Thanks to all who reply to this post. I am very happy to hear all views, pro and con on this subject.

Originally posted by Abraham Virtue
The clergy is not the way to God. God is more powerful than we can imagine. We shouldn't insult God in this way. For God would like us to know that his reach knows no bounds. We should know that God is right there when we need God. If we go to the church or to any other to find God then we only tell God that his/her reach is not within our range.

God wants more of us than that. He wants us to work for him. He doesn't want others to work for us in order to work for him. Grinder is right, there should be no middle man. Did the prophet Abraham have a middle man???

No I don't think so.


You See???

I think he was refering mainly to charlatans like Tipton ( who is on the air again:puz
You can't eliminate the clergy who are learned in the Bible and teach. It's the greed seekers and posers who need to go.

Toltec

This is slightly tangential to the issue of getting up of your knees in your worship.

It concerns the threshold of pain.

I believe that all 'research' that has concluded that women have a higher threshold of pain than men, is fallacious.

I believe it is conceived on the premise that women give birth to children, which men do not do.

Men cannot imagine delivering a live child through the tip of the urethra in the penis. In fact, it is not plausible.

Women delivering children know that they can do so, because it has been done billions and billions of times before, irrespective of the enormous amount of accompanying pain.

Show me some valid experiments that prove that men say "ouch" or die at a lower threshold of pain than women, and I will concur with the pain threshold argument, perhaps.

Toltec

Excellent.

But I couldn't read much further than the part about removal of painful impacted wisdom teeth.

I got too squeamish.



I presume it was in full support of the mid-90s reversal of the traditional male-female pain threshold perceptive data.

Hey MA personally I think men and women are a matched set; its not a matter of "anything you can do I can do better," but rather "together we can do anything better."

When looking at religion in general, Woman tend to be seen as secondary but with respect to spiritualism its a whole other story.

The way I see it religion is about community and spirituality is about individuality, both are important to development.

Development is about both assuming that one is more important than the other makes an a$$ of you and me.

And that sir is sincerely my opinion

Toltec

I agree with you entirely.

I'm also a fiend in my reaction to imbeciles quoting imaginary statistics and fictional research. In the sound bite age it is so easy for something to become a fact, for the spongelike and soporific.

You are not one of those.

I found this quote somewhere sometime. It's in Yiddish and goes: "Beser tsu shtarbn shteyendik vi tsu lebn at di kni". In English it goes something like: "Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." Just thought it could enlighten someone. Bravory and noblety is rare nowdays, so I guess every encurraging word of wisdom comes in handy.... Keep up the good work.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

"The opposite from love isn't hate, but indifference" -- Elie Wiesel

mikro

Quote also as used by Peter Garrett in the (defunct) Midnight Oil song, "Power And The Passion" from the (somewhat) seminal album 10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1

In case you are collecting idiomatic usages.

My sister used to love Midnight Oil back when she went to school. I'll stop by her and see if she's got the album. It's a cool quote I think that speeks for itself whithout the need for any interpretation.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

Wow, you folks are really on your toes!! I realize the I sounded like the rerun of the reformation, but I have seen too many good people dragged down and robbed by those pretending to be people of the cloth. If God wants me to change my opinion of organized religion he will tell me so.

Plain and simple, there are alot of people on this earth that need to be led, that need that feeling of protection and guidance. I think if you look hard enough groingrinder, the people that don't need this kind of help, the people that would rather think for themselves and "get up off of their knees", have already done so.

The church is made up of people. There are some people gifted in leading others and supporting them in their journey. If you don't like your church, look around! There's plenty of different styles of worship that you can choose. If you don't feel a need to connect with others in worship but can still feel close to God, that's ok too. But beware, without support, buildings fall and so do people so if you choose to relate to God on your own, keep it consistent and persistent. I walked that path several years ago and found myself caught up in the ways of man's world. When I did come back to the church, I checked out many different groups and philosophy's before finding the "right" one. The one I attend now is all about Grace, which is exactly where I am and want to be. Is it perfect, NO. Do I have problems with part of it, YES! Will I let that stop me from remembering what fellowship is really about? Never.

As for kneeling, this is a sign of respect. This is done to show humility before God. Perhaps God doesn't need it but we do. We perform actions for our own good as well as God's.
But keep in mind that you can talk to God when you're standing sitting, kneeling or hanging upside down. Just talk to him.

God's will be done (if you let him).

~Jammer

One last comment:

Regarding the bible... Someone (Seeker I think) posted that it has been translated and re-translated and that the message may have been lost. This is not the case. The bible is statistically the most accurate ancient text in the world. I used to use this same argument when I was in the questioning stage of my spiritual discovery. I used to think that the bible really couldn't be trusted. Then I came across a book titled, "Surprised by Faith." It is a very short paperback book written by a scientist who sought to prove that the bible was false. He found that he was profoundly wrong! He used methodolgies in language interpretation of transcription and other ancient texts (such as the Odyssey). I won't go into the methodologies here, but his conclusion was that, statistically speaking, only 10% (at worst) of the words in the bible are incorrect and not the major ones. This means that over the last 2000 years the bible has hardly changed at all ,if at all, in terms of the message. And if it is different, I challenge anyone to explain to me what Christ said that is incorrect. As Gandi said, "Even if Christ had never existed, the sermon on the mount would hold true for me."

In peace,

~Jammer

I agree with this....

But the future of religion is going more into the scientific side of reality and the way it fits in the geometric spectrum. I know this for the Kabballah tree of life is not the tree of life. To be the tree of life it is geometrically incorrect. However it is the tree of knowledge. You can look at the 12 keys of Basilius Valentine and see the first key has a man of Mercury holding two trees. These are represented by the two post with 2 snakes(Chinese tree of life) wrapped around them. The other individuals that are in the picture are holding a seperate key. These keys fall into place as seperates however these seperates can fit in both directions of each tree. The triangles in are the real tree and the triangles out are the tree of knowledge.
Like I have wrote in the past you can draw 3 triangles and place a number in each corner up to the number 9. In each triangle you will ghet a 6 if add like a birth number in wicca. THus 666.To place this in equation you wouls use a cross at the base of the triangle so it looks like a key You can add the apex and get 3 and the base od the triangles to get 6 and the 666 equals 9. 369 a goose drank wine. The key to hell.

[Edited on 11-7-2003 by cainecrawford]

Originally posted by cainecrawford
....The key to hell.

Again and again there are no keys to hell. Infact the word hell doesn't match with the Bible at all. In English translations there is no distinction between the Unseen State/Hades and the Lake of Fire/Gehenna. Both are translated or rather interpreted hell. This is a perfect example of how translation and interpretation drains the Bible for it's meaning and message. The result of this example is that the King James Version says that everyone will go to hell, something that is a lie. We will all (or most of us that is) go to the Unseen State when we die, but not all will be cast into Gehenna. Hades is the price of wisdom. Gehenna is the price of sin and unrightiousness. The word Hell we have from Norse. The goddess Hel was she who judged the gods and cast the cowardous ones in to the fiery pit which also carried her name. The King James Version is nothing but a dictionary in pagan ways and mythology to me. It even calls Seraphim beasts and says the kingship of Babylon was a god that wasn't even invented at the time! Just so sad it's one of the best transaltions available. It is like an apple tree they have taken off theapples from and replaced them with bananas and oranges. When Hindus and Buddhists see what we do with our holy scriptures, they go woe, and I tend to do the same. Death may have been Hell to King James, but it sure isn't for all of us!

Blessings,
Mikromarius