God: Talking Head

[steve]

I must say that you have thought this out rather well. However, I must energetically disagree with you. I too am a Christian, that meaning I have found my experience of God to be through Jesus Christ. I think that in Christ there is some force or nature, if you will, that can be had by all people. This of course is not at all exclusive. Anyone with the right tools or the right frame of mind may attain a higher state, if that is what you want to call it.

I come into a troubling area with you in that I’m not sure that I can even buy your interpretation of the ‘God experience.’ You are, of course, entitled to youre belief as well as I am. You think that God is a force or a personal being, whereas I find God to be more of a ‘nothingness’. Now, I know what might come to mind first, ‘how can God be nothing and yet you still have thoughts about God.’ Well, I think that God is nothing because nothing can ever describe God. If a description of God always, as I believe it does, fall short of the intended goal, why then do we still try and make up new things to say about God. Wouldn’t it rather be more appropriate to simply say that we believe that God exist, yet we don’t believe that at the same time?

If, as history as shown us, each civilization comes up with, or creates, its own version of God, why are we so hell bent on doing it just once more. Each and every time we come close to what we as people view God to be, there is yet one more thing that we have forgotten. We have, I think, come very far in our interpretation of God. At least we don’t think that he is going to come and sit down next to us under a tree to shoot the breeze.

It is very hard to realize the scope of how God has been used in even our own time. There are countless ways that even to this day, God, that three letter word, is used to separate or to divide. I’m certainly not willing to place a label on God and make it/he/she/whatever my own creation. How would that make any difference to anyone other than me?

Of course we all must find our own way of seeing or experience God, if that is possible, but can’t we just leave it at that. I know that oftentimes I belittle others God thoughts because they seem so juvenile and petty to me. OK, so God speaks to you, that’s great. What did he say today? It seems to off center. And if God is, as you say, a force why then would God speak. I would think that the talking would only come from us, and that God would leave that to us.

Lets dump theism in the garbage can of theology, and pick up a new God, one that may get us through the next hundred years. Of course, that God will be dumped also and people just like us, will look back and say, ‘My, haven’t we come so far.’

[fatherman]

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:

I must say that you have thought this out rather well

 

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,

 

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.

 

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:

You think that God is a force or a personal being, whereas I find God to be more of a ‘nothingness’.

 

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:

all that is, all that isn't

 

Although, in rereading my posts I can see that I didn't make that point very clear.

 

You wrote

I would think that the talking would only come from us, and that God would leave that to us.

 

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.