Opinions and conclusions about Religion and God.

i'm more worried about my own worship rather than those of others. i don't care how dead a church is, i can't go if i don't feel what i'm saying. the problem is with what i feel.

Well, I'm not going to respond with the kind of length your response is deserving of simply because of time pressure for me at the moment. Also, I don't think it is my place to convert anybody. I fully believe it is the Spirit that accomplishes that.We are definitely at odds on some things. For instance, I personally find that John is the most revealing of the Gospels. However it is in Luke where we really get a picture of the hard line stuff that freaks people out. Anyone can tolerate a lovey dovey Jesus who was just another guy but with great genes. Very few are interested in what He really was, and that is God...I strongly hear what the Apostle Paul is saying, and I don't dicount anything in scripture. I believe the whole Bible. That doesn't mean I can answer all of the very difficult questions that people raise. The details are unending.I totally agree with you about some churches being false and victimizing people. The lifting of snakes is a perfect example. But I do understand it's proper interpretation:The serpents are lies... demonic in origin. The poison is the wine(so to speak) of the false prophets. The christians job is to clear the bushes (the lies) and uproot them, all the while ingesting the deadly falsehoods and being unharmed, because they are so easy to see for the seeing. The goal is to give an unobstructed view of Christ.There are any number of way to say the same thing as I just mixed metaphors in my interpretation. The Bible is full of metaphor like that, not to mention parables. It is like encryption. You need the code to understand it, and the code is the Spirit of God.I find a lot of the Old Testament stories of battle and war, are direct examples of the spiritual war we face today. In those stories are tremendous lessons and confirmation and encouragement almost with a wink and a nod. In other words, the stories themselves seem to make no sense, but their true meaning is elsewhere. It is a supernatural experience to catch a glimpes of that revelation.This is going to be too much for some, but it is the truth. I understood very little of the Bible beforehand. I only followed God's leading, and that was a confession on my part very simple and genuine like the thief on the cross. After being born again and in a very short time, it was as though the whole Bible was revealed to me as one grid. Not a lot of details, I just understood it. Very difficult to explain and not very logical. Just Divine revelation! I was blind but now I see.There is only one requirement to know God. That's one of the many things that made Jesus unique... So many today preach (falsely) that we cannot know the truth. Jesus said flatly you will know the truth. And the requirement is to give over total control of your life to him. Then he will enter and you will see. It is not easy...when you are born of the Spirit that wrote it, you quickly begin to see why it is called the living Bible in many quarters, and how the false gospels were seen for what they were... Christianity is not a religion. It is reality! It's not about belief, it is about the blind having their sight restored.Faith? yes!... but not at all blind.That is my story and I'm sticking to it, not to mention I'm rambling and trying to rush...

it says things that are true, but not in a quality that i like. as i said, something about christ preaching himself doesn't sit right with my view of him as a humble prophet and martyr -- and sacrifice. son of god. and faith-testing. like you wouldn't believe. but everyone discounts something in the bible. i try to be honest about what do and don't like. but for instance, christianity as a matter of practice discounts leviticus, and the kosher laws. we feel they have been lifted, because we are under a new covenant. have you ever even read leviticus? ...or numbers? half of numbers is mind-numbingly dull. yeah, i don't know about that. they are, however, following the direct commandment of the bible:

quote:

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Mar 16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

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yes, but, no. in my educated opinion, i whole-heartedly disagree. there is nothing encrypted in the bible. there some more metaphorical meanings, and some passages that are metaphor (parables), but i do not see that there is anything hidden from the average reader. everything is fairly plain to see -- the only time anything seems hidden from anyone is when i am dealing with some of the fundamentalists on this board. take my last two debates with iano, constantly trying to get him to agree to the words on the page. it's very frustrating to try to debate with people who do not wish to see past their assumptions.if there is a spirit involved in that case, it's one of deception and not of god. i think that the more you understand the stories themselves, the more you will understand what is built on top of them. the literal is the foundation: you have to get that right first. a crooked foundation results in a crooked building. i find this is part of the "honeymoon" with christianity. we all go through it, not everyone comes back home. trust me, i thought i understood too. i didn't. i had no idea. we think we do, because the bible is such an integral part of our culture -- but we never stop to look at it through the eyes of the people who wrote it.for instance, we all know the story of adam's apple. it's a small example, but it's not in the bible. even a moderately good literal reading will demonstrate that it could not have been an apple, either. we have lots of stories like this in our oral traditions regarding the bible and christianity -- and few of them are actually in the bible. for instance, the one you mentioned earlier, the fall of satan, is not. it's in milton's "paradise lost" and a few similar works. it's in some apocryphal texts (though varied highly). but it's nowhere in the bible. yet, we all "know" it, and it's often preached in church. well, the requirement was "ask.""ask, and you will recieve. seek, and you will find."we can know the truth. we just rarely want to. christianity is a faith. it's a belief. i'll go into this a bit more in depth in a later post. but the more i study, the more i find that there is less and less basis for christianity. not in judaism, not in history. it's very, very distressing to be faced with evidence like that.faith, by definition, is blind. and this is no exception -- we are not given tangible proof. even spiritual proof is doubtful, at best, and easily explained by modern pyschology is nearly every case. the situation, nearest i can tell, has been especially rigged for this one question:given nothing, will we follow?Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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Neither Hitler nor Jane are the final arbiters of what is good or bad - society is. That's what morality has always been.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I agree with you about this. I was just being pedantic because you seemed to be suggesting that justice being blind in the conventional sense was somehow a problem. Maybe I should have kept my nose out .

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Your analogy is nonsense, iano, and it's actually counter-productive to your case. In law it's a fundamental principle of justice that the correct person is punished; if it were acceptable that anyone who confessed could be punished, the clear up rate would be phenomenal - every crime that gets even the slightest publicity has a whole host of kooks confessing to it.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Admin unfurled the stop sign on our offshot earlier JM. No doubt the issue will unfurl again

I was going to reply to your post even before I saw the reference to myself, because my own background (including the psychedelic drugs) is quite similar - although I'm not nearly so credulous .My own opinions aren't that different from yours (at least your current ones), although I don't believe that nihilism or determinism are a necessary outcome of atheism and materialism.The question of how much we should trust our own experience isn't really what the Problem with Science II thread is about, but I understand where you're coming from now. It might be worth you starting a thread about it if you can find a good hook.P.S. Do drugs if you must, but not too much

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I missed that. I should stop replying to posts on page 5 of 20 .As you say, I'm sure we'll get to discuss it again.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

http://www.clcnj.org I didn't really assume anything about the church you went to. There are many churches around here that are not old stuffy churches that claim all those things too, but fall short. But things are changing rapidly.Where I live in the greater NY area, there are many liberals. Even the conservatives have a liberal flare to them. It reflects in the churches as well. Our church is mostly professional people that grew up around this area. It is a nice blend of all facets of life, and somehow we manage to find a middle ground. Just this Sunday, my Pastor mentioned the recent battle about same-sex marraige.I asked him point blank, "besides religious reasons, so we have any reason to reject same-sex marraige?" His answer was no.Then I asked, "do we have a right to force our religious views on the rest of the nation?" He answered no, and added that people just don't understand that.

Yea, I can totally relate to that. If I didn't "feel" the Holy Spirit the way I do now, then I would not be able to worship God the way I do now. I used to look at people and say "they are crazy", before I had anything to go on. How can we worship a God that we do not know?For the time being, if you don't "feel" God, then I can only humbly suggest to worship Him in spirit and truth by being yourself, but never stop looking for Him. I don't think this is a problem for you, since you have no problem being yourself, and do not want to be decieved.peace.

No one's listening.Edited by scoff, : No one's listening.

What have you learned concerning your overall views about Religion in general and God, specifically? One thing for sure. Religion is not logical, although I believe that the idea of a Creator is entirely logical. The problem that vexes my heart a bit (just a wee bit! ) these days is the Pastors and teachers whom I DO trust and whom are otherwise very intelligent people who are not political activists, good with their families and other peoples families as well...in fact, the only thing they all share is a firm and unbending belief in Biblical inerrency and literalism. I personally never have seen God as something I conjured up. IMHO, He exists. Its a choice of belief, not of imagination. I certainly never conjured up the first overwhelming waves of emotion and awareness that washed over me when I first got saved. I agree with you, however, that expecting God to be a sugar daddy or a genie is NOT the right way to approach a relationship with a Deity. Religion most certainly DOES have many negative influences. What do you know?? Brother Ian and I agree totally on this point! ....and, as we well know, people never do God like God does God! You are well on your way to being cured of religion! Keep loving Jesus, Rat! I know what you mean, Brenn. For me, I turned away from the religious people and concentrated on talking and communing (through prayer and quiet time) to God alone. He has yet to let me down,even though He won't let me win the lottery! Don't believe everything you read, Rev! As for groupthink, I totally agree that many if not MOST Christians never actually think for themselves until after they pull back from the trappings of organized religion. Then, perhaps, armed with wisdom and a better relationship with God outside of the show, the Christians can reunite and pray as equals, not merely mouthing the words on a big screen! Im SO glad that you say probably, Kermie! I think that you not only engage your thinking process but that you married it! Inseparable, you two! I got saved because I was touched by God. I never could differentiate which of the three persons of God touched me, but logic says it was the Holy Spirit. The Bible confirms some of my beliefs but never originates them. He is that personal, for me. (remember that God has existed long before the Bible!) So many questions! Why can't we just accept that we will know some day but not today? I totally understand what you are saying! I look at it as "The price of seperation is death". Sin=seperation. The whole point that God wants us to know is that like a fish out of a fishtank, we can't live without Him...yet He would rather that we willfully acknowledge Him and enjoy the water! I like your stuff, cowboy! I agree that humans do not explain God except unto our own image, usually. I think, however, that without God, we will never explain the mysteries of not only the universe, but of our own inner universes. You were a smart 13 year old! That just proves that humans are seperated from their source, especially the religious ones! You can say that again!

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“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way” --C.S.Lewis

i still feel god. but i think i feel him more now in that nature of mercy and kindness rather than someone with rules and requests and demands. i am more than aware of my failings, but i think it is more important to be kind and forgiving and generous and loving and so forth to others than to work so hard to achieve something i cannot be but instead to be humble and contrite and repentant. but thank you for allowing me this. i really appreciate it. you are a rare and precious gem.

Operating in god's grace is a huge break through for people to accomplish. I have been to conferences specifically on the subject. It is part of the reason I have decided to be transparent about who and what I am, as you can see from these forums, I let it all hang out there. I don't care, because I know I live by grace alone. The rest is me just learning stuff.