Originally posted by getreadyalready
Originally posted by libertybgordeal11
reply to post by getreadyalready
Boy! I hope your wrong. If people had spirituality and then added to it morals anything could be called moral. Take for instance the best way to be spiritual. All you have to do is be thoughtful, in fact people are spiritual and never mention it simply because the act is natural! PS I dont want to visit your church.
For him, I always try to pin him down to Jesus' words stating, "No one gets to the Father, but through me." It is the singular thing keeping me from being a Christian. I do not believe any religion should be isolationist. I think everyone has an opportunity to reach enlightenment or heaven or whatever.
Good for you!
In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Judeo-Christian teachings about God offered a reasonable explanation and understanding of my spiritual experiences. Likewise, I find much truth in the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, adore the wisdom and mystery of the I Ching, and so on. But I am a Christian, firmly believe in the three Creeds of that religion (Apostles, Nicene, Athanasian).
For all I know, God has used spiritual persons to write and teach what is beneficial or even necessary throughout all peoples and time-- so that all persons can come to have access to God by many means.
And all the faults and misuses of religious beliefs I see most closely in Christianity, I must admit, are visible in most other religions to about the same degree. Likewise, all of the wisdom of God, of the spiritual Reality, and of what it is to be truly human seem to be in about equal portions in most religions.
My culture is marginally Christian, and so Christian references and symbols were commonly to be heard and seen when I was a child-- that alone is reason enough. But the way my mind works through problems, the way I respond, physiologically, to altruism and experiences of awe, and the way in which I encounter mystical experiences-- those, too, make that faith right for me-- as if God intended to encounter me through that means.
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Can I take a swing at that pitched question (about "No one comes to the Father except through me")?
Perhaps the statement of Jesus cannot bear the weight placed on it by many? Perhaps, then, there is a mystical understanding which is not about "being a Christian," or "going to Church," or accepting the creeds or even Baptism?
After all, Jesus did NOT say that "no one comes to the Father but by the Church," nor "by His teachings" nor "by the Sacraments" (although I, personally, find all of those indescribably helpful in my spiritual life).
Perhaps it means something more meaningful-- perhaps He leads the dead to the Father? Perhaps he guides all souls in all states to Paradise where they find the Father, finding them? I much prefer such speculation to any interpretation which demands only mental accent and or physical acts-- or obeying a legal code. Christianity includes intellectual accent, and physical acts (e.g., Baptism), and has behavioral expectations, but the faith and practice is not limited nor fully contained by those.
