AletheiaRivers

In the thread on Preterism and Futurism, XianAnarchist mentioned the book: The Navarre Bible: Revelation. A review on amazon.com had this to say: In that same thread I posted these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_the_world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Coming It's everything you ever wanted to know about every view of the "end times" but was afraid to ask! Aletheia

Cynthia, I work at home and so fortunately or unfortunately I'm always around this computer. The Bible definitely teaches that God has emotion. Some emotion attributed to God is definitely the work of the authors. I imagine that the "royally ticked off God" is the latter. I love Bill Moyers and I refer to the Genesis panel discussion often. I wish I could find his interview with Huston Smith on DVD. I don't suppose you know if it's out there? The person on bnet left Christianity because he could not reconcile an omnipotent God with a God that feels anything but love. I don't see the problem. Aletheia

Yes! I agree. The person at Bnet was saying that God CANNOT choose to be affected because it would be illogical. He was basically saying that CHOICE is a rock God created that is too heavy for God to lift. He went on to say, though, that since God is love, God can love, because that love is not a choice. But if God IS LOVE, even without us, then why create at all? There had to be more to it than, as the person at bnet possited, love. Exactly. God has freewill. God can choose. I think often, in an effort to define God as "love", we "take away" God's free will. If God IS love then God can't do anything other than love. But, if in creating life in order to relate, God feels love, then God could also feel something other than love. I would say that it was this desire to affect and to be affected, a desire to RELATE, that was the motivating force for creation. "Compassion and pity" might be better terms as compared to "love and hurt". Thanks for offering your insight. It has helped. Aletheia

I wonder if the apparent irreconcilabilities between God's being all powerful and our being able to be involved in an active "give and take" with God is part of what inspired Whitehead or Hartshorne with Process philosophy? PantaRhea? XianAnarchist? Any thoughts? Can God be all powerful and still be "attatched" to creation? My "intuition" tells me yes. All the philosophical logistical conundrums say no.

I was very impressed! Yeah. I shouldn't have taken so long in editing my post. LOL. Sorry. See, I don't equate unconditional love with non-attatched love. I can love my husband unconditionally, but it comes from being attatched to him, not from being unattatched. Boy it's hard to put feelings into words. I DON'T think unconditional love is impersonal. I think God could love unconditionally and still be "hurt" by that which it loves. I AM coming from a qualified dualistic perspective (which makes a big difference in how we think about things). I don't think I am God experiencing life. I think I am a combination of God and "ex nihilo" creation. That ex nihilo part of me is "receptivity". Are you familiar with the story of the Vessel and the Light? That's kinda how I view things. I think the universe (and us) are "part God" and part not. Aletheia

Does this mean that God does not view things as either good or bad? Does God look down on murder and say "Ahhh. I just LOVE that human." (Please excuse the anthropocentric language.) I guess if I viewed God as an impersonal force that has no attatchment then it makes sense. Only, I would remove love from that equation as well. I don't understand love that is that impersonal. I'm trying to "picture" a non attatched form of love. I guess I can do it, but I think it is so neutral as to not even technically BE love anymore. sigh. Aletheia

I just had this conversation in email with a friend. You sure your not him incognito? The footnote in my study bible says: "Human nature is not a duality of body and soul; rather God's breath animates the dust and it becomes a single living being." Rabbi Harold Kushner made a beautiful point in a book I'm reading that God's Names as they are spoken in the original Hebrew - Ehyeh, Yhwh, have virtually no consonants. The Y's and H's don't interupt the flow of sound the way most consonants would. They are almost pure sound, almost like breathing. He goes on to say that whereas animals were created with Word, humans were created with Breath. God brought Adam to life by breathing into him, putting a bit of the divine breath into him. I've come to believe that we are here to cultivate that little bit of divine light that is in us. As we do so, we are transformed. Perhaps we have many lifetimes to do this, perhaps not. I think Jesus (and Buddha and others) cultivated that "seed" and it tranformed them. Perhaps the "reward" or end result of that is immortality as shown in the resurrection. I think that is a beautiful way to view Jesus death and resurrection, as opposed to a substitutionary sacrifice. Aletheia

Cynthia The person I quoted from beliefnet had argued that it's not logical for us to be able to make God feel hurt. A girl replied that "it isn't logical why an almighty God would give a crap about me either but he does." He replied that "It is very logical for God to love you. Why did God create you if He did not care about you? Why would God go to the trouble of creating anything if it was not what He cared for?" I couldn't find a flaw in this argument until I lay in bed trying to fall asleep. Personally, I think the person at bnet limits God by saying that the only emotion God can FEEL is love. He is basically saying that omnipotence and love are logically compatible but that omnipotence and hate are not. That's a fallacy. Love is not an objective neutral emotion. I'm not saying that God doesn't love us, but I don't think LOVE is the bottom line reason LIFE was created. The word that popped into my head last night was RELATIONSHIP or RELATING. To relate, you have to have something to relate with or to. God was ONE. God created and so there was MORE than one. Now God could GIVE and RECEIVE. RELATIONSHIP. Relating can involve love, and if you truly love, then that which you truly love can also cause hurt. The person at bnet is defining love as an objective, neutral emotion when it is not. He's saying basically, that positive emotions are OK for God, but that negative emotions are not. He is LIMITING God. Did I answer my own post?

This question was posed on the Evangelical Christian board at beliefnet. I see it as the "Can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it" conundrum. I know it's a fallacy, but I can't remember why. The evangelical individual in the conversation believes that God is all powerful, but that we can affect God. For example, we can make him sad when we do wrong things. Most Christians believe this. The non-Christian also believes that God is all powerful, but that we CANNOT affect God, because it's logically inconsistent. He says that if we can cause God to feel hurt then we are more powerful than God. These are only the statements of the individual who believes we CANNOT affect God: I know it's long. Thanks for reading. I know the obvious answer is that God is not all powerful. Leaving that aside for now, however, can anyone see the fallacy in the following arguments? I feel that it is there, but I can't see it.

Ckangell Many religions, my old one included, teach that someday this earth will be changed by God into a paradise where "death will be no more". I don't understand that anymore. Whether we live here in bodies that are somehow kept changeless or in an "absolute" realm (say heaven) where nothing chages either, it doesn't make sense. I don't know what the alternative would be? Continuous reincarnation? Death period with no more life? What are your thoughts? I used to believe that "Adam" was created in the beginning to BE a living soul. Then when I left my religion, I almost automatically came to believe that "Adam" was GIVEN a living soul. The words in Hebrew are quite ambiguous and can be translated different ways. A friend recently replanted the idea in my mind that humans didn't have pre-existence. I thought about it from an "outside the Bible" point of view and realized how much more sense that makes. I'm wondering if humans were created of this earth, but after death are changed to "spirits" that can reincarnate if necessary? Are there any "new" humans still being made? Are all the humans that exist now incarnations? I am a panentheist. I think this universe (and all others) exist IN God. I find it to be a much more fulfilling way to picture God rather than God being "up there, in the sky, in a different realm." Hey, thanks for posting. I've been thinking of the pre-existence (or not) of human souls a lot lately.

Hey fatherman! I'm looking forward to reading Narnia. I've read the first chapter and I'm captivated by Lewis' storytelling. His humor is so dry. I just love it. My hubby and I went to B&N yesterday to return a book I had bought on Kabbalah. I was going to get "Screwtape Letters", but they didn't have it. My husband picked up "Stealing Jesus" because it caught his eye. He laughed when I told him how many on this forum are reading it. My husband isn't spiritual or religious but he's quite interested in religious history. I ended up buying Philip Yancey's "Reaching for the Invisible God". I'd always passed him by before because I thought he was a fundamentalist. Something made me pick up the book and by the time I'd finished my coffee I was hooked. Anybody else read Yancey? Aletheia

Des, I agree. I like to do an "active listening" meditation, where I simply listen, non-judgementally, to all the noises around me. If my thoughts intrude, I gently quiet them, and go back to listening. I try not to name the sounds, like "bird" or "car". I just listen. I swear, you can hear the heartbeat of the universe in those sounds. As per the instructions of Thich Nhat Han and others, I try to do this with certain activities. One of the most profound "meditative" experiences I've ever had was washing the dishes by hand. Warm water. Bubbles. Soft sponge. Round and round it goes. LOL! It really is cool. Aletheia

Beach, I'm glad you started the thread too. Thank you. I didn't mean to imply with my previous post that there are many KINDS of mysticism but there are many different ways to get to that "location". Liturgy, like Catholics and Episcopalians use, are one way to "get there". Kinda. Deists don't believe in revealed scripture (like the Bible). They believe God reveals herself through nature instead. I believe that very much, but it's not quite what I was saying. But, like you and deists, I do feel closer God in the woods than I do in a church. I think that the woman in the article dove into meditation too quickly and too deeply and suffered a type of psychotic break. I've had similar experiences. I don't think what she experienced was "mystical" but rather an deeply altered state. Mysticism and altered states are not necessarily the same. Metaphysics? No. I would sat the "other kind" would be called "altered states" which can be cool (and scarey!), but is not the same as mysticism. Well technically, ALL meditation is mind altering by nature, or it wouldn't BE meditation. The depth of mind altering, however, varies. JW's really preach on the evils of meditation, which is too bad, because they could really use some stress reduction. LOL! I felt like I was back in the Kingdom Hall for a second Beach! You've reconsidered the JW position on many things. Have you reconsidered this view?

"Mysticism is meditation, prayer, or theology focused on the direct experience of union with God and the belief that such experience is a genuine and important source of knowledge." - online dictionary definition. A good example of the mystical experience would be the way children experience God. Children are naturally mystical in their experience of God. They feel God. They talk to God. They know God is everywhere and they are readily able to see Him in the world. We've all heard the story about the little girl that approached her new born baby brother and asked him "Tell me about God, I'm starting to forget". Jesus said we must become like little children to inherit God's Kingdom. We need to feel God, to know God exists and to see that God is here, all around us. Meditation helps some to quiet their mind enough to feel God's presence. Prayer, especially a listening form of prayer like Centering Prayer, helps others. For some, it's liturgy or ritual that helps them open to the experience of the sacred. Personally, I have my deepest connection and see God most clearly when I'm camping. I am able to look at the trees and clouds and sun and sky and to see God in those things. I am able to listen to the sounds of the birds and the wind and to hear God in those sounds. Like Marcus Borg said, in The Heart of Christianity, we need to find the "thin places" where God can shine through and touch us. It's true that many think mysticism is an altered state of consciousness. I would agree that directly experiencing God in the way I've described can make the world look and feel a little different, but it's not an altered state of consciousness. Meditation can bring on an altered state, but that altered state isn't mysticism. It's perhaps easier to define what mysticism ISN'T than what it is. Mysticism is not dangerous. It's not the scarey experience that the woman you read of had. It's not something you have to prepare for. It's simply the natural state of feeling and knowing God that we forget as we grow up. Aletheia

It's important, as pointed out, not to confuse "mysticism" with new age. Meister Eckhart, Terissa of Avilla, St John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating and Matt Fox were/are all Christian mystics. They definitely were not "new age". Mysticism isn't really the same thing as "esoteric" thought either. Estotericism is a subgroup, under mysticism. But I could argue that many that follow an esoteric ("secret") teaching haven't ever had a mystical experience. And I doubt that any of the above individuals were gnostics or followed any other "secret teaching". I think the reason new age has come to be seen as synonymous with mysticism is because new age thinking ENCOURAGES mystical experience whereas most other religions don't. I think we need to be careful what we define as new age too. Yoga is NOT new age. Meditation is NOT new age. But many who ARE new age do practice those things. New age does have a tendency to pick and choose bits and pieces of various religions and use them. I find it ironic though, that that is what progressive Christians are being accused of doing by other Christian groups. They say we have a "Cafeteria Christianity". Starhawk, a Jew and a Wiccan high priestess, is more of an activist and thinks more deeply about world problems than most Christians I've ever read or met. She spends most of her time in Israel and Palestine working with children from both sides to help them see the need for peace. As a whole, the new age movement does focus more on individual growth, but as was mentioned, when the individual changes inside they have a tendency to want to make the world better on the outside too. Actually, that is what new age is all about: ushering in a "new age" of peace to the earth. Many think this will be a spiritual transformation, but not to the exclusion of the need for ecological and economic savvy. I think the term is overused and is applied to practices that aren't new age at all. I also think mysticism is completely misunderstood, which is sad, because it keeps people from finding out what it really is. Aletheia, getting off her soapbox

Anybody else read: The Screwtape Letters Problem with Pain The Great Divorce Mere Christianity Any thoughts? Book review? Anything? Aletheia

Soma, Could you post the re-write, perhaps with some "hard returns" between thoughts to make it easier to read? I have a tendency to skim over paragraphs that look like one continuous run-on sentence. Aletheia

As I understand it the Chronicles of Narnia was written to be obviously Christian. What I mean is, CS Lewis never intended that the Christian message in Narnia not BE obvious. Narnia, written oh so very long ago, was a way to introduce the concepts of Christianity to children and non-Christians. Harry Potter (whom I just LOVE) doesn't have anything to do with Christianity. As I understand it, Potter is about bigotry, prejudice, being different and being of "mixed blood" (mudblood). Do you have the new book on pre-order yet? Aletheia

It must have been my husband's interpretation of that quote. I think he's the one who actually said "lunatic" and not CS Lewis. On beliefnet, I think, someone called it the "liar, lunatic or lord" theory. His humor is great isn't it? Anyone else have anything to add about CS Lewis? Anyone read Chronicles of Narnia? I bought that at Christmas too. Aletheia

I was going to start this thread yesterday but decided sleep would be good. I'd like to thank Cynthia for bringing up CS Lewis' name which reminded me. For the past 6 years I've had innumerable progressive Christians, when I've asked what books they would recommend to help me find Christianity again, recommend "anything by CS Lewis". So, this Christmas, as a gift to myself, I bought Mere Christianity and Problem with Pain. I haven't read them yet because I've been reading Marcus Borg and now I'm reading Rabbi Harold Kushner. Since I bought them, I've come across a dozen comments on this board and others and in books that CS Lewis was VERY conservative. An example would be that he says, in essence, that if Jesus wasn't God, that would make Jesus either a liar or a lunatic because of the comments Jesus made. So my question is: If CS Lewis is as conservative as many make him out to be, WHY do so many progressive Christians read and recommend him? I'm very much looking forward to reading him. I find his humor refreshing. Aletheia

I think the following may have been posted somewhere on this board. I saved it to a Word file. I thought it was applicable to the discussion on taxes being stealing. It's exageration, but it makes the point quite nicely. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN - author unknown Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor. Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune. It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression. Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university. Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads. He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification. He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to. Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

Hi Des, It was my comment in another thread that made mention of Democrat versus Republican. I wasn't stating that the Bible said to vote one way or another. I just wondered WHY a Christian would vote Republican instead of Democrat. I agree that American Democrats are quite conservative as compared to European standards. I used the term socialist to stir the pot a little. Aletheia

I'm bumping this thread to the top in the hopes that some of those now here will have some insight to offer on the question initially posed by BroRog. I didn't even know what "lectionary" meant when I read this, I had to look it up. Curses on my JW and Mormon background! Curses I say! Anyone have anything to add? Please? I'm learning and you guys teach me so much! Aletheia

Beach Here is an article I thought you might enjoy reading (if you haven't already that is). http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magaz...&article=040651 It is about being pro-life and also a Democrat. Something from the article I particularly appreciated: That describes me. I'm pro-life but I wouldn't criminalize abortion. I would hope that options other than abortion and education on those options would help many realize they don't HAVE to have an abortion.

Ahhh! Jim Wallis brought up the other issue that Republicans latch onto as a "moral value" besides abortion that influences the way they vote. How could I forget this? Doh! Homosexuality! I guess I didn't think of it when I posted before, because I consider it pretty much a non-issue. So, the Christian right votes republican (mostly) because of abortion and gay marriage. Like Jim Wallis mentions in the below link, HOW MANY times is poverty mentioned in the Bible? http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.jhtml...eleb_10009.html Sigh. Aletheia