Corrupting the Old Testament at all costs?

Phat,The dominant cultural authority in the US descends from Europe especially England and so the dominant religious influence is European Christianity (the distinction is to acknowldege the Orthodox and other non Europe based churches.) You are an individual who has embraced one branch of European Christianity and found a fulfilling meaning in it.Religious authorites invoke Divine authority to legitimatize their leadership. Several of the major world religions base the authority of their decisions on one or more sacred texts. Since they use differing texts or differing interpretations of text, the difference between Islam and Christianity is a different collection of texts though some books are held in common, whereas the difference between Shite and Sunni, or Baptist and Catholic is one of interpretation they disagree on matters of religious significants to them. Ultimately I see this as cultural conflict. The question can be oversimplified and has been to asking "whose side is God on.", usually expressed as "God is on OUR side." btw, I suppose this aspect of Christianity is one of the reasons I finally threw my hands up in dismay saying "this is ridiculous" and realized I just didn't believe this stuff.It is a factual experience repeated millions of times around the world by believers that they feel their belief is TRUTH and that everyone who doesn't believe as they do are in error and risk all sort of grave consequences. And then they argue scriptures or interpretations of scriptures with one another.Brian and academic religious study is doing something else, something I find interesting and more useful than arguing whose beliefs about God are true and whose false. What happens of course instead of pleasing one group of believers let's call them some arbitraty name like the Anabaptists of the Holy Books and displeasing all the other followers, the scholars displease ALL believers! Why? Because they don't take any of these books as being the TRUTH of the LIFE as AUTHORIZED by the CREATOR of the UNIVERSE and therefore my group is right and everybody elses group is wrong and if they don't repent and join our church they can, NAY they will go to HELL... HA HA! My inner rebelious adolescent got a little carried away there, but I want you to that that is how I felt at 17 and still feel when I here the smug self righteous arguments of believers on any faith as they go on about how they are right about God. I feel embarassed and irritated that you and however many millions of humans behave routinely in this fashion.Yes I know religion is such a part of the human condition and it is a part of my condition. Brian is trying to bring rationality and sanity to these mixed up irrational beliefs that have inspired people to good and to conflict and evil.When you say God can be with us in no other way then you are just continuing this. God can't be with the Jews cause they don't accept Christianity's notion that "Immanuel, God with us, was made possible to all through the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In THIS day and age, God can be with us no other way." And for the same reason God can't be with Muslims, Hindu's, etc. God is with you and against all those who don't believe as you think they should. Of course there are Muslims, Jews, and Hindu's etc. thinking the same thing of you. Adults living out childishness. Now in the last sentence maybe some of the Godly wisdom you speak of slipped into your fingers and you wrote a truth you don't yet recognize: Brian is doing God's will. Brian's writings are valid. If God is as great as you claim then he is not your possession, nor the possession of any religion. You don't get to tell God what he is and you don't get to tell me what God wants me to do, that's between me and God. And if God thinks it's useful for me not to believe in him maybe he has a purpose to further in developing science for example. So telling me I should be a Christian like you is you saying "God, you aren't doing things right. You are letting these people do something different that what I want them to do. Make them be Christians and go to church." If you have faith in God then trust the source, trust the way things are, accept, and respect the facts, respect What Is.Brian and bible scholars are trying to understand the books of the Bible as they were written, not how they are being used by people to buttress their current religious beliefs. Get over it and learn something.I recognized that this rant is really not directed at you. It's from my past and the generally good, decent but narrow minded people I grew up with in a small rural "Christian" town. And 50 years later I'm hearing the same nonsense about monkeys, evolution, and religion. This forum sometimes functions as time travel to the unfinished business of my formative years.I don't have problems with religionist loving God. It's the doctrinal nonsense that they insist is a part of religion or truth that I find so objectionable.lfen

Phat,It hardly causes a stir because until now no one has ever heard of that idea! Where did you get the idea the Dalai Lama was a God?The Dalai Lama does carry quite a charge for the Chinese who are illegally occupying Tibet but that is understandable in a political sense.In Christian cultures even today Judaism and Islam cause quite a stir for religious and now also political reasons. I don't think it's Jesus that causes a stir at all, rather it's the actions of the Christian church claimed in the name of Jesus. But then that would be his will also!lfen

Jar,You are quite correct. Sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. I bet there are tons of apologetics arguing this piece of dogma to be regarded as original though.lfen

Phat,Clearly Christianity makes much of it. I don't understand why. For myself if Jesus had been born of Joseph and Mary the rest could have stood. Of course. But the organized religious options are not about accepting God (or a source greater than the ego) they are about accepting the beliefs etc. that people claim are divine revelation. My objection is the people claiming that their beliefs are what God wants me to believe. God has never told me this. Others like yourself have told me this.lfen

Phat,Have you also read any Upanisheds? Tao Te Ching? Discourses of the Buddha? Conversations with Ramana Maharshi? Not sure how you are using or defining the word "concept" or "person".
I would say we can have a concept that there is an absolute, or a concept that things are relative. Not sure what it is you meant that something as a concept can become relative implying that something as a concept can be absolute. For me concepts are abstractions as thus always as concepts relative, though we may conceptually assert that there is an absolute.lfen

An Eastern metaphor that I've found useful in the "search for truth" is that of ascending a mountain, the goal being the mountain peak. People may start anywhere at the base of the mountain, they could be on opposite sides and there are many paths up the mountain. Some paths are gradual, slow and winding back and forth, other paths are more direct but may involve scaling difficult cliffs, and so forth.The Eastern teachers often recognize different types of people for whom certain approaches are better suited. Some people are devotional in nature and the practise of loving God in whatever form with rituals, prayers, songs, the Bhakti path is recommended. Our people express love in doing for others, serving God by serving other beings. Other people seek understanding and they look to philosophy and theology. Others still want to penetrate and see directly, experience directly truth for themselves.Ramana Maharshi, for example, talked with Hindu's of many orientations, but Muslims, Christians, and seekers of all sorts came to him. He never sought to have anyone change their religion.My primary repulsion with Western religions is the notion of the one exclusively true path of conceptual belief. The notion that my group has the truth and all other groups are not only wrong but under the influence of evil delusion from the devil etc.It's a good thing you have a path that is meaningful to you. And there is no need to follow other's paths. On the other hand if you extrapolate that your path should be everyone's path. I consider that error. If you further extrapolate that all those who don't follow your path are somehow wrong, bad, dangerous, under evil influences, inferior, or whatever that I find a pernicious notion whether held by a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever sect or individual.lfen

doc,You are most welcome! Thanks,lfen

You are correct that is the point of the story. This is very interesting statement one that is self contradictory unless you have had intuitions into the nondual. If this statement about the Lord is true what does that imply about you and I and indeed all sentient beings?Second question before I must be off about my day. Do you think this Lord existing alone on the mountain top cares whether he is referred to as Yahweh, Siva, Brahman, the Absolute, the Source, What Is, etc.?lfen

The journey, the path up this mountain from any starting point, along any path eventually arrives at the same place, the summit. You stated that the Lord exists alone on the mountain top. So when anyone arrives at the summit they discover only One exists. What or who then were the multiplicity that appeared to exist along the path? If only God exists at the end of the journey, who are you? Who am I? Who or what is anything?lfen

Phat,Had I intended to mean that God didn't exist until the end of the journey I would have written, "God ONLY exists at the end". What I wrote was taken from your statement that God was alone on the summit, only he was there, no one else. So the metaphor of the mountain arrives at the end and you stated, I believe quite correctly, that at the end of the journey ONLY God exists. I recommended Bernadette Roberts book THE EXPERIENCE OF NO SELF. Bernadette has been a Christian all her life and spent some years in a convent as a contemplative nun the goal being uniting her will, or accepting the will of God as her will. When she felt she had done that she left to marry and raise a family and live in the "world". She discovered her journey was not complete and in her books she writes about what she found at the summit.lfen