For my Christians Friends
- Thread starter nyxtrader
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I would put that backwards: cold, loveless logic is incomplete and extremely dangerous. Having been happily married for over 30 years and raised two children, I know that from direct experience. Let love and trust in your life first, and then logic will follow like a puppy looking for a good home.
Intuitively, you do well to identify "Jesus" as the light of the world. I would only ask you to see how that light was put under a bushel such that the light is dimmed and fragmented. Together, let's look beyond interpretations that mask the authentic message that reason might reveal the truth.
Look without prejudice once again at the *learning environment* which seems to have been given "us creatures". Nothing exists in this world but that something else must die. Would a loving Creator give any such gift? Is this the price they must pay to recieve the Kingdom where time and space no longer apply? Consider that what you are looking at is actually a form of cruelty.
Open your mind for a moment and consider that our Father would make no such thing. Yes, he created the Son! Yes, that is His creation...his only creation. And that is also the Kingdom. But no, he did not make any other Kingdom, any other world, any other Son. Consider that this world represents another kingdom in the mind of the Son who wanders away from his inheritance to experience loss, starvation, deprivation, sacrifice, loneliness...everything unlike his Kingdom. Yet, whereever he goes, the Kingdom is still "within" him...meaning, the Kingdom is still the Son, and the Son is still the Kingdom.
In this kingdom, the Son is confused. Theologically, he views this world as some kind of farm league in which prospective sons can elevate themselves from bush league "creatures" to major league Son's of God. This paradigm is incorrect and confusing. The books the Son writes while in a state of confusion are confusing. Consider that they are not necessarily navigational aids. The very first sentence of the Hebrew scriptures is misleading. Our Father did not make this world, and we are no one's creatures but our own. For this world denies our Father his fatherhood, and replaces him with "man" as our father...making ourselves "sons of man". For this reason I have advised, "Call no man father". I advised this so strongly that I got the reputation of being born of a virgin!
The point is that the "son of man" is a self-concept that is simply not the Truth. You do well to credit our Father with the power to make this world. You do even better to credit his Son with equal power as part of his inheritance. You do best if you will consider that the Father never used his power this way...to make a world like this. It is the Son who does this to himself! This is the secret of salvation, if you are willing to open your mind. What power the Son uses to crucify himself, he may also use to undo what he has done to himself. But only those who accept the truth about who they are may undo what they have done to themselves. And this is why the prime maxim remains, "Know thy Self".
I, Jesus, knew that I was the Son of God. So I took it upon myself to undo what I had done to myself. I crucified myself, and I brought myself up out of a tomb of my own making. This Easter, consider, perhaps for the first time, that you too are the Son of God. Know this, and you will know your power to raise the dead. Know that the Son made death...therefore the Son has the power to abolish it. But only the Son! So long as you deny that you are the Son, you will not taste your own resurrection.
How can both you and I be the Son of God? I have told you since 2000 years ago that "we are one". That is probably the most understated sound-byte in the entire New Testament. Look it up. Underline it. Highlight it in yellow. Circle it! For the Son of God is an unbroken circle of light that can never be destroyed.
Amen.
Jesus
I hear you and like your language but don't fully understand what you are saying, the vocabulary is foreign to me. Where does it come from?
If you think that "death" in a physical sense is cruel, I disagree: all humans are immortal beings and physical death is but a passage from "grade" to "grade" to use a school analogy. As one of my favorite authors said, death is like taking off a tight shoe.
If you believe that, from a Trinitarian perspective, the Creator of the world is the Son, you are correct, this is essential Christian teaching, look at the Creed and you'll see it there. The crude analogy that I've used with my Sunday School students is that the Father is the Owner of the house, the Son is the Builder and the Holy Spirit is the Perfector - and by house I mean Creation.
Yes, those of us the creatures who really want it will be given Sonship "by adoption" at the Second Coming, as St Paul wrote (Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5.)
Yes, we are all one at some deep level, members of the same team that wins or loses together, or parts of the same wave that arrives at the shore as one structure, but each member of the team has an individual responsibility also to do his or her level best, and we'll give account on that some day. This too is part of Christian doctrine.
If you think that "death" in a physical sense is cruel, I disagree: all humans are immortal beings and physical death is but a passage from "grade" to "grade" to use a school analogy. As one of my favorite authors said, death is like taking off a tight shoe.
If you believe that, from a Trinitarian perspective, the Creator of the world is the Son, you are correct, this is essential Christian teaching, look at the Creed and you'll see it there. The crude analogy that I've used with my Sunday School students is that the Father is the Owner of the house, the Son is the Builder and the Holy Spirit is the Perfector - and by house I mean Creation.
Yes, those of us the creatures who really want it will be given Sonship "by adoption" at the Second Coming, as St Paul wrote (Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5.)
Yes, we are all one at some deep level, members of the same team that wins or loses together, or parts of the same wave that arrives at the shore as one structure, but each member of the team has an individual responsibility also to do his or her level best, and we'll give account on that some day. This too is part of Christian doctrine.
The evidence doesn't show that there is no God. There fails to be tangible evidence that there is a God.
It may seem like a game of semantics, but the implications are night and day. What you said says that there is definitive proof that there is no God. So to say that there is evidence that disproves God would be proving a negative.
Theist asserts God, theist must prove God.
If theist is personally satisfied with their criteria for proof, fine. But if theist can't open his proof to testing, then theist must continue to find other proof until theist finds proof that is testable.
Anyway, happy belated Easter.
that is why i used the word want.
Carl Sagan: You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe.
you are right.
It seems that this book may be of some interest to you.
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Mathematics/Logic/?view=usa&ci=9780198529811
You are right that death is an illusion. Some actually appreciate it because it gives them a chance to change form/characters. For sure, it does not really destroy the mind...it just confuses it so much that it is incapacitated. A confused mind might call it the "wheel of life" or, the "life cycle", or "mother nature". The point is to break the cycle of birth and death once and for all. That is what resurrection accomplishes. It is not accomplished by death. Resurrection is accomplished by a choice for truth (the truth shall set you free). Death is indecision. It seems as though the Dali Lama has decided to reincarnate outside of Tibet because China has legislated a ban on intra-Tibetan reincarnational license. But this is not what I would call a decision for truth.
The cycle of birth and death...the idea of spiritual evolution through graded steps...this is not the truth about what immortality means...this is not how our Father created us. It is not the truth about the Son of God. So it is not your truth. Death is part of a vast illusion, a period in a long and tragic saga of a wandering Son. I gave the parable of the "prodigal Son" as an antithesis of biblical Genesis. If you look again, you will see that these are not compatible scenarios.
But I make a broader point about death. Look around and see that nothing lives but that something else dies. Anything with a stomach is going to feel a need to kill something in order to survive. This is accepted as "mother nature". But look! What kind of "design" is this? Watch a National Geographic documenary on Earth and you will see the daily kill-fest globally. This is not acceptable to the truth about love, and our Father will have none of it.
Jesus