God loves me.

reply to post by sacgamer25


You got it my friend, and it's a real screamer, a real tear jerker (unto tears of hilarity) and, last but not least, the very hand of God that wipes away the tears from our eyes.

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy

Originally posted by sacgamer25
Let me try to explain. You keep saying God of the Bible as if there is more than one God. There is only one God and he is the source of love.

I keep saying 'god of the bible' to make an important distinction between god-belief and bible-belief.

I feel I was quite clear with what I meant by that distinction in my prior post, and what I would be looking for in response to it.

If you will, re-read it. If it's still not lucid, ask again.

you free if you simply do what he said.

You're free as long as you do what I tell you

Jesus was telling the Jews that there was only one God, God had proven it to them by having them completely destroy the detestable practices of God worship within the territory across the Jordan that was given to them as there inheritance.

The problem this created was many. The Pharisees and Sadducees had become wealthy and Jesus was questioning the means to which they obtained their wealth. If all men were under one God, this would mean, according to the Law of Moses that Usury was illegal. The Law would also require all slaves to be free if they were all considered Jews, because of the Jubilee laws.

Are we not at a point that we can stop worrying about whose God and at least agree there is only one. Can we not also agree that the words that Jesus spoke, speak to love and truth, even if you don't agree with anything else in the bible?

I say I found God in the bible through his son Jesus. You might say I found the light by following Buddha. Well one of Jesus names is light. So is it ok for you if I assume that we both found the same light?

For myself and men like Buddha there would be no argument. We would both clearly see that our brother lives in the light. In the bible Christ is that light, so while I say Christ Buddha may be more comfortable calling the love of the universe light. Either way it lives in all men and both Christ and Buddha agree on this as well.

You see there is only one God and if you find him no one can deny you that you found him. Only when you find him will you realize that God is love. Christ is love. Love is in you, because they are in you. If you do what love tells you to do than love will always remain with you. If you sin against love, then love will leave you, until you ask for forgiveness at which time love returns to you.

Here is where New Age Finds Humor

Do you see how simple Jesus message really is? Hey God loves you, stop hurting yourself with sin and God's love will return to you. All you have to do is trust in God and you will overcome the sins that you commit against love.

The Humor is that's it folks, in 6000 years this is as far as we have come, God loves you stop doing bad. What is real funny is we can't do it. Why can't we stop sinning against each other? It sounds so simple love one another. Well it is that simple and it is even easier to do than it sounds.

Just do what he said and you will understand God and love in ways you can't imagine and I can't really explain, although I try.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Yes at some point in his mercy he tells us the secret behind the joke and a heavy burden is lifted.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


God does heal amputees. Maybe not in the way you would like but I'm sure Nick Vujicic would tell you he is healed.

www.lifewithoutlimbs.org...

reply to post by sacgamer25

God does heal amputees. Maybe not in the way you would like but I'm sure Nick Vujicic would tell you he is healed.

I'm pretty sure he did that himself, just like every other amputee.

reply to post by sacgamer25

And just to be clear, when I say it's a "screamer" and talk about hilarity, I mean the good kind relative to the God of love, because you know there's those images of people screaming in pain and terror and the wicked laughter of the evil one (at them and their torment), whereas what I'm referring to is clearly the precise opposite of that, in the joy and humor and everlasting love and happiness of the one who is and has been liberated in and by God for whom all possibility of hell has been utterly removed, who then laughs with God for all the right reasons.

God of love, light and life always gets the last laugh at the devil's expense, and the secret joke is at the expense of the devil within, in forgiveness, maybe even that there is no devil and never was just a type of mental illness and self-reinforcing delusion (hell of one's own making) born of nothing but a deep insecurity and unfounded fear of separation evoking a fear of judgement and of condemnation

It's a joke then at the expense of what might be thought of as the "shrinking devil", and if he shreaks just a little bit in the process of being processed (chained and sunk) then sobeit!

reply to post by AfterInfinity

"Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted."

There's only one God, one spirit, one condition.

Your fight then is with the other one, the separative one, only problem is he might not even exist so all your anger, outrage and even hatred is unfounded, so maybe the joke's on you and on your fundamental presumption based on what "religion" has made of God (as a separate being).

It would be ironic then if the one you seek liberation from isn't the God of love, but the anti-God of hatred, which can be traced to one's own self whereby all judgements and projections are a projection based on a judgement about one's self (because all is one), unless of course your desire is to be the one with absolute power and absolute will (and the judge of God), then you are the devil or devil to be who is then the one in dire need of forgiveness and love which God freely offers time and time again. But do you have it in you to cry, and to repent? If you do, then please forgive me for coming across so harsh.

I think it's all a matter of trust in the final analysis.

Who can be trusted to love as God loves, and to find that out, we must first trust in the love of God who, among other things, is love itself.

Best Regards,

NAM

reply to post by AfterInfinity


How can you say he did it himself, when he says Christ did it for him?

reply to post by NewAgeMan


I knew what you were saying, I was kind of making a joke out of the dual meaning myself.

reply to post by Philodemus


You are correct all the power is within you.

John 14:15-21
15 “If you love me, obey my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. 18 No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. 19 Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. 20 When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”

According to your own statement you were looking for righteousness at church. This means that you were searching for what you have to do to inherit heaven. The problem is you knew more about how to get to heaven before you walked into church than when you walked out.

We have all heard and most believe in the rule to love one another as we love ourselves. We have heard turn the other cheek. Husbands have heard serve your family, friends, and yes even your enemies. But what most people end up doing is serving the church building and not the church family.

This is not rewarding and it is not what the Bible teaches. It is only what the church teaches.

You need to do what Jesus said to do. Turn the other cheek, literally every time. Forgive everyone who you need to forgive. Don't do anything that could be considered sin against another. The promise of the bible is that you will win. You will defeat everything that keeps you down. Just pursue him by doing what he said.

I know you tried church for 26 years and church failed you. I don't know what you ask for from Christ but I'll give you a clue about the gifts he promised to give. The knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, to love. And the faith to go out and do it. If you are lacking in any of your abilities to love, he will teach you. This is what he promises and this is what he delivers.

Hebrews 10:5-7
5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, my God.’”
Hebrews 10:36-39

36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 37 For,
“In just a little while,
he who is coming will come
and will not delay.”
38 And,
“But my righteous one will live by faith.
And I take no pleasure
in the one who shrinks back.”
39 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.

Christ said we are to be like him. To die to ourselves and do the will of the father. For Christ the will of the father was Crucifixion, literal death and resurrection. And although the bible points to an "end time" resurrection not much is stated about this in the bible. The resurrection theme constant in the bible is the resurrection of the spirit when you do the things that you are meant to do.

reply to post by sacgamer25

I know, but sometimes it's really important to make these distinctions, to keep our good-willed, good-natured humor and fearless charm in tact. Duality is a slippery slope, and there's no way that something so magnificent should or could possibly be confused by anyone, anywhere, so it wasn't for you but also for me and the reader in general. God's double bind only goes in one direction, and he alone is capable of multiplying it as many times as it necessary to "bind the strong man". There will be no playing both sides of the fence in the divided middle here no way no how, we'll leave such a pathetic slight of hand to the bankers and other certain "PTB" in high (low) places.

Originally posted by Philodemus
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

Wow...just, wow. You just blew me away. For a good while there I was kind of worried that maybe you were getting the rational upper hand. I went through some of your posts, pulled out that little gem and wouldn't you know it, your response has really put my mind at ease! HA.

*straightens lapels, clears throat and walks out*

Did you get my reply and if so, what did you really think (setting aside the need to be right and make me wrong)?

Originally posted by sacgamer25
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

I knew what you were saying, I was kind of making a joke out of the dual meaning myself.

Yes but you were referring instead of the humor of the duality of both knowing and unknowing (in God), I know, but again, just wanted to be clear.

This notion about non-duality raises (razes?) a very very interesting idea - that Jesus Christ as the door or the gateway to heaven and eternal life in the love of God (in the Hindu tradition the love of Bhakti or devotional love) crashed the gates of hell for us all on our behalf, as an act of all-inclusive, unconditional love.

Therefore quite obviously the gates of hell cannot, and did not, prevail against him.

So there's no gate(s) of hell but the hell of our own making, or in the case of playing both sides of the fence against the divided middle, what my dear mother in her great wisdom liked to call "crazy making".

That's very funny, and very relevant (these days) to the life of the church as the mystical body of Christ.

The "bastions" then were not keeping Christ "in", but out, so as to try to uphold (while keeping Christ "at bay") a permissive framework for evil with the cross of Christ serving as a mere "convenience" for the absolution of sin. That's an abuse of the cross, and therefore an abuse of power.

And after all, who can defend or repel against, the love of God?

I love how the Lord Jesus Christ always get's the last laugh, even at the expense of the very worst parts of our own human ignorance, or even evil malicious intent and ulterior motives.

Therefore if we refuse to cry, and then to laugh, and laugh some more at the expense of the "shrinking devil" within and without, then we're totally screwed until we do (on re-cognition), each and every one of us, and at all levels no matter what our "station".

Maybe the "secret of satan" (small s) isn't a secret any more..


Cheers,

NAM

Originally posted by sacgamer25
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

I knew what you were saying, I was kind of making a joke out of the dual meaning myself.

You know sacgamer25, for a young person (by your monicur), you are about the wisest of people I've encountered here at ATS, and you have NO IDEA what an absolute relief it is for me to find someone, anyone, who really understands the true nature of my sense of humor (which I found or discovered at great pain, suffering and sorrow myself including four dark nights of the soul! lol).

I'm also very relieved to have gotten this "out there" in one form or another, so that now, as a liberated human being (in Christ) I can "go back to my regular programming" so to speak, but I don't mean the "regular programming" of the veil of ignorance, but the opportunity to really live a full and happy and self expressed life, because I am an amazing person with a lot to offer, and I do have a positive impact on others, but I've neglected to take adequate care of myself (isn't that amuzing), and hey if God so loves me, and if I so love others, then by God I ought to love myself a little more, and work a little harder, be more responsible etc. etc.

But I didn't feel I could climb down off the wall so to speak until I was understood, so thank you so much for your understanding, it really means everything to me (you have no idea, or maybe you do)

God Bless, (it's already happening by virtue of our prior inclusion),

Your brother, and everyone else's too, in Christ,


NAM
February 20th, 2013.

Because it aint easy being the Prodigal Son (LOL), and I don't mean that allegorically either but the actual fulfillment of the parable as if prophecy of sorts, and he knew it would happen in the same way that he knew that our house would be tested with the winds and the rain, he understood the true nature of the human condition, but with a radiant smile on his face! Can you imagine? What a way to live.

And he knew and understood clearly that the human being is a person, and that the individual personhood of each and every individual was meant to be loved, accepted unconditionally, and celebrated to the nth degree (the reborn person, as the authentic self, or the child within who we really are but were holding ransom to the lower bidder of inauthentic egoic attachments of all manner of absurdity and ridiculousness).

"What does it profit a man to gain the WHOLE world (be one with everything yet nothing) but lose his own soul?" (essential character, passion and enthusiasm for life and for people - love).

But if we don't have the capacity to love everyone, including ourselves well then how can we really love anyone in particular (sounds like a line from Jerry McGuire), authentically, freely and authentically as we are (lacking an ulterior motive or hidden agenda)? But when it starts with a simple, rational and logical deduction (that everything is already shared), then our (his and our) joy, together becomes our "already always" state of mind and being and the funny part is that was never and never could be.., an imposition upon the mind and heart of man to begin with! No it was everything else except faith in God and in the love of God, which was absurd, even "insane" now left behind as everything we sell off to buy up the whole field with the hidden treasure re-buried somewhere that we were wise enough to recognize on identifying it, and wise enough to move without hesitation to secure what we've found, which is what we were looking for all along but could never find for the life of us!

One must lose their life to find it again, he knew that too.

But what humor, what self expression, what freedom and liberation is this Lord?!

And that the whole thing was in our blind spot, or our unknown unknown (what we didn't even know we didn't even know), makes it all the more amuzing and playful upon recognition - because then it's easy to let the absurd BE absurd, and in the process be transformed by the light of simple awareness, but not as your prior self, no simply who ever you want to be and to become that's in alignment with just who you really are as child of God (growing and evolving).

The treasure found, is really all the... what my dear mother called "junk stuff", brought to light, in a loving, unconditionally supportive framework of encouragement, real and authentic encouragement, both for the sake of others AND ourselves, to recognize just how ridiculous and absurd we really were and presumably, still are..! (but with awareness of self, and remembrance of true self not forgotten)

And Jesus he simply upheld a standard of truth and justice, love and mercy, all the way down the line, while heading into his ordeal "double blind" and literally to the very point of death while slipping through the eye of the needle only to explode onto the scene in the resurrection life, three days later which he then shares with us all. Remember too that I mean that he was obedient unto the point of death, and really took on the whole load of sin and evil, while fulfilling the ritual and prophecy flawlessly and without fail or compromise.

It's a victory you see, that was, is and is to come, a shared one, because with him it was always for US (we).

He deduced, correctly, that a love for one and all was the only acceptable thing to do and to be, relative to which we crucified him (not so funny, but still funny provided it didn't put him down and out) but, not any more, no there's an after-the-cross-life there (see my avatar) in waiting.. something that to fully share with us, he had to reserve for us all (himself included) for the sake of everything that's worthwhile in life, but at the expense of the "shrinking devil" (bound), who dies away eventually, in a childlike giggle, and voila, we enter in to the kingdom of heaven reserved for us from the time before time whereby even death loses it's sting, and so it is funny, very funny, as a great joke shared by all at the end of time and history (as we know it), and at the beginning of a new life and a new creation (yes a REAL new age, just not one of those people who making a living off the "new age"movement), at all levels, which makes the old joke just get funnier still by far, the more we move into the new life by comparison..

and then we can sit all around and drink beer and tell each other what assholes we were, and, if we so choose! still are! LOL! (Of course I don't mean that in a bad way, but a self deprecating way that doesn't take itself seriously any more), while taking "God" as the new condition, and the new happiness and joy ever more seriously, but with an inner knowing smile if not a # eating grin everywhere you go for the no reason that is every reason.


"Behold woman (look mon) I make all things new." (while carrying the cross). (the poor dears)


But, everything was reconciled at every conceivable level. What a calling! What a hero!

He and his love is my inspiration, and he is what makes me, a prior wretch, absolutely amazing (you might even like me to meet me). He is the one who gave me back my own sense of humor and joy, and untouchable charm at least from time to time (sometimes annoying I'm sure as well).


I love you, sounds hoakey I realize, but what else am I to say or do?

So I'm screwed in the best possible way, we all are. Let our prior insanity and absurdity become the source of an endless humor, even at the very predicament of finding one's self in the midst of it all as a human being, uncertain, alone, confused, scared...

To get to laugh at all of that and death itself? Are you kidding me? I'm not about to turn away from that nor refrain from sharing it with others.


Very Best Regards, and Sincerely (most of the time),

NAM

(bows out gracefully).

reply to post by sacgamer25

That was a great post, but I'm afraid most will be left scratching their heads.

Oh we are scratching our heads all right......

reply to post by sacgamer25

God does heal amputees. Maybe not in the way you would like

Not in the way I would like.

Okay since you felt you successfully rebutted that.

What about all the Jewish people praying for their lives during the holocaust? God works in mysterious ways? Didn't pray hard enough? Prayed to the wrong god?

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


I know you hate me already a little bit and hold me in contempt, but I have to say..

You cannot employ evil at any level, to disprove or negate absolute love, nor in so doing put God as the God of love to the test.

It's the same thing with the heal the amputees "challenge".

And all I'm ever asking anyone to do is to just give consideration to other ways of looking at things, you don't have to agree, but there's no need to get upset and angry. I even offered you an olive branch.

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
reply to post by sacgamer25

 

God does heal amputees. Maybe not in the way you would like

Not in the way I would like.

Okay since you felt you successfully rebutted that.

What about all the Jewish people praying for their lives during the holocaust? God works in mysterious ways? Didn't pray hard enough? Prayed to the wrong god?

Or are you suggesting here that God as the first/last cause and Creative Agent ought to, for the sake of uprooting all evil - have an infinitely greater control over the course of human history, and that otherwise God as a first last cause and Creative Agent cannot be called "God" or is no God at all? Isn't there something wrong with that argument though (although I don't mean to make you wrong in any way at all when I say that, honest)?

Here, check this out, from my new signature, which hopefully sheds some light on what seems to be required of us as active historical participants and causal agents of change (for good OR for ill - how amuzing..) even by the necessity of free will choice.

Martin Buber, generally considered the greatest Jewish philosopher of the 20th century, believed messianism was Judaism's "most profoundly original idea" (Lowy 47-70) The "coming of the Messiah," understood literally by Jewish people for centuries, was for Buber, a non-observant but pious Jew and a socialist, a metaphor for the advent of messianic age, to be brought about by God and man. As Buber saw it messianism was Judaism's gift to humanity

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessey, a Christian philosopher (a Jewish convert) and contemporary of Buber's, described the emergence of the messianic sensibility, "Unlike other tribal or imperial people the Jews broke with the narrative that life and death, peace and war were inevitable cycles. Instead of merely longing for a lost golden age, they staked their entire existence on a future reign of righteousness and peace" (Cristuado 247). The historian of religion Mircea Eliade has noted that human beings from the beginning of history have been haunted by the mythical remembrance of a pre-historical happiness, a golden age -- thus we harbor an abiding nostalgia for paradise. Judaism was the first religion to convert this nostalgia into the belief that this mythical paradise will be realized in history as the Kingdom of God on earth. History is the realm of redemption.

According to messianic thinkers, both Jewish and Christian, our state of conflict with the world, our mortality and suffering is not a permanent human condition but is a result of our historical estrangement from God. The Kingdom of God, the reunion of God and humanity, is the remedy: "For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9). Buber emphasized that this was not a matter of gradual progress but something "sudden and immense" (Lowy 52). In Isaiah God says, "I create new heavens and a new earth." The long awaited age of peace and happiness is called the "day without evening" in Eastern Christianity, thus connoting a state of immortality. Even in the Indian Vedas we find evidence of the messianic longing in the symbol of a new beginning also connoting immortality, "the eternal dawn." The messianic age is universally described as the union of heaven and earth.

More than any other religious Jewish thinker, Buber placed the active participation of human beings -- as God's partners -- at the heart of messianism. "God has no wish for any other means of perfecting his creation than by our help. He will not reveal his Kingdom until we have laid its foundations" (Farber 90). In the early 1920s Buber stated, "We are living in an unsaved world, and we are waiting for redemption in which we have been called upon to participate in a most unfathomable way"

"And as my father hath first sent me, even so send I you." (the man among men).