Word of God is relevant, but not the cultural influences in the Bible which were being practiced at the time of its writing. God didn't wipe the writers' minds clean of all human cultural context and ideology to get His messages to mankind across through them. The writers weren't writing to people 2000 years in the future. They were writing to the people of their time and their culture to save their souls. It is not a channeled book where only the spirit of God comes through perfectly cleansed of all human influence only to satisfy a people 2000 years after its writing. It is a collection of books written by humans, over a 1500 year period, who were guided by God through their cultures and experiences to be an instrument of His Word.
Is it logical to expect your cat to be a dog? No. Then why expect the Bible to be a text book of scientific, or enlightenment truth? It is God's Word as it is. Not as we think it should be.
It is illogical to "expect" it to be written to perfectly satisfy a 2000 year in the future worldview of what someone thinks "should be" God's Word. I suspect Clines had these imaginary expectations. That would be like Job expecting God to be as Job thinks God should be, would it not? Didn't God kind of completely humble him? That was the point of the story. Job couldn't logically comprehend the vastness of all that was spiritually going on with his limited, logical, intellectual, three dimensional, human mind. One must have faith. Not because God is cruel and doesn't want humans to understand, but because we cannot logically comprehend what is really going on in the bigger spiritual picture, or Reality. That's way above our pay grade until we dwell in our resurrected bodies. Then we will see as Jesus sees. Until then it is through a glass darkly. Faith is a must, as the Bible teaches.
1 Corinthians 13:12 Amplified Bible (AMP) "For now [in this time of imperfection] we see in a mirror dimly [a blurred reflection, a riddle, an enigma], but then [when the time of perfection comes we will see reality] face to face. Now I know in part [just in fragments], but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known [by God]."
"Your views are well expressed and there is some nuance, but by and large they adhere to fairly conventional Christian views which, as you admit, are often a matter of faith and not logic. At Children of Job the aim is to go deeper. Faith, like Job's, must be tested. & where it is found to rest on mere belief in doctrine and dogma, it will not withstand the whirlwind."
Thank you. Yours are intelligently challenging, which is a good thing. I'm not a Biblical scholar, just a believer.
The virgin birth is not logical. Paul's road to Damascus experience of Jesus is not logical. Yet, the entire story understood in it's completeness is perfectly logical for the story of Mankind and all of our personal stories within it. It perfectly describes how society has become what it has.
Heiser suggests reading the Bible like an epic work of fiction, rather than like a science text book because the mind is then in the right mode to get the messages and connect the dots, as one naturally does in a good work of fiction because it is the author's intention for that to happen.. Throughout history truth has been given through good story telling. That's what the Bible is, an epic story and should be read that way. It just happens to be historically true.
IMHO, believing in Jesus goes vastly deeper than the skeptical mind's ability to excrete what it believes is BS from the Bible. Good exegeting of the Bible leads to believing in Jesus. It's good to be critical, but good critical thinking leads to believing what is beyond the critical mind. Believing and having faith are not exclusive to critical thinking.
John Lennox. the professor of Mathematics at Oxford University.
The Logic of Christianity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5OPCtf-EhI
21. Is it the word of God?
Yes, in the sense that God inspired the writers to use their intellect, reason, and experience to write it. It is NOT a channeled work where some spirit takes control of the writer, like Crowley's Book of the Law, or the Book of Urantia, or a Course in Miracles, or the Quran, etc. It was written by people consciously using their intellect and reason, whose entire lives were providentially guided by God to make it so.
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
100% written by people providentially guided by God who molded their intellects and memories to be perfect for writing down God's Word. Exposing them to whatever they needed to be exposed to, other religious/spiritual writings, etc., to be an instrument for God's Word and set the entire record straight.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Absolutely essential. The Old Testament is the foundation, the back story, the context, for everything that happens in the New Testament. How essential is the first 3/4 of any meaningful epic? The last 1/4 means nothing, has no context, without the foundational first 3/4.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
Yes. Yahweh, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the three members of the Triune Godhead of the Bible, all one and the same God - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
Yahweh, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the Triune Godhead of Christianity. The Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. All one and the same uncreated eternal God. Although all analogies fall short in spiritual speak, one analogy I saw on Bill Mahr's Religulous show that stumped him was ice, water and steam. Three different states of one and the same thing. Just an inadequate analogy, as the members of the Trinity are not different "states", they are different beings, yet all the same being. It's paradoxical, but helps paint the picture.
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
Yes they were and are. Abraham was chosen by God to start a new nation, the Jews, that would bring about His incarnation in the flesh for the plan of Salvation. He made covanents with the Jews and keeps His promises. That's why the Jews are the most blessed and the most cursed people on earth. Blessed when they obey and cursed when they rebel, according to the covenants they made with Yahweh. God decided to create his own nation because humans kept worshiping false gods that were misleading them into sin and rebellion against God. So, God inspired Abraham and Sarah, two people who were too old to have children, to have a child and start the nation of Israel. All would know it could only be a miracle of God for them to have a child. The same goes for the virgin Mary.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
Yes, but Jews are not considered descendants of Abraham by God if they reject Jesus, their Messiah. Only those who believe in Jesus are, Jew or gentile. There are passages in the Bible where jews are considered "not my people" because of their sinful disobedience. Jews might be chosen and God's elect, but if they do not obey God they will be cast out. Gentiles that obey are grafted in to God's chosen family.
If you notice throughout the Bible there is some knowledge of DNA strains without even knowing what DNA is. There is an importance of being "unblemished" and a taboo of forbidden mixtures. The Messiah had to be born in the lineage of David. The most notable is in Genesis 6 when the sons of God had intercourse with human women and created the nephilim - half human half divine beings. Most races on earth have their mythological versions of this. The Mahabharata was one I used to study. Same deal, the gods had sex with human women and they bore divine warriors, kings and rulers. Great men of renown. The Greeks and Romans also display this in their myths, as well as many other nations and races. DNA and blood lines seems to have some kind of importance, as you well know. All other nations thought the false gods' influence on them was awesome and beneficial, but the Jews thought entirely differently about it because of their revelations from the True Most High God. To them it would only lead to corruption of everything on earth. As it has. You are aware of this.
John 8:42-44 (ESV) "Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
Jews are not God's chosen if they reject Jesus/Yahweh/Holy Spirit. Only those who accept Jesus are God's chosen, Jew or gentile.
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
Yes. It is in the canon - that by which everything else is measered by, including the enlightened.
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
No it is not okay. If it wasn't important and true, it would not be in the Bible. It is important to understand that there are many types of textual genres in the Bible, poetic, metaphorical, allegorical, literal, figurative, etc. For example, when it is stated that they will nurse on the breasts of kings, that is not literal. Not to be taken as literally true. This is just common sense.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
Yes, God has written His Law on the heart of every person. If a person obeys that Law, whether they know it or not, they are following the Christian Way and being a Christian - a follower of Christ. If what they do conflicts with the Bible they are not obeying that Law written on their hearts and not being a Christian.
If a guy hasn't been exposed to the Bible, but decides not to cheat on his wife, he is following God's Law written on his heart. He is "being" a Christian.
Romans 2:14-15 "14 Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. 15 They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right."
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
FUNDAMENTALLY different. This is what He was trying to get across to the jewish rabbis when He told them in John 10:34-36 "Jesus replied, Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’? 35If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36then what about the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? How then can you accuse Me of blasphemy for stating that I am the Son of God?"
By this He was saying that they all knew, due to their own scriptures, that there were beings among them that were more than just human. Jesus was saying He was not only one of those "more than human" beings, but that He is the Most High Being . He is God, the Lord of all beings. He is infinitely more than them. After this they tore their garments because they knew He was saying He was God, not a mere human like them. How often do you see a human walk on water, or raise the dead?
Jesus willingly surrendered His true state of omni-everything to become as limited as a human is. To have the human experience. So, although He was and is always the Most High God, He was also a completely limited human being as everyone else is. It's a paradox.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Excellent question. The Bible's teachings. In fact this is the basis for all morality because God wrote His Laws on everyone's heart. The Bible is the revelation of those Laws. Atheists, or the enlightened, who claim there is no absolute morality, but just blind meaningless existence, contradict themselves when they get all bent out of shape about things being unfair, or not right, or unequal, as the woke community does. How could they judge it as being right, or wrong, if they don't have the morals they got from the Bible, or God's Law written on their hearts to know the difference between right from wrong in the first place? Their worldview is completely incoherent, therefore distorted.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Yes, without a belief in being held to a higher source of accountability, immorality and lawlessness are guaranteed. Even with a belief in God it is hard not to be seduced to do evil in the influence of a group because people are born into a fallen state of existence. The spirit and the flesh are at war and we must choose what side we will follow and obey. There are also all of the spiritual influences trying to seduce us into sin and immorality. The Bible is a record of all the ways God's chosen people failed miserably to follow God's Laws to live in a harmonious community/family. This is why we all need Jesus' Salvation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83BdmoimH0M
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes, two. One I purchased with large font and my deceased mother's.
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Rarely. I plan to read it from cover to cover eventually. I have read most of it. I do have a constant daily input of Christian material from scholars, testimonies from believers, or other Christian based material through the internet. Michael Heiser has been my main guiding scholar as he brings the supernatural enchantment and mystery back into the Bible because it has been stripped out for centuries. It just seems correct to me and he provides lots of logical reasons/evidence as to why it is correct, with his reincorporation of the Divine Council and the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyA2092Oxzc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLb5-Ktc4cs
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
1:1. They are equal. You can't get a rose without a seed. Without the seed there is no rose. The rose is not more important than the seed. The seed is not more important than the rose. They are equal in importance.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
I don't, but I would if I could find one that provides good content. After studying scholars like Michael Heiser most of the stuff preached in churches is like going to Sunday school, fairly shallow and meaningless with poor understanding and often cluelessly ignorant. Church has been pretty disappointing for me so far. But it could also be just me.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
It is essential. Without knowledge you could not be aware of, or recognize, wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation. You could experience these things, but you wouldn't know what you were experiencing. A fish doesn't know what water is. It has no knowledge of it, thus no recognition of it, although it lives in it for its entire life. If it had the knowledge of what water is it could possibly recognize it everywhere, or have a revelation that he is and always has been living in water.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
It's essential. Without revelation you can not "know" what knowledge is relating to. This is why we all follow our belief systems, for the most part. Some have revelations and therefore "know" what knowledge is relating to. That is actually the proper use of the word gnosis.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
It is not a science text book. It is a spiritual guide book, or manual. A collection of books inspired by God who providentially worked throughout the lives of the writers so they would be capable in their task to use their intellect, reason and experience to write God's Word. So, it is a manual, a moral code, in some passages a revelation and possibly a doorway to the Holy Spirit as well.
Split into four comments.
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes, God exists and God is a useful word that represents the most sacred, holy, and powerful essence of all. The absolute truth. Perfection. That which is the essence of all meaning, purpose and life. THE TRUTH is a being and His name is Jesus.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Yes and enlightenment is a useful word for those who have seen it, otherwise it is fairly useless because there is no way to relate to it, other than imaginary concepts of what it might be like. If one hasn't had the experience of water, one cannot know or understand what someone means when they speak of water. The word water doesn't mean anything relatable to them. The same goes for God and enlightenment. All they can do is imagine what it might be. All they can know and speak about is imaginary concepts about it.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
Yes, "reality" is objective, but most people are lost in their subjective imaginings about themselves and their reality, so can't be objective, or see reality. Apparently, after death, reality becomes objectively clear. I've never been dead so I don't know for certain. I have seen enlightenment so I can see that the enlightened can make mistakes, be wrong, make wrong choices, sin, etc.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
It is our everyday experience when we are not lost in our imagination reflecting on our conceptual identities and are simply being aware of what actually is. This includes being aware of imaginings, but not believing the stories they tell as being reality, or true. Recognizing they are imaginings and not sensory perceptions of objective reality as it is in the moment. I did not spend enough time in this experience, only about 3 to 6 months, to become objectively aware of what is in the spiritual realms of existence. Only this earthly realm, which was pretty awesome while it lasted.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Yes.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
It means you believe that Jesus is who He said He is, a member of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God who sacrificed Himself for your Salvation from sin and Hell. You follow and obey Jesus out of gratitude for His sacrificial payment for your rebellion and sins against God, which you have to pay for or there would be no Justice. You have a healthy fear of God because the choice to disobey Him lands you in Hell. It's the only thing that can keep us on the straight and narrow. Plus, it's simply the true reality He is trying to warn us about. This is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is wise to choose to not go to Hell forever. I know this is a story that I have "chosen" to believe. One I have "faith" in. It is where my hope/treasure is, not of this earth where moth and rust destroy.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
It is a matter of loyally believing in Jesus and obeying His commands. If you sincerely believe in Jesus, everything else eventually conforms, falls into line, with that belief. The same goes for a person who believes in enlightenment, Buddha, Satan, atheism, etc. Our worldviews are all beliefs in concepts we have learned. The rest of your life follows your beliefs. The concept of Jesus being the Son of God just happens to be the absolute truth and reality, according to the Bible. What concepts you believe in is your freewill choice.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Apparently it is very important. I prefer studying/researching those who have put in decades of study and learning from their efforts and discoveries. Michael Heiser is my favorite Christian scholar and it is clear he saved me years and years of misunderstanding and time. It would be fair to say I never would have understood Christianity if I just read the Bible on my own. Yes, I would have got the moral messaging, etc., and possibly guidance from the Holy Spirit, but Heiser made it clear to me that if I didn't understand the worldview at the time the Bible was written I couldn't understand what it was really about. It would be like reading a physics text book without the context of understanding math. A math teacher would help understanding physics immeasurably. Studying Michael Heiser helped me with logical evidences of why to believe in Christianity. Now, when I read the Bible it makes perfect sense, but I had to learn a lot on the shoulders of giants for that to be so. We have no worldview context for a book that was written thousands of years ago. Without that context it seems fairly illogical. In context it makes perfect logical sense. It is perfect logic, but we can't see it because we are thousands of years removed from the context. Through the filter of our secular, occult, scientific, modern worldview we can't see the perfection and beauty of the Bible. Which is exactly what our secular, occult, scientific, modern worldview has been manipulated to do - to blind us to the truth of our eternal Salvation through Jesus. There are forces, beings, powers and principalities in high places behind this manipulation, as the Bible has explained, the false gods of the other nations. The story of the Bible explains how the Jews were freed from their enslavement by the one true living God.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Apparently it's good for support. The Bible highly encourages it, but I don't consider it essential at this point in time. I could be dead wrong about this. I haven't found a good church yet. Usually for me, it's like going to Sunday school, but it could be me with the problem. I've become somewhat of an introvert as I grow older.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
I would say yes, but completely unnecessary. Since enlightenment is the objective seeing of selflessness it is right in line with all Christian values taught in the Bible. You can be enlightened and not Christian, which is worthless. You cannot be Christian if you do not believe in, follow and obey, Jesus, which is the only thing that has true value that carries into the afterlife. A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ and as Jesus said in John 14:15 "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." Most of the enlightened do not do as Jesus commanded. Most enlightened rebel against what Jesus commands, or they don't believe in Jesus at all. Thus, they NEED Salvation, as everyone else does. IMO, DeRuiter is enlightened, but he is not Saved. He is not a Christian because he disobeys Jesus. He has become inflated, in the Jungian sense - overwhelmed by the contents of the collective unconscious (autonomous spiritual forces), thus developed a distorted view of himself, a messiah complex. If he obeyed Jesus he would not be in the position he is now. He certainly would not have let anyone worship him or think that "he" is the doorway to truth. A common inflation of the enlightened, possibly the influence of the same spiritual forces. Spiritual groups always seem to follow the same paradigm of guru as savior and devotees that need him to be saved. I think it's a spiritual paradigm. Jesus said the only one worthy of worship is Yahweh.
This is an interesting new direction that runs strangely parallel to a lot of thoughts I have had lately. Question: you mentioned a particular book on Job you read, though I can't remember the author. What is it, and what other reading recommendations do you have?
Thanks for the reminder, to make a full list soon, in the Notes area.
test
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
No. And yes. This is a trick question. The word ‘God’ is a useful distraction. Of course, my ability to perceive let alone understand the existence of god is minimal at best. So, it might be more accurate to say that the existence/non-existence of god doesn’t really matter as it has little practical value in reducing suffering. And, in fact, is likely one of the greatest contributors to the mess we are in.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Define ‘enlightenment! Lately I have been somatically understanding ‘enlightenment’ as the experience of some kind of mostly ineffable awareness that has made being alive lighter — meaning brighter and less heavy. That awareness tends to be associated with releasing the ideologies and unconscious stuff that has impeded my ability to see what really is in my experience. And here, I use experience to include non-physical ‘events’ that create or diminish my ability to see with more clarity.
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
No.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
N/A
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
No, although I am aware that Christianity has been infused into me osmotically because of the culture I was born into, the books that I read, the media I have been exposed to, etc.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
I have no idea. From Jimmy Swaggart to Jordan Peterson; from the Pope to Luther. From Naomi Wolff to Tammy Faye Baker. WTF??? Perhaps, reading a bit between the lines, and noticing that very likely JC had been contaminated by a Buddhist approach, that he means to be true to one’s own inner heart/spirit/energy and to follow no one.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
Likely, from my limited understanding of some of what JC says, I would suggest that anyone who identifies in the ways you have delineated has automatically distanced themselves from being a ‘true’ Christian.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
The truth that can be read is not the true truth. I don’t think that reading the Bible is a requirement.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Likely not belonging to a church would be a great help.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
Human.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
William Blake
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
Interesting question. No. It is likely more important that the ego step down from pretending it’s god is way more important. I suggest that the perception that the presence of god creates more effective communities is not because of God, but that the ‘proper’ belief in God keeps the ego in check.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes and no. Since becoming a covid refugee I have enlightened my self of 99.9% of my books. I think that the Bible was one I ambivalent about keeping. Now I don’t remember if it is stored or not.
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Infrequently. I recently revisited it on-line to look at the book of Job. And occasionally something I read will prompt me to revisit it to better understand what someone has been conveying.
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
Indifferent.
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
I do not. I would not consider *attending* attend. Visit only for special occasions. I recently begun attending, now twice a week, two Cha’n Koan Meditation ‘churches’. One on-line, one in person.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
Theoretically, for me, technically attaining knowledge is likely not required. At least that is what I have been told and have read. However, having been born into a community deeply poisoned by knowledge as God and a religious belief in it, attaining the knowledge required to remove our knowledge requirement seems to be the condition our knowledge requirements are in.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
What do you mean by ‘revelation’? To me this is very ‘christian’ word. Without looking it up, I will take it to mean having been shown, in some way by god or other, a truth that was not obtained by the study of knowledge or past teachers. In a way, this is an invalid question unless you mean the knowledge that knowledge is not the means to best experience being alive.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
Something else, a combination of all of these things. Recently I’ve come to think of it as a preliminary guide book to keep people obedient to an overarching power structure that sees themselves as, if not god, then the next best thing, having dominion over the rest of the undeserving.
21. Is it the word of God?
Hmmmm. No.God doesn’t really exist, or at least not in this way.
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
N/a
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
I don’t know. I think important, because my limited understanding of Christ was an effort to transform a corrupt society, largely built on Old Testament ideologies. And so, in a way, the Old Testament is the structure on which Christ built his ideas. (I confess that my depth of knowledge here is weak, and comes from snippet reading across a diversity of sources.)
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
No. And Yes: see Q21.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
N/a
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
I think that his is a fake question, and part of the obedience to authority psyop I refer to in Q20.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
RoTFL. Sorry, that just seemed too funny to me. Oddly(?) enough, the Moslems have taken that idea from the bible, and now apply it to themselves and have encoded as religious requirement the killing of the Jews. See the interesting discussion “ The Truth About Islam | Mikhaila Peterson & Apostate Prophet” https://youtu.be/EoSKE9QzRw8?si=13mBOfQg6OAITnww
00:49:50 Prophecy Against Jews
00:55:40 Christianity and Islam
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
No
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
Yes, because everyone does it to justify anything they want. Oops. I have just invalidated that? LoL!
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Or without knowing it?
Yes.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
No. The questions assumes an objective world, one in which this thing called Guy is separate in some way from the expression of life. I am not separate and so a personal god makes no sense. Perhaps I am expressing god would be a more accurate way of describing the situation, assuming the viability of the ‘god’ idea.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
It has no meaning to me.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
No.
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
Satan and evil are a particular manifestation of energy, human energy. Perhaps the manifestation of fear. It may be more interesting to ask where fear came from how it was made. Or why?
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
Yes.
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
No. Heaven and hell do not exist outside of my personal (each of our) personal experiences.
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
Both because we are god embodied.
38. Does God reward good behaviour and punish bad?
No.
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
Reward and punishment is a misunderstanding of how the energy of manifestation works.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Already is.
I'd love to think your one word answer to # 4 is a post-mod joke, but I fear not.
So if there is no OR, why muscle test (or what is being muscle-tested)?
In my subjective view, Objective Reality is a tautology, and subjective reality an oxymoron.
Ergo the need to acknowledge the existence of God (or "God," if you prefer).
This is what (my version of) the Book of Job is all about: Job's problem is that he has a subjective "personal" idea of God (taken from scripture), and so has a rude encounter with OR, the Real God (courtesy of the Satan).
Reap it and weep. I suspect you are the perfect stand-in for Job, Guy. Prepare to meet thy whirlwind!
Actually, it is a kind of joke!
And I wondered how you would react.
I skipped the 'Why not' part of #4 because that is, for me, not really addressable in this kind of comment Q/A quick response format.
I would like to examine that more thoroughly in an essay-like thing for a near future substack post. (I will complete Krishnamurti #2 first.)
Would that be acceptable to you?
Phew.
What if I said No? ;)
Same! Maybe.
(And why did you think that I might truly/fully deny object reality?! Sheesh. I have had the 'objective' experience of chronic pain in various guises for much of my life. Still today, as I steadily continue to diminish it. Something we have shared, if not in the specifics, then at least in the 'object' reality of pain as an experience of 'objective' reality. Or is pain objective?!) And by some measure, you are correct about being a 'perfect stand-in for Job.' And then, by that standard, all of us are.
And this came to mind as well after I posted the reply. I thought I might have included it before you read it.
The trouble with most poetry is that
it is either subjective or objective.
Basho. *News of the Universe: Poems of Two-Fold Consciousness*, ed. Robert Bly. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980, p. 209.
And by your response I am to infer that I am okay to move my response into my own essay thread? It might bring a few more interested people to you effort here.
Of course, tho I didnt realize that was what you were asking. Everything I write is quotable (urm, I mean free usage); I do like to be included, tho.
Well I mentioned to my wife and she believed it too; she thought it was to do with your upbringing and New Age contamination.
But happy to be wrong. There ARE those who make this claim tho, and they are Legion.
Will include, for sure.
And I recently wrote out to someone who seemed to be 'new agey' the story of the disciple who was thrown by a rampaging elephant because his guru told him that everything was god and so he didn't need to fear the elephant.
The guru said, 'And I needed to tell you to listen to the mahoot to get out of the way, too?!'
correction # 3
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
God must exist if God is the fundament of reality.
2. Does enlightenment exist?
Yes. I believe Dave Oshana has it. But maybe there are lesser degrees that have sufficiently "broke thru"
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
I believe reality, and that we get the subjective half, but its still reality isnt it? (Hm)
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
I believe we can escape "subjected" reality by eschewing falseness, which is as close as we can wish for.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
No, but one must pick a lane.. i can only see myself trying to align myself more with the teachings of Jesus, even if I never moniker myself as one.
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
Having Jesus as your teacher, and believing in the cosmic force of his advocacy. Most importantly, that one is tethered.
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
I think the term is best used to describe a community. But to follow Jesus is to take personal action.
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Not the most.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
Not at all, but it could be very helpful
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Yes.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
I think he was a man, who was enlightened, and became avatar of cosmic love.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
My father, patience, charity, fear of god/hatred of lies
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
I think we take for granted that the concept of God is still present, if only lingering, in the world. And we would sorely want it back if it were entirely eroded, much more than we do now.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Listened to a reading of 2 of the gospels maybe a couple months ago, haven't picked up my bible in maybe 2 years
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
80% new
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
No, did until high school. I would consider It. Maybe a non-liberalized protestant or orthodox.
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
I think we have to learn in order to unlearn, so yes. It would be much less important if we lived in our natural harmony
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
Thats the best view of it, that God reveals himself, and that one must stay watching and attuned to receive.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
Mamy truthful things are kept alive by it, maybe by divine providence. But Jesus' words are the most preserved pieces of revelation. Jesus' life was a painting that if you only kept one piece you could extrapolate the whole
21. Is it the word of God?
The Jesus parts, sure haha. The rest I suppose got to us like everything else did, so by God. Of course things have been nefariously obscured.
I realize going down this list I still have a very God-is-Universe mentality which feels like a copout. I like your term God of Reality more
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
Literally? 0?
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
I thinks Jews had the right idea with the 1-God thing, at least. I can't confidently say.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
If God is the Law, then it can be cruel. They can be compatible but not every iteration that appears in the old testament.
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
God can have many faces, but the God the Jews recount telling them to commit genocides-I dont buy it.
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
No, no
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
No
28. Does the fact of a passage or book being in the Bible give it special validity?
No
29. Is it okay to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are true? By what criteria?
By studying its history, which I haven't done, you can have a healthy skepticism. But more importantly, if it rings true in one's heart.
30. Can someone be a Christian without ever having read the Bible? Without knowing it?
One could be Christlike without knowing Christ. The more distracting the world becomes, the bible becomes more necessary.
31. Is there such a thing as a personal God?
I guess necessarily If we are persons, and the search for God requires inner seeking.
32. What does “personal God” mean to you?
God as being felt as a real, guiding force in one's life, the feeling of dwelling within God's love.
33. Did God create Satan and evil?
I think God necessarily must encompass everything.
34. If so, why? If not, where did they come from?
--
35. Does the doctrine of original sin contradict that of free will as the cause of evil?
Free will couldnt be if there weren't an adversary to rebuke
36. If we can choose good over evil, can we choose to go to Heaven or Hell?
Thats a good question and my easy answer is yes, but most would feel that didn't have that choice until too late. Someone who's ruined their mind and body with drugs, would they have any hope? They didn't make an informed decision to let in evil, did they?
37. Does God act on the world and humans externally? Internally? Not at all?
If God is the word and law of all reality, it must encompass inner and outer life without differentiation. I have a hard time thinking of God having a personality, or "intervening" in his own system.
38. Does God reward good behavior and punish bad?
Karma is a good rule of thumb and generally holds true
39. If so, how? If not, why not?
I think most commonly we harden our hearts when we do things we know are bad, and we dig ourselves deeper.
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Again I have a hard time with the idea God has a personality, or a personal will. I think a man or woman can walk on the path and so be an embodiment of God.
you've attended Dave events?
Ive attended one tai chi course, and no others. Mostly because of not keeping the 72hr sobriety rule. Rest of my exposure to him is thru you and his emails
1. Does God exist? (Yes, No, Maybe; alternatively: is “God” a useful word?)
Yes
2. Does enlightenment exist?
As defined as 'illumination by the Holy Spirit', yes
3. Is there such a thing as objective reality?
In God, yes. For the human mind alone, no: the mind is invariably darkened and distorted by sin and the consequences of the Fall. The mind must be illumined by the Holy Spirit for this 'objective' reality to be perceived and processed properly. True knowledge is inextricable from repentance.
4. If so, how can we know it? If not, what?
We know reality through repentance, which is humiliation of the mind and spirit, and partaking in the holy sacraments. Through repentance it is possible to heal the nous and obtain the Holy Spirit.
5. Do you consider yourself a Christian?
Yes
6. What does it mean to be a Christian?
To imitate Christ and obey His commandments, the chief of which is love of the neighbor
7. Is being a Christian a matter of self-identification, group affiliation, action, belief, or something else?
It means that person has surrendered their life to Christ. This is a spiritual act, yet it can be known in a person through the fruits of the spirit - patience, love, long-suffering, otherworldly joy, etc
8. How essential is reading the Bible to being a Christian?
Essential in a liturgical context. It can be unhelpful as a rationalistic, individualistic endeavor. One must have a mind of prayer to approach holy scripture.
9. How essential is belonging to any particular Church?
We see the establishment of the Church in the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and the Book of Acts: belonging to that particular corporate body (organism, the Body of Christ) is essential. The Body of Christ is a discrete physical being one either is or isn't part of.
10. Is the idea of enlightenment compatible with being a Christian?
Christianity is the fulfillment of enlightenment, though this fulfillment is fundamentally different from the concept as defined by the far east.
11. Was Christ like us or fundamentally different (more-than-human)?
False dichotomy. Christ has two natures: He was fully human and fully God. He was both like us -- in every identifiable way -- and unlike us, in being co-eternal with the Father. We possesses within ourselves the divine image and through repentance may come to participate in the Godhead.
12. What is the basis for your morality?
Christ and His commandments.
13. Is some form of a belief in God essential to community relations?
It is deeply assumed by the act of language and sense-making.
14. Do you own a Bible?
Yes
15. If so, how often on average do you read it?
Every day
16. What’s your ratio of interest for Old vs. New Testaments?
Equal
17. Do you attend a church? Would you consider it?
Yes
18. How essential is attaining knowledge to wisdom, enlightenment, or revelation?
Depends on the person. Great minds often need to be tamed through knowledge - humiliated in a labyrinth - before they can come to repentance. But once they obtain repentance, they are in the same lot as the illiterate farmer.
19. How essential is revelation to knowledge?
Practical knowledge does not require revelation. Revelation is true knowledge exactly, as in, the knowledge by which to live and understand oneself.
20. Is the Bible a work of revelation, a moral code, a manual, or something else?
It depends on the book. As a whole, given by the Church, it is to be taken as a liturgical resource: the Bible helps us pray and know God. Some of these books are histories, some of them prophecies, yet they are all coherent together, in light of the living body of the Church, serving the end of a liturgical life.
21. Is it the word of God?
Yes, in the sense that everything was written and compiled by God-filled men
22. If so, what percentage? 100%? 50%? 5%?
Every book was written by God-illumined men. There's no percentage. That comes from a mistaken view of the manner in which the Bible is "holy" and the word of God.
23. How essential is the Old Testament to Christianity?
Absolutely essential. It is one covenant. Israel/The Temple is the Church.
24. Is the Christian God the same as Yahweh, the God of the Tanakh (Old Testament)?
Yes
25. If so, how? If not, how not?
Christ explicitly speaks of Himself as that God, and the fulfillment of the scriptures
26. Are Jews still God’s chosen people? Were they ever?
As a nation they were "grafted" out of the covenant, per Saint Paul. The Church *is* the same chosen body as the Israelites. Any Jew may be grafted back into this covenant, yet it requires becoming a Christian.
27. Is it okay for God to have a chosen people/national identity?
Yes
40. Can God become a man (or a woman), or vice versa?
Men can obtain theosis (deification) through prayer, repentance, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That is, in fact, the whole end of the Christian life: to restore the divine image in the soul and rejoin oneself to God. Just as Christ was fully human and fully God, we may be fully ourselves, in eternity, yet fully united to God.
(ran out of time, shortened)
I mean these are all very well rehearsed, pitch-perfect 'Orthodox' Church answers with this one exception; 'Christ is in two persons'. Don't you mean two natures, one person?
that one stood out for me also, since it seemed internally contradictory (like much within Christian dogma, tho not in the Gospel) - if Christ was both human and God, where we are only human, then Christ was not like us; in this case you can't have it both ways
Christ is indeed like us in the most essential way. We are both fallen individual humans and yet possessors of the divine image -- we have been given 'the Pearl of Great Price'. If we inherit heaven, we will, like Christ, possess both our human nature and the divine life. We are not annihilated in God's abyss. We resurrect in our bodies, which are, like Christ's body, made holy. You can indeed 'have it both ways'. We are not 'only human'. The very promise of the Holy Spirit is that we, by right of this divine likeness, may also live in Christ, becoming Him while also remaining ourselves.
The logic of the Incarnation has a special significance for us, with regards to salvation. Cyril of Alexandria: “We are made partakers of the divine nature and are said to be sons of God. . . not only because we are exalted by grace to supernatural glory, but also because we have God dwelling in us.”
The theology developed out of close reading of scripture, made necessary by distorted readings of scripture.
Where Christ promises the Comforter, He promises the Holy Spirit, who is the ultimate arbiter in these matters. We also see tradition being handed down to the apostles in the Gospels; then, in Acts, we see the Holy Spirit descend on the entire Body, promised to that Body. These parts are not to be ignored, while the Sermon on the Mount is painted in gold -- everything Christ taught in the Gospels is related to the life of the Church (His mystical Body, to which we can join ourselves) and the promise of the Holy Spirit. The later language of the Church Fathers was given to the Church, by the Holy Spirit, to guide the faithful to correct understanding when a variety of heresies were cropping up, causing much confusion and debate. It is not so much a language given to convert others as a language to defend the Church against attackers, who love philosophy above all. If I could do without the later Greek philosophical terms, and just stick to my Gospel, I would, but these bits of dogma, so expressed, are necessary for cutting the Gordian knots of bad theology.
I think he just mistyped.
Orthodox Christology denies any human person to Christ.
He was not 'a man'; he was 'man'. The second person of the Trinity 'assumed' universal human nature in the platonic sense. The same human nature that we all share. This is how we partake in 'God' - according to them.
yeah, i fixed the typo.
He was truly 'a man', as in one particular human being, born to a particular woman, and at the same time, God. There is 'One person', with 'two natures'. The human nature involves this particularity.
If we unite ourselves to God, we remain ourselves, as well. Within the theology of God's personhood is something indicative of our own human salvation.
thanks for clarification; i take it from this that Christ started out a man like us but ended up as something else? this is implied by Rudolf Steiner's shockingly original version of the incarnation, which is that Jesus was born an ordinary man but at the Jordan baptism, when the dove descended, became fused with (a) God. Not saying I believe it, but at some point there seems necessary a fusion of theological faith with factual history (metaphysics)...
Perhaps Steiner came to this conclusion himself but it was a very early 'heresy' known as adoptionism condemned at councils in the 3rd century.