2 Timothy 2:23-24
Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful
Pax~
This comes across as threadshitting because it sounds like you’re dismissing this argument as stupid. (But you’re also saying you have to be kind and not quarrel.) If you do think this argument is stupid, I suggest you not participate in this thread any further. If that’s not how you feel, I’d take a different tack.
If God created all people then All are children of the same God.
The psalmist also said All are Gods.
Do you believe the universe created all people, then God adopted some?
When did God adopt any one? You can translate it anyway you want, but that doesn’t mean you have a patent on the truth any more than me, a Morman, Muslim, Hindu, or any other human.
You are intitled to you beliefs, but they are not for me! The way you speak of your God helps me understand why So many do not believe, and think God is a hateful, cruel being.
God created the universe and us. Not the other way around. He is fully God. We are all fully human. Jesus Christ was half human and half divine.
The only thing we are here for is to serve our purpose on this earth and then die. This is what I believe. We all have a purpose even if we don’t understand what it is. Some of us play minor roles and some huge ones. I can’t say what other religious sects believe or that what they believe is wrong.
God is all loving. It is us humans that are hateful towards each other. We blame anything and everything for our own tragedies and shortcomings including God.
God doesn’t have to adopt his own children. That makes no sense at all. You can spurn your creator. You can choose to disown him. The bible is His book. It is GOD = Good Orderly Direction. Follow it or don’t follow it.
I have never read of anything in Psalms saying a human is God? The Bible was written by humans that were inspired by God. They were not Gods. There is only One God and that if only if you choose to believe in him you will have eternal life, Or life after death. You don’t have to believe in God. God gave us free will.
I’m sorry you think God is a hateful God. If you hate your creator then you hate yourself since you were created in his image. Hate is such a useless emotion. I prefer Love, Kindness and Wisdom.
It’s all in the bible. No matter what translation.
IMHO the universe is the ‘female’, the female spirit of the universe, that God created for His sons, to populate with life.
And BTW your response matches pretty close to what the Pharisees said to Jesus, and how Jesus plainly stated to them that they are not God’s children, but children of the devil, and that they were unable to understand things of God because of their father the devil, who is a ‘hateful cruel being’ blinding them to the Love of God, replacing God with himself as their god and father.
It is the devil who is that hateful cruel being and acting as god in people’s lives, that’s why many see God as hateful and cruel
Read the 82d psalm or the 81st You will see the psalmis t says’I say you are gods, son of the most high. Jesus back this up when accused of Blasphmey,“Why do you say I blaspheme because I call God my father;When your father s did”!
Read the 82d psalm or the 81st You will see the psalmis t says’I say you are gods, son of the most high. Jesus back this up when accused of Blasphmey,“Why do you say I blaspheme because I call God my father;When your father s did”!
A post script I do not think a god is hate ful but the way Kanicbird says he adopts some of the people He created.
Some people think they know what God wants or does, but that is not from God but from the human who teaches, says, or believes they know God’s way, etc. It is all human doing and that can be proven.
Humans say it was inspired by God, but that isn’t in truth, it is believing the people who said it was. When one believes the Bible they are believing in the human authors!
You are ignoring spiritual guidance in your statement.
Maybe that is how God inspires me, He let me have a brain to use and guides me just as much as he guides you. Who made you Judge? Didn’t Jesus (according to the Bible) say not to judge? Because I cannot accept a cruel,self centered being,who is not loving, created people who He knew would be faulty, then kills them because they had the flaws he gave them, (according to your discription of a God) you, who say I am ignoring spiritual guidance, could it be you are ignoring the spiritual guidance He is giving you, by the replies you get for your statements? A God would have to be much smarter than how you see it!
I believe there is, or at least can be, an inner connection to something greater than ourselves. I’ve had experiences with moments of clarity and an inner guiding voice that were very powerful. I think with effort we can learn to seek and listen to that inner guide, whatever it is.
I even sorta like the reference of a, or the, Holy Spirit. I don’t believe it’s something separate from us that we receive when we believe the right things. If it exists it’s something that has always been a part of creation and is always a part of us. I think it’s likely when {or if} Jesus told the apostles that when he was gone the Holy Spirit would come he was referencing the idea that they had to learn to seek and trust their own inner connection rather than always look to him for answers.
It’s a very personal thing and mixed with our own personalities, foibles, and desires. Ultimately it is we as individuals that choose and must take full responsibility for those choices and there consequences because no matter how sure we think we are, there can be other subconscious influences.
For those reasons I don’t trust or hold in high regard those who seem too eager to say “the holy spirit is guiding me to do or say X” I think often they want to believe they have that holy connection so badly that the desire over shadows the reality.
You can say with all sincerity " the Holy Spirit confirmed to me that the Bible is God’s word" and it doesn’t mean much except that you want that to be true.
We’ll hear the same sort of thing form different religious people who can’t agree with each other. The only reasonable conclusion is that for all their talk of divine guidance and claims of God confirmed certainty, they really don’t know.
I think it would be more truthful and conducive to growth and living in harmony, for people to admit they don’t really know and are simply making their best choices based on their current belief system. I’d add that claiming that privilege creates a certain moral and ethical obligation to extend that privilege to others and as an added bonus, admitting we don’t really know leaves us open to new information and concepts.
This is pretty close to how I see it. The Holy Spirit is a ‘Great Spirit’ that runs through all of us and some people are born with it fully connected, such as John the Baptist. But for many of us, we are isolated from it, we claim ‘individuality’ and our own identity. God complies and cuts one out of it, and whatever portion that was in us is all we get. We build walls around our heats to preserve our portion.
This Holy Spirit is the spirit of God, we either connect to the Father, connect with lesser gods, or totally isolate this within ourselves. Either way that Spirit is God Himself and why Jesus and the psalmist said ‘you (men) are gods’.
So yes it is a inner voice, but with external connections to others. This is the basis how revelation and prophecy and other gifts work, it is your spirit connected to others so you know things as you are sharing a spirit with others. This is also the basis of the counterfeit gifts, such as physic, fortune telling, etc. That person is using the same connection to others but connected to a lesser god who has people connected to him instead of God.
There is nothing wrong from claiming spiritual guidance by the Holy Spirit, actually we are suppose to. When we are confronted with such a claim the scriptures give a test for us, called testing the spirits and a gift for some called distinguishing between the spirits. This test is how one tells what spirit is guiding them, and with the Holy Spirit has been for me a conclusive test. It is just as the scriptures state.
Yes it is very personal, but it becomes more and more clear as we learn His ways, we hear Him better, and we know what is us, what is Him, what is outside influence.
I’m not talking about religious folk, but spiritual.
Religious refers to set of rules and rituals handed down by tradition, such as confirmation, and I would add saluting the flag, these have nothing to do with God.
Spiritual refers to supernatural guidance a relationship between the person and a being, which may or may not be God, but it is a personal relationship, there are no rules or rituals.
When God works on your heart and teaches you, you start to just know, when God shows supernatural things, you really start to know. Do you think Moses just was taking his best guess when he parted the sea? Do you think Peter doubted when the angel broke him out of prison?
I hate to upset your bubble, but there are people who know Lord Jesus, they have no doubt of how real He really is.
And Jesus and that certainty is available for everyone who seeks Him.
It may surprise you to learn that many people use the terms interchangeably - basically everyone who hasn’t decided that there is a separate unnamed religion-not-a-religion named “spiritual”.
And I’ve never met or even heard of another person who shares the same belief system as you, at the level of details. Which makes me very dubious of your position that buried deep within the set of the billions of people who think they’re talking to God but all disagree about things, there’s some group of people who really talk to god, and do agree about everything. I just don’t think that’s the case - I think your group has a size of one: all the people who can talk to the god that exists only in your own mind. Given the (as best I can tell) complete lack of other people with the same beliefs as you.
I believe the whole point was, assertions like the one you just laid down don’t hold water. My mom would say exactly the same thing as you - “I don’t believe the Church is true, I know it is,” being one of her catchphrases, and wouldn’t agree with you about much at all. (You would say she’s religious, not ‘spiritual’.) Which just goes to show that the kind of absolute certainty you are demonstrating means very little* - because it is available to everyone who wants it, no matter what they believe in.
- To me it actually gives a person’s words less credibility, since such certainly can only be at odds with the ability to detect errors in your thinking.
I know many people use the term interchangeability, though there is a world of difference and they are totally opposite. To put in in secular terms it is the difference between just living by the laws of the US, or knowing the president of the US, being able to ask questions, get answers about legal matters with his authority behind his advice. Replace the president with a king and you get more to the point, then have the king adopt you as His child, being able to come to him at any time for any reason.
The people under the law follow religion, the one adopted by the king has a spiritual connection and communication with the King of the universe.
Your definitions of “spiritual” and “religious” are, like your Biblical interpretations, pretty much yours and yours alone, and thus useless in this discussion.
I believe we’ve discussed the inherent problems with taking a word that has a widespread and well-known definition and co-opting it for some special purpose. Suffice to say, when you have 99+% of the planet telling me it means one thing, and you telling me it means another, I’m not going to take your word for it.
It’s one thing to invent yourself a whole new God - that’s every man’s Santa-given right. But it’s quite a different matter to go around redefining words and then telling everyone else that they’re using them wrong. That’s not right; that’s rubbish.
As for the rest of the content of your post (you know, the part that you want me to pay attention to) - nearly everyone with a religion claims to be “spiritual” in the sense you describe - if not to the level of regular personal physical visitation, at least to the level of inspiration. So from where I stand you’re either the one honest man in amongst a million liars, or the one correct man in amongst a million people who are just as certain as you they’re correct. Or you’re just another of the mistaken ones - the only option among the three that doesn’t have million-to-one odds.
Then find out for yourself, seek God, after all it’s up to him.
As for you not accepting a defining 2 opposite principals as opposite, I do understand, as it would radically change your views, which many people don’t like. You would have theist who are non-religious and atheists who are very religions - which is the reality but make some very very uncomfortable and upsets some basic concepts that they take comfort in.
In other words don’t try to expand you mind and thinking, just stay with what you’ve been told, don’t even debate the issue, nothing to see here, move on.
What the fubar? What’s going on here is you’re calling a spade a telephone pole. The word “spiritual” existed before you got here, and it’ll still be around after you shuffle off and find to your horror that the afterlife is ruled by an amnesiatic elephant-headed god with a sophomoric sense of humor. This tangent has precisely nothing to do with the fact that I’m not interested in praying to the light fixtures, and everything to do with the fact you’re abusing poor defenseless words again.
And if you really want to get your points across to people, you shouldn’t invite to have yourself derailed by people telling you what the words you’re using really mean.
Wow! Good question!
First, let me say that the idea of God as an anthropomorphic supernatural being does not ring true for me. However I do believe this “God” entity does “love” in the sense of wanting life to expand, increase, evolve, and improve; much like a very cosmically elaborate survival instinct.
If we view “God” as source - evolutionary theory tells us that a source wants to survive and propagate. The idea of God “wanting” something is very anthropomorphized in itself, but I’ll forego that as it’s a whole other conversation.
Now to assume God wants the best for every individual blessed thing would be an ideal, but I would say is unrealistic. There is no growth and development without loss, and perhaps this “God” entity is aware of this.
Second question, using the anthropomorphized idea of a mind, this God entity would have to operate at such a macro level, human minds could not comprehend such a thing. We don’t even understand the underlying levels of connectedness on our own planet and in our own galaxy, let alone all of existance.
So for me, those express two seperate ideas that are both true (at some level) but not necessarily contrary to each other. It’s rather paradoxical I suppose, as most things are when it comes to talking about the idea of God.