fatherman

I relate to this dilemma. It's tough when your world turns upside down but the rest of the world doesn't. I've been fortunate to have a UMC church with a pastor that preaches Spong, Borg and Fox from the pulpit, but this church wasn't always that way. Christ teaches us be like leaven in the loaf...small, but subversive! You might be surprised how many progressives crawl out of the woodwork when one of them has the courage to speak up a little. Then again, sometimes it's just time to move on and lovingly kick the dust of that place off your feet. Thoughts on "moving on": Sometimes its ok to be in a community that loves you more than they agree with you...beliefs change, but love does not.

I agree that it is an interesting question to ponder and that it may be moot point, Sophia! :-) BrotherRog, thank you for pointing out what may be the most traditional view of the Western Christian world on the subject; however, I was simply stating my views on the subject. I call it "traditional" because that was one of the traditions I was taught growing up in the Presbyterian church.

I have some thoughts, but I certainly don't have the answers on this one. Here are a few thoughts ranging from radical to traditional. I'll start with the radical thought: Jesus perfected himself over many lifetimes (some have suggested that Jesus was a reincarnation of Elisha) until he became the Christ. Having become Christ, he then had the choice of whether or not he would return again to Earth as flesh and bone. So, you could say that he was the Christ before he was even born. Not quite as radical: Jesus was born with the same potential as anyone else. Perhaps he had some spiritual gifts from the start. Through devotion, prayer, study, and daily communion with God he became a fully self and God-realized being (or Christ). He raised his consciousness to a level that no one in history had ever done. Traditional: When Jesus was babtized by John, God claimed him as his son...making him the Christ. I find all of these scenarios to be plausible. Who can say what really happened? Unless you become a Christ , you will never really know for sure.

Jeep, I haven't read "Why Christianity must change or Die", so I'm not sure I can respond adequately to your words, but I will clarify my own words. When I suggested that we can "put on Christ", I'm suggesting that we can do as Jesus did and become fully conscious of Self (i.e. "True Self", "Divine Self", "Christ Consciousness"). I'm also making a distinction between Jesus and Christ. I'm suggesting that Jesus is a person who lived 2000 years ago...flesh and bone...our ancient brother, and that Christ is the state of consciousness that he attained (full alignment with true self). I don't mean "Christ" in the traditional Christian/Hebrew/Greek sense of the word. My use of "Christ" here comes more out of the traditions of spiritual development in India where yogis often claim the Bible as one of their sources of scripture, and Jesus as one of the great gurus. The state of full self- and God-awareness characterized by an infinite capacity for love and compassion is so strongly associated with Jesus that "Christ" has become its name. I'm also suggesting that when Jesus became the "Christ", he transcended the bounds of time and space (think quantum physics here). Jesus tuned his life to a level of energy (very high, perhaps pure light in the end) that exists in another dimension (eternity). When we tune ourselves to that frequency, we are one with Christ. Perhaps Jesus broke the "light" barrier before modern humans even broke the sound barrier. What I'm suggesting is not supernatural, nothing needs to be above nature. I'm merely suggesting that there is more to nature than what science has quantified thus far. Listen, I don't need to be right about this stuff...we're not here to be right. I'm just suggesting, like Bishop Spong, that there are other ways of looking at the phenomenon of Jesus. We're all here at tcpc.com or attend tcpc church's because we could not swallow the Christianity that was fed to us. We all had a deep sense that there was something more to it for us than heavenly goodies, judgement, and moral checklists. Fatherman

Hi CAT, I want to say that I honor your experience with God, and that I agree with what you are saying. I think that we are both suggesting that God is something to be experienced, not just studied. In reality, we are always experiencing God whether we realize it or not. Who can say what will trigger that realization? I haven't encountered a profound tragedy like the one you experienced, and I don't really want to wait for one to come along. Meditation is a holy science that has helped many to realize God in their lives. It's a path that can be chosen at any time in life. I believe that the choice is an "invitation". Like you, I don't usually experience the presence of God as a light. It may sound kind of flakey, but I tend to experience God directly through vibration...sound...silence. You wrote: I really like that. I believe that it is the nature of our divine or true selves to serve the world with love ("good deeds"). When we take the time to get to know our true selves and let the rest fall away, we are those "good [people] who [do] good deeds".

Steve, I'm guessing that you are responding to one of my recent posts (either my reply to your "Why do I open my mouth" thread or my "Transcendent Christ" thread). I will gladly respond for the sake of clarification and discussion, but I'm not interested in continuing for the sake of debate. You wrote: Although I have given quite a bit of thought to this subject, others have certainly thought it out quite a bit more. The perspective that I'm describing, is ancient, (2 to 3 thousand years by recorded history, and who knows how old by unwritten human experience). So it is not fair to characterize it as new or as creation of our current civilization. You wrote: I have not stated, nor do I believe that God is a personal being except to the extent that we are manifestations of God and we are personal beings. On the point of God being a 'nothingness', we have agreed. I wrote: Although, in rereading my posts I can see that I didn't make that point very clear. You wrote Exactly. Because, like you implied before, we shouldn't use G-O-D to seperate and divide us. When we perceive God as seperate from Us we have ruled out the possibility of God's voice. God's voice permeates the universe from within, not from without. We are the "Talking Heads". Discerning God's voice becomes a matter of discerning the voice of our divine-selves from the voice of our ego-selves. I can relate to your perspective (as I understand it to be) because I've dearly held it and still hold much of it. I'm also willing to accept that I could hold an entirely different perspective on another day. I do my self and others a disservice when I hold any of it too dearly, though.

I've never really introduced myself on this board, so I'll say a few things about my perspective and then get on with it. My relationship with Christ for a good portion of my adult life has centered around these thoughts: I will follow the model and teachings of Jesus without regard to reward and without regard to the legitimacy of his recorded miracles and divine position in the universe because I believe that he allowed God's true image and nature to shine freely through him for our sake. Living with this thought has opened up my heart and mind to experiencing God and Christ in whatever way they come to me, regardless of my upbringing and the traditions of my chosen denomination (UMC). This includes experiencing Christ as a state of consciousness. I believe that Jesus, divine as we all are, through single-minded devotion to Self and God realization became his highest self (Christ Consciousness) and became one with God (God Consciousness, or 'Entering the Kingdom of God'). In so doing, he realized his life's highest purpose and set about to achieve it as fully as he possibly could. WARNING: Some of you will want to click the "bunch of hooey" button on your computer and move on to another thread before you finish reading this next bit. Studying Jesus and following his example and teachings is something we all have some experience with. What if there is more? We can't really know Jesus the Man beyond what we read, but can we know Jesus the Christ? I'm reminded of Schweitzer's words These words have meant so many things to me over the years. Right now they are suggesting to me that Christ can reach us beyond time and space, not just in word, but in experience. Is Jesus the Christ at the right hand of God waiting to welcome us when we choose to enter the Kingdom of God? "Kingdom" meaning not some heavenly reward that comes after we die, but kingdom that is a state of consciousness, a way of living and being... (after all it's written that the Kingdom of God is at hand, here, now, with us.) What "toils", as Schweizter suggests, do we choose to enter the kingdom? For a long time I thought that good deeds and study were enough for me. Lately, though, I'm finding that I've got to stop, shut up, and listen or just be. My brain and ego have a lot of ideas about what I should be doing, but they do not have the full knowledge and being of God. Have I come to know Christ or God in my brain? I've only come to know what my five senses tell me. I'm hopeful that I will come to know God more fully by learning to deny my bodily senses and notions (meditation) as Jesus did (fasting and denying temptations in the wilderness after his baptism with John). Meditation also called 'yoga' (literally 'union') can be achieved many different ways, but the result is always the same so I'm not saying that we all have to become yogis to know God...but we do have learn how to get quiet and turn our attention to God. Can you say "I know how to ride a bicycle" just because you read a book (or even twenty) on the subject? You have to try it and practice it. Can we "put on" Christ? Is there room in the universe for David the Christ, Cindy the Christ, Bob the Christ? Can we truly do as Jesus did and find our true self, true calling, become one with "the Father"? It sure couldn't hurt to try! Could it? You tell me...

You may be making an assumption that being a progressive Christian means not listening to God. I sense that God does speak to us, but there are a few different ways to think about it : 1.) God's like a person, separate from us, lives in heaven, working the giant prayer switchboard in the sky (perhaps your coworker thinks of it this way) 2.) Just like in the first scenario, except in order to cut down on the switchboard activity, God picks just a few people to speak to (Jesus, Moses, The Pope, Jerry Falwell, etc.) 3.) God doesn't speak directly to people. God leaves signs (beauty of nature, design of the universe, loving people, fortune cookies, etc.) 4.) God is both the creator and the manifestion of the universe (all that is, all that isn't); therefore, we are manifestations of God. This means that we all have a divine self that need only be realized. Our divine self is like a drop of water in the ocean. By itself, it is just a single drop, but in the ocean it is the ocean. The divine self is everything that God is, but it lives in a single piece of creation, only our singularity is just an illusion. If you accept this, then it is easy to see how God could speak to a person. The divine self speaks to the ego self. The trick is, learning to quiet the ego self in order hear the divine self.