All the western religions teach that the goal of each human’s spiritual development is to become like God.
The troubling (not ‘non-useful’) speculation I mentioned in my post above referred to ideas like large segments of the populations suffering for no better purpose than to be an object lesson, or people being actually being hurt and killed just because God wants to twit with their relatives’ emotions. (Or were you referring to something I said in another thread?)
I think it’s worth noting that, if our painful life-changing experinces here are considered unimportant to ‘us’ once we shake off this earthly coil, it seems to me that the ‘us’ on heaven would have to be a totally different entity than the ‘us’ here on earth, with the earth-us being nothing more than a puppet or playing piece that nobody ‘real’ up there in heaven gives a rectal emission about. We’re not the kid; we’re the hamster the kid puts in the microwave.
Not the one I grew up in, and I doubt any outside of **Stranger in a Strange Land. ** How can we become like an omnipotent omniscient deity? Plus, remember the story of the Tower of Babel.
I can make a cheap joke about not wanting to flood my neighborhood, but I won’t.
But we have gained a massive net loss of diseases.
All human organizations of an significant size and duration are going to be corrupt, since they are made of corruptible humans. That doesn’t mean that some organizations are not much, much better than others.
As pointed out, the Bible is full of lies.
An aberration, compared to the general historical trend.
Which is strongly affected by the external world. People who are starving or dying of gruesome diseases or being tortured are seldom happy.
And the greater influence of religion in the past was another source of unhappiness, especially Christianity. Which is all about hatred of oneself and others, and of virtually everything that brings happiness or pleasure. You won’t find much happiness in a society nearly completely controlled by a religion dedicated to promoting misery. Part of the nightmare we have been waking up from is the nightmare of societies controlled by religion; the rise of secularism is a great boon to humanity.
This doesn’t seem to help. The line between “hands off” parent and “bad” parent needs some clarification.
-FrL-
I’m not sure anymore.
I think the complex interconnection of events and consequences prevents us from saying people are hurt or killed just to teach a lesson to other specific people.
What? Is that conclusion any more likely than it’s opposite?
I don’t have to dwell on my father’s death and stop laughing and enjoying life to note that it was a significant event that shaped my attitudes in part.
The concept that our physical bodies may be temporary doesn’t mean we don’t care about them or that we are puppets.
too late
Well, as I said, this theory would be a patch on the already unstable parent analogy. Myself, I reject all of it.
Your position relies on the theory that every hardship can be overcome, by everybody. (Or that God doesn’t care about those who can’t make the cut, which is another valid persective held by many religions.)
If ‘getting over’ our hardships is an automatic result of passing on to some ‘next world’, regardless of how tightly we’ve been clinging to our trauma up until that point, then our earth lives necessarily have an unreality in that larger scheme of things.
As for your quote, I guess that zaps the “Christians are not perfect, just forgiven” bumper sticker.
If someone was perfect, would they need to get absolution from Jesus? I thought the doctrine of original sin meant that no one could be perfect, ie sin free. If it said, strive for perfection, I could see it.
That seems to be the theological equivalent of a parent telling his kids to get 100’s on all their tests. That’s bad parenting, so your quote is another brick in the wall.
My thought is that a part of growth is letting go of past experiences. That doesn’t mean they don’t count at all. I’m not 20 years old anymore but those experiences are a part of who I am. I don’t cling to them or dwell on them but they are not unreal or devalued as they pass.
If we’re talking about “I’m saved and you’re not because you don’t believe the correct things”
I find that brand of Christianity distasteful. My reading of the NT leads me to think that Jesus encouraged us to walk a path that included continued growth. IMO opinion belief in Christ means belief that the goal, like the standards he set in the SOM, is achievable.
That’s pretty much how I take it.
Not if it’s possible and the way is prepared to achieve it.
I find the rapture bumper stickers worse. I think those are admitting the person may do bad things, which is a bit humble, at least. It does have the component that they’ll wind up in a better place, which is indeed obnoxious, but that’s at the very heart of Christianity.
Telling a kid to do her best and to strive for 100 is far different from the Matthew quote which orders us to get 100 all the time. I thought Jesus was the only perfect human (thought the fig tree disagreed, no doubt.) I’m talking of perfection before death, of course. Unless you have a very loose definition of perfection, I can’t see how it is realistically obtainable - and setting unrealistic goals is exactly the problem.
I think considering JCs audience his point was to get them to look beyond superficial obedience to dogma and ritual but to look within for real change and growth. That process is still incomplete.
I don’t see the Matthew quote as a “and do it right now” kind of commandment. Do you think a lifetime of learning and growth is a realistic goal? An achievable one?
The goal of learning and growth is like striving for perfection. That’s different from being told to achieve it. If you are told that lifetime learning is a good thing, you’d agree. If you were told that you should know everything, you’d reject it for being unrealistic.
Given the dubious provenance of the Jesus quotes, I don’t think we say what Jesus meant, if he ever said that at all. More likely that quote was by the author of Matthew, or perhaps a misquote from another source. This guy was not the most accurate of all the four Gospel writers, after all.
Correct.
Also true. The quotes are only food for thought regardless of their source.
Another quote was brought up months ago that I thought was interesting.
The rich young man in Mat 19
I find it interesting that Jesus seemed content with what the young man was doing but when pressed he told him what more he could do.
That is, if he said that at all.
And if the man had done it, what else would Jesus want of him? I don’t know if the Disciples gave up all their worldly goods to follow Jesus, but they were hardly perfect even so.
It just shows it is futile to expect consistency and logic from the Bible. The writers seem to have been able to put down the most absurd things. Maybe one with better reasoning abilities tried to write a gospel, and then gave it up in frustration and hid in a cave somewhere.
I took it that Jesus was talking about our degree of dedication in pursuing perfection not that giving up possessions automatically makes it so.
Whatever progress we make as individuals in this generation affects our influence on those around us and in turn the next generation and the next.
or the church burned them as heresy.