What is so scary about thinking, or discovering, your Religion is false?

reply to post by FlyersFan


The problem with that argument is that the prophetic framework of the OT paved the way for the NT.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

That's rooted in ignorance, because the truth is that in Christ we are all of incalculable value as children of a loving God.

Also, you too have to be willing to try on the other paradigm without making assumptions ie: what if it were true, what would be the implications of that? to avoid the hypocrisy of asking the other side to try on the paradigm that it were also shown to be "a lie".

There is something rather repugnant about the nature of this thread that I can't quite put my finger on, but it's incongruent with an honest pursuit of the truth or of enlightenment.

Really?

No, it's not 'incongruent' with an honest pursuit of the truth. You seem to be content with your beliefs, and quite entertained by them. Glad you find everything so laughable.

But it is "Ignorance" (with a capital I) to think that there aren't MILLIONS of Christians who don't find it "hilarious" or "funny" at all.

Seriously.

They take it to mean they are worthless sinners who need 'salvation' because they are 'unworthy.'

I don't think you've read through the entire thread. Repugnant?

To ask people if they've questioned their beliefs?

I don't know what else to say. It's common sense.

NewAgeMan
The problem with that argument is that the prophetic framework of the OT paved the way for the NT.

Isaiah and Daniel are not the problem. The problem is where the science has proven the stories wrong. It's irrefutable.

Example - DNA science and basic mathematics prove that all of humanity didn't come from 3 pair of reproducing humans who lived on a boat 5,000 years ago. It's impossible.

To say that someone needs to believe in Noahs Ark to be a good christian, and that they need to turn a blind eye to the fact that Noahs Ark has been debunked .... that's a lie and evil. IMHO.

(and yes, we have had some people come on here and state that, in order to be a real christian, you have to buy all the silly stories that are in the Old Testament)

reply to post by NewAgeMan

The problem with that argument is that the prophetic framework of the OT paved the way for the NT.

It's not like all of the contemporaries of Jesus hadn't been taught the OT.

This is one of the lamest arguments of all, in my opinion. A writer (or writerS) who want to create a story that backs up the previous story is QUITE capable of doing so.

I've written a trilogy of fiction. It's NOT HARD to make volume 2 match up with the cues/clues in volume 1.

Jesus himself was familiar with the OT.

Do you dispute that??

reply to post by wildtimes


You also need to do the same "work" you're asking others to do, but are not willing, and neither can you see it. It's kind of strange, and very one sided.

wildtimes
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

The problem with that argument is that the prophetic framework of the OT paved the way for the NT.

Jesus himself was familiar with the OT.

Do you dispute that??

Not in the least. He was well aware of it, knew it like the back of his hand and intentionally set out to fulfilled the prophecy, he and John the Baptist both, to a t, quite literally, but the OT's prophetic framework culminated in the Great Work of Jesus Christ and it served as a roadmap for him, first in terms of his own self discovery, and as to how he worked to fulfill and complete it.

One more thing, and it's something that I'd ask people to try on or consider, really consider.

Jesus, Yeheshua, embodied and demonstrated, made known, made manifest, nothing less than the LOVE OF GOD almighty, the first and the last, the Alpha and Omega of existence. God communicated his love for humanity and the world through a HUMAN BEING, by design and as intended from a first/last cause beginning with the end in mind even to the degree that it's written in the moon, earth, sun, planets and starry skies. so that Jesus would be able to discover his sent-calling, and so that we, in hindsight, wouldn't miss it.

Does anyone have any idea how extraordinary and wonderful, and yes, humorous and joyful that is? What a marvel, what a GIFT!

And the Liberation inherent in it, isn't a permissive framework for bad behavior, but neither does it condemn us for our past conduct which was driven by and rooted in ignorance, no it invites us to be spirit led and spirit-expressed, and to come to know ourselves as we are known and as we truly are as children of a loving God and as sacred beings of incalculable value.

But what kind of self knowledge is this?!

It's not fear of losing such an understanding or frame of reference, but fear of gaining it, and what that might mean in terms of who and what we were, are and are becoming, because people fear transformation, and yes, do not feel worthy of such Mercy, whereby Justice has been served yet without making any compromise with sin and evil, including our own sins, and those that have come to us via the family of origin, generationally.

It is our ego-centric, sinful self, and the willful pride of man (and woman) who is AFRAID of the truth of the Great Work and Magnum Opus of Jesus Christ, and that IS funny from the POV of the Liberated self, in love, and absolute forgiveness, looking back on the wretch we were, oh it might evoke some tears at first, but then the childlike giggle eventually breaks through..

We were made to dance with God in joy and everlasting happiness and satisfaction which is capable of altogether transcending the suffering and sorrow brought on largely by our own ignorance and misunderstanding of deeply seeded psychological and spiritual issues, predicaments, dilemmas..

So instead of attacking the remedy to the situation, largely to protect certain psychological and behavioral patterns, instead of being insulted by God's Great Love, why not try it on for size and in the process re-discover our true self as we really are before everything went haywire and we tried to find our satisfaction in things that can never satisfy..?

And here it is freely offered up for real consideration.. as a FREE GIFT of Grace which is the love of God made known or demonstrated and made manifest via action (communicated).

Don't pretend not to understand it, don't look away, make excuses. If you wish to reject the gift to keep on ah dancing with the wrong guy, fine, just don't pretend to be in the right or righteous about your own willful ignorance.


Best Regards,

NAM aka Bob

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Um, no. I don't agree with your evaluation of my rejection of theism. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I would venture further to suggest you have a lot of us pegged wrong. Have you read nothing we've posted? Your words suggest you haven't. You should rectify that.

Not that it truly bothers me. We can't win them all, nor should we try to. Someday, your eyes will open. And if they don't...well, that's your problem to solve. Sorry.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

None of that changes the fact that the Old Testament is wrong.
The New Testament can stand alone. Jesus doesn't need Noah or Exodus to stand on His Own.
It's not a sin to admit that the Old Testament stories are just that .... stories.

"The unexamined life is not worth living."
~ Socrates

The whole "Jesus paradigm" amounts to an issue of integrity (wholeness) and a breakdown and restoration of of integrity.

His integrity is granted us by an "intercessory Grace" (God's love in action) to fill in our gaps, so to speak, making us whole again and in the process giving us, moment by moment an opportunity for a fresh start, for a renewal. It's a generative, evolutionary principal of death and resurrection, of differentiation (judgement) and reintegration (in forgiveness). It's a type of catalyst, a boostrap, or a leg up by which we too might enjoy the benefits of a reconciliation and atonement (at one ment). It integrates us, accepts us and envelopes us, even in spite of ourselves and our prior sinful nature and compulsion, so it is like a great joke told at the expense of the devil within while inviting us to be and become our "better angel" without division in absolute forgiveness including self forgiveness and acceptance, and so, we'll either be insulted and offended by it, or we'll get it, and laugh at our own prior ignorance and absurdity. And sometimes when dealing with things that cut to the core and that wrestle with the true nature of the human condition, in order to protect and preserve the very best of the best (Virtue) the very best defense has to represent a good offence.

There is always a choice, and there is always an attachment to an outcome, and so the choice remains to either be insulted and offended while protecting our right to pursue the status quo and remain as we were bearing in mind that "we are (and were) all of us mentally ill to a greater or lessor degree, lacking in perfect mental health and well being" (M. Scott Peck, MD from "The Road Less Traveled, A New Psychology of Love, Tradtional Values and Spiritual Growth"), or to celebrate what's been accomplished for us and on our behalf whereby God, in his wisdom, has done for us what we could not do for ourselves.

So it IS funny, if we accept it.

I would rather choose to glean from it whatever is there to be had and then have the audacity to receive it's gift and benefit in full even in spite of myself, than to choose to be offended or insulted by it's "treatment".

Jesus was well aware that half measures avail us of nothing formative, and lasting.

As an allegory or metaphor, consider the Oyster and the formation of it's precious pearl. At first, the pearl begins as a single grain of sand, which is really an irritant to the oyster and something alien to it's nature, but it nevertheless "chooses" to receive and allow that irritant to remain in it's heart and then slowly, over time, by a process of compounding and aggregating it's secretions (life juice) around the grain of sand, what was once an irritant becomes an integral part of the oyster in the form of a precious pearl, a pearl so magnificent that it is fit to adorn the very gate (entry point) of heaven as a point of attraction. We in our sinful nature are just like that grain of sand, and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is like a cosmic clamshell or oystershell capable of integrating and restoring us, and making us whole and at one with the perfect holiness and integrity of God as the all-in-all, even something utterly new and transformed, by the aggregate compounding, over time (however fast or slowly) of the Spirit and the Life which is the very essential nature of Christ.

We are works in progress in need of a catalyst, and Christ and his Great Work is that catalyst, which is nothing less than the love of God in eternity from beginning to end with us included and not excluded, reintegrated and made whole instead of fallen to piece and orphaned.

We were not left orphaned in spite of our separation due to our sins and our ignorance, and like I said, that's FUNNY!

How did he know?!!!

reply to post by FlyersFan


Check out, in regards to the OT foreshadowing the Great Work of Jesus Christ at the cross, and beyond the tomb.., the prophetic allegory of Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac and the two-horned Ram conveniently situated nearby caught up in a thicket on the mountain - this.

Does that not blow your mind?

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Your explanation works wonderfully...as long as a few select, huge assumptions are made. It is those assumptions I keep getting stuck on. Assumptions which are generally chased with a liberal dose of faith, but as you know, I do it straight out of the bottle. Your assumptions regarding God and his blood magic are much too incredulous for me to swallow. I was just reading something on the Facebook Theosophy page about that. Here, I
will share it:

Blood is in occultism regarded as a very dangerous and powerful thing because it keeps attracting energies that are not able to reincarnate yet as they are of a very low vibration. That is why blood in satanism and rituals is very important. By attracting negative entities they are gaining more strengths because those entities will literally get into the aura of black magician through which they can operate.

Is this the truth of your so-called "Holy Spirit"? I do wonder...

reply to post by AfterInfinity


There is only two assumptions I am making. One, that Jesus was a person of character, and two, that he really did go the cross, and came out of the tomb three days later, having, imho, threaded the needle, to complete the ritual, placing himself and the ritual at the apex of the divine order as a type of evolutionary principal of life meeting life ie: transcendent of the spring equinox and winter solstice which itself is a type of allegory, which he read correctly. Even the Northern Cross in the Constellation of Cygnus lies down on the northern horizon during summer and picks itself up to stand upright in winter. "if you want to be my disciple then you too must pick up your cross and follow me". He read it like a roadmap and followed the instructions set forth from the very origin of creation and before the foundation of the world, to a t, recognizing these things as the first father's own testimony to himself as the son of God son of man. What this says about MAN is equally as vital as what it says about the nature of God and of God's love for humanity, and the GENIUS, and anticipatory ah remedy to present the Gift of Life and reveal man's right relationship with God, oh my it just takes the cake!

31 “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.

33 “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. 34 Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. 35 John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

36 “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38 nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39 You study[c] the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

41 “I do not accept glory from human beings, 42 but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God[d]?

45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

www.biblegateway.com...

reply to post by NewAgeMan


So you admit to making assumptions, though you haven't admitted to all of them. But this argument is no good. You have chosen your path and it has satisfied you fully. I cannot fault you for that.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Oh no doubt he attracted everything to himself on that cross, which I've discovered, because it coincided with a lunar eclipse, was a type of cosmic theodolite or lens measuring true vertical and horizontal as "the true measure of a man". It was a signal as much sent "heavenwards" (in all directions) as it was to the PTB who got blindsided by it and didn't see it coming, and as a work of Great Magic by a true Magus it rippled outwardly as a message to all powers and principalities both good and evil, and across time and space, even to this day and this particular conversation we're having.

Rome tried to steal it, or hijack it and contain it and dispense it because at the most fundamental level the PTB recognize it's occult power and wish to harness it, own it, control it, imprison it in a stained glass bottle. Ironically, by preserving it, they've floated that bottle and the message and the spirit it contains down through the past two millennia, to this time just over 2000 years later, which given it's true nature as a type of "passover" over time and history (with blood of the lamb over the door) might as well have been yesterday.

The Spirit however is radically free and like the wind blows where it will, so the Genie is out of the bottle if you will and freely available for appropriation as offered by the Spirit and the Bride who cannot be the "Church" in the traditional, institutional sense, but simply anyone who is married or devoted to Christ as the final object of attachment of the whole course of human history whereby Life itself IS Story and the unfolding of a destiny, preferably one with a happy ending and new beginning.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Actually those aren't mere assumptions, as his character or voice can be discerned and his Magnum Opus proven to have taken place, even to the very day, coinciding with a lunar eclipse rising mid afternoon as seen from Jerusalem on Passover Preparation Day during the governorship of Pontias Pilate.

And all I am asking is that people try these paradigms on and see how it all might fit together and if it holds any water.

NewAgeMan
reply to post by AfterInfinity

 

Actually those aren't mere assumptions, as his character or voice can be discerned and his Magnum Opus proven to have taken place, even to the very day, coinciding with a lunar eclipse rising mid afternoon as seen from Jerusalem on Passover Preparation Day during the governorship of Pontias Pilate.

And all I am asking is that people try these paradigms on and see how it all might fit together and if it holds any water.

I have tried. It didn't work. And I really wanted it to at the time. I wanted God to protect and help me. I lied to myself the whole time, trying to believe, to know it was real. It never worked. It didn't take long to realize how wrong it felt, trying to be a Christian. How utterly ineffective it all was. I've never gone back.

Ever since I can remember, religion has always been an oddity to me. And attempting to become a Christian only emphasized that fact for me.

AfterInfinity
NewAgeMan
reply to post by AfterInfinity

NewAgeMan
Actually those aren't mere assumptions, as his character or voice can be discerned and his Magnum Opus proven to have taken place, even to the very day, coinciding with a lunar eclipse rising mid afternoon as seen from Jerusalem on Passover Preparation Day during the governorship of Pontias Pilate. And all I am asking is that people try these paradigms on and see how it all might fit together and if it holds any water.

AfterInfinity
I have tried. It didn't work. And I really wanted it to at the time. I wanted God to protect and help me. I lied to myself the whole time, trying to believe, to know it was real. It never worked. It didn't take long to realize how wrong it felt, trying to be a Christian. How utterly ineffective it all was. I've never gone back. Ever since I can remember, religion has always been an oddity to me. And attempting to become a Christian only emphasized that fact for me.

We all want the protection of a god instead of our own parents and family members. Why, because we are a determined specie to believe there is something greater that exists boundless and absolute that must be our 'for true valentine' creator/projenitor. Its the heartfelt yearning for IT SOMETHING that is the clue; its an innate diabolical insane preponderance of the simple question drilled and repeated "WHO AM I and why am I here". How does one try to fit oneself into a belief system. I would think its a natural fit round peg in round hole. To struggle or force it would seem to be trying to take your prior lives knowledge and manipulate with egoeccentric FORCE. I would never psychically attempt to be a Christian in the same way Id attempt physically to climb Mt. Everest (never either ever). Why do you have to strive so much, hasnt anything resonated for you that you naturally are drawn to? Metaphysics for instance/Paganism? Majick ala David Blaine style, anything to get you out of the human LAB RAT MAZE of ACCEPTANCE and BELONGING is this the ONLY WAY? (its not). Im not underestimating you at all (oh brilliant person) but I see some chinks in the armor.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Yeah that's the problem too with many Christians, trying, even trying to be good in order not not to not be bad if you know what I mean. It's absurd. There's not a damn thing we can do, except see and recognize, "believe" (it seems more ultra-rational or reasonable to me, more of a gnosis or knowledge and understanding than "faith" but I'm very inquisitive, scientifically minded and smart where "faith" is for the not-as-smart, and by no means am I putting anyone down when I say that because it still works or is still functional according to faith alone as the starting point), and RECEIVE (see pearl in formation metaphor).

It's SPIRIT, fully-informed living Spirit of infinite intelligence (obviously - see celestial framing of Jesus' birth and Great Work at the half-life) and let us not forget that we were made, from the beginning, by design, just like Jesus as a human being, to contain nothing less than the Spirit of the Living God in full and to overflowing (without measure).

"Spirit" is also interchangeable with TRUTH, and Life, even the mystery of Light (everlasting).

To be a Christian isn't to try to DO anything in particular, because it's unmerited Grace to begin with! (which makes it fun and enjoyable, imho -> very humorous), but instead, to realize, at the most fundamental level, that you're being incorporated into a Great GREAT Work - to which we are called to participate from life to life in eternity in one form or another, WITH the Spirit who is also the Absolute Godhead, who's "M.O." according to Christianity is to share it ALL without reservation or limitation or constraint. So it's an eternal "we" thing where we too could say, in Spirit - We love them and you as you loved me from the beginning for creating me from the beginning, beginning with the end in mind (see unique earth-moon-sun-planet->human being, configuration) or by design and with intent - to share a greater glory from "above" (tangled hierarchy).

It HAS to "come from above", then it wells up as an emergent, bottom up phenomenon. It can't be built on corruption, so it has to have been done in such a way that while making no compromise with sin and evil also liberates us and sets us free as children of a loving God, meeting us where we are at and accepting and integrating us even in spite of ourselves or who we were.

However big or small, however fast or slowly doesn't matter when you already find yourself a work in progress, not by your own will and doing ALONE, but together hand in hand WITH the Spirit or allegorically, feeding from the Tree of Life in the re-opened Garden of Eden, the tree of the duality of the so-called "knowledge" of good and evil (in judgement) conspicuously absent.

How was it done, how could such a thing even be possible? Because it's the Tree of Life itself (see mystical Jewish Cabbalism) where what we see and perceive is the will of God (as Love) blowing through the divided middle of the Twin Pillars of Justice and Mercy - full body spectrum in the form of a human being, of all things, and here, of all places where perhaps it may be said that "the last shall be first, and the first, last."

What we're dealing with really is a type of Absolute Acceptance and Forgiveness as a Liberation even in eternity, where you can breath a sight of relief and become a little more like a kid when things like mortality had no reason meaning or significance because you were just setting out to explore this amazing and wonderful world, with fresh eyes and LOTS of time with summer holidays lasting a rather longggg while.

It's been said that "the supreme challenge presented by Christianity is how to receive an unfathomable Gift of incalculable value, that cannot be earned or deserved" (don't you see how funny it is now?).

Our true predicament as sentient beings results in a a state of Absolute Uncertainty, which is a very VERY high state of being, Buddhist like. But there's something even higher than that, which is to discover one's self framed by the love of God within the context of an eternal cosmic family whereby the original impulse at the place of Absolute Forgiveness and Re-integration and Incorporation (as family) where there is nothing we must DO or are compelled to do call it the domain of all possibility without judgement (Buddhist) - is the very same love by which it arose in the first place, still functioning with continuance even to the nth degree. Death has no meaning in this context, because it's spiritual in nature and thus transcends the material universe, yet it carries with it the same original intent that we are invited to carry on and develop over time through our own individual and shared, mutual, participatory koinonia

It's not a morality play, not a set of rules of should and shouldn't because the Spirit has no compulsion to sin - LOL.

We're all "sinners" there's nothing fundamentally "wrong" with that, it was expected and anticipated from the very get go,. along with the resolution to the fundamental problem which to be the least bit effective has to be an all-or-nothing proposition by it's very nature and it surely has to offend the sensibilities of the pride and the ego of man, including our own selves, so that's where the HUMOR comes in.

These are not "my" ideas. This is what I've uncovered from a very deep and very probing investigation like Sherlock Holmes.

I am the Prodigal Son. I am the kid who simply HAD to locate and secretly unwrap or otherwise discern what was hidden away in the closet in anticipation of Christmas. I am the one who HAD to know WHY, and HOW, not just because that's the way it is.

I rejected and ran from Christianity, searching high and low at anything and everything that would satisfy my curiosity and investigative mindset, and I really needed something to bail me out of all this Church nonsense having grown up around the church as a double-pk (don't you DARE use that against me either), i was a true rebel with a cause.

But what we resist persists and I took another look with an open and inquisitive mind, and I've found enough to write a best seller if I had the time and the wherewithall, because there are aspects of Jesus that almost no one knows, and no one seems to be able to cobble it together in precisely the same way that I have.

All that matters is to know that you are forgiven absolutely, and are called to become a true co-creative participant in a Spirit of Love and Mutuality with the very center and source of all existence, which isn't a "thing" but a who of which we ourselves are very much a part of, as family.

If I'm right, then in spite of my own horribly sinful past as THE Prodigal Son (I'm almost sure that Jesus was talking about me in particular when he shared that parable! lol) - you may find me someday, Bob, sitting beside you at the big table cracking jokes the likes of which you would have never conceived in a million years or for the life of you, and together we will laugh and play, and at that point it won't matter who's at the head of the table. Just to get the last laugh it wouldn't surprise me in the least if we were to find it EMPTY! Not because there isn't a God, but because there IS and he's always running some wonderful gag of some kind or another, but never A.I., is it an outrage

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Never at any point did I feel anything resembling a "Holy Spirit". I only felt the fellowship of being around good people with good hearts. I don't think it was a lack of trying or anything like that. It was more like going to Spain and pretending to be Spanish.

I'm just not a religious person, which really puts a hitch in the whole "God is for everyone" deal. Like I was never born or intended to be "saved". Like I would literally have to become someone else entirely if I wanted to be saved. Otherwise, you may as well ask me to breathe fire.

Maybe now you understand where I'm coming from. I can't ever be a Christian unless something changes everything about who I am, to the point that my friends would wonder what the hell happened to AI and who the hell replaced me.