30 Oct 07
Originally posted by epiphinehasWow, you really think there exists ample evidence for God? I agree that if the Bible is accurate it certainly seems Jesus was a really great chap, but why should we simply assume it is accurate?
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).
God's ways will always seem strange to us. And it is useless to argue against God. If we reject the ample evidence which His ...[text shortened]... e the entire world. That is, Love will judge the entire world. And His judgments are just.
30 Oct 07
Originally posted by whodeyTwo main thrusts which you need to deal with:
Lets create a scenerio where I possess the ability to give others eternal life because I love them. Morally, should I force people to accept eternal life? I think that the only moral way to go about things would be to offer it as a gift, no? One must choose the gift rather than having the gift thrust upon them. However, one must believe that I possess the ...[text shortened]... desire a relationship with me based upon who and what I am all about. Do my ways appeal to you?
1) Originally posted by whodey
One must choose the gift rather than having the gift thrust upon them. This isn't what a gift is, a gift is something which is given without talk of force or choice. So the rest of your point is somewhat undermined already. God either gives a gift or he doesn't, if there are conditions attached it's not a gift, it's a contract/bargain/sale. Either redefine your terms or your argument suffers.
2) Where in the bible does any of this get formalised? Your opinion is all well and good, but your prescription to an institutionised religion carries with it either an adherence to its dogma, or logical inconsistencies which arise from following the god of a religion you disagree with. In the bible all I see is the threat of force poorly veiled with ill defined terms such as gift and reward.
30 Oct 07
Originally posted by TheSkipperEven if it is, I have yet to hear a single reason why it then entails obedience and worship.
Wow, you really think there exists ample evidence for God? I agree that if the Bible is accurate it certainly seems Jesus was a really great chap, but why should we simply assume it is accurate?
30 Oct 07
Originally posted by TheSkipperIn a book where truthfulness, honesty, righteousness, and wholeheartedness are held with such genuinely high regard, it is hard to imagine the authors purposefully misleading listeners (i.e. lying) about the ministry of Christ. If it is a lie, however, who invented it and why? Christ's apostles? What did they get out of it? Martyrdom--hardly an attractive temptation. A liar always has some selfish motive.
Wow, you really think there exists ample evidence for God? I agree that if the Bible is accurate it certainly seems Jesus was a really great chap, but why should we simply assume it is accurate?
And why did thousands suffer torture and death for this lie if they knew it was a lie? All the enemies of Christianity needed to do to destroy this new religion from the beginning was to produce one confession from one of Jesus' disciples that it was all a lie, a hoax. They used many forms of torture and bribery. None succeeded.
What force sent Christians to the lions' den with hymns on their lips? What lie ever transformed the world like that? What lie ever gave millions a moral fortitude and peace and joy like that?
If it was not a deliberate lie but a hallucination or a myth sincerely mistaken for a literal truth, then who were the naive fools who first believed it? There isn't another idea a Jew would be less likely to believe than the divinity of Christ. Imagine this: the transcendent God who for millennia had strictly forbidden his chosen people to confuse him with a creature as the pagans did -- this Creator-God became a creature, a man -- a crucified criminal. Hardly a myth that arises naturally to the Jewish mind.
And if it was not the Jews but the Gentiles who started the myth, where did the myth come from in the New Testament? Of the twenty-seven books of the NT, twenty-five were written by Jews.
Whether Jews or Gentiles started the myth, they could not have done so during the lifetime of those who knew the real Jesus, for it would have been publicly refuted by eyewitnesses who knew the facts. But the "myth" of Jesus' divinity goes back to the very earliest time and documents.
If the same neutral, objective, scientific approach is used on the NT texts as is used on all other ancient documents, then the texts prove remarkably reliable. No book in history has been so attacked, cut up, reconstituted and stood on its head as the NT. Yet it still lives -- like Christ Himself.
The state of the manuscripts is very good. Compared with any and all other ancient documents, the NT stands up as ten times more sure. For instance, there are 500 different copies earlier than A. D. 500. The next most reliable ancient text is the Iliad, for which there are only fifty copies that date from 500 years or less after its origin.
The point being, if the books of the NT did not contain accounts of miracles or make radical, uncomfortable claims on our lives, they would be accepted by every scholar in the world. In other words, it is not objective, neutral science but subjective prejudice or ideology that fuels skeptical scripture scholarship.
If Jesus' divinity is a myth invented by later generations, then there must have been at least two or three generations between the original eyewitnesses of the historical Jesus and the universal belief in the new, mythic, divinized Jesus; otherwise, the myth could never have been believed as fact because it would have been refuted by eyewitnesses of the real Jesus. Both disciples and enemies would have had reasons to oppose this new myth.
However, there is no evidence at all of anyone ever opposing the so-called myth of the divine Jesus in the name of an earlier merely human Jesus. No competent scholar today denies the first-century dating of virtually all of the NT -- certainly Paul's letters, which clearly affirm and presuppose Jesus' divinity and the fact that this doctrine was already universal Christian orthodoxy.
The texts are well-preserved, and the witness reliable. Therefore, Christ needs to be taken quite seriously.
30 Oct 07
1 edit
Originally posted by StarrmanIt follows that if the bible is accurate about Who Christ is, then He has every right to demand your obedience. Of course, as a rational and free individual you have every right to refuse.
Even if it is, I have yet to hear a single reason why it then entails obedience and worship.
(Worship is for those who receive the spirit of God through faith. Without faith it is impossible for you to grasp the pure joy of worship. Worship is man's highest calling, but without faith it seems burdensome and altogether below us. Without possessing a proper perspective, I'd put worship on the back-burner for the time being.)
30 Oct 07
Originally posted by epiphinehasYour beliefs are so incoherent that you must warp the meaning of your words to compensate. It's like there's the real world, and then your Bizarro-world, where everything is opposite of the real world.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).
God's ways will always seem strange to us. And it is useless to argue against God.
If we reject the ample evidence which Hi ...[text shortened]... e the entire world. That is, Love will judge the entire world. And His judgments are just.
For it is only Bizarro-love that allows God to inflict endless misery on people, and only Bizarro-justice that allows a 'one-size-fits-all', endless punishment.
Maybe the Bible is the most well-preserved comic book out of antiquity. 😀
30 Oct 07
Originally posted by vistesd"Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe:"
I said wasn’t going to bother going at this again, but (sigh)—
The Christian sin/salvation motif—at least in the West, and especially within Protestantism—seems to run generally like this:
(1) The first humans sinned (erred/failed, literally failed to hit the mark, hamartia).
—Basically, they were suckered by the serpent, in the Genesis acco ...[text shortened]... ]soterias[/i], “salvation” is to make whole or make well; hence to save, to preserve, to heal.
Salvation is for all, but is given only to those who believe.
It's just that simple.
If you don't believe it, should God force you too?
Are we not capable of making an intelligent decision?
Having a sin nature doesn't make us stupid. It simply prevents us from being in the same place with God. God made a way for us to be with him, but we must choose to trust in that way.
It's too easy isn't it?
30 Oct 07
1 edit
Originally posted by SwissGambitI lied: I’m going post again—in the interests of love . . .
Your beliefs are so incoherent that you must warp the meaning of your words to compensate. It's like there's the real world, and then your Bizarro-world, where everything is opposite of the real world.
For it is only Bizarro-love that allows God to inflict endless misery on people, and only Bizarro-justice that allows a 'one-size-fits-all', endless punishment.
Maybe the Bible is the most well-preserved comic book out of antiquity. 😀
I understand how whodey uses the word “love”; he and I are not so far apart in our disagreements that I don’t have a sense of how he is using the word.
With Epi, I confess that I have no idea what the word means in his discourse.* Under standard meanings of the Greek words agape, eros or philia, his position would have to be that God loves under some circumstances, and under others does not; loves some, and does not love others. (I believe that there is a Greek word that captures simple affective, relational transactionalism, but I don’t recall what it is; maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it is philia, but I have it on the authority of a native Greek speaker that even philia goes deeper than that.)
Now if love, in Christian usage—or divine usage—means something else altogether, I don’t have a clue as to what it is. At the moment, I cannot see the effective difference between love’s judgment, and what a judgment of hate would be, vis-à-vis those who are condemned to eternal torment. If God’s “loving-kindness” ... “agrees in the condemnation of all sinners to eternal torment”, then I don’t know what loving-kindness means—literally: I don’t know what it means. And God’s love is supposed to be the inspiration and model for our own behavior!
Does the Holy Spirit make words mean the opposite of what their lexical meanings are?
I hope my other post made clear that this is not a semantic, intellectual exercise for me. I said elsewhere that love is the chink in my Zen Buddhist armor. My discussions with whodey have opened that chink wide again; for which I am grateful. Perhaps the intimate love that I know, in terms of that We (which I also spoke about in my one “sermons” on the sermon contest therad), is not at all what at least some Christians mean; if that is so, then it seems that they must mean something less.
Epi, quite rightly, pointed out that the ego-boundaries cannot be lovingly invaded: the We must be consensual. Nevertheless, when one steps back from the depths of that We into the everydayness of I-Thou, one cannot imagine inflicting any harm on the beloved.
With some trepidation, and with the caveat that, although I have used Biblical quotes, my view may not be at all Biblical or Christian, I reproduce that “sermon” below.
______________________________________________________
* I assume that Epi is reading this, so that I am not talking behind his back, so to speak.
30 Oct 07
The holiness of God is love. The holiness of God is in the word “We.” True love—true agape—consists in relinquishing the boundaries that maintain the separateness of I and Thou: with regard to God, with regard to our neighbor, with regard to the world.
Relinquishing those boundaries entails risk. It is dangerous. One may be betrayed by the beloved; one might even die. One needs to bet one’s life—but that does not mean betting, or sacrificing, someone else’s life. There are no guarantees. If there were guarantees, then neither faith nor love would be required.
Self-expansion, self-revelation, for the sake of the beloved is risky. So, however, is self-enclosure. You can remain locked in the closet of “me, myself and I.” You can seek out the security of a guru or a holy cook-book that will provide detailed instructions for living, or cooking. You can seek salvation in submission. You can imagine that the “kingdom of heaven” is an individual affair. You can try to play it safe. And you can die of old age in your closet, unloving and unloved. You can live small—in the confines of your little “I”—and you can die small.
Or you can, as Zorba put it, undo your belt and go looking for trouble.
For if you go looking for love, you are looking for trouble. There is no such thing as riskless love. There is no such thing as a real love in which you do not risk your very life. And gladly—or not at all.
Love—let us be honest—is trouble and a confusion. I can no longer tell if I am I, or I am you, or We are a bit of both of us. When we make love, I sometimes do not know who is touching whom, who is calling whom, who is kissing whom. There is—in the most precious moments—only We. And in that We, where am I? In that fullness, where is my part? In that largeness, what of my littleness?
___________________________________
Fana
As long as there is herself and myself
—beloved and lover, an imagined mirage
cast in a dream of two mirrors—
love is the desperate, jealous flame of desire.
When the images join in a singular fire
—returning to only ourself and no other—
then love is the passion and pulsation of One,
forgetful of dreams imprisoned in a mirror.
And it begins again until it ends,
this rhythm of form and fullness and form.
How silly for the flame to fear
annihilation in the fire—
or waterdrops to be afraid
of falling once again
into the vastness of the sea.
[Note: “jealous” here is used in the archaic, poetic sense of “zealous.”
____________________________________
A love that is frightened of such largeness of passion, in which the littlensss of “I” is lost, is a pseudo-love that is frightened—of love itself. “Perfect love casts out all fear.” And yet, we sometimes seem frightened of fearlessness itself. “Be careful! You might make a mistake! You might commit a sin! You might lose your soul.”
And yet: “No one can have greater love than to lay down his soul for his friends.” (Absolutely accurate translation of psuche: soul.)
The “kingdom of heaven” is not an individual affair. Salvation does not proceed from spiritual masturbation. And God does not need to be stroked.
The “kingdom of heaven” is a love affair. You must risk the “I” for the sake of the We. The smaller for the larger, the part for the whole. Though, in fact, the part has its place only within the whole. No flame is kindled apart from the single fire.
For your true “I” is that We—everywhere that it is found, and it is to be found everywhere. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” And that God is all in all. That God is the ultimate We—in which and of which we are. The fire in which, how silly it is for the flame to fear annihilation.
That God’s name is not “I am that I am”—but We. The We, aside from which, no one is.
But none of this is law. Love is not only trouble and a confusion—it is lawless. One does not keep the books in love. Love keeps no accounts, nor does it hold court. A strict moral accountant should stay out of love, because love will muck up all her accounts. And “those who love much are forgiven much.”
Nor is love an act of submission—one “I” bowing down before another. Love is an expansion. An expansion of the “I” into the We. Two flames entangled in the common fire. In which one’s littleness is burnt away—into the fullness of the whole.
Or—why should the waterdrop be afraid, to fall once again into the vastness of the sea?
30 Oct 07
Originally posted by epiphinehasIt doesn't follow at all. Given that the bible is a true and accurate representation of god, the only thing giving god the right to do anything is his power. This is still no reason whatsoever for me to worship him. I'd rather die permanently, or live out of the sight of god than to live in servitude to a god for whom obfuscation and threat from a position of power are his efforts to bring people to his side.
It follows that if the bible is accurate about Who Christ is, then He has every right to demand your obedience. Of course, as a rational and free individual you have every right to refuse.
(Worship is for those who receive the spirit of God through faith. Without faith it is impossible for you to grasp the pure joy of worship. Worship is man's high ...[text shortened]... thout possessing a proper perspective, I'd put worship on the back-burner for the time being.)
Give me a reason why, if god appeared before me and I fully believed he did exist, I should yet worship him.
31 Oct 07
3 edits
Originally posted by vistesdWith Epi, I confess that I have no idea what the word means in his discourse.*
I lied: I’m going post again—in the interests of love . . .
I understand how whodey uses the word “love”; he and I are not so far apart in our disagreements that I don’t have a sense of how he is using the word.
With Epi, I confess that I have no idea what the word means in his discourse.* Under standard meanings of the Greek words agape,
* I assume that Epi is reading this, so that I am not talking behind his back, so to speak.
Is that due to misrepresentation, do you suppose? Possibly. However, I have in mind the fullness of the Transcendent God as He is revealed throughout scripture. The Lion and the Lamb. Not only the bloody brow of the Messiah, suffering and dying for souls in ruin, selflessly working to set us free from the shackles of sin and death; but also the God who went forth before Israel as a pillar of cloud and flame, Whose presence shook the mountains, Whose anger struck the disobedient dead in their tracks, and Whose presence is so holy that flesh cannot see Him and live; He who was known as, "All-consuming Fire."
God is love, and His love is an all-consuming fire -- transcendent, supernatural and ineffable. To understand it we would have to understand Him, which is impossible. The best we can do is look to Jesus Christ and see what is exemplified in Him as evidence. Or yet further, we can receive the love of God through faith in Christ, and let the Holy Spirit burn in our hearts and fill us to overflowing with the all-consuming fire of God's love; love first for the Father of Jesus Christ, and then love for our neighbor.
Translated into judgment, for those who reject the terms of reconciliation which God mercifully extends to all in Christ Jesus, they will be consumed by the fires of God's wrath and know only anguish, while those who are obedient to the gospel of Christ will be consumed by the fires of God's love and know only peace, joy and rest. Same fire, different relationship.
Thomas Merton described all human souls as being like wax, wax waiting for the seal of one’s true identity to be impressed upon them. By themselves souls have no identity, he believed. “Their destiny is to be softened and prepared in this life, by God’s will, to receive, at their death, the seal of their own degree of likeness to God in Christ. And this is what it means, among other things, to be judged by Christ. The wax that has melted in God’s will can easily receive the stamp of its identity, the truth of what it was meant to be. But the wax that is hard and dry and brittle and without love will not take the seal; for the hard seal, descending upon it, grinds it to powder. Therefore if you spend your life trying to escape from the heat of the fire that is meant to soften and prepare you to become your true self, and if you try to keep your substance from melting in the fire, - as if your true identity were to be hard wax - the seal will fall upon you at last and crush you. You will not be able to take your own true name and countenance, and you will be destroyed by the event that was meant to be your fulfillment."
To remove the teeth from love is to misrepresent the Truth. In this life we can lose everything, and we can gain everything. There is true eternal danger, and risks at every turn. Some people will be crushed under God's seal, and others will inherit their true selves and their true name for all time. God is not sentimental love, nor is He passionate human love, nor is He dispassionate intellectual love, He is an all-consuming fire. The Lion and the Lamb. For those who have faith in Him, He demands nothing less than full submission to the cross of Christ. For it is only through the cross that God's all-consuming fire can pour forth into one's life.
All of which can only be accomplished by faith.
31 Oct 07
3 edits
Originally posted by StarrmanIt doesn't follow at all. Given that the bible is a true and accurate representation of god, the only thing giving god the right to do anything is his power.
It doesn't follow at all. Given that the bible is a true and accurate representation of god, the only thing giving god the right to do anything is his power. This is still no reason whatsoever for me to worship him. I'd rather die permanently, or live out of the sight of god than to live in servitude to a god for whom obfuscation and threat from a positi ...[text shortened]... on why, if god appeared before me and I fully believed he did exist, I should yet worship him.
Power = authority.
Authority to create the universe and everything in it, including whole galaxies, the infinite variety of living things, the mind-bogglingly intricate laws which govern the interaction of mass and energy on both subatomic and macrocosmic levels alike, etc. The authority to speak whole worlds into being! God as absolute authority is no reason for you to worship Him? I have a hard time understanding why you would not want to honor a Being of such magnitude nor pay Him reverence in any way. That is, were you to consider His authority as neutrally as possible.
Give me a reason why, if god appeared before me and I fully believed he did exist, I should yet worship him.
If God appeared before you now, you wouldn't need me to give you a reason to worship Him -- you would do so instinctively. Every person who ever had an encounter with God could do nothing more than fall to the ground as if dead. After recovering, the first words are always words of repentance, e.g., "depart from me, Lord, for I am unclean." To which God invariably responds, "fear not." I know the bravado with which you speak, because I used to have it, too. But it is a false bravado because it is really just a shot in the dark wearing the mask of certainty, for the sake of others.
If you want an encounter with God, meet Him in His word.
31 Oct 07
1 edit
Originally posted by epiphinehasPower may = authority but you still haven't demonstrated why authority = obedience/worship. Until you come up with a reason which has some basis beyond 'Because he's God and he says so' I'll remain oblivious to this need to worship you seem to be so concerned with.
[b]It doesn't follow at all. Given that the bible is a true and accurate representation of god, the only thing giving god the right to do anything is his power.
Power = authority.
Authority to created the universe and everything in it, including whole galaxies, the infinite variety of living things, the mind-bogglingly intricate laws which gov he evidence of scripture is not. If you want an encounter with God, meet Him in His word.[/b]
Your second bit is just a distraction, your projecting your own feelings onto me. I'm not a strong atheist and faith is indeed blind.
31 Oct 07
Originally posted by StarrmanUntil you come up with a reason which has some basis beyond 'Because he's God and he says so' I'll remain oblivious to this need to worship you seem to be so concerned with
Power may = authority but you still haven't demonstrated why authority = obedience/worship. Until you come up with a reason which has some basis beyond 'Because he's God and he says so' I'll remain oblivious to this need to worship you seem to be so concerned with.
Your second bit is just a distraction, your projecting your own feelings onto me. I'm not a strong atheist and faith is indeed blind.
This is like asking someone else to seek God for you.
If you want an encounter with God, seek Him in His word. I can't do your seeking nor your finding for you. That is, assuming you really do want a reason to worship Him.