The God That Paul Marketed Over Time.

In fact, things are even more extreme than that. Belief can even be contrary to the evidence because the evidence is just one or facts that a believer can deny. Belief may have nothing to do with reality. Even reliance on non-conclusive evidence can be supported by belief.

Its nonsense if one is an atheist. It is certainly not nonsense to a believer. God exists--has always existed--and always will exist. Of course we will. Lets roll up our sleeves and get to work, shall we? And I have told you time after time that we need to also accept Jesus into our hearts and minds for it is only through communion that reconciliation and transformation can take place. I fear we will never see eye to eye on this point.Perhaps jar is right---perhaps the atheists,satanists,Buddhists, animists, etc etc will get a free pass regardless if they acknowledge God or not. I would think, however, that God would be more impressed with someone who admitted they needed His help to change rather than one who simply shows up and asks "yo, where is the party"?

I think Phat that we have to be careful of how we understand John 1. John was a literate first century Jew and would be intimately aware of Genesis 1. Genesis 1 has Yahweh speaking the world into existence, and that it was this "speaking" things into existence, (which isn’t saying that he couldn't have spoken things into existence through an evolutionary process), John called God's wisdom and creative action God's "Word", and using personal pronouns such as He to refer to the Word.
Here is how John, (or whoever the author is), starts his gospel.

quote:

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1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

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It is ambiguous if we try to understand the same way we would read a newspaper. How can the Word be God and at the same time be with Him. I suggest that what John’s first century Jewish audience would hear is that God was there at the beginning of time, and that God is responsible for our existence. He then separates out God as a being from His wisdom which he, again, calls the Word’ of God. He then later says that the Word became flesh. He is saying that Jesus perfectly embodied this Word or wisdom of God. He is then saying, that if we want to understand the true nature of God we are to look at the one who perfectly embodied this His nature.
John is saying that it is God and His Word that existed at the beginning. We know Jesus had a day on which He was born. I think that a lot of people believe that Jesus remembers a time of walking with the angels in heaven but frankly that just doesn’t fit with the Gospels. This isn’t to deny Christ’s deity. Think of what Jesus was saying when He referred to Himself as the Son of Man. This is an obvious reference to the book of Daniel and particularly to Daniel 7 where one like a Son of Man’ is presented to the Ancient of Days. Here is the quote:

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13 In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

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It is Yahweh, the "Ancient of Days" who enthroned Jesus, made Him Lord and gave Him dominion over His eternal kingdom. This is how we can understand Jesus as being both God and man.It seems the Christians are so focused and seeing Jesus as God that they forget that He was also a man. Remember; wholly God and wholly Man. Jesus would have had intimate knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. As we can see in the Gospels He was also a man who prayed. It becomes clear through this that He believed as matter of faith, that He was God’s anointed one, the Messiah and that in addition, He was somehow embodying Yahweh’s return to His people. It was this resolute faith that carried Him into Jerusalem knowing what the result would be of what He was doing.The problem as I see it is that we our stuck with our 21st century mindset when we read the Bible. We have to read it in the way it was intended, and it was intended primarily for people of the first century and written by first century Jews.

It's nonsense if you read the text.A particular interpretation of the text will "make sense" to anybody who believes the interpretation. If you believe it's talking about the Tooth Fairy, that interpretation will "make sense" to you. And I have asked you time after time why people who claim to have that communion and reconciliation and transformation don't SHOW the transformation. It isn't a question of whether or not we "need" His help. It's a question of whether He needs ours. Remember that Noah had to build his own ark. It's the faith-only crowd that's offering a get-out-of-hell-free party. All I've offered is blood, sweat, toil and tears.

The Faith only crowd is most assuredly not correct. You have made a good case that works show our faith. I might only add the words of Paul in Corinthians to make my case that belief too is important. Paul seems to insist on separation of believers from unbelievers. You seem to propose that doing good works will itself be proof of belief. Perhaps you are right...if we can get enough atheists feeding people, perhaps we wont have to worry about them. The challenge will be getting the faith only crowd to sweat a bit.

There you go again Phat just taking verses out of context and in doing so totally perverting what Paul was saying and more importantly, what Paul did.The Jews held themselves as a People Apart, a Chosen People.Paul was totally opposed to that as was Jesus.Paul preached that you did not have to keep Kosher, did not have to get circumcised, did not have to hold yourself apart from the rest of society.Jesus got into trouble by reminding the Jews that they were NOT special.Jesus got into trouble by pointing out that God did not reserve blessings for believers but rather sent them to all people.Both Jesus and Paul have said belief is NOT important but behavior is.

I get your point, but remember that you dont believe that transformation is possible...that it can be proven...or whether it is even necessary.And to be fair, the only way that it could even be remotely shown to others would be by our actions...our good works.Does not Paul advocate belief and works?

But even that does not show belief.All that can be seen are the acts themselves. There is no way to see belief or piety or grace or salvation or being born again or transformation. None of those things show and them what claim those characteristics far too often do not display the traits that might indicate such things.Paul markets his beliefs, but that again means little; it is his actions that actually transmit truths.

Fair enough. Lets look at some scrip. 1) What truth is Paul talking about?
2) What lie is Paul talking about?

In the passage you took out of context Paul does not give even a clue what "truth" he is talking about but the lie he describes sounds a lot like modern Biblical Evangelical Charismatic Christianity; like the folk that market "being born again" and "being transformed" and "being saved" and "being washed in the blood of the Lamb" and all the easy feel good Christianity.

So did Jesus in Matthew 25. He pointed out that those who profess belief are not real believers. Those who act on their beliefs are.

The lie is the idea that you can demonstrate belief by saying, "Lord! Lord!" The real demonstration of belief is treating the least of His brethren as you would treat Him. The branches that do not bear fruit (e.g. love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) will be cut off and cast into the fire.

At the risk of sounding like Im regurgitating what "I've been taught" I will state that I believe the truth to be Jesus Christ...the eternally living truth. Critics may again ask why the messenger is more important than the message...but I'm convinced that the reality of god eternally in communion with humanity is big news indeed and a worthwhile truism.Our world is flawed...humans will not ever make it by themselves...without acknowledging and embracing this communion...this message.The lie is the idea that humans dont need God and that we are simply expected to embrace this world the way we have created it...but our entire system is as vacuous as the Tower Of Babel....

Thank God for dyslexia because I read that as "internally". It doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether God is eternal or even if He exists at all unless we internalize the concept. If your "belief" doesn't become who you are and what you do then it isn't real and there is no "communion". It's as vacuous as the Tower of Babel.

I don't need your god so how can it be a lie?This is just simple logic, you think all swans are white, well I've just flown in and I'm a black.I also don't accept that our systems are vacuous, they're what make us civilised. Your god apparently created the world as a kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, eat anything you can catch environment - we had to create our systems in order to be better than that. Your god is utterly hopeless. What we have, we created ourselves.