Andal
resident hypnotist
I understand now. You can't understand unless you have experienced the divine. Otherwise anything said by theists makes no sense.
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Christianity offers wings not weight
- Thread starter Heneni
- Start date
I understand now. You can't understand unless you have experienced the divine. Otherwise anything said by theists makes no sense.
slave2six
Substitious
I was a Christian for 40 years. having abandoned the faith, one of the very first things I noticed was a dramatic change in how I see the world and the people around me. I discovered that unconsciously I had fallen into an attitude of "life on this planet sucks and I can't wait to get to Heaven where I don't have to deal with all of this." Paul put it in terms of this world is "passing away" and consequently the entire attitude of Christendom from the outset was to minimize this life and live in expectation of the next.
When I abandoned the faith, suddenly the universe became not only more important but less vile than I had thought before. To me, the reason we help others is not so that we gain some reward in the next life but because life on this planet can be pretty darned good. Indeed, I cannot conceive of a more fantastic place than our blue orb and the chaotic, dangerous universe resounds with unpseakable beauty and awe. I missed out on all of this for most of my life because I kept hoping for "the day" that I would be free from all the negative.
Standing on my own two feet and taking responsibility for everything you listed has been exceedingly liberating. If God is going to be ****** at me because I now love his creation better than I did before then, well, I'm screwed.
slave2six
Substitious
I now dub thee officially "substitious." Welcome to the land of the real.
slave2six
Substitious
By use of the word "another" am I to assume that you agree that religion is a deception?
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
slave2six
Substitious
Perhaps because they have read the Bible, the Torah, and/or the Koran - not to mention the mountain of works written by religious scholars...
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
exactly.....
unless you pick up the brush and begin painting
You are not an artist
slave2six
Substitious
This is precisely the attitude I was describing in my previous post. Anyone who can look at the Earth and call it hell has serious issues. You should get out into nature more often. Just watch out for the poison ivy.
slave2six
Substitious
You are wrong. The fear of hell is a form of control to coerce people into abdicating their ability to reason. By becoming children (or sheep) you become unthinking and therefore do what the priest/pastor says is right. To my mind, abdication of reason is an insult to ourselves and to any deity that created us. If he wanted us to be sheep, we'd be wooly and eat grass.
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
:flirt: no funny brownies please
slave2six
Substitious
...married outside of our religion, married outside of our race, had "impure thoughts", ad infinitum. "Wrong" is not such a concrete idea as many tend to think.
slave2six
Substitious
No. I have never done any drugs of any kind which is, by all accounts, one of the best ways to get in touch with the "spiritual" realm. Then again, all that is is altering your neural pathways.
It is impossible to transcend the five senses. Every experience you have takes place in the brain which is a physical part of the physical universe. I don't have to be bipolar to know that being bipolar is not desirable.
slave2six
Substitious
That's a bit like saying that you can't know what it's like to swim in lava until you jump in. It doesn't sound much like a tenable position to take.
slave2six
Substitious
I did and I am still no artist. Unless you call making a mess and getting paint everywhere "art"...
slave2six
Substitious
LOL. Not that kind of grass ya weirdo!
Heneni
Miss Independent
Thank you for sharing this. There are so many things that come to mind when i read your post, but what really caught my attention was this part above.
What comes to mind is that just at the point where god was testing whether you loved your life, and you didnt, you quit.
You know all the things paul went through right? Surely he did not think 'what a great life!' LOL. His real life was hidden in christ jesus. And he had hope in exactly what you had. He couldnt wait to go to heaven. Thats what kept him going. So through your suffering you lost all hope in this world, but at the crucial time gave up on the hope for heaven.
In Hebrews 10:34 we have a startling account of people who did not put their hope in life going smoothly but rather they had a different hope.
''For you had compassion on the prisoners, and you joyfuly accepted the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one''
These people were not trying to save themselves.
What are christians hoping for? What are we said to hope for?
The appearing of jesus christ (titus 2:13)
The redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23)
The consumation of our righteousness (Galatians 5:5)
Sharing the glory of god (Romans 5:2)
Inheriting eternal life (titus 1:2;3:7)
Nowhere does it indicate that we are to hope that this life of ours will work out well according to what the world thinks a happy life should be.
Seeing that you were a christian for a very long time, i take it you know the bible, so you know that we are required to die to our flesh. Our flesh is our human nature without god. What dying to the flesh means, is that we have to give up our hopes in dreams in this life. That will make the flesh die, because without the hope for it realising what it wants, there is no way for it to entice you do do wrong things. And so this process is painful. Giving up hope in this life is like asking someone to die inside! And that is the point. If our hopes and dreams in this life dies, then there is nothing for the human nature left to do contrary to gods will.
So your life sucked. Praise god, you must have given up hope in this life. But before your hope in eternity could be established, even though the signs were there that you did hope in heaven more than a life on earth, you gave up.
God never commands a christian to be happy if there is nothing to look forward to. Something so good that no suffering can deminish it. Our light and momentary suffering is nothing in comparison to what is waiting for us. If we dont have hope in what is waiting for us, we wont have the heart to suffer in this world. Paul suffered a lot, and yet he said that all that he had lost, and it was pretty much everything, he counted as dung compared to the priviledge of knowing christ jesus. He found a treasure of immense proportions, and nothing that he had, though im sure he cared about it, could compare to the hope he had in christ, and the priviledge of knowing jesus.
Heneni
Miss Independent
Some people might object and say that christian theology is so future-oriented that it takes peoples minds off today and turns them into people who only care about their own private spiritual happiness. In other words it does not produce love, it produces escapism.
Is it true that christians fall prey to self-centeredness and escapism?
It is not true. The strong confidence in the promises of god and a passionate preference for the joy of heaven over the joy of the world FREES a person from worldly self-centerdness, from paralyzing regret and self-pity, from fear and greed and bitterness and despair and laziness and impatience and envy. And instead our hope in christ and in heaven bears the fruit of love.
Now i contend that in any given day, people are forced to focus on things that are of this world, our jobs our debt our ambition and perhaps a few would spend a few minutes reading the bible.
Its not heavenly mindedness that hinders love. Its worldy mindedness.
Its because we have our hope in heaven that we are free to have our possessions plundered, to give away all we have if we want to because our treasure is in heaven where moths cannot ruin it. If we were not heavenly minded we would want to hold on to our stuff with all we got, because we will be afraid to not have enough for tomorrow. And god says, that we dont have to worry about this stuff. He will look after us. So the weight of our possessions are lifted from us exactly for the reason that we are heavenly minded, and so for that reason, we are free to give as much as we can and as much as god inspires. Not only our possessions, but our time. If we felt that our time was limited we wouldnt wanna share our time, but because we are heavenly minded we are free to pour our lives out like drink offerings because there is more, much more time, an eternity waiting for us.
Its not that christians believe in escapism, its precisely because they believe in heaven that they are free to spend and be spent for others.
Heneni
Is it true that christians fall prey to self-centeredness and escapism?
It is not true. The strong confidence in the promises of god and a passionate preference for the joy of heaven over the joy of the world FREES a person from worldly self-centerdness, from paralyzing regret and self-pity, from fear and greed and bitterness and despair and laziness and impatience and envy. And instead our hope in christ and in heaven bears the fruit of love.
Now i contend that in any given day, people are forced to focus on things that are of this world, our jobs our debt our ambition and perhaps a few would spend a few minutes reading the bible.
Its not heavenly mindedness that hinders love. Its worldy mindedness.
Its because we have our hope in heaven that we are free to have our possessions plundered, to give away all we have if we want to because our treasure is in heaven where moths cannot ruin it. If we were not heavenly minded we would want to hold on to our stuff with all we got, because we will be afraid to not have enough for tomorrow. And god says, that we dont have to worry about this stuff. He will look after us. So the weight of our possessions are lifted from us exactly for the reason that we are heavenly minded, and so for that reason, we are free to give as much as we can and as much as god inspires. Not only our possessions, but our time. If we felt that our time was limited we wouldnt wanna share our time, but because we are heavenly minded we are free to pour our lives out like drink offerings because there is more, much more time, an eternity waiting for us.
Its not that christians believe in escapism, its precisely because they believe in heaven that they are free to spend and be spent for others.
Heneni
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
wrong....
if I go and rape my next door neighbor's wife, have I done a good thing?
yes right and wrong are subjective....
thus you could argue there is no rigth or wrong.
This would mean its ok to just take a poop in the vegetable aisle of your local supermarket.
Quite clearly this is wrong. So instead of right and wrong we have discernment...
Discernment knows, rape is wrong, it could cause disease and is really not all that great for the victim; discernement knows sticking pencils in your ears..and smearing ketchup on your face....then going to a job interview....would be "WRONG",,,,,....
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
Well unless you have eaten an apple, you dont know what one tastes like.
I understand now.
...
Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines.
Black then white are all i see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see there is so much more and
beckons me to look thru to these infinite possibilities.
as below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition leaving opportunities behind.
Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random.
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.
Mr Cheese
Well-Known Member
An artist differs from an art critic