Jim Wright

Let me try another way, when asked if I believe in God, my answer is SILENCE. I have no answer because any answer breaks the First Commandment. You have to accept that we can say nothing about God, and any statements about God are idolatry. When we get down to it, when we ask about origins, we come up against the Silence and Darkness. It's not that God is being meanie by not answering; it's that the answer is beyond our understanding, and any answer we come understand is less than God. All our spiritual answers are less than God. The best we can answer is no answer. The Bible is not about God at all, it is only about the human race. God id Love says nothing about God only about the one making the statement. Does Grace come from God or is it just random happenstance? Until you come to the conclusion that this question  is unanswerable, all you can have is delusion and idolatry.

I messed up on the commandments I forgot the Sabbath. A day of rest is good for us and putting Divine Authority on it has only lead us into trouble. What I am trying to do is take the Divine Authority out of this and show that they are still the very best for us, no god needed. We are warned away form bringing God into by the first commandment, but do we listen. If you really reflect deeply on the first commandment, you end up with the conclusion that the spiritual is embedded in the physical. My first point that reality is 100% physical stands, well, my comment that it is 0% spiritual was an over statement made to get attention, an aphorism. The physical, existential comes before the spiritual; the body comes before the soul this is the piece you have been missing; it is the narrow gate you fail to enter. Rethink your point of view and believe the Good News.

Yes the Ten Commandments are very mundane and written on the level of a seven year old child. This is why I am trying to flesh them out. The first commandment is the toughest one to get. It involves some thought experiments to get into it. In the above post I posited I giver of unmerited favor. Who or what is this giver. Is it God or just some randomness in the universe. The problem with the God answer is that it is used as an authority and a power. This unmerited favor of grace is at its best when it is powerless.  My point is that there is no good answer, and further we are not qualified to answer it. We are butting up against the limits of human knowledge. We have to accept that we can ask all these very deep questions but we can never have any answer In the end, we have a choice, we can live live in this unmerited favor or not. Which way do you think is the better way to live? We are just scratching the surface of the depth of meaning in the first commandment. 

Honor your father and mother, I rephrased as you exist in between your parents and children make the best of it. The last six commandments are about respecting others.

I agree that the ten commandments need to be parsed out...

But, the commandments are given by unmerited favor solely for our benefit

You have received this gift of life and the freedom of choice by unmerited favor. You cannot know the giver or understand why it is given. Any trying to understand this giver will only lead to idolatry and taking the Lords name in vain.

You are embedded in family relationships, parents, you and children, make the best of it.

Respect other people as having received the same amount of unmerited favor as you have.

The existential consequences of the is, the blessing and curse are a little more nuanced and will take further posts.

Sorry took so long to clarify, but the statement is an Aphorism. It is not aimed at you logical mind, it is aimed at your subconscious. I do not need a spiritual realm laid on top of the physical, existential one. It is murky and mysterious enough all by itself. Further. the first commandment tells us not to speculate on a spiritual realm. the first commandment is about UNITY. A unity that we can never, NEVER, understand, not even a little bit. On one hand we are all part of this UNITY, on the other we can never get it. The Commandments not divine law, they are existential facts of life. They bring with them a blessing or a curse, and these are real existential blessings or curses. The commandments are given wholely and solely for our benefit. You are master od the Sabbath, the Sabbath is not master of you. The Good News about the First Commandment is that we have a connection to this UNITY if we only get out of the way and let it through. There is no revelation of God. anybody who claims the do or they can speak about God is a liar. There is however revelations about the multiple ways we block this UNITY. Revelations are not about God, they are about how we block God.

Hello from Sparks NV, just a few thoughts for the season Grace brings us Easter, Easter does not bring us grace. Life the universe and everything is 100% physical and 0% spiritual. Here's my shout out to you zero percenters: you are the salt that makes the meat savory, the yeast that rises the bread, the light in the very darkest night, don't ever let your light go out.

My apologies to Soma for finding this thread a whole lot of nonsense. You are a body with a soul at the very best. The spiritual does not create the physical, it is the physical that creates the spiritual. Existence is 100% physical and 0% spiritual. The Kingdom is all physical and nothing else. This is the hardest pill to swallow. Living as if the Kingdom this existence is the Kingdom doesn't solve any problem, but it makes sure that we are not part of the problem.

Living in Grace does not give any insights or expand consciousness. It does lead to an abundant and joyful life. The Kingdom is existence; they are not two things that are side by side. No one alive or who has ever been alive or is going to be alive has ever lived anywhere other than in the Kingdom. It's just some people live like it is so and most don't.

Jim I agree with you and I think your last sentence sums it up perfectly. I will just add that I think Jesus came to show us that we are divine beings with the infinite wisdom within in order to find our way out of the lower dimensions of slower frequencies in the material world and their shadows of our insufficiency so we can experience the living God in our higher consciousness.

 

*I can agree with all of this except the infinite part, I would use greater wisdom. It is not the fall that makes us mortal; it is not accepting our mortality that is the original sin.

 

The journey begins with the deep observation of our thoughts, which ones to consider and which thoughts not to pay attention to on our way to the consistent happiness of our true being described as heaven on earth. We are only asked to leave in peace the lower level of mental programming that is keeping us down so the Divinity within can unfold a new life of awe and splendor that is all around us. This happiness is not based on our possessions, but the intuitive consciousness that tunes into and perfects our awareness in the spiritual experience deeper than the earthly deficiencies covering the divine treasure within. Christ is offering us an opportunity to connect with all humans in love, unity and compassion to expand our consciousness to the consciousness that is God the Father in everything and all things. I don't think Christ came establish the institution of Christianity, but to play a part spiritually so we attain immeasurable joy playing our part and being a factor in life. “There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there.” (Einstein)

 

*There you go with the infinities again with the word immeasurable. Now I know joy, she is a good friend of mine. All joking aside, I don't measure joy by the glass being half empty or even half full. I measure joy by an over flowing glass, more than that a glass that is gushing joy. Stop worrying about all these thing and their sources. In all your relationships just be the joyful one. Be the one who breathes joy and hope into every situation no matter the circumstances, just because you can. This does not mean you should be insensitive when bad things happen, but if you look hard enough, you can find the joy even in the toughest situations.

 

* the star signifies my additions to Soma's post....

Again I will parse some words with you all, and I will like it....

First I will take on the verse that go something like this, the Kingdom is at hand, repent and believe the good news. For Jesus and me the Kingdom is both potential and existential. It has and always be fully and perfectly present both inside you and outside you. Most of you have agreed with the inside part, but your stumbling block is the outside portion. This is the meaning of the parable of the sower where the seed fell on good ground and sprouted but was choked out by weeds. This world seems to be too evil for the Kingdom to be perfectly present in all times and in all places. Repent is then just about changing the way you see the world. Is this world really fallen or is that just the way you choose to see it? It is foolishness to see the world as anything other than fallen, some about what is foolish to the world is the wisdom of God. For the last part, just change the word believe for accept.

The Kingdom is ever present, change how you look at the world and accept the Good News.

Paul

 

Here is Bertrand Russell on the subject ... the piece I alluded to earlier.

 

Thanks for the quote, it might be a whole lot of circular logic, but that is Bertrand's point.

While I might not be sure where I am going in life, I go about as though I am sure.

 

One does not need to act as though they are sure of where they are going, all one has to be is joyful in their unknowing. If you wait around for proof, you will never do anything or if you wait around till you are sure of what you're doing, you will never act.

 

I like parsing words and after only a few post I'm sure that you all are convinced of it. I got a little side tracked with the math stuff, but my point was and is that I approach God like a I approach zero and the infinite. While I cannot fully understand the infinite or God, I can use them in real life, in existence, to make my life better.

 

First thing one has to do is like Bertrand accept that you can never prove or disprove God. You can never prove whether the universe is by intelligent design or random chance. Any inquires into these things is a waste of time except to prove to yourself that they can never be answered. Only when you get to this point can you honestly ask the question, how then should I live my life. This is where your concept of God will play out in your life. How you live your life will reveal your concept of God. I don't care if you are a hard line atheist like Richard Dawkins. God is not a thing to be proved or disproved; God is a concept that is for each person is defined by how they live.

 

A little aside, here is a meditative practice of mine. I sit quietly and think about my breathing. With every breath I draw I am thankful for it, every time I exhale I breath the sheer joy of being alive into the world.

Jim,

 

Going back to what kicked this off then - would you say you are open-minded to there being a God/s or some type of supernatural entity that we don't yet understand, or are you closed-minded so to speak believing that the concept of God is 'impossible'. Not a loaded question, just asking as you are self-identifying as an atheist and this goes to the core of what started this discussion.

 

Cheers

Paul

First wow, don't look at the board for two days and there is over a dozen more post on this thread, that is a good thing.

Paul, it is hard to make a complicated point in the space provided. I did not say that God is meaningless, I said that the question do you believe in God is meaning less. There is a difference. I'll put it this way and God that needs me to believe in him is no God but an idol. I need to delve into some thought experiments to explain and Newtonian mathematics. He is the first person to put down on paper that zero and the infinity are reciprocals, this is the basis for all calculus and higher mathematics. They are two sides of the same coin, one is the infinitely small and the other is the infinitely large. Another this is that no number exists apart from being applied to something. The number one is just a concept and does not exist, but one apple exists. On the other side zero apples do not exist. Now you can have half an apple, a quarter of an apple, an eighth of an apple and so on till you get to the point where it is so small that for all intense and purposes it is almost zero apples. On the other side an infinite amount of apples would fill the universe and very other possible universe with apples and still have apples to spare. It reminds me of a story of a boy who finds a jeanie who grants him one wish. The boy likes apples so he wishes for apples, poof, the world starts to fill up with apples and destroys all existence. Somebody hit the restart button and do the big bang all over again.

Throwing my hat in the ring....

I am an atheist. I do not agree with any form of theism. God does not exist any more than the infinite or zero exists, but they are useful and real. They are helpful in so much as they help us understand existence without really being apart of it. I put it to you another way, any God that needs to be believed in is nothing more than an idol.

Do you believe in god is a meaningless question to me. The words we are left with to describe the human condition are tainted with past meanings that distort the reality. Terms like Grace and the Kingdom are the best I can do and only with a lot of explanation. Life is a Gift and it doesn't matter if it is by design or just random happenstance. How you receive this Gift is the only question that matters.

What is Progressive Christianity to me?

What is religion to me, would be the better question?

It is all about story to me, and how it is more important on how the story gets you to live than the content of the story. this is true for all religions or stories although some stories are just light entertainment. True stories don't have to be factual to be true. I have been a church goer, member all my life that is 58 years, and I never bought into the idea that the bible stories are literally true. I see baptism as group entry ritual. It has nothing to do with God. I see communion as a ritual meal sharing which tells all the participants that they are equally valued in the group.

I don't know if this is answering the question directly, but what I shared makes me more a Progressive Christian that an traditional one.

I have read some of John's books over the years but never considered that there might be a message board to talk about them. I am a long time Methodist and have always enjoyed the music even though some of the words in the songs are quite meaningless to me. An example of this is How Great Thou Art. I like how it feels to sing the song even though I won't even sing the last two verses. The song elicits gratitude and joy in me even though the words leave me cold sometimes. My point is that anything that gets one to a place of gratitude and joy is a good thing.

I also have a keen sense of irony. Just last week I shared with my pastor how all the believers in God might be practicing idolatry and the atheists might have it right.

Anyway, glad to be here and thanks for letting me share...