It wasn’t Snopes, it was Cecil:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_003.html
Also, Polycarp is using me as a point of reference! That’s about the best thing that’s happened in my life all day.
To answer the OP, my belief is that there are two main reasons why Jesus had to be more than just an ordinary man:
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Only a God (or begotten Son of God) could live a life without sin. Why was it important for him to live such a sinless life? Because he could not have ever performed the Atonement (paid for the sins of mankind, in other words) if he had sinned. The law of Justice is such that it demands payment from all who break it by sinning. We are unable to pay for our own sins ourselves, so we need a Redeemer to ransom us from their effects. And this Redeemer had to be sinless, thus requiring that he be more than an ordinary man.
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Only a God had the power to break the bands of death and be resurrected, so that all mankind would also be resurrected eventually. No ordinary man could break the bands of death.
I know you were addressing DITWD, Cap’n, (is this from another thread?), but there are some notable similarities:
- Both preached a message of peace (Hillel more rigorously than Jesus);
- Both used parables very effectively to explain their messages;
- Both based their ideas in the Pharasaic tradition (as opposed to the traditions of the Saducees, Essenes, or any other theological school of which we have knowledge in period during which they lived);
- Both are spoken of in terms that indicate that they were well-versed in the study of Scripture.
(Hillel proposed the idea that one treats one’s neighbor as one wishes to be treated. Whether Jesus “borrowed” that thought from Hillel, re-created it on his own, or whether both “borrowed” the idea from a common source cannot be proven.)
Of course, there are significant differences, as well. Hillel was a scholar in every sense, not a wandering teacher. He spent most of his life as a student of The Law, commenting upon it to the extent that he is recognized as the foremost proponent of what became Talmudic Judaism. He worked entirely within the “system” of formal Judaism as it existed at that time and was eventually recognized as a patriarch of the community.
Hillel commented frequently upon the Law in light of the belief in God and created a fairly large body of (at that time) spoken commentary that established specific rules of fairness within the Law, including practical suggestions to apply The Law in the cases of economics and social interaction. Few of the teachings of Jesus appear directly and practically applicable to specific events (thus, WWJD?).
I suspect that Hillel and Jesus could have been good friends; they shared much in matters of believe and attitudes toward people. However, they are not easily compared in other ways due to their radically different lifestyles (and the fact that neither left a personally written legacy except what was put down “for” them by later people).
[QUOTE]
PETER 1:16
FOR WE DID NOT FOLLOW CLEVERLY DEVISED MYTHS WHEN WE MADE KNOWN TO YOU THE POWER AND COMING OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, BUT WE WERE EYEWITNESSES OF HIS MAJESTY.
PETER 2:1
BUT FALSE PROPHETS ALSO AROSE AMONG THE PEOPLE, JUST AS THERE WILL BE FALSE TEACHERS AMONG YOU, WHO WILL SECRETLY BRING IN DESTRUCTIVE HEREIES, EVEN DENYING THE MASTER WHO BROUGHT THEM, BRINGING UPON THEMSELVES SWIFT DESTRUCTION.
Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
[QUOTE]
You raise a valid point about exploration of other belief systems and whether their devotees’ devotion validates them, Gaudere, and I’ll honestly answer it as best I can.
So let’s go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back on this:
- Either there is a god or no god.
The absence of a god is trivial; I am the victim of a harmless self-delusion that may interfere a bit with my reasoning system, but otherwise does not incapacitate me much. I’m already on record that I would keep the same moral code I have now, except for the “love god” part, if I became convinced there were none. So this is a no-brainer.
It may be argued that this does not take account of polytheism, but this reduces to: (a) there is a head god in charge, who may for these purposes be classed as the one lone god; (b) the gods make decisions by committee, effectively becoming a corporate sole god; or © nobody is in charge, which reduces to “no god” with some supernatural tricksters thrown in for additional amusement at no extra charge.
- On the assumption there is a god, he is either interested in his creation or he is not.
Taking deism into account. The uninterested god reduces for these purposes to “no god” although the distinction makes for some interesting intellectual explorations.
- Assuming a god interested in his creation, he either has a plan for my life which it behooves me to follow or he does not. (This comprehends both “providence” and “following God’s will” in one package.)
If he has no plan for me, then my job vis-a-vis him is to amuse and entertain him. And continuing on the path that assumes he does should be sufficient low comedy for him. So this one boils down to “assume a plan.”
- If he does have a plan for my life, then he will put into my path the things he wishes me to encounter, in the order that he wishes me to encounter them.
This is a logical consequence of the plan. I do not see an alternative where his plan depends on my action, because then I could subvert it. Taking my actions into account, he will place those things in my path.
My conclusion from all this is that what he wants me to encounter, he will bring present to me as and when he wants me to encounter them. This has borne fruit so far (he said with 20:20 hindsight).
I therefore do not feel a need to seek out data on Heaven’s Gate, the Falun Gang, or any other system. I am not denying the possibility that any given system may have something of value to me. Even the IPU, largely humor value that it may be, has caused me to ask the necessary questions to progress out of the “he r’ared back and passed a miracle” mindset into the “if there are any miracles, they’re incumbent in his plan and therefore accounted for by natural law as fully understood” mindset. This is one I think David would have no serious problem with if he were to accept the existence of a god for the sake of argument – that we do not fully comprehend all of how the universe operates is a tacit assumption of science, which seeks to get an even better grasp of it than it already has. If presented with a full-fledged miracle that excludes all possibility of fakery or misinterpretation, David’s question would be “HOW did it happen?” and that’s a fair and honest question with a possible answer, though perhaps not one we know at present.
So I rest comfortably in the confidence (or self-delusion, if you prefer) that God will in fact provide me with whatever he wants me to learn from the Falun Gong.
Now, as to whether I am giving them fair justice in my posting, I’d say that I am. It is not incumbent on me to dredge out information on them and analyze it. If God wants me to deal with the beliefs of the Falun Gong in any way, he will produce a situation in which I am supposed to follow up on them. (I am not discounting that this may be just that situation, with Him operating through you, Gaudere. If that is the case, then you will find the appropriate website on Falun Gong beliefs and add it to this thread with the request that I review it and discuss what it has to say and why one should believe as I do and not as they do – without reference to personal experience or Christian dogma. And if you do so, I will do so. Otherwise I’ll assume that this is not something he’s pushing on me at present.)
As to why anybody else ought to believe me and the Christian witness and not them, my answer is that they should believe what their mind and heart tell them to believe, and nothing else. Because I’m confident of His love for them, and that He will lead them to the results He has planned for them in His own good time. It’s my job to speak of His love and to do it in a Christian context. That much has been made clear to me. I don’t doubt one bit that He has something at work in any belief system. Probably the reason they differ so much is that people tend to add in their own predilections and preconceptions instead of listening to what He has to say. And He, being infinite and manifold, can be perceived in diametrically different ways. (Insert parable of six blind man and elephant ad lib here.)
Is that satisfactory?
Sorry about the spelling mistake to all you spelling bee fanatics… HERESIES
MY BAD 
There is a tale about Hillel, (and since this is documented in the Oxford History, it must be fairly well thought of as coming from Hillel) that shows much about Hillel. Hillel was challenged by a gentile to teach the entire Torah while standing on one foot- the “first Rabbi” replied “What is hateful to you, do not do unto others. This is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn!”.
Paul, while still Saul, was considered to be of the “House of Hillel”, as to his leanings.
[Aside: Poly, why the logical breakdown? The logic is flawed at nearly every level, IMHO, and I do not think it is an accurate description of the reasons for your beliefs. If you genuinely decided God exists because it doesn’t hurt you to do so, I’d be shocked; you’ve always seemed to hold your faith to a higher standard than that. So why cobble together a collection of logical arguments for the existence of a single God that would be ripped apart by any educated atheist or deist or polytheist, when you don’t need to convince me–or anyone else–that you firmly believe God is Jesus? If you’re intending to convince an atheist, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew; if you’re intending to describe how you came to believe in Jesus, it doesn’t jive with what I know of you as a person. Your strength in witnessing is your heart and your self, not your logic.]
You know as well as I that “it doesn’t do any harm” is no real reason to believe anything. (In all seriousness, before I realized this was you, I typed out a plea to research “Pascal’s Wager” 
)
Why? The president is in charge of my company, but the most important person to my continued well-being in this job is my direct overseer. Talking to the Big Guy about anything would be a poor move, as he’s not the one most involved in my life. I feel you have some hidden assumptions about the nature of God underlying your arguments.
I don’t really see this. A corporation is not a single entity; you can apply to various parts that might be specially sympathetic to you, which is quite different than addressing the organization as if it were a single being.
Well, if you define “God” as Supernatural being that runs everything, I suppose so. Still, if multiple Gods can NOT work together and still create the world and all that is in it, how does this possibly reduce to “no Gods”?
I think the deists would take extreme exception to this. How does the Deist God==no God, were it not for your unspoken belief that a God must be interested in the world? And indeed, the deist God may be interested, yet do nothing; or he may be interested, yet do nothing on the physical plane. If you are claiming that a God that does not do you any good isn’t worth believing in, well, there’s lots of things that I believe exist simply because I think they exist, not because it is beneficial for me to believe they exist. You seem to be arguing a reverse Pascal’s Wager: if this belief isn’t beneficial to believe, I should not believe it.
Perhaps he has a plan that it would be best for you to try to subvert as much as possible. Nowhere have we established that God’s plans are good for you.
Why is it your job to do so? If He has no plan for you, He does not desire you to amuse Him, either. If He wanted you to amuse him, that would be a plan He had for you. If you are wrong about God having a plan, think of what you have missed out because you tried to follow it–I think that is sufficient reason to not be indifferent about whether God really has a plan for you or not.
If you cannot subvert God’s plan, than it will do you no harm to study the Falun Gong. If “it doesn’t really incapacitate me much” is sufficient reason to believe in a all-powerful supernatural being, I fail to see why it can’t be used as justification to study the Falun Gong.
I disagree strongly with this. Correct me if I am wrong, but your belief in a provident God means that you need not seek out knowledge–if He wishes you to know it, you cannot avoid it, so you need make no effort to seek anything out. You will patiently wait for knowledge to be forced on you rather than seek to learn more. Perhaps it works for you, but by Her Holy Horn, the deliberate ignorance that can be excused by this! Why should a creationist learn about science? If God wished him to know it, God will make sure he knows it. Why should a bigot question his hatred of Jews? If God wished him to question it, He would make sure he did so.
It is more acceptable to me for you to say, “I am certain that Jesus is the God I encountered, therefore why should I research teachings that are not the same as His?” (Though that’s also used as an excuse for ignorance; how many times have you argued with a person who would not listen to your concept of God because they knew they were right? Still, I think “I don’t need to seek out knowledge” is worse. If you learn a lot you can hardly help your mind being changed. And if you combine “I don’t need to learn more on my own” with “I know I’m right about God”… ::shudder:: )
To claim that you need not actively seek out knowledge because God will make sure you learn all you need to know…I am boggled. Whatever happened to “I sent you three boats and a helicopter?” Are you saying that God wants you to stay on the roof because no one’s come by with a boat, when there’s all the materials for building a boat right next to you? You don’t have to research anything you honestly think is a waste of time, Poly, but using God’s almighty plan to justify not seeking knowledge seems wrong.
Fair enough. But I believe that in the past your mild mockery of skeptics who disbelieve the resurrection was unfair–not because I think you are wrong to believe, but because I feel you are not allowing that to a skeptic both your claims for the apostles and other people’c claims for their miracle’s witnesses are logically identical. You speak of the smoke to support the Christian claim, but you do not acknowledge that the non-Christians see an awful lot of smoke from an awful lot of sources, and see no reason to believe yours any more than another. I don’t feel it’s fair to consider those who do not believe your smoke is evidence of a fire to be ignorant or overly skeptical, when you do not demand they give the same credence to every other plume of smoke they see.
[Edited by Gaudere on 12-28-2000 at 08:12 PM]
Tom,
Jesus doesn’t fit in the Rabbinic tradition, though, because he seems to deny major portions of the Oral Law. His teachings allowing his disciples to violate the Sabbath was dealt with in another thread, and he also seems to argue against laws about ritual purity. He doesn’t seem to refer back to any other teachers or schools. The “golden rule” isn’t exclusive to either Jesus or Hillel, but can be found almost universally, and Hillel wasn’t even the first to enunciate it within Judaism. If I had to put Jesus in a category, I’d say he was outside of any formal “school” or “division” of Judaism. He was one of the itenerate teachers and miracle workers, a mystic, of a type common in the area at the time.
Which is why I referred to Jesus as a teacher, not a rabbi.
I pretty much agree with your post, although I will still maintain that both were in the Pharasaic tradition. (I suspect that your discussion with DITWD is ongoing, I just noted that there are some similarities.)
I won’t venture to speak for Poly, and I don’t agree with all he said but I’ll tell you the way I’d put it: No reasonable scientist is going to listen to me if I come up to them with a flat-earth theory. Yes, a truly objective scientist will listen to all ideas, data, etc. But as a practical matter, some things are going to be ruled out of hand. Some things are just so well-established that they acquire a priori status.
Accept it or don’t, but for a believer who has had a personal encounter with God, His existence is as established as a round earth or 2+2=4. Hence, I’m willing to listen respectfully to anyone else’s beliefs, and take what I can from them, but it is frankly inconceivable to me that any new information would rule out the existence of God or the resurrection of Christ. I could articulate a set of empirical criteria which I would accept; but the bar would be set at about the same level of evidence that you would require for my claim that Abraham Lincoln was actually a Portuguese charwoman.
Theoretically, yes, anything is possible, and Jesus could have been a liar or a loon. But as a practical matter, no. I can step outside myself for a moment to try to think as if I didn’t know; but it’s only an intellectual exercise.
Hence, my new sig, delivered with tongue planted in cheek…
[hijack]
Only 10 times in all of history has an outfielder caught 495+ fly balls in a season. Richie Ashburn was six of those.
I’ll let you argue for Speaker, but May’s glove was clearly a notch below. Willie got the pub, but Richie got the outs.
[/hijack]
First, to Furt: I won’t pursue the Centerfielder of the Century issue; you clearly have valid reasons for your choice. But I wanted to respond simply to bring your attention to an amusing incident. Just after we started that more-or-less-tongue-in-cheek debate, somebody started a thread on the Ashcroft Nomination – and I at first read it as “the Ashburn Nomination.” Now there we have a truly Great Debate! 
Gaudere: Yeah, I noticed old Blaise doing a lot of betting on the sidelines while I posted that. But you misunderstand my motives in doing so. I’m not trying to convince anybody by the rather odd arguments I used: not myself: I have better evidence than that; not you; and not any other reader. The purpose of it was as an intellectual exercise to document my motivations in ignoring the Falun Gong while claiming similar evidence as proof of my own thought. Quite simply, if I have a moral code that derives from the teachings of Jesus, but which I selfishly maintain as what works best for me – makes me feel better about myself for following – regardless of what divine authority it has, then the tortured question of whether one may prove the existence of any omniwhateverous being and a priori derive some conclusions about his will, much less zero this in on the Father claimed by Jesus as depicted in the Gospels, becomes moot.
I tried to rough out this theory through making some excluded-middle assertions: In the absence of a god with a particular will directed at me, then I’m free to live whatever life I choose to live (as was noted on one of the recent atheism-as-a-religion threads) and the one based on Jesus’s teachings suits me, regardless of whether the claims made for him are valid. The deist god who winds up the clockwork universe and walks away, the executive committee of a polytheism, etc., reduce to one supreme being with a plan, or not. The hypothetical Divine Obliviousness has no claim on me and what I do with my life, nor does he have any interest in claiming such, if he even notices I exist. The Divine Weasel does not get my support; I feel about him much as I do about GWB – he may be in charge, and as such deserving of my willingness not to revolt, but he’ll never get my love or allegiance.
Now, I’m free to form opinions about the world, to follow my interests whatever they may be, etc. My point was that I do not personally feel called to determine whether the Sufi, Falun Gong, or any other metaphysical pursuit of God (or a god or gods) under modes other than the one I am pursuing has any particular validity. In short, I am in and of myself uninterested in it. Now, if God has a plan for me that involves looking into Falun Gong claims, it’s my assumption that He will forcefully push me into examining them. I fail to see how “His plan” could expect that and not do so. This would manifest itself as an urge in me, a challenge to me mediated through yourself or someone else, to do so. That is, in essence, how I got interested in Spong and his thinking – I was led to it in a reference while reading something else, and I felt an urge to explore where he was going with what he had to say. I interpret this as a bit of God’s leading; I fully realize it may just be my own intellectual curiosity. The point is that it doesn’t matter which it is – in either case, I did as I felt called to do, to my intellectual benefit.
I do not reject any philosophy or religious belief on the grounds of apparent foolishness; in general, the idea that “you have a wheel in your stomach” or “your aura reveals your past lives” are metaphors for a worldview that are no more and no less stupid than the idea that eating a piece of bread and drinking a sip of wine somehow brings one into a deeper relationship with the creator of the universe. It depends entirely on what the metaphor stands for, what spiritual truths it conveys to the believer. And the last time Barb made her special three-alarm chili, I could easily have been convinced there was a wheel in my stomach.
In short, I was attempting to rule out possible alternate worldviews as things that ought to make me change my behavior. I’m happy being who I am, regardless of whether my metaphysics are right. As Furt said, I could be wrong, but I’m not. And I understand just what he meant by it: I’ll never convince you of my POV, but I’m confident in it and content to live by it. So the Pascal’s Wager thing is moot: I’m not living a moral code as a bet that God is what I think He is; I’m living it because I like who the me who lives it is much better than the one who didn’t. Very selfish, but with the result of a pretty decent orthofocused morality too, so I’m not going against my own standards in doing so: if you “love your neighbor as yourself” and hate yourself, you’re not doing him any favors either! In effect, what I’ve invented for myself is the converse of Pascal’s Wager: my morality is valid regardless of my metaphysics.
Yes, but your morality is nothing very special and definitley not unique to Jesus. C.S. Lewis makes the point in his book, The Abolition of Man, that Jesus’s teachings were not the main point of His mission. His moral code, what Lewis called the Tao, pops up in every religion and phiosophical system. Socrates, Hillel, Mohammed, Moses, all said basically the same things.
So, the question becomes, what is so special about Jesus? The orthodox Christian answer is that Jesus mission was not to teach, but to die on the cross to atone for the sins of humanity and then to rise from the dead to bring salvation and new spiritual life to those who believe in Him. If I understand Polycarp correctly, he believes that Jesus’s teachings work for him, so he will live by them, regardless of the claims made for His divinity. If that’s so, then his position is unassailable. But, by the same token, I am free to ignore them, since Jesus was only a teacher and not the Son of God.
Your position reminds me of Puddleglum the Marshwiggle in the fourth volume in the Narnia series, *The Silver Chair[/]. In it, he is being held captive by a witch underground who tells him that the world aboveground and that Aslan the Lion (the Narnian version of Jesus) is a mere fable. Puddleglum replies that it may be a fable, but it makes so much more sense that he is going to continue to believe in it anyway.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Polycarp *
** … I at first read it as “the Ashburn Nomination.” Now there we have a truly Great Debate! **
Come to think of it, Richie, being dead, might do a better job than some of our current pols…
One salient point: Puddleglums’s speech is directed specifically at the witch’s contention that there was no “higher” world; that all that existed was what was visible there in the room. The anology is more properly that of a religious worldview vs. a materialistic one, rather than one religious view vs. another.
True, but it did seem apropos in Polycarp’s situation as well.
It cannot be as established as 2+2=4; that is true by defintion, since it is simply a logical proof, not something proven with subjective or even empirical and reproducible evidence. As well, I would not compare belief in one particular definition of Godhood as being as established as a round earth; there are no well-established competing theories to the round-earth theory. If we had 100 million who believed in a trapezoidal earth, 2 billion who believed in a square earth, 10 billion who believed in a round earth, and so on, AND the primary evidence for belief was personal and subjective, not empirically verified and reproducible then yes, I think not listening to alternate theories at all is a poor move. Surely you would desire a person who believes in Kali to wonder about this Christ guy everyone is talking about? I do not doubt that believers are just as sure about their belief as a scientist is that the earth is round–that’s faith. But I do not agree that the evidence is as established for them (if they view it objectively) as for a round earth or 2+2=4. It is more like saying God’s existence is as established to a believer as his belief that his wife truly loves him; while he may believe it just firmly as 2+2=4, he should be aware that it is a subjective perception, and not an established scientific fact or logical proof.
At any rate, this is besides the point a bit, since Poly was not arguing “I am certain God is Jesus, so why investigate elsewhere”…that I find somewhat more acceptable (or at least I’ve encountered it so many times that it doesn’t bother me anymore… ). He was saying “if God wants me to know about Falung Gong, He will make certain I do so, so I don’t feel the need to investigate on my own.”
But how do you know Falun Gong does not work better, if you never check it out? Because if it did work better, God would make sure you learned about it? How then do you explain those who firmly believe in a doctrine you find repugant, and God never seems to force them to learn of another? I suppose you can argue that they are willfully rejecting God, but I tend to object on principle to any philosophy that requires accepting as given that those who believe differently than you must be wrong–there’s no room for changing your mind. If you can argue that since God has not forced you to learn about the Falun Gong you are not required to make any effort of your own to do so, cannot someone else argue that since God has not forced him to learn about modern medicine, that he is justified in not bothering with learning it on his own either, even if his child dies from it? After all, since God is guiding him, if it was really important for him to know about this sort of thing, God would make sure he knew about it. If his child dies, it must have been what God wanted, since otherwise God would have done something about it. The two situations seem logically identical to me; the only reason one is superior to another is if one of you really does do what God wants–which is something I cannot judge given my disbelief in both your God and his. Admittedly, not learning about a religion seems a rather trivial decision, which is why I question about you hauling out the big guns of “God’s Plan” as a reason to not do so. If it is wholly accepted that God will force knowledge on you if He really wants to know it, I see this as being quite easily used for people to justify their own ignorance–if God really wanted you to know about evolution or gay rights He’d make sure you were interested in it, so if you’re not interested in something you have divine permission–hell, practically a command–to utterly ignore it. I mean, “I am in and of myself uninterested in it,” is reason enough for me; but I prefer that people take personal responsibilty for their own investigations rather than claim that if they don’t want to learn about something then God is saying that it’s not worth learning. Yikes!
The issue there is that I do not believe the Jesus story(/-ies) to be “just a fable” but a midrashic rendering of a historical event that reifies a great metaphysical truth. However, the Puddleglum analogy is quite proper in that I do not see Jesus death as the cause of God’s lovingkindness (as opposed to [negative] judgment) but as the manifestation of it.
I think the last thing anybody here wants is to get into an arcane Christological debate. But the traditional Christian position, which I hold as well, can be summed up as:
[li]Jesus was a man, in every way as we are (albeit sinless, but otherwise heir to all that we face).[/li][li]Jesus was also the avatar of one person of the Holy Trinity.[/li]
How these two assertions work together is the stuff of which theological debates are made, and ones I don’t want to be involved in at this point. I’d simply make the observation that they are only contradictory if you are looking at it from an Aristotelian, categorization viewpoint, and not as two assertions regarding the character of the individual. Just as a person may be morose and affectionate, or quick-tempered and loyal, without being self-contradictory in one or the other, Jesus may somehow be both god and man, or divine and human, not as categories into which he must fall, but as modes of describing his person.
And I think it has been adequately said that the evangelical take on that persnickety verse “No one comes to the Father except through/by me” is not the only reasonable reading of it.
Because of having the love of God and of Jesus in my life, I’m a far happier and more caring person. My “witnessing” is simply a desire to share that attitude and worldview with others, and to follow my Lord’s admonition to do so. I do not formulate any rules for admission to Heaven that require recital of a particular formula, submersion in blessed waters, the holding of particular doctrines, or any of that. If God is content that someone comes to follow the path He desires for their life through the modus operandi of Theraveda or the Guru Granth Sahib or the Baal Shem Tov, then I don’t have a problem with that. If He wants them to get to know His Kid, He’ll ensure that they meet, now or at some other time. And IMHO He works through those who find the stupid things we come up with to say about Him incredible too.
Bass ackwards, Gaudere (my previous post was composed as you were writing your answer to me).
I am not saying that it’s always His impelling that piques my interest. I am saying that if He wants me to learn something at some given time, it’s well within His power to pique my interest, and that in fact, from my POV, He has indeed done so. Hence if I find something not worth my while to follow up (and, frankly and with respect for the sincerity of their beliefs, that’s where I place the Falun Gong and their gastrocycloi – it sounds more like a metaphysical concept if you put it into Greek! ;)), then I take this as presumptive evidence that He is not at this time and place moving me to look into it. Certainly I can follow up on paleontology as a personal interest not necessarily connected to His plan (although I can see how He might use my interest in it to further said Plan in future events, e.g., over on the Pizza Palace). But that would be because I’m intrigued by it myself, without regard to whether I’m fulfilling some aspect of His will in doing so – other than “loving myself” in the sense that I owe to myself as well as all other humans the respect, dignity, and love He calls for.
In short, unless something makes it important for me to look into Falun Gong theology, I don’t see it as something I ought to be doing. And by your theory, I can bear witness to the fact that believing in Jesus in my style makes my life happier, so it’s obvious you ought to as well. I have a feeling that that dog, far from hunting, is moving around in circles a la Halvsie.