posted August 29, 2007 11:07 PM         

Consider what it means to have a particular political philosophy... let's say you identify yourself as a Socialist. Now, in order to be a Socialist (and not just a person who calls themself a Socialist), you do not have to go to meetings, you do not have to read the literature every day, and you certainly aren't expected to be the Head or spokesperson of the local Socialist Party. However, you do have to, at least, agree with the basic, fundamental principles of Socialism, and proclaim nothing which is in direct contradiction to those principle. For instance, if you were to express an opinion in public that there ought to be an aristocracy, and that the labour of the many should be directed so as to support the wildly indulgent lifestyles of the few, well, then, you would prove yourself to be something other than a Socialist. If someone were to inform you of this discrepancy, and you did not "repent" and alter your position, but, rather, insisted upon calling yourself a Socialist, you would only show yourself to be quite mad, or, at the very least, quite indifferent to logic and consistency where your political views are concerned.

Can we agree on this much?

So, that brings me to the point, which is not, "What does it mean to be a Socialist," but, "What does it mean to be a Christian,". What are the basic, fundamental principles which a person must concur with, and not contradict, in order to be a Christian?

By definition, to be a Christian is to be a follower of Christ. But, as we know, various denominations of people calling themselves Christians will naturally disagree as to what Christ taught. Most will assure you that it is essential to believe that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, that he was born of a Virgin, that he died on the cross, was ressurrected in the flesh, and shall judge the souls of all humankind at some point in, or at the culmination of, human history. Some denominations will take exception to one or more of these, and all will differ on various "lesser" points of dogma. Determining what Christ actually believed and taught while he was alive in the flesh is a controversial matter involving dedicated scholarship, rational thought, and common sense. Many of his sayings appear to be open to a variety of interpretations, and, to be sure, an ever-growing variety of interpretations are still being found, propounded, and compared. Determining what a Christian is may be a lifelong journey of small discoveries, false starts, missteps, detours, and dead ends. But is there even one thing we can say that Jesus absolutely believed and preached, and, if so, what is it?

It is my understanding, as it was Leo Tolstoy's understanding, as well as the understanding of the Quakers, a great many of the Catholic saints, and the original disciples of Jesus Christ, that the fundamental principle which he championed, in both his teachings and his living example, is the centrality of Unconditional Love. "Love God and God's creations with all your mind, heart, body and soul.... Do not resist evil, but pray and work for the salvation of those who curse and abuse you." Christ taught that, at the highest level of truth, there is only Love in God. Julian of Norwich tells us it is absolutely impossible for God to be angry. For God is Love. And love and anger cannot coexist.

So go ahead... get angry. Curse God's children, desire to see them tortured and burned. But if someone points out to you that this is contrary to what Jesus taught, and if you yourself know this to be true, then you must recognize that this is the very moment of truth, in which your allegiance is being tested. It is not enough to say, "Well, I dont have to be a perfect Christian." What is required of you is that you agree with Christ's commandment to love, and you renounce your anger, and pray to be delivered from it. Pray to understand and forgive the one you are angry towards. Make peace with your brothers, all your brothers (for, if you love only the victim, and not the aggressor, then what have you gained in Christ? Even sinners do the same.) before you pressume to indentify yourself as a follower of Jesus Christ. "Why callest me 'Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I ask?"

And that's all I have to say about that.

posted August 30, 2007 12:12 AM         

-Aleister Crowley

Christ mentions Hell something like 70 times in the NT, doesn't he? How does one reconcile this with the image of a 'loving' God?

If you are a Christian who believes in an all-loving God, are you not in effect committing the sin of idolatry? Creating a God you feel comfortable worshiping, instead of the one the Bible and Christ present?

posted August 30, 2007 08:34 AM         

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Julian of Norwich tells us it is absolutely impossible for God to be angry. For God is Love. And love and anger cannot coexist.

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There is a lot of debate as to whether or not Christ himself felt anger, at times. He must have felt it occasionally, at least a bit. People debate whether he turned the tables over of the people trading in the temple in a cool and calm disposition or a passionate one.

I have often pondered whether human emotions such as anger are altogether 'bad'.

For it is anger which provides the fuel to motivate us to do something to make a difference in this world.

Anger and love do go together. A mother protects her children like a tiger out of love.

I have always had a nervous disposition by nature, but I would do anything to protect my children. Also, when I feel very angry or passionate about something, I cannot shut myself up- I have to speak out! The things that make me angry in life are things such as racism or cruelty, or people taking pure advantage of others. If no-one resists them, where would be the balancing force of life?

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is a very important part of spirituality. However, I don't necessarily believe all individuals should be forgiven straight away. But always in Time.

Johnny,

I personally think Christ himself was a 'heretic'. I think the rest of Bible was either just the work of man or extra-terrestrials wanting to dominate/ manipulate

and

posted August 30, 2007 09:11 AM         

?

However, I believe the the true God isn't human at all.

posted August 30, 2007 10:18 AM         

quote:

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If you are a Christian who believes in an all-loving God, are you not in effect committing the sin of idolatry? Creating a God you feel comfortable worshiping, instead of the one the Bible and Christ present?

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Good question, Johnny.

First, let me make clear that I do not identify myself as a Christian.

Second, we do not have to consider the warnings about Hell attributed to Jesus, in order to see a contradiction here. We merely need to look around at the present world and take note of the atrocities we see, in order to be struck by some serious discrepency between an all-loving God, and a God who would create, not Hell, but Earth, alongside Heaven. Can we believe in an all-loving God when we see what we see?

Thirdly, to imagine that God is all-loving, as well as the creator and upholder of a world in which suffering exists, is not to create an idol, but, to imagine the very God which Jesus spoke of. The contradiction is in Christ's teaching, and it is all through the Bible, so, its not the Christian who contradicts Jesus, but, Jesus who apparently contradicts himself. Overlooking this contradiction, and taking just one side of what he said, would be idol worship.

So, we can leave it at that, and maybe conclude that Jesus was a cracked pot, or, we can suggest the possibility that there is a deeper mystery here which might be worth investigating. I'm going to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt that there is some deeper mystery, and see if I can't reconcile, logically, the apparent, or superficial, contradictions in his teachings. How might it be possible for God to be all-loving, and, yet, responsible for suffering? I'm going to try to answer that.

Here is what I believe Jesus taught:

God is a "living God". God is not a dead, but a living thing. What does this mean? It means that, like a person, God grows, changes, evolves. Like a person, God brings forth that which is within Him. Like a person, there is a Kingdom in the very core of God's heart, in the very center of His being, which is eternal, unchanging, untouched, and the sole condition of which is Love.

Christ came to announce that the time had come for God to bring forth what is within Him. He substituted the Law of Grace for the Law of Works. He substituted Understanding and Forgiveness for Judgement and Blame. He says, "I came not to detroy the Law, but to fulfill it." He is saying that there is a Higher Law, which includes both the Law of Moses, and of Works, and the Law of Christ, and of Grace. This Higher Law is the Law of the Living God, who changes, and fulfills His own destiny, as well as the destiny of humankind.

Furthermore, we are God's children, and the witnesses of God in the world. As we change, we give expression to the dynamism of God. When a person like Jesus walks the earth and speaks in perfect love, he simultaneously gives witness and expression to this aspect of God. And because the aspect he represents is God's innermost essence, and that which God himself is moving to express (through Jesus), we may well say that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the Herald of the Kingdom.

Now, Jesus did not speak only of Heaven, but also of the Earth, and of Hell. This is where he shows that he was both human and divine. Because God has not yet manifested His essence in such a way that it transfigures the entire world and all creatures, so that there is only Heaven, it makes sense that a creature born to witness to God's highest impulses would still contain some relation to the lowest that is in him, and would speak of that as well.

In polytheistic religions, it is enough to accord a different name and embodiment to each of God's attributes, when we wish to speak of God as being entirely this or that. But in the culture in which Jesus taught, this was not an option. So, at times, he speaks of God as all-knowing, all-powerful, or all-loving, containing no trace of discord and ordaining nothing which is harmful to His creatures, and, at other times, he uses the name, "God", to refer to the creator of Earth and of Hell. Had he been born a Hindu, he would have used different names when speaking of the different faces, or masks, of God. But, nevertheless, an apparent contradiction would remain, just as there remain contradictions in Hinduism, where we see gods exhibiting antithetical natures, and, yet, said to be, ultimately, attributes of One God.

So, what can we say about these contradictions? Is it that we are schizophrenic, and our conceptions of deity reflect our own fragmented and essentially irrational collective consciousness? Is God schizo? I think, in a sense, this is not a bad way to consider the matter. I think that God is seeking integration, as we are. I think that God is aware of a part of His Own Being which is centered in Love. I think, in a sense, that this center is the God of God. I think Jesus saw himself as an alchemist, helping to transmute what is still base in God into what is perfect. In order to do this, he had to think spiritually, which is to think outside the box, outside the world. When he says that God is pure love and only love, Jesus is making use of the Law of Attraction. He is focusing on the heart of God, the God of God; as T.S. Elliot put it, "the still point of the turning world", and refusing to countenance those evils which appear real, but which are only a passing shadow compared with the glory of the future Kingdom.

From an earthly perspective, there are two Kingdoms. There is the Kingdom of Heaven which exists always and eternally, beyond time, in the heart of every creature, and then there is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, which has yet to be accomplished.

But, from a spiritual perspective, from the very highest vantage point, we come to the realization that these two are in fact one. And for the enlightened person, there is Heaven on Earth... period. The inner heaven has born fruit, and transfigured the world in such a way that even suffering does not technically exist for them, - or, rather, it is not suffering as such, or as we understand it, but, something necessary and natural to the realization of harmony, which is neither good nor bad, there or not there, and which does not touch them, for they hold no thought of it. It is as if suffering were a caterpillar, compassion a butterfly, and, while the eyes of the body still see caterpillars, the third eye sees only butterflies. The future has come. "Behold, the Kingdom is upon you."

Love and Light,
HSC

posted August 30, 2007 10:28 AM         

quote:

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Johnny,

I personally think Christ himself was a 'heretic'. I think the rest of Bible was either just the work of man or extra-terrestrials wanting to dominate/ manipulate

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posted August 30, 2007 10:34 AM         

quote:

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Anger and love do go together.
A mother protects her children like a tiger out of love.

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This is not the Love of which I speak, which is Agape.

Sure, conditional love can and must exist alongside anger.
That is the very nature of conditional love.
It has conditions, and those conditions are boundaries,
so that the love they manage to contain is,
in effect, surrounded by anger, or "unlove",
and only exists by virtue of that antipathy toward what is outside the circle.
In other words, conditional love is like a cell.
A cell has a membrane which encases it and keeps it together.
The membrane, in this case, is the antipathy to all that does not meet the conditions.
In this sense, love and hate are two sides of the same coin.
But that is only true of conditional love.
You may say the tiger loves,
but she only loves conditionally.
The tiger has no love for the animal she devours.

The Love of God is something else entirely.

Love and Light,
HSC

posted August 30, 2007 10:54 AM         

quote:

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But, from a spiritual perspective, from the very highest vantage point, we come to the realization that these two are in fact one. And for the enlightened person, there is Heaven on Earth... period. The inner heaven has born fruit, and transfigured the world in such a way that even suffering does not technically exist for them, - or, rather, it is not suffering as such, or as we understand it, but, something necessary and natural to the realization of harmony, which is neither good nor bad, there or not there, and which does not touch them, for they hold no thought of it. It is as if suffering were a caterpillar, compassion a butterfly, and, while the eyes of the body still see caterpillars, the third eye sees only butterflies. The future has come. "Behold, the Kingdom is upon you."

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posted August 30, 2007 11:53 AM         

It's seems to be the same as....everything happening for a reason.....us choosing the lives we do because, on a higher level we know the lessons our souls need to learn the most for our evolution, our spiritual progress. It's the difficulties in life which help balance us out, in Time.

And.....I will think about what you wrote
Thanks.....for your thoughts.

I try not to get angry when someone opposes my viewpoint, because I look at opposition as an opportunity to grow.

posted August 30, 2007 11:57 AM         

Awesome, Fayte!

I'm very happy for you.

And I don't pity you.

Rather, I admire and am inspired by you.

Most of the time.

I do subscribe to the school of thinking that relates ailments to certain mental perspectives or beliefs. Maybe that makes me a fool. But I do not know, or think I know, enough about the specifics to say what causes what, and I am inclined to think that it is more complicated and individualized than websites like "The Pagan's Path" are telling us. Or maybe, at a deeper level, its far simpler. It could be that all suffering, in whatever form, corresponds to a belief that one must suffer in order to grow and learn. Perhaps you unconsciously brought trials and tribulations upon yourself as a means to jumpstart your soul's evolution. Or, perhaps it is just the natural purging of karma that has been stored for lifetimes, and you are only now strong enough to carry/release it. In which case, it may be a sign of the growth, and not the corruption, of your soul. All these things I consider, and I always judge slowly. In fact, I think thats my new motto: Judge Slowly

posted August 30, 2007 12:09 PM         

And maybe there are so many different reasons why people suffer such physical afflictions.....not just to teach the person experiencing it, but to teach those around them how to be more compassionate!!!!!!

For example, not so long ago people were extremely non compassionate towards handi-capped children. Now, things are better. Each and every one of us has our different strengths and weaknesses, our gifts to offer, and handi-capped children are truly a blessing. They help us remember, to return to our innocence.

It is possible that souls may volunteer to live lives of extreme suffering to help us wake up, do something about it and move toward a better future?. Who knows.

posted August 30, 2007 02:02 PM         

quote:

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Sure, conditional love can and must exist alongside anger.
That is the very nature of conditional love.
It has conditions, and those conditions are boundaries,
so that the love they manage to contain is,
in effect, surrounded by anger, or "unlove",
and only exists by virtue of that antipathy toward what is outside the circle.
In other words, conditional love is like a cell.
A cell has a membrane which encases it and keeps it together.
The membrane, in this case, is the antipathy to all that does not meet the conditions.
In this sense, love and hate are two sides of the same coin.
But that is only true of conditional love.
You may say the tiger loves,
but she only loves conditionally.
The tiger has no love for the animal she devours.

The Love of God is something else entirely.

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posted August 30, 2007 02:15 PM         

quote:

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Stroke: Giving up, rejecting life. "I'd rather die than change."

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quote:

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"change, adapt, or die!"

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quote:

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Everything changes.
Fear not the changes.

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posted August 30, 2007 02:35 PM         

The teaching of karma on one hand can make people feel more at peace with life. On the other hand, when people interpret it in too much of a simplified, literal way, they end up being judgmental and destroying compassion

Always follow your heart

posted August 30, 2007 03:04 PM         

I have been thinking lately, that my psoriasis has been a blessing to me. It has helped to protect my true spiritual essence by freeing me from the trappings of "ego" and vanity, and to keep sight of what truly matters in life rather than the "transient".

posted August 30, 2007 05:23 PM         

As said christian, it is my belief (action) all fall short of the Glory of God and to condem another is to condem our selves. Simple but not easy

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted August 30, 2007 07:32 PM         

Re: smilies ~ I have experienced this too -- when you use quotes or bb codes ( these: [ i ][ /i ] ) it seems you get the number of allowable smilies (which I think is 7??) reduced.....

posted August 30, 2007 08:37 PM         

Fayte,

The way I see it, if you are not enlightened, you have karmic debts. I think that is just how it works. And as I said, being called to account for your karma may be a sign of your high level of evolvement. Also, in the grand scheme, I think 3,000 years is a burp.

Thought you might appreciate this:

"[I know God only gives us as much suffering as we can handle. I just wish He didnt trust me so much.]"
- Mother Teresa

posted August 30, 2007 10:24 PM         

quote:

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I know God only gives us as much suffering as we can handle. I just wish He didnt trust me so much."
- Mother Teresa

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