Because it isn’t one. All who love — Pagans, Atheists, Lutherans, Catholics, Buddhists — all who love are disciples of Christ. “By this will all men know you are my disciples, that you love one another.” — Jesus
Religion is just rah-rah bullshit. My team against yours. A cesspool of politicians appealing to altruism for the purpose of gaining wealth and power. God despises religion.
A Pagan who sees Christ — and not a warped image of Christ reflected by the meaningless blather of heartless cheerleaders — easily recognizes his own brother. For the Pagan, Christ is the Quiet Goodness in his heart that mourns with him as he endures the persecution of blasphemers who call themselves “Christians”. “In that day, many will call me ‘Lord’, and I will say, ‘Go away from me, you evildoers. I never knew you.’” — Jesus
As Tris has said, the Bible is not the word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. No book is necessary to hear His Word. And especially not one canonized by a political machine. Scripture, in and of itself, is worthless. Even the devil can quote scripture. The Word is not in the scribbles. The Word is alive and in the hearts of those who love.
Slythe
What it is is an identity. The Love that is God is not a feeling, but an Entity that is alive and eternal. It is the Living Love, the Light, the Way, the Absolute Reference Frame, the Standard by which we judge ourselves. “I do not judge you. You judge yourselves by the words I speak.” — Jesus
Great, more LibSpeak. Yeah, yeah. “Everyone else has religion. I’ve got the TRUTH!”. I’m sorry, but this is what every religion claims. You worship an invisible being based on unprovable beliefs that make you feel better? You are following a religion, plain and simple. I keep telling you that you can’t redefine words and phrases to make you feel better about the inconsistancies in you thinking, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. If “Love” is an actual entity, than so is “Hate”, “Envy”, “Curiosity”, etc.
You can make another snide comment about my understanding of LibSpeak if you want, but keep this in mind for future reference: I fully understand every single explanation for the way you speak and think, because you are not the first to come up with them by a long shot. I just think that your atttempts to redefine common words and phrases to make you feel better are wrong.
To think that someone disagrees with you just because they cannot understand you is a bit arrrogant, don’t you think?
Nick, I completely respect your point. One (less than clear unless spelled out) habit I have is that, having studied in some depth traditional theology, I often will post the traditional understanding of some question that comes up, whether or not I myself agree with it. I ordinarily try to spell out which I’m doing (my view or traditional explanaiton) and whether I’m arguing this viewpoint or not, but sometimes fail to do so.
Some comments, slythe…for debate, not for refutation. I cannot know what you are thinking from a study of your body, even with detailed neurological records. But it may give some indication of your mood, your emotions, etc., simply because they have physiological counterpoints. One might see the universe as God’s “body” in this sense – it is what he created, on our understanding; it is subject to his will. But study of it will bring us only marginally closer to knowing his mind, or any element of it. I don’t find him invisible; I find him at work in the world about me. This is due to my perception of purposiveness which you would presumably consider invalid. While I cannot ask you to buy into this as a valid principle on my supposed authority, I can and do ask you to consider it as an alternate perception of reality that some reasonable people consider valid. By my interpretation, God is invisible in the same way as ultraviolet light or oxygen is – perceptible with the right tools but not obvious to casual senses. The right “tools” in this case are spiritual – a point on which we will presumably disagree.
Continuing that metaphor, “everyday terms” become slippery when employed out of context. What the heck is “a spiritual entity” and how does it differ from (the Platonic ideal of) a “state of being”? I know the difference between being warm and a space heater, or between unquestioning acceptance and a Golden retriever, but when you start getting into concepts without agreed-upon physical referents, you start getting into fuzzy terminology. What is the exact location of some specific electron? How can an electron behave as a wave? Which slit will a photon of light go through – or does it somehow go through both? (You recall this experiment, I believe.) Quantum theory wreaks havoc with “commonsense” views of reality. For Lib. to say “God is love” is not constructing an equality but an attribution, and when you’re fooling with spiritual terminology, sometimes the obvious is unobviously incorrect. Traditionalist terminology speaks of Jesus not as “God on his father’s side and man on his mother’s” but as “fully God and fully man” – and they’re not building paradoxes; they’re trying to cast human terms around a superhuman concept (never mind whether it’s true – it’s an attribution of totality of characteristic to two things that sound mutually exclusive from our frame of reference that apparently are not in a divine frame of reference).
Finally, Lib., you fall into the fallacy of generalizing from specific examples in condemning all organized religion. I am perfectly well aware that there are a lot of demagogues and people for whom church office is a way to exercise petty power and route a group into acceptance of their petty prejudices – and sometimes these things are not so petty but monstrous! But just as the Bible contains some sublime spiritual truths and some maunderings by very smallminded people, most churches contain an element of the Holy Spirit working through the people in them and a touch of this Lord-Acton taint. I have found some points for spiritual growth in improbable places – a Bible Baptist Church at Earpsboro, NC (pop 12) and a fundamentalist pentecostal group in my old home town. And while I find my present parish to be for the most part a gathering of truly decent Christians of the kind you would enjoy meeting and discussing things with, it has its myopic moments from time to time. I guess I am saying that organized religion, like organized anything else, is a mixture of good and bad in varying proportions. You would certainly be offended by someone suggesting that Harry Browne is not a good Libertarian, since he is a candidate for the chief executive position of a government that has historically been anything but libertarian in its operations. Does that parallel make my point?
NICK welcome to SDMB. I can see by your post number that you’re new here. There are several Xians here who aren’t the literatlist type, Poly and Lib being two. Please talk with them. They’ll explain a more mainstream viewpoint of Xianity that I can.
I also might recommend a course at your local college on comparative religion. Back at UW-Milwaukee (my alma mater) I took a couple courses for my minor (comparative religion) that explained the Old and New Testament terms of literature. It was fascinating and eye-opening! I recommend the same for you. You’ll discover the more mainstream viewpoint of the texts and how they’re viewed.
Polycarp, I would love to meet a group of Christians that were discerning, and welcoming to debate. Unfortunately, this is rarely so with any christian I’ve met, which is probably why I have a general dislike of christians, and admittedly I judge them out of hand. I will confess, I doubt my doubts at times, in relation to the existence of a superior being. Or, more specifically, a life after death. I can’t really comprehend nothingness after death, simply because I’ve been conscious too long Anyway, you seem like a great person, and I respect actual devotion to one’s beliefs. Too many times I’ve seen so-called christians completely breaking their own rules. While, everyone apparently sins, this is consistent, and without guilt. They will generally practice debauchery during the week, then ask for forgiveness when Sunday comes.
There has been a lot of talk about “free will” and how important it is for God to let humans make choices on their own. He will not force anyone to love him; people must be allowed to use choose their actions freely.
But if God is active in people’s daily lives, isn’t this messing with “free will?” There are numerous examples from the Bible of God choosing people’s action and thoughts, from sending Nathan to David after the Bathsheba incident to God “hardening” the Pharoh’s heart. Didn’t God take away their free will and abilty to choose in these cases?
And if you thank God for the biker with the cell phone who happened by when your car broke down, are you saying God arranged for that person to be there at that time? If so, isn’t that interfering with someone’s free will? If not, then it was just a lucky break, and not divine intervention at all.
Evidently, “LibSpeak” means “what Slythe says Lib says”. Your assignment of those assertions to me, thankfully, doesn’t make them mine.
My feelings, at least as you likely mean “feelings”, are synaptic discharges. The two are unrelated. When you relentlessly disrespect my beliefs, it hurts those kind of feelings, but not the kind that matter. The kind that matter are stirred up, for example, when I read a post from Tris.
But I do worship an invisible Being, yes. And you don’t. So what? Is it the worship or the invisible that bothers you? Do you not believe in things that you can’t see? “Oh,” you might say, “but I can see measurements of what I can’t see (like gamma radiation) with machines.” Okay, so should blind people who can see neither the waves nor the machines’ readouts conclude that you’re delusional? If no people existed to either see or measure the gamma radiation, would that mean that gamma radiation does not exist?
God is discerned by our hearts. If I tell you that God is Love, defining Him for you, then if your heart is receptive to Love, it is receptive to God. Your choices are your own.
Of course not. I have, on the one hand, what you tell me, and on the other, what I experience.
Not necessarily. Your arbitrary groupings are binding on nothing.
We simply have no common frame of reference Slythe. You do not understand me any more than I understand you. I am a penguin and you are a polar bear. If common words used in special ways are, as you correctly point out, practiced in philosophy since the dawn of comprehension, then it looks like you just don’t like me. And that’s okay.
Not necessarily. How could a person who understands what Love is reject Love? You aren’t disagreeing with me, but with Slythe.
You’re wrong. I draw from the general (a political machinery) to the particular (the corruption of politicians). Wherever men control the will of other mean by whatever means, there is tyranny, and God is not there.
The worship of God is a libertarian act, born of free and volitional consent. When politics infests the House of God, people get Glitched. If a body of worshippers conforms to none of this, that is, it is not part of the political machine, then it is not corrupt.
As to Harry Browne, he is, in my opinion, a recidivist, an hegemonist, and a statist, merely to a lesser degree than some of the other politicians.
As I said, this is Pascal’s Wager. And since it’s now been explained, with my basic issues outlined, I’d be interested in hearing your opinion.
Moving on:
Now this interests me. And I’ll be brutally honest and tell you why. The people who attacked me are Christians. They believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Hence, they’re Christians. They may not ACT like it, but they are. My amusement/interest comes from this: it seems to me based on the posts I’ve seen from you that you would be this type. Are you saying that even if I converted back to being Christian, and didn’t give up my beliefs on social issues such as abortion, I’d still make it to heaven? If that’s what you’re saying, then I misjudged you. And I’m pleasantly surprised to see it.
Moving on again to a personal issue:
Not quite attempted suicide. I basically cut my arms enough to scar, but not enough to be a serious attempt. In pysch terms, it’s called self-injury, or SI. And if God wanted to comfort me, he did a DAMN poor job of it. I sat in my room BEGGING him to help me. To show me something. ANYTHING. It’s like Satan (the poster) said, I just wanted him to turn on the light. And there was nothing. For 5 years of my life, when I was dying inside, and begging your God for help, there was nothing. And THAT is why I say he was not open to me.
Let’s see if I can guess this response here. Based upon what I saw at LBMB, Falcon’s question of FoG…
…would be answered in this manner:
All that one needs to do to gain salvation is to believe.
However (there’s always a “however”), once you believe, you will somehow find yourself suddenly changing. This change includes your social politics and anything else where Christ would have an opinion that He endorsed.
In other words, once you become a Christian, God changes you to become and presumably act more “Christian,” and therefore change your feelings on the issues you speak of.
In other words, suddenly it seems like a good idea for The 10 Commandments to be posted in public school, because you start believing that that IS the truth. You suddenly become pro-life because God wouldn’t like abortion. You suddenly decide that God hates fags.
Okay, that last one was hyperbole and glib (and hopefully not that inflamatory), but you get my point.
It’s just that you and He are looking at cause and effect issues differently. He says you can believe whatever you want because God will change you. You are thinking that you have to change to come to God.
Now, the problem here is what if you become a Christian - you, in fact, were one for a long time - and you DO NOT change as the likes of FriendofGod think you should, then you are NOT listening hard enough.
It’s impossible, therefore, to say you are really listening and you really believe unless you change.
Frankly, this is why I could never be a Christian, by FriendofGod’s own definitions. Because everything I’ve heard God tell me does not make me feel “wrong” for being pro-choice, not against homosexuals at all, and believing in the separation of church and state.
In fact, I believe these things even more now.
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, two weeks, one day, 19 hours, 28 minutes and 19 seconds.
5512 cigarettes not smoked, saving $689.06.
Extra life with Drain Bead: 2 weeks, 5 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes.[/sub]
"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey![/sub]
Jesus said, “On that day, many will call out to saying me ‘Lord, did we not do many great works in your name?’ And I will say, 'Get away from me, you evildoers! I never knew you!” You might expect that Jesus is an authority on who is and who is not a Christian. According to Him, “By this will all men know you are my disciples, that you love one another.” Christians are those who follow Him, not necessarily those who believe in Him merely intellectually. Those who follow Him believe in Him in the sense that they trust Him and rely on Him.
Okay, no problem so far. If there’s things in this world that do not correspond with God’s will for how we should treat each other, it’s incumbent on those who try to treat each other in accordance with God’s will to fix those problems. Makes sense so far.
But then…
Huh. Did my shots not “take”? What I found when I became an active Christian (as opposed to somebody who was brought up in the church and was supposed to be one but it didn’t matter a whole lot in my life) was that just the flippin’ opposite happened. I started being concerned for the people who didn’t have enough, and trying to find ways to provide them the help they needed. I started giving a shit how people felt that weren’t “like me.” I started caring about what a pregnant teenage girl might be going through. I started feeling that damning gay people for being gay, when they’re unanimous in saying they didn’t choose to be, has a lot in common with some of the discrimination stuff we all learned in school was a no-no practiced “there” not, for gosh sakes, here in America (or at least, not in the North… (and having moved to the South, I see a lot more clearly how that ancient stereotype doesn’t quite fit the picture!).
You think there’s something wrong with me? I just don’t fit the mold!!
[ :rolleyes: Though I know Satan knows me well enough to read the sarcasm regarding whether my conversion didn’t “take” that pervades the above, here are a couple of smileys to make it clear to others :rolleyes: ]
And Falcon, though I disagree with Lib. on Christianity as a solitary, intellectual/commitment of the heart phenomenon, I think he’s hit the nail right on the head. That passage about “when did we see You naked, or hungry, or in prison…” is pretty damning to some of the “professional Christians” you and I know online. (Yeah, the guy with William H. Bonney’s social skills and 2/3 of his byname, for one…)
I’ve said it before, Polycarp (and I must admit I don’t say it enough about Tris and Libertarian, and I probably should), and I’ll say it again:
I ain’t talking about you.
I am willing to bet that your and my spiritual and social beliefs are a hell of a lot closer than yours and FriendofGod’s - even though you are both Christians and I am one of those Unitarian Univeralist heathens.
I was trying to explain to Falcon how (the likes of) FriendofGod rationalized her questions, because you might remember my famous LBMB post called “Reasons I’ll Never be a Christian” maybe?
I started a thread with a whole slew of things that I believe that most of the LBMB-variety Christians found fault with.
You know, "I can’t be a Christian because…
"I am pro-choice…
"I have no problem with someone’s sexual orientation…
"I am against the teaching of God in public schools…
"I LIKE the ACLU…
"I believe that the world and universe evolved…
“I like music which can have downright stupid lyrice because of the music, not the lyrics…”
…ad nauseum.
The responses from them was exactly what I said to Falcon. When you become a Christian, you will change.
You agree with that notion. However, the change in you and them seem completely different with regard to the social issues I mentioned and Falcon brought up.
It would be really easy to say that God is speaking to you guys differently.
However, the folks I am indicting would simply say you (Polycarp) are misguided. They often said that it was really Satan telling you what to do. You KNOW I am not making this up, Polycarp. You’ve seen the way these people think.
The main difference between you and those people, Poly? You walk the walk. They only talk the talk, and a lot of times can’t even manage that very well…
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, two weeks, one day, 20 hours, 51 minutes and 30 seconds.
5514 cigarettes not smoked, saving $689.34.
Extra life with Drain Bead: 2 weeks, 5 days, 3 hours, 30 minutes.[/sub]
"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey![/sub]
Sorry I haven’t had time to post the past two days, I will try to respond to you guys tomorrow sometime. I especially want to answer Falcon’s recent questions, and slythe’s from page 1. I promise I’ll get to all you guys eventually!
G’night for now, as I said I should have time tomorrow.
I am willing to bet that your and my spiritual and social beliefs are a hell of a lot closer than yours and FriendofGod’s - even though you are both Christians and I am one of those Unitarian Univeralist heathens.
I’d like to echo this sentiment, and offer a viewpoint you may not realise.
Standing outside the present Xian church and looking in, I can only shake my head. I see the Fundamentalists speaking louder and louder, proclaiming their voice is the voice of the Xian Church. I see rather minor issues tearing the church apart, often sparked by Fundamentalists who insist their viewpoint is the only valid one.
No where do I hear the voice of moderate, mainstream Xianty rising up against this. If it is, it’s a rather quiet voice.
PolyC, Lib & Tris please raise your voices up, because otherwise, I feel your church will fall under the tide of rising Fundamentalism.
Or to put it differently,“Thank you for pointing out that your neighbor isn’t separating his trash. By the way, your house is on fire.”
It doesn’t matter a whit that you don’t think that the far rightwing a-holes out there are Christians. If they shout from the rooftops that they are, and you don’t out shout them, for all intents and purposes they represent Christianity to the outside world.
Sorry it took so long to get back here. Finals are just starting. Actually, I shouldn’t be spending time here at all . . .
Sorry, I may have overreacted. Often do. My point was just that this kind of thinking isn’t unique to Christianity. Many, maybe most religions and philosophies contain at least some elements in common with it, so you proably shouldn’t claim them as “Christian” concepts alone.
As for the Art of War, the line I was thinking of was “Disorder arises from Order, Courage arises from Cowardance, and Weakness arises from Strength.” Course, he ment this in a practical sense, (You cannot feign weakness unless you are strong, etc.) but it still fits I think.
The Art of War is ment to be more of a strategy guide than a philo. one, though. So, basically, I proably shouldn’t have brought it up. The Tao Te Ching is a bit more suited to this type of thing. So,
“When you’re weak, He is strong”: Well, these are going to be a bit vauge, as Taoism dosn’t have a higher power per se, but, If you open yourself to the Tao,
you are at one with the Tao
and you can embody it completely.
If you open yourself to insight
you are at one with insight.
If you open yourself to loss,
you are at one with loss
and you can accept it completly.
**“To find your life you must lose it” **
*If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
Let yourself die. *
And just for fun, When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the begining of chaos.
Or my personal favorate: See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Hove the world as your self,
then you can care for all things.
Don’t mean to hit you with too many quotes, but I dug up both books, and I might as well get some use out of them. By the way, all these quotes are from Stephen Michell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching, written by Lau Tsu, or the Shambhala Pocket Classics version of the Art of War, by Sun Tsu, translated by Thomas Cleary. No, Lau and Sun Tsu arn’t related, as far as I know.
Both these books, by the way, are considerably less than 100 pages, and once you get past the Vorlon style of prose that ancient chinese books seem to require, (the’re both over 2000 years old) they’re quite accesible.
Is this witnessing? I’m not even a full Taoist, just an agnostic who’s studied marital arts.
Well, I guess we’re at an impasse, then. I can’t accept this as anything but you rembering past learning, or figuring things out for yourself, (I might buy, as I said, “God is helping me remember,” or something of the like) and you are unwilling to put it to a test that I would accept. Or at least strongly consider and want to investigate further.
If you were in a plane and the pilot had a heart attack, would God give you knowlage of how to fly it? I don’t mean an amature pilot or flight sim fan pulling it off and beliving that God gave them a little nudge, I mean someone with no idea of how a plane works sitting down and suddenly learning.
And you say this happens to you on a regular basis . . . I’m sorry, but I just can’t belive this.
This, I’m also gonna have to disagree with. Just this evening on Fox News, there was a report on a statue crying blood, that frankly looked a bit fake even in the pictures. They said scientists (and I think church officials. Not sure. I was getting a soda during the report) were working on it to figure out if it was a fake or not.
Now, there’s always an equal amount of evidence that anything you care to name is covered up by a vast conspiricy that has blotted out all evidence. But if so, you’d expect miricle reports to pop up in fringe media, or at least in some non-christian publications/web pages. But I’ve never seen many OT miricle reports in a publication that wasn’t specifically devoted to that type of thing. (Like Charisma, for instance)
Now, many mainstream news reports do occasionally report miricles, especially when they’re looking at faith related issues. But they usualy at least mention possible explanations and the like.
Any sufficently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, after all. Is is possible that many of these miricles are just misunderstood science? (Like a lens flare becoming “the gate to heaven”) And, obviously, at least some miricles are outright frauds, like the old balloon faith healer trick.
Now, I grew up in Amherst, Mass. At the time, (it may still be) it was a very common settling point for many political refugees. As a result, many of my friends and aquantences were from the less stable areas of the pacific rim, eastern europe, and the like. One of my high school aquantences turned out to be Neilson Mandela’s grandaughter. That’s not germaine, just kind of neat.
None of them mentioned any kind of miricles in their homeland, which is kind of odd if they were as common as you say. Neither have any of the immigrants that I’ve run into since. And yes, some of them were christians.
Well, my point was having my friend having a much easier road kind of blows apart your earlier statement that anyone who truly seeks Christ will find him. If my friend has such an easier time of it than, say, Retsudo Yagyu, then what you mean is that “anyone who seeks Christ enough to find him, based on his situation and point of origin will find him.” Which, frankly, seems grossly unfair. As well as being a bit of a tautology.
The other two posiblities is that everyone has an equal shot, (in which case, my friend is obviously more in need of guidance than Retsudo) or that are more likely to be saved anyway are born into christan areas. Or, short version, that people in christian contries are holier than people who arn’t. Which I find . . . distateful.
Or, of course, it’s concivable that there are more than one road to salvation, which avoids this whole problem.
On your friends healing:
Well, I hate to be blunt, but you’d have a much stronger case if you knew one way or another.
Well, five years of explaing “yes, that’s how it happened” could have blended memories and the story together.
Well, we only have this friend of a friend of a friend, as it were. And doctors have been known to make mistakes.
Thing is, even if I was willing to accept this as perfectly accurate, which I’m not, all this would be proof of is that something supernatural happened. It could have been a demon, a ghost, a secret government nano project, or one of the prayer-givers was, unknowingly, a powerful anime style psychic, and healed your friend without knowing it.
As for why a demon/alien/psychic would do this, it’s not too hard to come up with a possibility for any of them.
Maybe someone was going to see her limping around, which would have melted his cold heart and alowed Christ to enter. But because she wasn’t limping, he didn’t, and died with a heart full of bitterness.
God, I should get a carrer writing shojo manga.
A muslim or a wiccan isn’t praying to a demon either, but (and I’m sorry if this is inaccurate) you’ve implied that if they can produce a miricle, it would be the work of a demon.
And even if you say that other religions are the work of demons to begin with, and thus they are praying to demons without knowing it, (Which I think you have, appologies again if I’m wrong) why are you so sure that yours isn’t?
Are demonic powers a part of any standard christian doctorine? I ask because I thought that they were not, that demons could influence peoples hearts, but not actually do stuff, at least in modern times. Or is this different from sect to sect?
Weren’t you around for Christanity and Love? I seem to rember you posting there, but I’m too lazy to check. If not, check it out. It goes around and around this for about 15 pages.
In any case, you’ve said you arn’t an expert in any of them. How can you make this statement if you haven’t studied at least the “major players” to a certain degree?
No ones expecting you to convert four or five times and then back, but if you could at least a book or two on, say Judism, Islam, Budhism, Hindism, and ZoaAstrianism (Not a major player anymore, but you might be surprised at what you find) you’d have a much, much stronger case, and be able to argue your points better. Yeah, a lot of reading, but nobody said being a misionary was easy, did they?
Maybe someone here can recomend a good, fat book on comparitve religions? I can’t think of one.
You might rethink a few of your ideas. Or you might not, but youd be able to explain why you haven’t.
You might want to toss a couple of secular philosophy books on top of that pile. William Franken’s Ethics is a pretty fair introduction. Not perfect, but fairly short and readable, and gives a pretty ‘fair’ treatment on different philosopher’s ideas. I don’t agree with all his interpretations, but then I guess that’s too much to expect from anyone.
No offense to any major religion that I’ve missed. Not my forte, as it were.
I don’t mean a book on why they’re false, I mean either a “comparitive religion” type textbook, or the appropriate “holy book,” preferably a student’s version type with footnotes.
And, for the record, while the imperfection of man is pretty apparent, I’m not sure the “goodness” of God can be safely assumed. By which I mean, even if you establish that their IS a God, dosn’t mean he’s neccisarily completly good by our standards, or if he is, that he wants our worship, and so on.
Does anyone rember the name of that Twilight Zone episode where it turns out that man was created by aliens to be a weapon? Guyver went the same route.
But that’s been beaten into the ground several times just in the last few months.
–
“I am differnet from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.”
{{{{{ “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit… God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth… The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” }}}}} — Jesus
Ok, Lib, Poly, it’s up to us! No more Mr. Nice guy! Let’s start a campaign of raised voices to drive the unfit from the Church. We’ll show these fundamentalists just who the real Christians are! Yeah.
Uh . . .
Maybe not.
Ok, let’s try to speak of the Love we know, when the times come that we can believe that someone is listening.
And let us not forget our good friend CMKeller. His quiet voice is a great joy for me to hear. I find in the dedicated scholarship of his words a grand passion for God and love of his fellows. I don’t find any condemnation of others. Sounds like someone we know, doesn’t it?
Love for each other, and love for God is not an easy message to shout into someone’s face. You have to speak it quietly. And you have to leave the saving of the world in God’s hands.
Yeah, yeah. “Everyone else has religion. I’ve got the TRUTH!”. I’m sorry, but this is what every religion claims. You worship an invisible being based on unprovable beliefs that make you feel better? You are following a religion, plain and simple. I keep telling you that you can’t redefine words and phrases to make you feel better about the inconsistancies in you thinking, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. If “Love” is an actual entity, than so is “Hate”, “Envy”, “Curiosity”, etc.
Anyway, you seem like a great person, and I respect actual devotion to one’s beliefs. Too many times I’ve seen so-called christians completely breaking their own rules.