Elen1107

I live in a free country. Many Christians do mix Christianity and evolution. It's not a big problem here, or where I live This is why many people come to 'Progressive Christianity' because they don't want to do Christianity in old fundementalistic ways. One can mix science and Christianity. God is still God. Christ is still Christ. It's just that some of the things written about them, even in the bible, aren't all they are made up to be. The first Christians didn't have a bible. The books of the bible weren't written until everything that happened in them had already happened and were done and over with. Many people say that the books of the New Testament weren't written till even much later than that. You don't need a perfect book, the bible, for God and Christ to still be great and true and wonderful. They are all that and much more, with or without an absolutely perfect book being written about them.

Here's a clip I've found on centurions in the NT An officer in the Roman army, nominally in command of one hundred soldiers. In Matthew 8:5 , a centurion who lived at Capernaum approached Jesus on behalf of his ailing servant. In Mark 15:39 , a centurion who witnessed the crucifixion identified Jesus as the Son of God. In Acts 10:1 , the conversion of the centurion Cornelius marked the beginning of the church's outreach to the Gentile world. In Acts 27:3 , the centurion Julius treated the apostle Paul with courtesy. These passages illustrate the generally favorable impression made by the centurions who appear in the New Testament. They were usually career soldiers, and they formed the real backbone of the Roman military force. from this link https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/hbd/c/centurion.html I don't remember what other non-Jewish people Jesus is depicted as interacting with, besides the woman at the well, and his mention of the "good Samaritan". I'd need to spend some time on that. I don't agree with everything that Bart Ehrman says, even though he does have a lot of great insights. Obviously I don't agree with how he understands Jesus all the time. Seems like it took a bit longer to convert the Romans. The Kingdom of Heaven is about everybody living together and sharing and caring and loving one another. People just started doing this, and possibly were ignoring all the authority type people, whether they were Jewish or Roman. Ignoring some governments can be a good thing at times, I should know, I live in the US 🙂 . They weren't waiting to do this, It started happening right away. In that sense the Kingdom of Heaven started inbreaking right then and there. Who was in authority didn't matter too much, and everyone was accepted, no matter where they came from or who or what their ancestry was.

Sorting it into four collections might make plenty of sense, but that doesn't mean that everything in those four collections makes plenty of sense. I'm not saying that God doesn't exist, or that Christ doesn't exist, or that the Holy Spirit doesn't still exist. Or that they are any less God or Christ or the Holy Spirit. I'm just saying that parts of the books about them aren't all they could be. Spong keeps saying, "We have got to stop worshipping a book and making an idol out of it" We shouldn't be worshipping a book instead of God. We should be worshipping and loving God directly, not a book about Em. Spong says that Christianity has got to change or it will die. It will become useless and inoperative in our lives, and that that is already happening. He says that many of the problems and much of what is causing this is in the bible itself. I don't want to see it die. I don't want to help it die by pushing a bunch of inoperative and dysfunctional ideas that say God is something E isn't ... and more , . . . I could go on... The Spirit of God is so wonderful! I don't want to see it lost to us because we are so attached to a book that we can't see past it or can't understand what it is and what it isn't. The Catholics are lucky. They were never "sola scriptoria' or what ever the phrase is, though they have their own problems and challenges. Sorry for the rant . . . Thanks for reading

But didn't he interact with a number of Roman soldiers and do or say good things to them during his ministry? Times I've read the NT I haven't really been paying attention to whether he was communicating to a Jew or a Roman or a Samaritan, or someone else. I've been more interested in what he was saying than who he was talking to. Him talking to a centurion . . . Looked it up > In Matthew 8:5 , a centurion who lived at Capernaum approached Jesus on behalf of his ailing servant. Holman Bible Dictionary. Centurion. An officer in the Roman army, nominally in command of one hundred soldiers. In Matthew 8:5 , a centurion who lived at Capernaum approached Jesus on behalf of his ailing servant. centurion [senˈt(y)o͝orēən] NOUN the commander of a century in the ancient Roman army. I believe he did end up healing the centurion's servant. ------------------------------------ I'm thinking there might be other Roman type people that he interacted with in the NT as well. ----------------------------------- This might sound a little funny, but in a certain way Jesus and Peter and a number of other Christians did kind of take over the entire Roman government. They've even got a big cathedral in the middle of Rome called 'Saint Peters', they have pictures of the Jewish patriarchs and prophets all over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, (painted by Michelangelo, of course), where the Pope gets elected, as well as many scenes from the Old Testament, and the Pope himself wears a little hat just like all the Jewish men do. There's more to it of course,... (just thought I'd mention it ) ----------------------------------------------- I think Jesus was more into converting or changing people - than overthrowing, conquering, retaliating, going to war with, etc. That's the best I can understand it at this time in my life. --------------------------------------------------- Edit, > went and found the whole verse 5 And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, 6 and saying, "Lord , my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented." 7 Jesus said* to him, "I will come and heal him." 8 But the centurion said, "Lord , I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 "For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it." 10 Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. 11 "I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; 12 but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 13 And Jesus said to the centurion, "Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed that very moment .

I agree In the Old Testament, sometimes it really seems to be about insight and experience of the Devine. Other places it really seems to be something negative, harsh and unfair. Not at all what I would call God or, as Spong would say, "Not a god I would be inclined to worship" (or something like that, from his book "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism)

Paul was working in Jerusalem, but from there going as far abroad as Damascus. I've got this from a link I found: "Saul was soon to arrive, with all the necessary legal machinery (that is, the authorization of the chief priests and the Sanhedrin130) to arrest and extradite131 the saints who were in the city. " These are the notes to the above sentence: 130 In our text, we are told the Saul “went to the high priest” to ask for letters from him to the synagogues in Damascus (9:1-2), but in Acts 22:5-6 Paul indicates that the “Council” (the Sanhedrin) was also involved in providing him with letters of authorization to arrest Christians in Damascus. Furthermore, in Acts 26:10 Paul testifies that he received letters from the chief priests, not just the chief priest alone. 131 “. . . the Romans . . . required neighboring states to grant it the privileges of a sovereign state, including the right of extradition. A letter delivered at that time by a Roman ambassador to Ptolemy VIII of Egypt concludes with the demand: ‘If any pestilent men have fled to you from their own country {Judaea}, hand them over to Simon the high priest, so that he may punish them according to their law’ (1 Macc. 15:21). In 47 B.C. Julius Caesar confirmed those rights and privileges anew to the Jewish nation (although Judaea was no longer a sovereign state), and more particularly to the high-priesthood.” F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, Revised Edition (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988), pp. 180-181. This is the link https://bible.org/seriespage/14-conversion-saul-acts-91-31#P1489_574949 ------------------------------ "cahoots' is Burl's word. I picked it up from him earlier in this thread. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had it in our heads that Paul/Saul was in cahoots with the Romans. A good number of painters and perhaps their patrons seem to have thought so too. I think myself, I've gotten this impression as much from art and paintings as I have from the NT. The two have combined in my mind.

What do you have from Josephus and Maccabees on this subject?

The one that really gets me is the blonde, blue eyed Jesus. Now how likely is that. Thing is everyone, at least most groups, depict Jesus as looking like them. In a certain way it is a complement to the man. The real thing is however, when one really thinks about it, Jesus himself wouldn't care one bit what we look like, what our race is, or whether we look like him or not. At least the Jesus that I know and understand wouldn't. ------------------------- I've been thinking about the whole Saul/Paul thing. It's evident that he was working with the authorization of the chief priests and the Sanhedrin. In Acts 12 we have Herod and Roman soldiers arresting the apostles and other Christians. Any chance that the chief priests and the Sanhedrin could have been in cahoots with Herod and the Romans? If they were, then one might surmise that Saul/Paul could have been in cahoots with them too, and that's why we get all the pictures of him looking like one or at least working with them. I've got to read Acts again, as well as a few of Paul's letters, it's been a while since I've done that.

I think that we can all be filled with Christ, the Holy Spirit, and or God. This enables us to discern and understand what are the right ideas and insights about things. I actually think that this might happen to most people, whether they are aware of it or not at sometime in their lives. The thing is to get so it doesn't just happen once in a while or once in a rare while. I myself would like it to be a state of being for myself, but I'm def. not there yet. All things take time. I don't focus on the Old Testament either. It does have some "testament" about the coming of Christ and some of it's saying are good, even inspired. Some other parts, they might be "inspired", but my question is, 'inspired' by what?

The first part of this video is how the state of New York is addressing the policing problems. The rest of it is about the virus. It was released on June 17th I'm thinking it's really worth watching if people care about these issues and if they care about America Thanks for watching

I've looked up a few different definitions for 'forgive'. I'm thinking it's something that I will prob. focus on a bit later... what it means and how different people understand the word. If you are right, then we both are about the same things being important. Great to find some agreement on something, somewhere, even if we have been using different word(s).

This video shows several rather famous paintings of Saul/Paul's conversion. The most featured painting definitely looks like that's a roman helmet lying next to him. Most of the other paintings show him dressed in a roman uniform or surrounded by roman soldiers that he is working with. (They have painted him to look like he's in cahoots). You don't have to watch the whole video. Just put it on pause in YouTube and then flip through the different scenes. YouTube gives one a little thumb-nail if one holds the curser over the red line at the bottom of the video.

It looks like you are right concerning this. I've been looking it up a bit and it seems that it was only in cahoots with the Jewish authorities that he might have been working in persecuting the Christians. Perhaps though the Jewish authorities were in cahoots with the Romans however, as sometimes seems to be the case. I'm thinking that I've gotten my idea that Saul/Paul was in cahoots with the Romans because of some of the rather famous art I've seen that depicts him in a roman uniform and or with roman soldiers around him. There is definitely art that makes him either look like he's wearing a uniform or with people who are in uniform. Sorry about that. I had really thought I had read it that way from the NT, but perhaps my impression is mostly or only from these paintings. Here is one such painting of this type (there are other paintings like this as well as one's where he's wearing more regular clothes)

Yeah, but look at the death rates for just yesterday,... not the past 6 months. Texas 268 Florida 179 California 137 New York 8 This is from your link showing the new deaths from yesterday, perhaps one needs to click on the 'yesterday' tab over the chart to get the full statistics. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ I'm still trying to find detailed information on how long it takes for death to occur after one contracts the virus. It's proving rather difficult to come by. It also might be different for different persons and different infection loads.

No it's not "herd immunity". Health officials have reported on this, both at the NY Governor's news briefings and else where. Herd immunity requires an infection rate of at least 60% of the population, the infection rate, even in NY City is under 25%. I don't know everything about the death rates compared to infection rates, but it's my understanding that death most usually occurs between 10 and 20 days after infection. This may be the cause of some of the disparity. I think I'd have to research it more thoroughly though. There's a few other cities and locations that the Governor has been reaching out to and helping out. The names escape me right now, but I have heard reports on them. Well, if you're talking about cities with an area of about 1 square mile or less, sometimes much much less, and populations of like between 5,000 and 66,000 then you're right, but they still are all in the New York City Metropolitan Area, even if they are in New Jersey. By contrast New York City covers 302.6 square miles, and has a population of 8,175,133 people. I don't know if you've ever been there, but one needs to see it to believe it. It's like no other US city, the population density is intense and tremendous. If one discounts Staten Island from the other NYC boroughs then the population density of the city can be seen as being much higher. If one just counts Manhattan, then that borough definitely has the highest population density of the entire country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density ---------------------------------------- I've watched most of Governor Cuomo's news briefings since March. What he did was implement a pretty tight shutdown, essential businesses only, and essential activities only, 6 ft. distancing, any closer and people need to be wearing masks, masks must be worn in the essential stores.... And what's amazing is that New Yorkers did it. They just up and did it - I don't know if you know anything about New Yorkers, but that really is something and really is/was amazing . . . Then he implemented a phased opening. I believe there are 4 or 5 phases. Not until each county had their infection rate down to right around 1% could they go into phase 1, and then they had to maintain that low rate for a certain time period to go into the next phase, and the same for the next and so on and so forth. All of his Corona-virus news briefings are available on YouTube, I encourage anyone and everyone to take a thoughtful and constructive look at them. If the rest of the country had been following such steps and measures we wouldn't be going through what we are going through right now. This is not about politics, It's about saving American lives. ------------------------------------ Concerning the nursing homes, the states were ordered by the feds to readmit elderly people back into the nursing homes after hospitalization. If you want to blame someone, blame the feds, it's their guidelines and their orders. If the individual nursing homes couldn't isolate and properly care for their clients then they are supposed to report it, so other people and authorities could make accommodations for them.

Yes, it's nice, great and wonderful to have community agreement and to have and find people who are of a "like mind". This can also affirm and confirm what one believes in their heart themselves. There are other times however that one truly feels and believes and understands something, and they can find no one, but no one, who agrees with them or affirms what they are saying or thinking. In fact they may find a number of people who actually affirm the opposite. Here one shouldn't just go with their own ideas or insights willy-nilly or just cause it's their own idea. They should think it over and think it over again and think it over as much as they need to. But if they truly believe that their/the idea or insight(s) is true and even true to the true spirit of God, then they should go with it and stick with it, even if they have real, and even considerable opposition. Even if they have to stand alone in their position.

I'm thinking that I might well agree with you on this, at least in a good part or piece of what you are saying This is all interesting and good information. One could add to and on some points disagree with Ehrman - this is perhaps best for another post thread - I'm thinking that I gotta read the New Testament all over again a few times to get into and cover all of it. Thanks for sharing this outline.

Paul/Saul persecuted the early Christians. It's my understanding that he was in cahoots with the Romans while he was doing this. He changes his name from Saul to Paul after he became a believer and falling out of the cahoots.

There are a number of things about Paul: One is that he seems to be on a kind of selfie in some of his (authentic) letters. He goes on like; wasn't I great, wasn't I all wonderful, wasn't I all that and then some. - - - He tells people, both men and women, how to wear their hair and whether or not to wear something on their heads. To me this is a rather personal decision, people can wear their hair and hats any way they choose to and for their own reasons. People shouldn't go around assuming that people are wearing their hair or hats for one reason or another. - - - There are a number of challenges concerning Paul, we would really need a separate thread for this. - - - Back about 10 years ago there were a number of people going around giving lectures and talking about problems with Paul, JS Spong was among these. It's died down some, but the words in his letters are still there so in a sense the problems are still there too. -------------------------------- Concerning Socrates: He seems to believe in the Greek gods, yeah that's probably all he had to go with at the time, but I still disagree with him. - - - A quote from Socrates: "The highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others". I agree that this is a good and really fine thing, and important too, but I don't know if I would call it "the highest form of human excellence", I'm thinking that there are somethings that are higher and more important. --------------------------------- I like all this scholarly stuff, I really do, in fact I love it. However I don't think that a person should need to have all this intensive study of different scholars in order to have a good and inspired understanding of Christ. A person shouldn't have to be confronted with so much 'stuff' in order to be a Christian. Stuff like which Pauline letters are authentic or not, or how authentic or true are the books in the bible in the first place, or what verses could have been inserted in Paul's letters or other documents and so on... One just needs to tune into the spirit of Christ, God & or the H Spirit within themselves to know and discern if an idea is right or wrong or not. It can be the idea that this thread is about, about female preachers, or whether the Eucharist is important or not, or whether certain ideas are really in harmony with God or not. This can touch on anything or everything, what is too much coffee to drink, what's the best way to phrase a certain idea or question, what's the best way to organize one's day. . . . .. We can all, God willing, tune into God's or Christ's spirit and have a light and clarity of mind in order to enter and get through life with.

I'm thinking that a person can have none of these negative effects on themselves, no resentment, hatred, vengeance, anger, etc. and what this person has done is just let it go and given it up to God. It's on and up to God whether that person is forgiven or not. The person(s) who have been injured can elect to have nothing to do with it, and leave that decision is up to and with God. If a person wants forgiveness they can take it up with God themselves

If you can teach someone else to put things in God's hands then great. Some people will be horrid just so they can get other people's prayers and energy, and go around being other people's enemy just so they can get a one way street. Sorry you think that's a platitude. It's a real thing that people do. It's not callous and it's better than rewarding them for being horrid, mean and awful. Some people are what they want - what they get based in their thinking. If they think they are getting a reward or something good for doing something evil they are going to keep on doing it. They really have no sense of right and wrong or of community. It doesn't help anyone, perhaps most especially them to give them what they can only perceive as a reward for being horrid.

Sometimes it's dumped on the people who have been hurt to make things all better and alright. While the people who have done the wrong and the harm do nothing whatsoever, or just make things worse. Sometimes it's the best these people can do just to put it up to God ... say it's not my stuff and put it up to God and keep it there, cause it's not their stuff.

Well, Christ says, if a person says, "I repent" that one must forgive them. He doesn't say if they do nothing whatsoever then forgive them. Christ says, (loose quote here), "That if someone has something against you, then go back and make amends - & that no one gets out until they pay the last bit/penny' Sometimes if someone is dead, people just need to put it in God's hands. If it comes to them spiritually that they have forgiven them, fine. Sometimes these things just come to a person, they realize one day that they have let go of it, if they realize on another day that they have forgiven, perhaps that comes from a higher place also.

What about all the things that the bible says a person should do if they have wronged someone else? They should own-up/confess - apologize/say they are sorry - make amends/make up for it - change/repent in behavior as well as words. If a person has done all this, and the person they've done something to can't forgive them, well, then that's on them. If a person has done all they can to make things right and make things better, and has truly changed and is not repeating the thing they've done wrong, and is not using forgiveness as an excuse to keep repeating the behavior, and not making it the other person's responsibility to set them striate all the time or control them because they can't or don't or won't control themselves,... then they should be forgiven. If forgiveness is just an excuse for getting away with things and passing off responsibility,... Then there's a limit to it.

She is great! Your video lead me to another video of her, she is really great.