According to Matthew Jesus said the world would end in that generation, so the early Christians saw the world didn’t end and the church leaders decided he didn’t mean generation as we do today, But Matthew also wrote there were 14 generations between David and Jesus just as we use the word generation today. He also is quoted by Matthew that some of the people standing there listening to him would still be alive to see his returning to earth. It didn’t happen! They are still waiting 2,000 years later and there are no people that are 2,000 years old still here!
Good gravy, I was feeling my oats that day, wasn’t I?
I tend to agree with you about prayer. The only prayers/spells/call 'em what you like that have worked for me are the meditative kind where I figure out what I really want, or the kind where I pray for the strength/mindfulness/skills to change myself or be more open to seeing the solution that already exists. “Please, Baby Jesus, bring me a boyfriend,” has never worked. “Please, help me love myself, because I’m really caring and warm and compassionate and have so much Love to share; please help me learn how to be more comfortable in my own skin and not assume that compliments are predatory…” And then I still have to do the work, acknowledge my worth, listen when people talk and erase my own preconceptions about my “type”…THEN I might get a boyfriend.
Prayer for me isn’t about begging, it’s about identifying goals (what do I want really) and the things that are keeping me from attaining them, and sometimes I do get a whiff of sudden and unexpected revelation during that prayer that helps me understand the situation in a new light. Which is very helpful, but not, I think, what most Christian types are thinking of when they tell you that prayer works. (Is that revelation from God? From my subconscious? From alien signals beaming into my brain? I dunno. The older I get, the less I care.)
Which, while using too many words, is what I meant back when I wrote that: Christianity isn’t the only Religion, it’s really not. Jesus is not the only God. (Nope, still not struck down for saying that.) When you build a strawman up, it’s easy to knock down.
The most important thing to understand about religion, any religion, is that it is a man made concept. It is a set of rules and stories created by man to explain our world with no regards to the universe as a whole. Does that mean God doesn’t exist? I don’t think so. When I talk about God, I’m not talking about a level 100 wizard casting spells, like most religions like to personify it as, I’m talking about a source of creation. Simply, to me, God is a constant source of creation. We are just products of that creation. Kind of like vibrations in the air.
Any religion that professes that we are the center of the universe are just consequence of human narcissism. Everything in the universe, including humans are a part of the source. We have access to it through meditation and what not. We’re all just living waves in the ocean of being.
I could go deeper, but, that should be enough to answer the OP. It’s not about believing what other people tell you, it’s about believing what you want to believe and what resonates with you. I choose to believe the above explained scenario. If you want to believe in Christ, Buddha, Scientology, or nothing, that’s a choice you’re free to make.
Seriously, I don’t think I said my concept beats anything. I explicitly said that it is just what I believe, everyone is free to make their own choice. More specifically addressing the OP, trying to fit into what other people believe does not work, if the idea does not resonate with you. It’s like putting a square peg in a round hole.
I just gave my example because it doesn’t fit into the defined religion of Christianity or really any other well known religions. I didn’t come up with the concept either. I just choose to identify with something that I could connect with. Which is the choice we all have to make.
Did you by chance quote the wrong post here? It would seem newcrasher was being facetious, and I don’t see where any real claim that God “knows” something is being made.
I ask not to poke fun or to highlight a possible mistake, but because I generally agree with the point you appear to be making, we must accept at face value what someone not-divine claims is in fact divinely guided. But I don’t see why that point is raised in response to the post you quoted.
I was listening to a Bible radio station yesterday, and the preacher said something I’d never heard before.
(Quoted loosely from memory.)
“God created man to be his slave.”
Now, I think most Christians disagree with this premise… But it is an interesting one. When you put it right out there in that way, it answers a lot of the objections many of us have to the Bible. It answers the problem of pain, and it sets the issue of Free Will aside completely.
We were created to be slaves, singing the praises of God, doing his perfect will, contributing nothing, creating nothing, just exalting and exulting.
There is a lot of reading in between the lines going on. Lines that don’t exist. I meant exactly what I said. All religions are man made. Including the one I espoused. Although, technically my belief is not a religion. There are no rules or rituals to follow. It’s just an idea. It’s not better, it’s not worse, it may not even be correct. It just is.
At the end of the day, I think all ideas and religions are man made. Unless, someone has personally talked to God and gotten the scoop on what’s going on, we’re all just guessing.
My main point has always been and will continue to be, it doesn’t matter what someone else thinks, only what you think.
Free will does not apply, One can say to a child, You can go to the movies if you choose to, but I don’t want you to go, if you do I will punish you for all eternity.
"The child’s mother, who has two teenage daughters, had prayed for years for a son, the Huntsville Times newspaper quoted church pastor Bishop TD Strong as saying over the weekend.
‘Twenty-two months ago [the great sky fairy] gave her a son,’ Strong said, according to the newspaper. ‘And 22 months later he was taken away. I’ve been preaching 30 years and pastoring for 20 years, this is the first time in my ministry I’ve been speechless.’"
That’s what happens when you try to have faith in prayer. It lets you down, sometimes horribly. The tragic death of the child, just like his birth, was just something that happened, without any spiritual meaning. It was not something that a god or gods did.
It’s much easier to cope with tragedy when one realizes this and stops the “why god why?” nonsense.
No doubt people will try to comfort this poor woman with “It’s all part of God’s plan”. I very much hope she finds comfort in that and whatever else might help. But when people spring that on me I think “So fucking what? Even if that were true, that’s supposed to make me feel better? He might have even worse things planned, for all we know.”
Heck of a good list of 25! I hope the author gets past them.
I am 51 in the good ole bible belt and since fearing the roof tearing open and god pulling me out of that small church when I was 5 yrs old, I’ve never believed, even with all my might.
As I reached adulthood I saw the way church helped my beloved grandmother, it transformed her. For me, I felt guilt, hypocracy and hated being logical. I couldn’t accept the WORD in any form.
So, now, no church for me, I like to thing spiritually when I can and when times are tough I call on my faithful friends and ask for prayer. I feel it transcends the topic.
I believe if God is all Knowing, Loving, and everywhere I don’t need to pray. I would not give my child anything because he or she begged for it if I knew it was harmful nor would I hold anything back I knew was for it’'s own good. I would only expect trust. To me that would be the best a child could do. And my child would know and could prove I was it’s parent not just to take the word of some other human.
