bearpawss

Ah, I can't edit my previous post... But I read some more about this concept of Christ paying for our sins, and instead of some clarifications or churches dogmas I found overwhelming confusion among... everybody. I find this post on some christian forum very cool:

OP probably doesn't read it anymore, but I like Orthodox approach since they have slightly different definitions of sins and "original sin". I never understood the idea of "infinitely offended by sin God" killing his son so he can pay our debts. It's just weird to think God won't forgive people until something bleeds out to death... Anyway, here goes few lines from Orthodox mind (2nd one written by a priest has some anti-western sentiment but bear with him ): Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction

It's not so easy. Most outspoken Catholics are traditionalists and fundies, which are strongly opposed every change. There are people who care about changes, but history taught them to better be silent, publish a book from time to time and just hope someone will notice it before they die. When it comes to theologians it's not that scary, but when you are a nun, priest or monk Vatican can hit you HARD when you are calling for even lite reforms, you will just get muted, literally. We have a priest in Poland, Adam Boniecki, few years ago he was acting friendly towards an atheist "satanist" (Adam Darski, you can wiki him). So priest was like "oh, he is not a satanist, just an atheist, acting like that to enrage fundies", he went on Darski's book premiere and took a photo with him, standing next to each others, smiling... Next day fundies found the photo and ###### hit the fan. From "excommunicate him" to "jail him", i kid you not. Obviously they hated his kind and liberal attitude towards people, were criticizing him for years and now they had this "satanic proof", so few bishops quickly wrote a letter to Boniecki's Prior and bam, he got ban for public speakings, ban for writing, ban for tv. Imagine being a writer and director of catholic press for whole your life and suddenly you can't do ######... for being kind to a non-christian That's how rigid fundie catholicism can be, and unfortunately now most church hierarchy is like that. They still want to "cure homosexuality" and jail doctors who do abortions for murder. Recently I stumble across this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_2011 , http://www.memorandum-freiheit.de/?page_id=518 240 theologians just from Germany, I think they would collect few thousands worldwide with some proper... commercials lol. Living in a pretty much catholic country and listening to news every day, I never even heard about this "action". Years ago there was similar thing, and few nuns and monks who were participating were "all over the floor" after Vatican ended with them. I don't think catholicism will change much, closing itself and focusing around fundies is more probable.

I could define God everyday in different way, stopped doing that some time ago because whatever I say, the most "powerful" words I use, it still feels like a blasphemy compared to the idea of eternal, all-knowing (see, "all-knowing" already feels bad because whatever my ideas are, it limits God in some way). I don't feel comfortable even saying "God exist", because if he does, it's something more than existence. And sometimes, on the other hand, "eternal" etc feel like too much. Maybe it's just me, I'm a big fan of Derrida

Dunno what version was Leo using, but in russian "within" is closest to "among you", same with polish translation, so he wasn't really talking about kingdom being IN someone. He wrote somewhere that by imitaning Jesus and incorporating his teachings you not only change yourself but bring kingdom of God to everybody near you, because well, what else can bring it if not imitaning someone who you think was God?

No one discussing good, old Leo Tolstoy's Kingdom of God? It's not really a full time book, more of an essay, but it was inspiration for Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their fight with... fighting More I read him, the more I think he would be a good company for progressive Christians today because of his critical views on the Bible, churches, organizations and whole Christianity as we see it today, but in the same time he kept unshaken faith that Jesus' teachings could change not only single person but whole world. First of all, here's link to whole essay: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_is_Within_You And small part of it from 3rd chapter: It gets better later when he compare catechisms of different "original, only true" churches of Rome, Greece, Russia, and Protestants, every one of them happily condemning others, putting them in "grave errors" which results in "eternal damnation"... As you may know, Leo was nobleman and Orthodox Christian, excommunicated because of his views on religion, just as those above (no wonder ). He also had some rough political ideas which I don't think would work (for now, I just can't see anarchy with today's people greedy minds). ANYWAY, I really recommend his essays and books, he had amazing insight and actually lived by what he preached.

Well I don't know much about "Universal Sufism", but I was attending meditation classes in nearest Naqshbandi Sufi Order place for few months and they were awesome. I like to listen to the sermons Mawlana Shaykh Hisham Kabbani says. Most are pretty much for muslims only, but still there is much to learn from this guy whatever you are. http://www.youtube.com/user/sufilive

I stumble across this video and it reminded me your question about accidental life, check it out: Whole video is very interesting, but go for ~53 minute. He says that universe is/was filled with so many opportunities for life that at some point or another the life had to appears and grow. Sure it was accidental, but sooner or later that accident was simply inevitable. Well watch it yourself, I can't describe it like he did lol. I think Thomas Aquinas addressed this idea of God as extend of one's mind and ego, and now there is a quite big theological "wing" of priests in catholicism who are more into saying what God is not, rather than repeating attributes stacked for centuries. They even like to say atheists in some way know God better than believers, because their "there is no God" is closer to truth than overload of personal attributes to him.

Thanks for replies. Yeah well, I find it hard when it comes to people like this internet "apologist" from my 1st post, explicitly vile and evil, using "christianity" for money, sheer egoism and mockery of people. btw. Funny thing, when I was thinking about it and opened Bible, this fragment came at me, srs:

Hi, I'm a guy from Poland, raised in a Catholic family (not very strict). I was an atheist for a long time, now I'm all over the place when it comes to religion. I had my problems with Christianity, for a long time Jesus was like a warrior to me, decapitating unbelievers, smashing Jews. He was completely enveloped in catechism, in dogmas, in "what i HAVE to believe to be saved", or "believe in that or you will get possessed by sum demons!". On the one side, I love Jesus, I really do. No to be saved, or whatever (I'm not an afterlife believer really), but because of his remarkable actions and words. He was loving enemies HERE, not in heaven, he was a good man HERE, he was teaching about love HERE... ...and here comes other side, people. The reason why I was an atheist for a long period of time were people. All started way before I discovered internet, with "Sunday Christians" - people going to church, confess, just to go back to being assholes right after they get out. Sunday's church mass is meaningless routine for most "believers". They are born into catholic cogs and follow rituals without even knowing what they mean or depict. In fact, they don't even know what the believe in, never read bible, etc, yet they were very fast to judge people. It was a big turnoff for my Christianity... but you can't really blame them, can you? My biggest obstacle were (and still are, I don't know how to cope with them) all the horrible people internet contains. People who turned my definition of "christian" into almost an insult for some time. People who use Bible to bash everybody, to threat people with hell, to cut out the context of everything in the Bible and use what has left for their personal usage. Most explicit example, which is almost nauseating and gives me shivers every time i see his face is this guy: the-anointed-one.com/quotes.htm (I hope links are allowed, if not sorry.) Te*tonics guy, known by many different pseudonyms and names. His comments, attitude, celebration of sick ego... and yet he calls himself a christian, I can't get over it. Oh irony, there are satanists who acts better than him towards people. (btw. I think his example shows big advantage of organized religion over religious "free fall" for some people who never had positive christian example to follow). It's very frustrating because Christians have bad name MOSTLY because of people like that. I believe you can't preach religion, you have to live it and be example of it's philosophy, core values, show people that your religion really can change life and help you become a better person. "Christian" for me today is not a label you can just pin to yourself, you have to earn it and it's a hard, full time job. Jesus was IMO very explicit on behavioral topics, how people should act to one another, despite opinions or labels. Jesus said he is the way, to follow his example. Acknowledging there is a way, believing there is a way is not even close to walking that way and this is IMO biggest problem of Christians today, especially fundamentalists. Bunch of people standing at the beginning of the road, screaming "HEY, THIS IS THE ROAD YOU GUYS, THE ONLY ROAD TO GOD, LET US TELL YOU WHAT TO BELIEVE AND WHAT TO DO" to confused atheists, Muslims, Buddhists who actually go that way without even realizing it, leaving screamers behind... I also don't think Christianity is some elitist way to God. I tried to imagine it one day, let's say one religion is true, rest is bollocks. This one God described in holy book, who loves everybody, came to very few people and told them "believe in me guys, kingdom of God is awesome". They were not so convinced here and there, despite looking at living GOD. Imagine, if those raised in Jewish faith, were not all 100% sure about everything... how can all loving, all caring God ask people from the other side of the world to take AMAZINGLY HUGE leap of faith (a lot bigger than, let's say, apostles), abandon their tradition, faith, and go after alien religion? Ok I kind of overdid that introduction, I just had to pour it somewhere :--)