5150cappie

Thank you, everyone on this post for insights. It renews my faith in Humanity that there are compassionate and intelligent voices of reason out there. It seems the more the fanatics of every religion try to pigeonhole the written theology, the sillier and harmful they come off. We live in an age and culture where our understanding of God and our religion (should we belong to one), must evolve, or slowly bleed its own death through clinging to its irrelevance by mostly black or white, either/or thinking. After much reflection and 5 1/2 decades in this life, I have evolved an aversion to literalist nonsense that I'm finally old enough to not even consider worthy of any form of legitimate debate. I'm enjoying the freedom of this honesty with myself and I'm conscious of not throwing the baby out with the bath water. Good health to all.

Jenell's right; that the need for substitutionary sacrifice is founded on original sin. If we tell the Garden of Eden story as a step up into maturity, of taking responsibility then it makes sense to see Jesus as a model and that we are his Twins. He is showing us the way: that it is only through death of our old selves and resurrection of the new thing that Jesus has begun in us that we will be able to experience heaven in the here and now. It is only in this moment, the Apocalyptic now, when heaven might come to earth. To be best prepared we must let our old selves be crucified, shattered so that we can be present in this moment.

 

Perhaps all of us have those moments where everything we understood about the world stopped working. The shattered pieces lay on the floor. We are resurrected when we start a new thing. Jesus' death and resurrection point the way out of being the living dead.

 

The theologian John Haught says that to move from a mundane life to a higher experience of life we must pass though chaos. From the living dead through the death of an ordered world, experiencing the fear of chaos and loss of control in order to reach a higher level of experience through Jesus' eyes.

 

Dutch

Well said, Dutch. I look at tradition salvation theology as little more than a religious protection racket. Sure, you needn't accept the 'free' gift, it's Your Choice. If ya don't, uhhhh, who knows, (shrugs) tings could happen... Is it a coincidence that the Vatican and the Italian Mafia hail from the same place? How much did culture play into this the last, say, two thousand years?

Hello Gardener,

this is my 1st step communicating with like-minded folks that don't descend into tribalism and the negative bits we humans seem to create in that medium. I'm sorry your parents sound very sick. Are they near the end-of-life stage? If so, at least relatively comfortable with proper medications and the support folks trained to care for people in your parents' position? What comes up for you regrading their situation? Wishes, hopes, regrets, could've, should uv's, and would uv's? Are there things you're having difficulty accepting? You sound like a nice, thoughtful fellow.

I'm here because I have stopped believing certain tenants of Christianity. I never believed or accepted the salvific theology and discovered I felt more peace when I concluded that with myself and whatever mystery is God. I do believe in God and have had too many sublime intuitive instances/coincidences thru life to doubt there is more grab-astic shenanigans in the universe and around us than we can conceive for now. So I Believe, but not at all in the Religious Protection Racket disguised as Salvation sense.

Anyway, I hope you have a great 4th of July and try not to take life too seriously. All everyone Really has is this day and our friends & loved ones. What will we do with that today?