WIll God save us if we don't believe in the Resurrection?

Okay, I'm going to once again bring up general semantics and the Buddha's teachings on interdependent causation. These billions of creatures are billions of processes that are identified as creatures being created or being destroyed but the process goes on.Buddhism advocates compassion for all sentient creatures. I'm not sure where the line is drawn. I don't think it's neccesary to specify. In Mahayana Buddhism the Bodhisatva vow involves pledging to remain in samsara until all sentient beings are saved; this would of course include great sinners such as Hitler or Ted Bundy.This vow seems impossible to fulfill in it's stated terms. The thing is that with awakening the Bodhisatva sees that "from the beginning not a single sentient being has ever existed." There are no beings to save. There is Being but no beings.The question is if there is anything compatible to this Buddhist formulation in Christianity. I think there might be in the understanding of Meister Eckert and Bernadette Roberts. The clue may well lie in St. Paul's sayings about his life being replaced by Christ, I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me,. This could be a recognition by Paul that it is being itself, referenced as Christ, that is real and not the person.lfen

Brian,I think you've pointed out something very crucial with your comment about "cerebral controtions". I think your observation that the world many people live in is better reconciled for them with Genesis than science is spot on. But then for them the "cerebral contortions" are less contorted when reconciling their experiences to the Bible than when reconciling their experiences with science. In short science requires more of them than the Bible so they go with the Bible. It just makes better sense to the way they model reality for themselves.lfen

I'm wondering what the meaing of sacrifice is in this context. Abraham would have lost much more than God had he sacrificed his Son because if I understand it God knew that three days later he would get his son back, right? This is like having a child go into surgery or something for three days but you know they will come home again and maybe the surgery was a painful ordeal but there is no loss involved.It's hard for me to see how God as described by Christians could sacrifice anything if sacrifice means loss as he is everything, no?lfen

I'm lost. What is the sacrifice? If you can have everything where is the sacrifice?I mean parents sacrifice their time for their children. But that is because they have finite lives. What loss can an infinite being have, and as I understand it Christians claim God is infinite? I don't know if that is part of your theology. I just don't at this point see how God can meaningfully be understood to sacrifice anything. A person's sacrifice makes sense because a person is limited and can't have it all.lfen

What is killed? What is death? What is dying?Where was God if he still wasn't God and what happened to the universe when he was killed?lfen

Ex,You've stated a crucial point here. Obviously there are those for whom the Gospel message is very problematic. Brian talked about it being very difficult for him to give up his faith. It wasn't particularly traumatic for me but was more of a gradual process of increasing suspicion, doubt, and skepticism. Getting involved in these boards has been an interesting return to the past for me.Having left Christianity and indeed Western Abramhamic religion behind my focus has been in philosophy, Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta. I will just state that for me the Abramhamic religions though perhaps showing elements of spiritual insight are largely shaped by human needs for a religion and that includes the needs of the priests and ruling power for a monopoly.I flat out think the notion that God is jealous is a transparent projection of the priests being jealous of any competition and is if not an insult to the source of the universe is at least a totally human misunderstanding. This attribution of the petty human emotion of jealousy to the absolute is something that I have never encountered in Buddhism or Advaita and is one of the themes that makes to me Christianity such a comparatively "dark" or primitive religion.I think I have been fairly presented with the Gospel and have found it to be a human ego created wish fulfillment fantasy with some primitive and rather nasty features though I also recognize and appreciate the real good people have done from their religious motivations to love and care for their fellow humans. I think the religion is clearly a human creation motivated by experiences of or desire for something transcendent but deeply flawed by the limits and needs of the ego.I also want to give you some feedback about the length of your posts. I like reading your posts but I think I read like maybe 25% of what you write. I am interested in your response to this but if your response goes much longer than my post I'll probably stop reading. I'm not saying either you or I are wrong in this, it's just for some reason I get lost in your posts and just move on. No blame either way just something I'd like for you to keep in mind.lfenABE: I wish to clarify that it is your long posts that I get lost in. The post just prior to this post I read in it's entirety.This message has been edited by lfen, 06-21-2005 08:16 AM

Ah, I think I understand your approach. I see it as being more of a way one publishes something whereas I think I see these posts here as more like a conversation only strung out over time and in writing. So a point is made then responded to and then maybe clarification asked for but this takes place over a series of posts rather than in one.Your approach seems more academic as in publishing something and then publishing a refutation, critique, etc. I also think you often address multiple points in a single post with appropriate quotes but the back and forth to check the originals after a point I lose track.I typically take a single point from a post to reply to. Sometimes more but if it's a deep post I try to do just one thing at a time. This is also my verbal style I like small bites with error correction questions or clarifications maintaining the flow on course. It does seem we have very different approaches to communication. I don't mind making a dozen attempts at explaining myself because I feel that each time I am improving or polishing my communication and that I am learning as I do so. I think over the months I've been trying to convey the non dual viewpoint I've improved my explanations and even my understanding.I would ask you to consider that perhaps your anticipation involves unnecessary redundancy. What if you were to do your step 1 perhaps include step 2 and then see if I get your point. If I don't my response or questions give you feedback to make even more appropriate selection of your step 3 or 4. I'm not demanding you change your approach just giving you feedback that I and I suspect some others don't read all that you put into your long posts.lfen

I think that quite early became the doctrine. As I'm leaning more to the idea that Paul was referring to spiritual Christ that was sacrificed in a spiritual realm that makes sense.On the other hand another possibility exists that there was a teacher who experienced Awakening in the Buddhist sense and tried to convey it in a tradition that had no concepts to support it. He somehow ran afoul of the authorities and killed before he could complete his teachings and his followers interpreted it in the terms of Judaism and the mystery religions. In this scenario his suffering, death, and his prescence after death to his followers is a teaching or revelation that the body and death are not the truth of being human.This interpretation is not something I expect Christians to be interested in but it's a way to see meaning in the death of Jesus and so it wouldn't be pointless. This of course contradicts the New Testaments and I don't see a way to find any but a very slim basis for this in the Bible which probably accounts for at least some of my lack of interest in the Bible except as it has influenced history and society and culture and art.lfen

I'm not following "such thought". What it the thought that you are referring to?lfen

In Franklin Merrell-Wolff's account of his awakening PATHWAYS THROUGH TO SPACE he comes on this very point. In the brief time I have with my coffee and internet mail this morning I couldn't find the passage, but he was writing of a particular time when he was caught up in what he calls the recognition of nirvana and looking at his earthly life he found nothing that was meaningful or pleasurable compared to the intensity of the consciousness he was experiencing. He felt like he could abandon his body and then he thought of all the millions still suffering on earth. He felt that was the only thing that made it worthwhile to remain alive rather than enter fully into the bliss and that was to help those who remained struggling in suffering. This is the vow of the Bodhisattva, to refrain from the bliss (might be thought of as heaven) and remain behind to help those still caught in samsara.Franklin had some interesting insights in what Jesus's experience might have been though again these are not according to Christian doctrine and most Christians wouldn't find them useful.Franklin was a mathamatician and his account of his awakening to recognition is one of the most accessible books on the experience of non duality.lfen

Brian,I wasn't questioning Jesus, I was question God's sacrifice. If Abraham had killed his son he would have lost his son for the rest of his life or so he believed. Christians speak of God sacrifice and it does seem modeled on the Sacrifice of Abraham, but God knew he would have his son back in three days. So I'm wondering how is that a sacrifice?If I give up something for three days I might speak metaphorically of sacrificing my weekend to work, or sacrificing my time with my friends in order to help some cause, but that is because I have limited time and it's not a huge sacrifice. Christians seem to be impressed that God sacrifice his son. It's supposed to be a huge deal but in what way is it really a sacrifice at all? God has all eternity so what is a loss of three days for him? He knew his son would return in triumph over the dead so why should I feel guilty and in awe that God did this?It's like if I would try to make my children guilty because I sacrificed being with my friends for three days, knowing that in three days I would be with them all I wanted? How impressed are they supposed to be by that "sacrifice"? It all seems bizarre irrationality to me. You have to ignore so much that is obvious, like HELLO! It's NOT a real sacrifice if you get it all back three days later! It's a temporary inconvenience or at worst an ordeal. Are we saying we should feel bad that God had to endure suffering that though bad is not as bad as it gets. Ordinary humans have endured worse for far longer periods of time. Has their suffering redeemed God? Is he at all grateful to us for our suffering? And if not, why not?lfen