A Reason for Faith in Jesus Christ

originally posted by: dfnj2015

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork

God is a Supreme Being and Person "who's thoughts are as high above ours as the stars are above the Earth".



As I mentioned before, it's an I-Thou relationship between lover and beloved other and the Bible is the story of a divine romance whereby Jesus is Himself the bridegroom.

If you love Jesus does that make you Gay since Jesus was a man?

I think God is woman anyway. There's no way a man could create something so beautiful as a woman.

No, it doesn't, but it could be the reason that some men are gay, I've considered that before, but that's not necessary of course to love the love of Jesus.

Fundamentally, all Christians are like women in a certain way in so far as we are the receptacle of the word or logos as a seed of a consummation in a comingling between the Spirit of man and God, giving birth to a new creation, both within and without.

Me I'm highly heterosexual, but as a Bride of Christ, there's also a woman in me, and I think what makes a man whole involves a balance between the masculine and feminine side, and vice versa for women, which of course might cause still others to become transvestites in the confusion.

There is always an attachment to an outcome and an object of desire, and the human being is a wellspring of desire.

Jesus, imho, is the only object of desire to which it's entirely safe to be attached, and the mark of true leadership is also true followership. To use a horse analogy there's always a bit in the mouth and reigns in the hands of a rider.

I think this raises an interesting paradox, the idea of unfettered freedom in obedience to the will of God, where to become truly happy involves making God's will our own innermost heart's desire.

But we rebel, and we pull away, and we pursue idols like prostitutes, and in as much as we form attachments to everything but God, God is in this way a jealous God, like a scorned lover, and that's sad, when man and woman was made for God, and by divine proportion made in the image of God, both male and female. to contain nothing less than the Spirit of the Living God and to stand beside God, hand in hand in relationship WITH God whereby Jesus and the first Father of creation make their home with us, and call us their son/daughter.

For us human beings, this can get confusing I suppose, with God as both parent, lover, and true friend, and you can't even see Him or hang on to any material representation or manifestation, since God can't be reduced or placed in a box for our keeping.

Let me put forth an idea using the horse analogy.

Until they are tamed, a horse may be wild and even crazy eyed with a bit of an identity crisis, until it acquiesces to the bit and the saddle, but when horse and rider work together, they both experience the exhilaration and joy of a fast gallop both united as one yet as two, together.

It takes a lot of courage to take on Christ and the Spirit as a rider, so we may run away or try to buck him off, but when the reigns are in the right "hands", then they are no longer needed, which I think is the reason why in the Revelation of John, the rider has the name of the Lord on his thighs because all it takes is the slightest pressure from the thighs to direct the horse towards new destinations, even at speed.



I think that God is actually quite wild and perhaps even crazy in just the right way, who alone can be crazy enough to be trusted to ride the horse the way it was meant to be ridden (both in control and out of control, with abandon and in complete surrender).

Another example is the way the father reacted to the return of the prodigal son in that story. He must be out of his mind to run to his son who squandered his part of the inheritance on "riotous living" and to then envelope him in a big hug, give him nice fresh shoes, a ring (with the family symbol), a wonderful robe, and throw a party in his honor, simply because he came to his senses and embarked on a return journey home, well, that's kind of wild and crazy, out of love at the return of the lost son.

It's a paradox of freedom this idea of being led, but if God is good crazy, then he'll know how to enhance our freedom in the most delightful way if we would only trust in Him and rely on Him for the leading of His Spirit.

We are the Bride and He is the Bridegroom.

There has to be an object that's worthy of our love and that's safe to be attached to, and yet that also sets us free and doesn't seek to place a heavy burden on us.

It's not easy falling in love with God or Jesus as God, but in the final analysis, where else are we to direct our adoration and to what shall we be attached?

Again, it's both a terrible and a wonderful predicament and I'll bet there are any number of people who're gay or bisexual or transsexual because of it, in the desire to have a love relationship with God in the person and spirit of Jesus as male or "masculine", or to avoid one at any and all cost.

This all brings to my mind the true, esoteric meaning and symbolism of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper", which I'll do a presentation on in this thread to try to illustrate the idea, which I'm not entirely sure if da Vinci intended as a mischievous joke or at the deepest level, something of profound significance and depth of meaning.

His is the love that never fails, and the light that never goes out.


Be blessed,

Ankh

And if you find yourself in darkness through an ordeal and a dark night of the soul, may the stone roll away from your tomb to let in the light of a new day.

And if the rains beat against your house the winds threaten to blow it down, may it be founded on the rock, and remain instead of falling, and oh what a fall that house had!

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.

The problem today is that we've got our priorities all wrong.

First there must be reason and then cultural expressions and then the application of philosophical principals.

Once again, don't follow the blind who are leading the blind into a ditch. They don't know what they are doing, or why.

My prayer for you, dear reader, is that on the other side of the ordeal in sympathetic harmony with Jesus Christ and his own death and resurrection is that you will come to know the truth that sets you free, and still further the one that sets you free for His sake and for the sake of his love and righteousness, and why then you shall be truly free indeed, even if only because his reason and logic and love is infallible.

And there rises that mirth again... and the loving hand of God that's able to wipe the tears from our eyes and restore us to authentic joy that's so big it transcends the suffering and the sorrow and the heartache in nothing less than everlasting life, starting now. The resurrected life.

Then you may skip and dance and twirl down the street (just because you can) as what I call an untouchable.

And that's real power and authority. It's also the cornerstone of a civil society; the first cause, and the rock of all ages that moveth not.

If you encounter this juggernaut in your road, this zeitgeist, at first you will be very troubled; then you will become astonished, and then, with Christ you will stand relative to the all-in-all and even rule over the all-in-all with God, and without for a moment losing your own sense or humor or making the error of taking yourself too seriously, and that's charming.

It's who you really are and were meant to be and to become, that's the funny part about it, and that none of this is outside the domain of real knowledge and truth because it resides in the knowledge of experience or self-knowledge. It's a house built for two or more, or in our case for three in the sense that they come to live with us and make their home with us in Spirit and in Truth.

It's not even really a matter of faith alone, since it can be tested, once discovered.

It holds up. It holds water. It goes places far and wide.

Who would have thought that the most powerful and valuable of things would be completely invisible, but it's true.

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
― Kahlil Gibran

Blessed are you if you can be moved and moved by the rock that moveth not. Then you will have come to know the truth that sets you free, and once known, never forget!!! - rebury that treasure, mark it and then sell everything you had and buy up the whole field!, or on finding that one most precious pearl (even if still in formation), sell it all just to have it.

And if the price is a small bowl of tears, stored up in heaven as unending joy, then they're worth every drop to also experience the loving hand and the smile that wipes them all away.

No one said it would be easy. It's simple, but not easy, but the one who loves us also went before us to make the burden bearable, even a joy to carry and willingly take on and accept as a necessary and meaningful suffering (never a neurosis or an unnecessary suffering) in order so that our mutual joy and mutual glorification might be made whole again, when we at last join His circle of joy, with His in ours and ours in His.

And then we are one, and being one, in sympathy and in attachment to the only appropriate and worthy object of our attachment, we know, that He was sent by God and is also God with us.

Who woulda thunk it?

It's the free gift that just keeps on giving and getting better and better all the time, even in spite of outward appearance or the twists and turns of fate and circumstance, because once found we cannot be lost, nor would He ever leave us or forsake us even if from time to time we may grieve the Spirit.

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

originally posted by: dfnj2015

originally posted by: NightFlight
If you really believe the bible, read Deuteronomy 5: 7-11; and I'm paraphrasing, do not place ANYTHING before God. Not in heaven or on earth or below the earth, cause if you do, you and at least five to six of your future generations will be cursed for blasphemy. If you believe you have to first believe in christ to get to heaven as it is written in the new testament, well, it ain't gonna happen.

Sorry...

RE: "do not place ANYTHING before God"

What if you put Jesus before God?

It seems to me people idol worship the words of the Bible more than they have authentic piety.

Jesus is God is part of the Trinity: jesus FATHER Holy Spirit = FATHER jesus Holy Spirit = Holy Spirit jesus FATHER and so on

a reply to: galien8

they may have a bit of a point though when they say

It seems to me people idol worship the words of the Bible more than they have authentic piety.

I would not have come to know Jesus if it weren't for the Bible, which is also the Word, first on paper, but I've noticed a lot of "dry" Christians, who not only commit what might be called the sin of Bibliolatry, but who wish to use the Bible as a blunt instrument by which to try to bludgeon people into accepting what they are "offering" as they wave their Bible in their hand..

To me, that doesn't represent the Spirit of it and certainly doesn't form a great point of attraction as a pearl in the gate.

As I pointed out earlier, it already doesn't sell very well even as the authentic expression of God's loving hand of friendship!

We and God then look to the man waving the Bible in our face, and then, and here's the really sad part, many if not most turn and walk away at that point (and why wouldn't they), or, still worse, having been made a convert in this manner, then go out traversing the seas proselytizing to win even a single convert, only to make that person twice as fit for hell as they are or were made to be. (Jesus had a very cutting wit at times).

It's an exclusive proposition only in so far as there is only one Spirit of the Living God who is also Jesus, by the Father and with the Father, as one, with us included. And upon obtaining all authority on earth and in heaven he then handed it all back to God so that God (with the son) would rule over the all-in-all in eternity, with love, again while including and not excluding the human being, even the lone individual, who was made for a reason and a purpose, which as far as I can tell, is to fellowship with God and our neighbor as our self (an unexpected realization with a whole new set of challenges).

As to authentic piety, when we know ourselves as a type of divine mystery and are in the world but not of the world and are energized or inspired from non-traditional human conceptions outside the norm or the world of the prevailing social matrix and system, then at best, we can be authentically inauthentic or in other words in a place and a position from which we can then take ourselves and others infinitely more seriously, and infinitely less so, and thus enter into the domain of spontaneous fun, as a possibility, and as new ground and new territory within which to explore, together, this mutual mystery and experience of koinonia, where the old adage holds that no man is an island unto himself.

Jesus is Life. Jesus is Fun. He lives with us, in us, and among us, and in so far as you do it unto the least of his brothers, you did it unto Him and wherever two or more are gathered in His name, there He is in their midst.

It's a higher argument and voice of reason, logic and love, but it would only be told by one who was entirely worthy, congruent, and graceful from the place and POV of the rock of all ages that moveth not in alignment with the unmoved mover of existence, and even founded squarely on a Principal and Standard of TRUE Justice, who's height is only matched by His tender Mercy and loving-kindness and the heart of the law. Whoa!

His is like a hand outstretched, and his face, a beckoning smile, and what does he want but to share the entire inheritance prepared for us as a birthright from the very beginning of time and space and from life to life in eternity unto the new creation.

What kind of love is this, that, however unfathomable, isn't the least bit unreasonable, and while inscrutable, can also be grasped firmly as true "lion's paw" handshake that's capable of lifting us straight up out of the pit and into a whole new way and basis of life, while setting us free at the same time and rendering us as spiritual untouchables and thus as very powerful and for some very frightening people to behold, yet who are encountered in authentic piety (if there is such a thing) and love that same outstretched hand of friendship (oh the irony never ceases to amaze).

There's most definitely a charm to it and an unending mirthfulness of the humor of true understanding.

It's not really a morality play, I don't think, or an edict of should and shouldn't, and neither is it something that we can only accept on blind faith alone if we are willing and open-minded and receptive to even so much as a mere inkling or faith and hope but the size of a tiny mustard seed, which, truth be told we all possess, both prior Christian and atheist alike.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork

who not only commit what might be called the sin of Bibliolatry

OK The Bible can make people crazy, has made many people crazy all through the ages. Keep your wit!!!

What do you think of this?

a reply to: galien8

I think that The Revelation of John, read forward, was designed to goad us and drive us insane, but read backward, beginning with wonderful ending with the Bride of Christ and the Spirit offering free, living water to all who thirst, a delightful joke of sorts in its resolution, looking back on the whole ordeal in hindsight yet not in relation to something that has yet to happen, but that has happened already, where the references to Isaiah in Revelation are again to Christ Himself, not the church as a future corporate entity to bolster a Jehovah Witness argument or that of any of the whole "rapture crowd" or who might be called fundamentalist literalists (God bless them one and all).

The allegory of being saved and snatched out of one world into another however, is apt, but it doesn't mean you're going to get beamed anywhere, or start floating off the ground, leaving Earth and everyone on it in a hellish handbasket.

The true messianic hope of the Jewish mystical tradition always involves heaven coming to Earth as a manifest destiny or what I would call a participatory eschatology.

The implications and challenges inherent in this cannot be understated.

With great knowledge and power comes great responsibility.

And we're impacting it all, for better or for worse with every thought and action anyway, might as well get with the program and go with the flow.

We all thirst for living water.

Our problem is a problem involving a constant activity of mind and spirit based on a first cause.

We have to take responsibility while also putting more and more into God's hands and building with him an ever better and more enjoyable me and you!

God would have it no other way, than in partnership (or a participatory eschatology).

Oh the Madness!

; )

by Seth Farber • 4 years ago, title of "Eco-Doom or Redemption: The Mad Movement and the Sixties' Counter-Culture Project"

My recently published book The Spiritual Gift of Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride Movement is based upon an unusual proposition, which is at the heart of the conviction that inspires the book: Many of those persons who have been labeled "mentally ill" by the psychiatric system — whom I prefer to call mad persons — have had spiritual experiences or visions, often messianic, and thus they have an important contribution to make to the  redemption of humanity, to the redemption of  the earth. Or to put it in other words, many of them could be the prophets or midwives of the new age, the messianic age.  I cannot help but recall the often repeated words of the first mad person I ever met (this was during my college years, decades ago): "I am the mother of the new messianic age."

Messianism originated in the Western world with Judaism. 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" ~ Martin Buber

realitysandwich.com...

a reply to: galien8

As to the cosmological pointers in the Bible including in particular, those surrounding Christ's birth and crucifixion (and which appear again in The Revelation of John), I tend towards considering the following to be essentially valid in every way that matters.
Extra - In the heart of the Ram.. caught up nearby in a thicket of stars..

The Case

www.bethlehemstar.com...


It's what I refer to as the Superdeterministic Cosmological Christ, right down to the very hour, woven right into the Earth-Moon-Sun, solar-system and thus galactic and intergalactic configuration and orientation (divine order).



It's like what might be thought of as a cosmic theodolite or measuring lens, as the true measure of a man, while magnifying the love and mercy and loving-kindness and the long-suffering of God for the sake of humanity.


Oh what is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou did visit him?
~ Psalms

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

greatest practical joke ever perpetrated, in a plot and a plan that was hatched from the very origin of the creation capable of anticipating the worst of human nature as fallen creatures and putting us back into our rightful place in the grand scheme of things as children of a loving God,

Only an imperfect god would create a world where the imperfect children (made by a so called perfect god) are predicted to sin therefore along comes a saviour that is alleged to have been there from the beginning.

Careful, the god of the Old Testament is not mankinds friend.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

As long as we don't confuse him with Baal or Moloch, I think we're fine.

The message of the OT is also one of love.

You have to look at the cultural framework and context as well, along with the idea of a great struggle to demonstrate that man as a social animal cannot live the life he/she was meant to live according to the constraints and edits of laws, yet Jesus doesn't do away with it but completes it where it may be said that the heart of the law is mercy (where did he learn that?).

The whole thing was a great set up, that came down to a very hour. I doubt that's an easy task when dealing with a bunch of very flawed people, but He stuck with it, and then created the very frame through which he Himself appeared, right on time and with accompanying signs and wonders ie: he left a trail in the starry skies, like a signature, where all we need to is to rewind the tape, to catch a gimps of the larger framework and context within which and through which this little drama took place, which was itself framed on the basis of universal principals and of the principal itself personified in the son of God and son of man; Jesus Christ or Yeheshua Messiah or by any other name still a rose.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Say yes....Steve Martin needs you to say yes

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

he Himself appeared, right on time and with accompanying signs and wonders

Why not in 500 bc, why not 1500 AD? Right on time according to Roman Empire vers 2 teachings. You've brought it hook line and sinker, still under Romes yoke

originally posted by: TheConstruKctionofLight

Why not in 500 bc, why not 1500 AD? Right on time according to Roman Empire vers 2 teachings. You've brought it hook line and sinker, still under Romes yoke

Please see this post, above. Edit: and the edit I made to the post you replied to.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: TheConstruKctionofLight

Only an imperfect god would create a world where the imperfect children (made by a so called perfect god) are predicted to sin therefore along comes a saviour that is alleged to have been there from the beginning.

Why do you say that?

I think you may be assuming certain things and that there could be others that you've not really considered out of an apparent bias or aprior interpretation that doesn't permit the idea that a perfect God could very well do just such a thing.

For example. Maybe the human being is made by design to contain nothing less than the Spirit of God, and that we stand next to the very Godhead as it were, but that, absent a savior or intervener such a position would be just too precarious to effectively and continually navigate without a satanic rebellion, or even a clash of authority in the paradox of authentic leadership, or lost to God without the possibility of a reconciliation.

What's wrong with the idea that in and through Jesus something valuable and significant has been communicated clearly and unequivocally?


Best regards,

Ankh

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

I dont buy it, like I said an Omniscient god would see its creation as having fallen, never mind the temptation of putting a tree of life in the Garden

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork

In the heart of the Ram

A Ram Lamb

a reply to: galien8

In case anyone missed the context, note foreshadowing involved in the near sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, with a ram serendipitously found caught up in a thicket nearby to be sacrificed.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Unless it was an allegory for the introduction of the duality of the knowledge of good and evil with man tempted to rise up and replace God as the judge, with the cross of Jesus as the tree of life functioning as the remedy to the problem