Understanding the holy scriptures is impossible unless God gives you the interpretation

[2ndpillar]

You'd be wrong. I've never read Marx and have no use for nor interest nor trust in Communism. I'm a social democrat and capitalist. I lived life my way and made my nest egg in that setting, which allowed me to retire young and comfortably to a pleasant place. Why would I support Communism?

Socialism is the Marxist keyway to communism and is not compatible with capitalism. Your accrued wealth was accomplished under capitalism, and then you helped tear down the country with your support of Progressivism, and now receive socialistic payments once you have gone to a conservative Christian country. A more aligned choice would be to live under the atheistic Marxist regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, or China. Mexico is somewhat a pleasant place, but that is because you don't have citizenship and therefore haven't turned it into a Progressive hell hole. Their problems are still large in the sense of corruption, loud music, inept administration procedures, but the people are not woke enough to complain about what they do have. No one likes complainers, and as for capitalism, it looks like Trump is way ahead, and Biden will probably be made to withdraw, and Michelle looks like the one trying to back into the presidency from in her basement. The electorate might be fed up with number of inept DEI woke black women judges, prosecutors and mayors. Should Trump be elected, you will have to find a place to howl at the moon, as laisse fare capitalism might make a comeback. Socialism is where the government takes the citizens property. When that happens, you will not be so happy. It is happening right now in a subdued way via inflation, which is defined as increased money supply, such as the government printing money to send you checks and secure your deposits.

 

[2ndpillar]

I am glad I am not "autonomous." Frankly, that must be horrible. But! that's me and obviously not everyone. That's almost like -- maybe -- the doctrine I hear sometimes about being a "Sovereign Citizen."

You should go on YouTube and watch the interactions between the police and the "sovereign citizens". It is always nice to watch the police break the side windshield of the sovereign citizens and pull them out of their "traveling""boats"/"dwellings"/cars. They do have the law of "Black Law's dictionary", and any constitutional law that they can try and bend for their own use. Since the federal government has deemed them a terrorist group, they are using other names such as Moorish American.

 

[PureX]

How does one know that God gave them the correct interpretation vs. their just interpreting it for themselves and then presuming that it's God sanctioned?

 

[jimb]

How does one know that God gave them the correct interpretation vs. their just interpreting it for themselves and then presuming that it's God sanctioned?

If a person pray first for understanding then God will give them what He wants. The Bible must be spiritually understood, which is why mental understanding simply doesn't work.

 

[Ajax]

If a person pray first for understanding then God will give them what He wants. The Bible must be spiritually understood, which is why mental understanding simply doesn't work.

So you need to believe first, then pray and then God may give you the interpretation..
But if you come to believe, then you don't need anyone to give you the interpretation. You will find it yourself easily..

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You apparently financed your life by way of credit cards. Now because of inflation and bad debts, the young and he unborn will not have that bad path to follow.

I still don't know why you want to express that opinion to me. I think you want to blame me for something. If so, I feel no guilt about the way I navigated my life. I borrowed money when it was helpful to do so, and then eventually repaid those debts as a result of the financial leverage it gave me doing that. My point is to borrow intelligently and to get out of debt eventually.

You live in a world that is dictated by as you judge others, so shall you be judged. You judged Trump by way of a woke, crazy, me-to blue haired lady. Now you can expect to be judged by the same standards. Good luck with that.

I'm happy to be judged by the same standards I judge Trump and everybody else by. I judge Trump to be a criminal, traitor, liar, grifter, disloyal, serial adulterer, and sexual predator, and would expect to be the judged the same were I to behave like he has. He's a societal parasite.

You are as autonomous as an autonomous Tesla car. You are now on your own, but you were programmed by someone else.

No, I wasn't, but there's no value in arguing this with you. There are many people who assume that one cannot come to sound conclusions without somebody to copy, and that everybody is subject to indoctrination. I assure you that that is not the case, but don't expect or need to be believed. Yes, I've considered the opinions of others, but haven't accepted any of them uncritically, which is what programming or indoctrination is. They have to pass my criteria for acceptance.

Socialism is the Marxist keyway to communism and is not compatible with capitalism.

Disagree. In fact, a combination of regulated capitalism and socialism is the optimal economy and was why there was a strong middle class before people turned over their future to the Republicans beginning in the eighties with Reagan. The Republicans want to remove the socialistic aspects of government that don't serve them such as environmental protections and programs like Social Security and minimum wages while continuing to use government to tax the middle class and redistribute it to the wealthy through government contracts and regressive tax laws while despoiling the land and exploiting workers.

A more aligned choice would be to live under the atheistic Marxist regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, or China.

I leave that to you. I like secular, humanistic, social democracies, which is why I moved to one as the one I had lived in for 55 years was becoming something more fascistic, theocratic, and regressive.

Mexico is somewhat a pleasant place, but that is because you don't have citizenship and therefore haven't turned it into a Progressive hell hole.

You have some strange ideas. You seem to think that I did that while living in the States but changed upon expatriation.

And you're wrong about Mexico. It's relatively progressive here. Gays are protected by law, atheism is not a crime, extramarital sex is a nonissue, and the church was severely limited in its activities by the Constitution, and workers receive considerable protection regarding minimum wage, holiday pay, and severance. They're a little behind regarding abortion, but probably no worse than America now.

Should Trump be elected, you will have to find a place to howl at the moon

You don't seem to be able to assimilate the idea that I don't live in your country or under your government. The upcoming election will likely have no effect on my life unless it leads to a surge in people trying to live where we do. That will strain the infrastructure and lead to higher prices for homes, which doesn't affect us since we intend neither to sell or buy another house ever but will also lead to more restaurants and other amenities.

Socialism is where the government takes the citizens property.

Socialism made it possible for a man to work a blue-collar job 40 hours a week and support a family, a mortgage, buy a car, get braces for junior and ballet lessons for Missy, eat in restaurants, and take a vacation every year while the kids got good public educations, and the streets were policed and cleaned. The Republicans changed that with the help of the votes of those blue-collar worker's children.

You should go on YouTube and watch the interactions between the police and the "sovereign citizens". It is always nice to watch the police break the side windshield of the sovereign citizens and pull them out of their "traveling""boats"/"dwellings"/cars. They do have the law of "Black Law's dictionary", and any constitutional law that they can try and bend for their own use. Since the federal government has deemed them a terrorist group, they are using other names such as Moorish American.

I've seen quite a few of those. Those people are amazing. If they would watch those same YouTube videos, they would see that their approach never works and often leads to broken glass, somebody being forcefully removed from a vehicle and being arrested, processed, and incarcerated at the precinct for a few hours or overnight, and the vehicle towed and impounded.

They tell cops that they aren't driving because they not conducting commerce, and that the laws don't apply to them. They don't think they need a driver's license, current tags, to be registered, to be insured, nor do they think they need to answer questions or otherwise cooperate with the investigating officer, which they call contracting with them, and for which many have a price list for answers or their time (so much for no commerce). They claim to know their rights and mistakenly insist that their consent is needed. They all seem to hate government and are hostile to the police. And they seem genuinely surprised and confused when the officers break the glass after multiple warnings.

Here are a few examples for anybody interested:

And they're equally insane in court with more strange language. Here's a typical example of that:

It's not hard to imagine convincing people of this, but it is hard to understand why there are so many still trying to make this work after so many years of bad outcomes for them.

 

[Trailblazer]

That is how many use the word, which is why it appears as such in a dictionary, but there are problems there. First, we don't know that anything exists which is not physical. As far as we know, there is only nature, and nature is physical, that is, matter, energy, and force dance through time in space. There may be nothing else, and we have insufficient evidence to conclude that there is anything else.

As far as we can see and prove, there is only nature, but that doesn't mean there is not something beyond nature.
The only evidence we have that there is something beyond nature are people's personal spiritual experiences and what is written in various scriptures, although I know you don't consider those evidence.

Let's not confuse material and physical. Physical refers to those five elements (matter, energy, force, space, and time), whereas material only refers to matter. The mind is not material. The brain is. But the mind is physical if it is a manifestation of these five and an epiphenomenon of the material brain. We don't know that that is the case, but we have no reason to think otherwise apart from a propensity of the mind to understand what I call the authentic spiritual experience - connection, warmth, belonging, transcendence, awe, mystery, and gratitude - in terms of spirits. There is a tendency for those undergoing such experiences to express that they have seen God, or that they have experienced some aspect of reality out there that is more than their own minds.

If that's the case - that the only reality is nature and that nature is physical - then "human spirit" and "soul," if they refer to anything, refer to aspects of physical reality, of brain and mind. The only things in my experience that those phrases might apply to is what I might call personality or human nature, which are consequences of brain activity.

According to my beliefs, the human spirit (the rational soul) is associated with the brain and mind while we are living in a physical body.
After we die the soul leaves the physical body the soul associates itself with another form, a spiritual body. .

The mind is the power of the human spirit (the rational soul). The soul is like a lamp and the mind is the light that shines through the lamp.
God gave us a rational mind to use for reasoning, but unless it is assisted by the spirit of faith, it cannot become acquainted with the divine mysteries.

“The human spirit which distinguishes man from the animal is the rational soul, and these two names—the human spirit and the rational soul—designate one thing. This spirit, which in the terminology of the philosophers is the rational soul, embraces all beings, and as far as human ability permits discovers the realities of things and becomes cognizant of their peculiarities and effects, and of the qualities and properties of beings. But the human spirit, unless assisted by the spirit of faith, does not become acquainted with the divine secrets and the heavenly realities. It is like a mirror which, although clear, polished 209 and brilliant, is still in need of light. Until a ray of the sun reflects upon it, it cannot discover the heavenly secrets. But the mind is the power of the human spirit. Spirit is the lamp; mind is the light which shines from the lamp. Spirit is the tree, and the mind is the fruit. Mind is the perfection of the spirit and is its essential quality, as the sun’s rays are the essential necessity of the sun.” Some Answered Questions, pp. 208-209

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

As far as we can see and prove, there is only nature, but that doesn't mean there is not something beyond nature.

For me, anything able to interact with nature or to be discerned by man is just another part of nature.

The only evidence we have that there is something beyond nature are people's personal spiritual experiences and what is written in various scriptures, although I know you don't consider those evidence.

Correct. That is evidence that people are having experiences that they understand as other-worldly, but not evidence that they are correct.

God gave us a rational mind to use for reasoning, but unless it is assisted by the spirit of faith, it cannot become acquainted with the divine mysteries.

That says to me that one cannot conclude that what one is experiencing is not natural by suspending critical judgment and embracing faith. If that's what it takes to hold such a belief, then I find no value in holding it.

“The human spirit which distinguishes man from the animal is the rational soul, and these two names—the human spirit and the rational soul—designate one thing. This spirit, which in the terminology of the philosophers is the rational soul, embraces all beings, and as far as human ability permits discovers the realities of things and becomes cognizant of their peculiarities and effects, and of the qualities and properties of beings.

OK. Man can reason symbolically. Somebody wants to call that the human spirit and the rational soul. But unfortunately, then then go further and begin thinking of those things as more than just mental functions - as if they were instilled essences that arose from and return to elsewhere.

I've managed to get rid of all such ideas not only with no discernible loss in the quality of life, but an improvement. Such ideas clutter and confuse thought. They introduce lines of thought that don't serve, but rather, distract and mislead. People spend great resources over extended periods of time engaged in thought and activity that generates nothing useful in the estimation of those who can live comfortably without them. The world is just as mysterious and wonderful and life just as meaningful without all of that, which often distracts from the experience of that reality.

It's fine that you and others choose to think and live differently. It's just not something I want to do or find value in for myself.

 

[Trailblazer]

Such ideas clutter and confuse thought. They introduce lines of thought that don't serve, but rather, distract and mislead. People spend great resources over extended periods of time engaged in thought and activity that generates nothing useful in the estimation of those who can live comfortably without them. The world is just as mysterious and wonderful and life just as meaningful without all of that, which often distracts from the experience of that reality.

I understand what you mean by that and I agree, and that is one reason I am not one of those Baha'is who is engaged in scripture study, and I never was. I know enough about the Baha'i Faith from my own reading and discussions with others. Now is the time of my life that I would actually like to live life instead of being engaged in thought and activity that generates nothing useful for myself or others.

 

[YoursTrue]

Titles are often click bait and do not accurately reflect the article.

The "article" itself has the title...

 

[YoursTrue]

I still don't know why you want to express that opinion to me. I think you want to blame me for something. If so, I feel no guilt about the way I navigated my life...

Hi there. The article you presented about "gods" who died and were resurrected after 3 days is inaccurate and fallacious. Nothing about any so-called gods that died and were resurrected after three days. I hope you understand that.

 

[2ndpillar]

I still don't know why you want to express that opinion to me. I think you want to blame me for something. If so, I feel no guilt about the way I navigated my life. I borrowed money when it was helpful to do so, and then eventually repaid those debts as a result of the financial leverage it gave me doing that. My point is to borrow intelligently and to get out of debt eventually.

Suggesting that someone should go into credit card debt "intelligently", is an oxymoron. Credit card rates are now 20 to30%. There is nothing intelligent about paying a 30% interest rate. You worked in a different environment and were lucky to survive your methods. The Progressives you supported, and the swamp have printed money to assuage the masses. You got out of town, thinking you have escaped the lawlessness, and the coming crash, but I am thinking that as you have done for others, so shall be done to you. Relying on your cash is going to wind up as one holding onto sand. Trump repaid his debts, but you would like him to be put in jail. As you judge others, so shall you be judged. One cannot escape justice. Putting Trump in prison will only get him more votes. You going into a Mexican prison will get you no votes. The next time a Mexican policeman stops you, are you going to give him his bribe, or say no?

 

[Subduction Zone]

The "article" itself has the title...

That is what I said. Sheesh

 

[YoursTrue]

That is what I said. Sheesh

and nothing in the article says anything I could find about 'gods' that died and were resurrected after 3 days. Since Jesus was not a "Roman God" the entire list is off base anyway.

 

[Subduction Zone]

and nothing in the article says anything I could find about 'gods' that died and were resurrected after 3 days. Since Jesus was not a "Roman God" the entire list is off base anyway.

When a concept is explained to you twice you are at fault.

 

[shunyadragon]

The "article" itself has the title...

How many Gods are blue?

 

[YoursTrue]

@Subduction Zone and @It Aint Necessarily So In other words, the entire list is off-base.

 

[Subduction Zone]

@Subduction Zone and @It Aint Necessarily So In other words, the entire list is off-base.

No, it is not. Only the title is wrong. That happens a lot with articles. Live with it.

 

[YoursTrue]

No, it is not. Only the title is wrong. That happens a lot with articles. Live with it.

Only The title is wrong? The title is misleading, and it's wrong.
You also said in a recent post, "Not even Jesus in the Bible was dead for three days.." @It Aint Necessarily So

 

[YoursTrue]

Do you understand what the word means? It's the opposite of subjugated or controlled. I am not subject to any religious commandments. It's the way I prefer to live.

That refers to people who think that civil law doesn't apply to them. What I am saying is that I don't submit to religions or what they say their gods command.

I didn't suggest it was.

Hi there again, IANS. There was quite a controversy over who or what the nature of God was in the early days after Jesus' resurrection.