So, are you saying that you are not trying to convert us, but that your god is, through possession? Are all of your missives actually “Holy Ghost-written”?
Where does one go to get exorciseed of a good spirit? 
Satan, the best answer I can give is that on this subject, any “hot line to God” I might have is just reaching voice mail. I trust in His goodness, that Sqrl and others with loving spirits who may not have jumped through the proper ecclesiastical hoops will come to something good and suitable to the persons whom they are. If that sounds a bit nebulous, it’s intentional: I don’t have a clue what He has planned for Sqrl, but I know it’s not gonna be a punishment. (Well, not for Sqrl; for all I know Ed Asner is a major sinner in His eyes! :D)
Slythe, I could come up with a variety of horrible puns on “spiritual exercises” and “failing to pay one’s spiritual debts means you’re liable to be repossessed.” But a straight answer to the question you pose would be that any God worth the title would be able to convince you, since He would know you, inside and out, better than you do yourself, by omniscience. I think what FoG is trying to say is that we Christians are called to be witnesses, to state what we have known and believe in a way that makes an open-minded person aware of what God is making available. We’re “marketing specialists”; after we’ve done the promotional work, He closes the deal, to convert it into a horrible business-world metaphor. (Try to be a bit merciful on the spasticity of the analogy, huh?)
Sorry that it has taken so long for me to respond Poly.
This is fascinating. I find your definition of why you find your religion complete interesting and accurate for you. I don’t find my religion to be incomplete because I lack faith in Jesus. I don’t really. I know he was a good person and contained divinity but in my eyes no more than any other person around. I find my faith is complete because it contains the whole universe and not just the universe as we know it but as it will become. It lacks the ideas that creationists hold dear because it is flexible enough to see that ideas are not always right and that change is inevitible.
Polycarp, “And that those who would invest Him with their smallmindedness have turned you off to His love is to my mind a great sin.”
Sadly I see that you are correct here. Turning people away from love is always wrong. It violates me personally as I follow a principle about where I find love it should be spread (not ever by force, that is not spreading love in any way shape or form). I find that the excessive prosthelitizing of any religion as a way of spreading hate to those outside the religion. I don’t want my soul in the hands of people who bully me or others into “converting” nor do I want to associate them on a personal level. They, to me, are not spreading a loving type of message.
Daniel, I applaud you at your choice of religions. Getting rid of the Paulite philosophy that is attached to it would do wonders in my opinion. It still is not a religion that I am interested in following as I have studied it in the past and found practically nothing that spoke to me. Thanks for the information. I should say I have been wanting to go to a Welsh church in Rehoboth but only to hear the preacher actually speak in Welsh. Dw i’n dysgu Cymraeg ond dydw i ddim wedi siarad yn rheolaidd. I wouldn’t be there for the message of the sermon but the sermon itself. It was like the older athiest musicians whom I knew back in Texas who only went to the mass pre-Vatican II to hear the music. Since they changed it they have not been back to a Catholic church.
Poly, I appreciate your candidness with me. It is nice to hear from a Christian that I am not damned to Hell for the first time. I know that most of the time when I hear it that they mean it wholeheartedly. I don’t believe in Hell though so it really makes no difference where they say my soul is going. If only the “Christians” that I have known would be as open minded as you are.
HUGS!
Sqrl
PS. We could go see Falwell but I might have to rescind my vow of pacifism when I do to kick him in his nuts. Well, probably not.
Well, that clinches it: Polycarp is a Uniterian who believes in Christ!
I’d put a smilie here to denote my playful attitude, but I don’t want someone to think that I am totally kidding either…
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, one week, one day, 13 hours, 38 minutes and 37 seconds.
5222 cigarettes not smoked, saving $652.84.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 4 days, 3 hours, 10 minutes.[/sub]
"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey![/sub]
Hmmmph…Like Reagan (one of the few valid comparisons between me and him), I’m Teflon; labels don’t stick to me!!
Sqrl, I didn’t intend to suggest a belief structure to you as regards Jesus – just the idea that He is a quite real, quite alive person whom you can trust, like Satan (the poster!!) or Phil. Now, I can immediately see people swooping in with “imaginary friend” analogies the moment I post this, and I wanna issue a caveat. Not that they aren’t justified; it sound suspiciously like my other imaginary friend, this six-foot rabbit… 
Seriously, for better or worse, I have at times experienced what appears to be the active forging of a link between us by God in the same sense as someone from the board might phone you up and suggest getting together for dinner – except that this presence is invested with a real sense of love and guidance. And quite practically, I am sitting here today instead of being dead as the result of a direct intervention, where I was “told” to befriend a young man who then felt a strong urge to come to my house the day I had my heart attack. “Told” in quotes because there was no voice in my head, just the strong, apparently externally motivated urge that this kid, cousin to a neighbor kid, is someone who you need to become close to. And the result has been, in the main, highly beneficial for both of us in ways neither of us could have expected, over and above my life being saved by his discovering me dying. In fact, virtually everything that has happened in my personal life for the last ten years, other than the day-to-day relationship with my wife, derives from that “following directions.” If this presence is imaginary, I still don’t want to get rid of it; its ability to tap the precognitive and other psychic resources of my subconscious is phenomenal!
SqrlCub,
The evil that is done to you by those who claim the authority of Christ makes me weep. Please let me be the second one to assure you that you are not damned to Hell because some Christian tells you. While I know that you do not call the Love of God Christ, I see also that you receive the children of God with love, and compassion. As you have received them, so shall you be received. Knowing the secret name is not the answer. Love is the answer.
How come I always end up wanting to kick some Christian’s ass? I’m a Christian! I’m not supposed to kick anyone’s ass! grumble grumble . . .
Tris
Third.
So I take it that Trisk and Libertarian agrees with this sentiment as expressed by Polycarp and myself?
What say Zion and FriendofGod, I wonder?
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, one week, one day, 15 hours, 33 minutes and 56 seconds.
5225 cigarettes not smoked, saving $653.24.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 4 days, 3 hours, 25 minutes.[/sub]
"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey![/sub]
Lib wrote:
[… wincing …]
I appreciate your gracious conciliatory intent, but rest assured that I do not see things quite the way you’ve put it.
Okay, fair enough. How would you put it, then? I agree, my understanding of Xian faith is from a LOT of independent reading and my own thoughts, I’d like to understand your viewpoint. Trying to understand the viewpoint of someone who I generally disagree with is something I’d enjoy.
Polycarp wrote:
In the original, Jewish-Christian understanding, what Jesus did was to bring a new and closer relationship between man and God. This still applies. But, at least originally, Jews didn’t see sin in criminal-law terms, but rather as man falling short of a mark God had set, which leads to a sports metaphor where Jesus becomes coach and personal trainer.
Actually, no one’s ever explained it THAT way, and it certainly makes sense. My own viewpoint is pretty close to that. The Gods are here to give us advice, help, encouragement, etc. We still have to do the work for self-improvement, tho.
Whenever I’ve tried to talk about God/Jesus with Christians in general, I’ve always gotten the “hellfire and damnation” spiel, especially if I let on that I’m gay.
And Polycarp went on to write more:
The other thing is that a substantial minority of Christians are gay-affirming.
It’s a wonderful thing that they are. Unfortunately, all to often, those voices are drowned out by the more conservative, fundamentalists. After the Pope, the Council of Lambeth and the pronouncements of other Xian leaders, saying that homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture, all I can do is shrug and say “see you around, maybe.” Your own words give me encouragement, but I see this issue tearing the Xian church, in all its manifestations, apart.
Friend of God wrote:
God’s followers don’t try to convert people, at least I don’t. We can’t even if we tried! God does the actual converting. What I and so many believers do is try to be sure everyone has a fair shot of hearing the gospel proclaimed. In other words, to make sure that people know that there is something to ask about!
FoG: I wish you could see the world from my prespective. If you did, you’d realize how silly this statement is. I’m fairly sure that there isn’t a person in the US who hasn’t heard of the Bible, Jesus and the Gospel.
Oh, maybe not YOUR version of it, but they have heard. How can they not? Western history for the past 1000 years has been drenched in it.
And we keep hearing it, over and over and over. I’m very tried of finding “Chick” tracts littering the bus, of waiting at a bus stop only to have a car drive up, somone jump out and start handing out “WatchTower” leaflets, of people knocking on my door at 8 AM on Sunday morning asking if they can talk to me about eternity.
Please give your fellow humans the benefit of the doubt. Please assume we’ve made our own decisions about how we worship. If we want to find your version of the Gospel, we know where to find you. It isn’t like you’re hiding yourselves.
Right. That’s because there’s no alternate plane of existence to give it objective meaning. Therefore, the here and now is more important, q.e.d.
Sorry, I should say… “there’s no alternate plane of existence that gives it objective meaning.” The difference is subtle but profound.
Matt, sort of like the IPU – whether there is an alternate state matters not a whit to the existentialist, because it does not influence the world in which he exists? Do I have this right? Suitable for bull sessions but not influencing life decisions?
Also, I’d welcome your feedback on how I did on approaching animistic paganism respectfully and doing a compare-and-contrast with (my style of) Christianity. I felt very concerned that I would misrepresent your beliefs (you and Sqrl and the other pagans) in painting that “dogmatic” picture of your beliefs, and I’d welcome clarification and correction of my (mis)understandings.
Poly, you handled the comparison fairly accurately for the most part and what was not accurate for me may be for another pagan. I didn’t find many dogmatic principles in what you said when you were referring to paganism. I will have to go back and look.
I suppose you were referring to when you said, “Now, if I understand animistic paganism accurately, and of course I am not schooled in it, there is a spark of the divine in everything (Christianity has no problem with this) and thus it is worthy of worship (red flag! Only God is worthy of worship! Yeah, but they’re not worshipping the tree, they’re worshipping God as revealed in the tree…). Analogously to Hinduism, these various “pieces of godhood” are mystically one, brought together in a god and goddess viewed as fructifying aspects of a single spirit found throughout Creation. And hey, I have no problem with this: “This is my Father’s world” to quote the old hymn. And if Christianity has historically been very patriarchal and given no credence to the feminine aspect in the divine, it has at least given lip service to the idea that God is neither male nor female. In a patriarchal society, He chose the image of loving Father and a male avatar – but He is by no means restricted here. And of course in Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, “Spirit” is feminine, and a statement of the order of “She comes into our hearts to lead us to Christ” would have been quite proper to our buddy St. Paul the Closeted.”
I really don’t see a dogmatic issue as is standard in traditional Christianity. You are welcome to enlighten me more if you can. I see the comparitive analysis but not really the direct dogmatic principle. There is not really a large unified system of beliefs in the varying pagan religions that would normally be called dogma. I suppose the “Do as you wilt as long as you harm none” would fall into a dogmatic belief but there is not necessarily the same beliefs when it comes to a spiritual nature. Even then nothing is considered absolutely true necessarily so even pinning that down into a dogmatic belief (using the definition that means a belief shared by the whole group to be wholly true) would be like posing a belief that only the colour blue is worthy to be everyone’s favourite colour. That said, it makes paganism uniquely individual. I believe that you and the other Christians here on the board can have that experience with Yahweh as well but there is the rest of the structure within the religion that to pagans is seen as a depersonalization with the divine. Does that make sense to you?
BIG HUGS!
Sqrl
I have followed this thread with interest as I am a lesbian member of a small post-Roman Catholic church. Most of our members are cultural Catholics, comfortable with some of the familiar forms of worship, symbols and rituals, who left the Roman church because of problems with being judged, repressed, condemned or alienated. The “Thou shalt nots” of the Roman Church got in the way of their spirituality and experince of the devine. One of our doctrines is radical gender equality, meaning among other things ordaination of women and same gender marriage. Our fundemental theological orientation is that people are essentially good, if often misguided and at times individually doing evil things, but essentially good none the less. We also honor others’ spiritual experiences in all of their diversity. One example of this belief in practice is that our local (male)Bishop’s husband is a practicing Druid.
While I would not try to convert you, Sqrl, I salute your quest for an experince of spirituality that is authentic to who you are. I beleive that G-d is larger than any one of us can understand. Different aspects of G-d are more meaningful to different people depending on their personality, culture, personal history and preferences. Good for you for finding your own way in light of pressure to adhere to a one size fits all model of spiritual expression.
Sequela
Be careful, Sqrl-I think she’s trying to turn you into a Lesbian-Catholic!
Ya know, it’s too bad that a lot of Xians hate homosexuals just because they’re “different.” :rolleyes: Umm, excuse me, I don’t know any homosexuals who’ve sprouted scales or claws yet . . . and the last time I checked, they were just as human as me. Seems like they can’t tell the diff between hating the sin and hating the sinner (the latter choice being one we shouldn’t even do, and yet many Xians do so anyway by offering the one-sided sermon of eternal hellfire and brimstone for any sinner who’s unfortunate enough to get in the line of fire . . . homosexuals, especially). Real sad, huh?
I ain’t much of a debater (I like lurking more, thanks), but this thread caught my attn and I guess I was tired of being labeled a narrow-minded, hypocritical idiot on the spot once I say I’m a Christian . . . which I am. We sure do seem to catch a lot of flak because of the stupid actions of Christians in the past.
Not that I’m venting against any of the other Christians I’ve seen post in this thread. You guys are doing a great job, and so is everyone else when giving their opinions and POVs.
Keep up the good work. Just pleeease think (or pray) about your answer before posting it.
Peace.