A constant struggle of mine.

reply to post by Rhadamanthus

. . .I don't think I should be led to worship him and not God himself.

What do you mean by that exactly? Is there a verse in the Gospels where Jesus says,"Don't worship me because that would be inappropriate"?
I think what Jesus avoided was people who wanted him to become a political leader, so that he would fulfil their materiel desires. Jesus was interested more in the people's spiritual needs.
The verse where someone says to Jesus, "My Lord and my God" could be thought of as meaning in today's language, without all the problems that come from several layers of of translation, "My object of spiritual worship". Calling someone a lord is a form of worship because it gives a special high status, or worth, to that person.
Someone could lend to another person like a king, a devotion or loyalty in a political sense, and that would be something different.
We know there is a God and by definition all things have their source in God, as nothing could even have an existence without there being some sort of God. That is unless you had a different kind of religion where the gods were kind of like us and wrested their authority from bigger beings who made the universe, but then were driven out of that same universe.
The important thing, I suppose, is to not let your thought go to some place where Jesus substituted a now defunct previous god. Christians do not think that and Jesus recognises his own dependency on being in accord with the Father, who is God forever. Meanwhile we don't know God, but then we have Jesus, and there is a reason for that because we need a shepherd, and as far as the sheep know, that is god to them.

Originally posted by Rhadamanthus
I believe Jesus is very important but I don't think I should be led to worship him and not God himself.

If you accept the Biblical portrayal of Jesus as being accurate, you should quickly come to the conclusion that Jesus IS God, it's not an either/or proposition. The people who say "Jesus was a good teacher, had a good message, but nothing more" miss the point that Jesus was Jewish, and the things that he said and did were the worst form of blasphemy. To even hear someone say that they were the "Son of Man" was highly offensive, much less to say it.

Again, Jesus was a Jew. Unless he really was God, the things that he said and did were deserving of being put to death by the Law. Do you think that he deserved to die? (That is, of course, a rhetorical question, no need to answer it.)

He sacrificed himself for God which is the greatest sacrifice of all.

No. God doesn't need anyone to sacrifice themselves for him. He's God, after all.

Jesus sacrificed himself for YOU. You didn't ask him to, maybe you don't want him to, but he did it, 2,000 years ago on a cross in Israel, specifically to save YOU in 2010. God loves you so much that if every other person in the history of the world was perfect and needed no salvation, aside from you, Jesus wouldn't have changed a thing.

The problem of dismissing church, you see, is that you also dismiss what 2,000 years of study by some of the brightest minds have already sorted out. It is easy to fall into the trap laid by some that "Jesus was a good teacher" or "Christ couldn't have existed" if you don't have a reasonable understanding of what Christianity is all about.

That is not to say that there aren't problems (some rather severe) in some churches, or that every denomination teaches stuff that you'll agree with. But if you want to believe in Jesus, it's rather important that you find a part of his body (the church) to commune with.

If nothing else, please, please, please go to your local library (so it won't cost you anything) and read "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. It is a short book, but it strips away "the church" from Christianity to give you some insights into what the core of this faith is about, without the dogma of Catholic or Protestant doctrine mixed in.

If you come away from that read with the notion that Christianity isn't for you, then no, it probably isn't.

reply to post by adjensen

. . .Jesus was Jewish, and the things that he said and did were the worst form of blasphemy.

Around twenty years ago this topic came up into the public consciousness as "sexual harassment" where a woman would be in a workplace setting and someone there would make a comment that may have been a clumsy attempt at flirting. If the woman felt threatened by it, or offended, they could lodge a complaint and the offending person would be in a lot of trouble.
What people figured out after this picked up steam and they could see where it was going, was that the complaints would correspond with how attractive the potential offender was to the potential complainant.
The same principle applies with anyone claiming to the position of Messiah, back in Jesus' day. The blasphemy was not so much the concept that he was presenting but who it was who was saying it. To the important (rich) Jews, Jesus was not appealing. They were rich and the Roman system was working well for them, and who cares about the people that it did not work well for. If there was going to be a messiah, they wanted one who would make a system where they could profit at least as well as they had in the system being replaced. A Messiah who cared about poor people did not fit into the scheme they would want seen put into affect. Go ahead and kill the pretender, and if he was by some chance really the Messiah, God would somehow save him from their murderous intentions.
Well God did save His appointed Messiah but it was saving him from Hell, not from being killed. That did not fit the Jewish paradigm and some could break out of that and accept Jesus and others could not.
Back to what I was commenting on, Jesus went out of his way to demonstrate how he precisely fit all the requirements to be a Messiah, he was not blasphemous but they just did not want to change and be godly. They would rather have a genocidal agenda to where they kill all their opposition and inslave the rest, which is not God's way.
The people we think of as Jews, or Israelites or Hebrews were Canaanites and none of their neighbors ever made a distinction between them. It is a myth to think of an all Jewish state, ever. It never happened, so there is no restoration of such a thing that never existed in the first place. What is to be restored is a people who follow godly principles. Some people like that, and some don't.

reply to post by adjensen

. . .read "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis.

I think Lewis is a crypto-theosophist and not a Christian, but someone who would want to shape Christianity into what he would like it to be, to fit better with the Theosophist philosophy. I am not an expert on the subject of Theosophy but I pay close attention whenever anyone mentions it. From certain things in that philosophy, I get a different sort of view on things like in the Narnia books. Oh I ran into that on IMDB yesterday, that they are coming out with another movie. Anyway, Aslan is not Jesus, but a mythical land that existed but had to die so that Man could evolve.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by adjensen

 

. . .Jesus was Jewish, and the things that he said and did were the worst form of blasphemy.

Back to what I was commenting on, Jesus went out of his way to demonstrate how he precisely fit all the requirements to be a Messiah, he was not blasphemous but they just did not want to change and be godly. They would rather have a genocidal agenda to where they kill all their opposition and inslave the rest, which is not God's way.

Sorry, I didn't make that clearer. Christ was threatened, and eventually killed, for claiming to be God, and doing acts that only were acceptable if he was God (such as forgiving sins.) The Pharisees no doubt had lots of reasons not to like him, and they sold the Romans on the whole "claims to be the king" bit, but the biggest offence (and one that the Romans wouldn't give a fig about) was the whole God bit, horrifically blasphemous.

As for Lewis, I put the whole Narnia thing off to him hanging around JRR Tolkien too much, lol. I've read almost all of his theological works, and there's nothing in there that is out of sync with an Anglican mind, tinged with a bit of Roman Catholicism, which is, again, my position. Tolkien was disappointed that Lewis didn't convert from atheism to Catholicism, but he got his bits in. Where mine came from, that's more of a mystery :-)

Nonetheless, "Mere Christianity" is a Christian apologia that doesn't have much doctrinal bias at all, so I think that most reasonable Christians (in the "reasoning" sense) would find little to argue with in it. If you haven't read it, it's worth a couple of hours (if that) of your time.

reply to post by adjensen
I was going off on a tangent from what you said about the Jews. The whole being Jewish thing in my opinion is just a tool that has been used for a long time to justify being bigoted and chauvinistic without a real justification, just a made up one. That's why Paul made a break from it, seeing it was just a divisive thing. Why did Jesus overturn the tables of the moneychangers? Because they were scamming people with this idea that what we approve of is holy and everything else is not.(meaning the coins) That philosophy crept over to how they treated people, that who they approve of are a holy people, and everyone else is of no account and not worthy of lending any assistance to.
The Lewis / tolkien Christian / atheist story, I have heard different versions of, including one completely reversed. Maybe a better way to look at is allegorical / no-allegorical for Lewis / tolkien. When Lewis is being allegorical, what is he referencing? It's a little new-age and that has as its roots in Blavatsky and Crowley.

reply to post by jmdewey60


Well, no, my perspective in stating that Jesus is Jewish is that he was under the same Law as the Pharisees. Interpretation a bit different, obviously, but he was well aware of the fact that people were supposed to stone someone who claimed that he was God. It's a basic argument against Gnosticism, as well -- Jesus is clearly Jewish, even in their own literature, and yet the notion of a hierarchy of deities, with the God of Torah being some oafish demiurge would have sent the "Divine Messenger" far, far away from any profession of Judaic faith.

Personally, I've never understood the whole "hating on the Jews" thing -- even looking beyond the Judaic nature of our faith, when Christ says "Love your neighbour as yourself", there is no qualifier in that commandment. Follow Christ and love them all, or pick and choose at the cost of your own salvation.

So, is this you saying I am hating on the Jews? I don't hate Jews. I am not going to look at a person and automatically not like him if he happens to be descended from some people who practiced the religion.
Obviously Jesus had problems for what passed as religion in his day. Then we have Paul who had problems with it.
There is a hierarchy as soon as you say "Son of God". Paul said that what the Hebrews thought of as God was an angel. That's not too hard to figure out. Moses was conversing with an angel in the burning bush who was speaking as if he was God, just like a prophet will speak the word of God as if he was God saying it. The elders asked Moses to be able to see God and he took them up the mountain and they saw God. Jesus said no one has seen God. Well whoever the elders saw was a representative of God, most likely something we would know as an angel.
I don't know what you mean by oafish. Are you claiming that my description of God is as being oafish?

Originally posted by jmdewey60
So, is this you saying I am hating on the Jews?

No, I was responding to what I thought was you saying that I was hating on the Jews, lol. I think we're at cross purposes at this point, my friend :-)

I don't know what you mean by oafish. Are you claiming that my description of God is as being oafish?

No, that's the claim of the "Gnostic Christian". Not sure how we got confused there...

reply to post by adjensen
Thanks for answering those questions.
I was not sure what you were getting at.
I must have missed the connection with the gnostic reference.
The demiurge idea is a little bit not right, to me. Anyone who was a real god would be unified in the godhead.
A wantabe god such as a demiurge would be out of sync by trying to operate independently. The correct designation for such a person would be Satan.

reply to post by jmdewey60


The best that I can figure is that Gnosticism, which came out of Greek philosophy, preceded Christianity by a bit, and when Paul started converting Gentiles (Greeks, for the most part, rooted in Gnosticism,) a number of them believed in Christ, but didn't believe in the Jewish God business and didn't want to leave the Hellenistic tradition of the material and the spirit, so they attempted to work the two together. The writings of both Paul and John indicate that this was an early intrusion, one that was viewed as heretical and expelled from the church, even before common theology and doctrine was established.

I've seen a number of people suggest that Gnostic Christianity is something much different than what historical scholars generally agree on, and when I dig a little deeper, they seem to be referring to later (some as late as the modern era) reinterpretations of Gnostic texts and beliefs. Which is fine, but that's not what the Gnostics of the first couple of centuries thought, and, as they are the ones who are the source of these texts, one quickly comes to the conclusion that the reinterpretations are almost certainly invalid.

Gnosticism is inherently incompatible with Judaism and, through it, Christianity, so it mostly seems to appeal to those who like the person of Christ, but only a Christ who is removed from his Jewish faith. The remainder is the desire to be "in on the secret", or to consider oneself clever for having figured out the truth, hidden from everyone else.

I prefer a non-elitist God, who presents salvation for ALL people, not just the rich, or the poor, or the foolish, or the clever.

In John, the Samaritan woman at the well called Jesus a Jew. The Syrian or what ever, woman who met Jesus when he was headed towards the Med. coast, acted towards Jesus as if she assumed he was a Jew. So, I take it that he was most likely a Jew. I don't know how he interpreted what you are calling a Jewish religion. The Gospel says it was his practice to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and he seemed to be keen on going to the temple in Jerusalem on high holidays. Those are outward demonstrations of going along with a nationalistic religion. I suppose that showed a certain amount of loyalty towards what he considered to be his own people. It seems to me that in his normal life he fit into the mold of any person who would have had a religious streak about him and just so happened to be of a class of people going by the name Jew.
The religion was relegated to a list of prescribed practices that were interpreted as being in accordance with an ancient set of instructions called the Law. Jesus understood that the set of rules of conduct based on those laws were an interpretation that missed the central point which would be love and respect for all men as being a creation in God's image. He would tweek the teachers of those rules by doing what he felt was the true interpretation of the Law but would have been in violation of what those men felt like was their obligation to enforce.
Jesus as Christ, when he was crucified for our salvation was type meeting anti-type that the Law foreshadowed. Once this was completed the old practices that were designed to point forward to this event were made obsolete. What remains is what Jesus tried to bring forward, love and the value of all persons being potential sons of God