Bible Questions?

Do you consider the possibility that Christ realized the cultural relevance of choosing 12 men rather than women though? Or do you think that there is something inherent in the gender of "man" that makes ordination for a women impossible.
I think it's the former.

 

Neodude, you say that the reason why I dismiss other religions is due to me being afraid of the other worldviews. This isn't true. Actually, like you, I used to incorporate every worldview into my life. I would take a little from Taoism, Zen, Hinduism, Buddhism, and many others you could think of. But I only began to move away from those beliefs because I start to feel that they contradicted themselves and that they aren't so realistic in the end. I began to think that everything that these beliefs offered was already contained in the Bible but in a much clearer form.

For example, the best way toward living in the now, to meditate, isn't to actually sit down and clear one's head, trying to reach nirvana. The best way to this is to let yourself go to others and to just let yourself go to love. When you let yourself go to love, everything else just falls into place. So with that, Buddhism becomes obsolete. But then I think, if we were created, and we had a creater, then that creator would need to show us how to live. I don't see any other religion doing this in such a down to earth and honest way. All of the other religions complicates this by describing states of being and whatnot. And all we really need is to just be shown how to become more spiritually aware.

Isn't it interesting that Hindus accept Christ as an avatar of God? It shows that they recognize the word and that they incorporated that into their worldview. The only difference is that they changed the story of his life around (like what Islam has done as well) and took the very thing away that made him unique from every other God described in absolutely any religious text. In Hinduism, you have shiva coming down to earth describing how to live more loving lives. In fact, in order to gain attention, people MUST use the word. The word being the message of God. Otherwise people would not flock to it. But in order to deceive people, you would need to twist this word slightly towards the end to make it difficult to recognize.

In Hinduism, there is no salvation and reality is just a never ending stream of chaos and peace, chaos and peace. I don't see how a loving God would not do what he can to stop this cycle and to try to bring out eternal peace. In my opinion, having chaos and peace in a neverending cycle because God is bored is not nice and it's not the type of God that I would want to praise, personally. In hinduism, reality is just a big act, and that God is doing all of this to amuse itself.

Also, no, I don't see any prophesies in any religion that are as potent and as useful and as accurate as the prophesies contained in the Bible. If you like, we can start a thread and compare prophesies. But so far, there have been religions that say, "WATCH OUT FOR GOVERNMENT, IT'S RULED BY THE SERPENTS". But it doesn't really go into how to prepare yourself and how to spot them and doesn't really go into anything relevant.

 

Sure, but could you point to any part that is inherently deceptive? Other religions have to go into how to avoid evil, and they have to use the word for it to be taken up by the people. But the word is twisted and becomes an ineffective means of avoiding the pitfalls and trappings, simply because I think that they over complicate the means of avoiding such things. Simplicity is the best.

I can't think of any other religion other than Christianity that speaks so clearly and so down to earth as to avoid what you ask and they do it by using real world events and real world sayings, happenings, et al. I don't get this sense of realism that I do from any other religion. It's mostly flowery language that hides it's message through complex terminology.

 

Interestingly enough, the above paragraphs convey a tremendous misunderstanding of the religions you mention, so it isn't surprising that you found them unsustainable. We could get into the specifics if you like, one at a time.

 

What I think you are showing with these two posts is that the religion you most strongly identify with and understand is Christianity.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but why does this personal clarity that Christianity may or may not provide for you somehow discredit other worldviews and religions for other people?

 

Take the most influential Book list. What do you think would be on that list? Books that discuss spirituality and God, right? Anything that uses a positive message, something that has good news attached to it:

1. The word of Buddha
2. Taoism
3. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
4. Desiderata

Etc, etc, etc.

Using that example, that is what I mean what I say the the word attracts people. We have this natural tendency to flock towards the messages behind these books. Many religions of the world HAVE to use that if they want followers because people can sense it.

 

Because none of the others offer salvation, just acceptance of a cold world.

Can you explain how I misrepresented those religions?

Mostly, I am not really articulating myself very well. But spiritually, nothing makes as much clear sense to me other than Christianity.

Actually, I went through Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and in the end, nothing is as clear and cuts through the BS as well as Christianity.

 

I'm not following you on this. What do you mean about "the word attracts people".

 

What I mean is that a message of how to love others, how to grow spiritually, the word is like a spiritual food and people have this natural hunger for it.

If I were Satan, I would try to discover this recipe and learn how to use it to get people to flock to my spiritual food other than the spiritual food that actually has real substance to it. I would do this to get people away from the true substance and prevent people from being full. I would do this to harm Gods plan.

 

All of them offer salvation from what the human condition is essentially - the constant struggle of duality and the play of desire. The trappings of separative existence, the subject/object paradigm.

Well, at least in the post that I mention, with Buddhism, you say that they say the best way to live in the now is to try and reach nirvana, which is actually a contradiction. What Buddhism is claiming is that when you do live in the now, nirvana is something that will naturally unfold. It isn't a goal to reach, but simply a by-product, of pure awareness.

And then with Hinduism, you say there is no salvation, which also isn't true. In Hinduism, salvation is acheived when the illusion of maya is dispelled. The cycle of chaos and peace is part of this illusion, because true peace is when you are at peace even when the peace goes.

 

So are you saying that other spiritual texts do not offer a message of how to love others?

 

They do, but I see them as ineffective. People have the holy spirit within them if that want it. Those that do will know how to love, but nothing clears things up as well as a message from God himself.

With Buddhism, ya you're right. I rushed my explanation a bit. But it's my opinion that there is only one truth... pure awareness is great, but nothing beats letting yourself to love and practicing the loving your neighbor as you love yourself.

If you want to make a better comparison of eastern religions I really recommend http://deoxy.org/watts.htm. No one explains these religions as clearly as Alan Watts. Usually, most just explain the terminology of these systems but they never go into what any of this means in reality.

As for salvation, being in the here and now is great, but it isn't enough. What I meant by salvation, mostly, is that Hindus believe in a never ending cycle of chaos and peace... this is true and absolutely unavoidable. They believe that peace can be maintained by for a limited time. But in Christianity, it's eternal. In Hinduism, you gain inner peace, but there is no paradise. You just keep the inner peace within yourself, while living in a stream of chaos from others. There is no peace for all, eventually. That's just the thing, to a Hindu the Christian worldview is a kind of myth, and I find that shocking if the God of Hinduism is described as loving yet doesn't offer paradise for its creation.

In Christianity, everyone is a child of God. In Hinduism, everyone is ultimately Brahman. In Christianity, we only have our being due to God because he acts as a source, a light of sustenance. I believe it is ultimately illusionary to say that we are the eggman

I wish I can go into this more deeply with you, Neodude, but I have no idea really how to go about this. Through my discussions with other people, many hours worth of discussion, things just cleared themselves away and I forgot how my friend and I went through the motions but it really made sense. If I have the aim chat log I'll send it to you.

 

I didn’t say that the foretelling of a handful of prophets from a specific region discounts the teachings of every other religion in the entire world, I said that it was one of the proofs that the Bible is the word of God.

People who make prophecies are a dime a dozen and sometimes those prophecies actually come true.

The thing is that the prophecies in the Bible are not just the vague prophecies of psychics and seers of what will happen tomorrow or next year but are very specific about things that will happen hundreds of years in the future. In fact some of those prophecies are so accurate that people accuse them of being written after the fact.

 

Just like the statue prophecy in my signature

 

Pure awareness IS love. Love is creation. Being able to be perfectly aware of that is to embody love in the most highest and infinite form.

I'm sorry def I don't mean to be so blunt but that isn't true at all. There is such a thing as eternal peace in Hinduism, and it is for everyone. Once you realize this "inner peace" as you put it, you see the "stream of chaos" for what it really is. You see that it just is, and that is peace.

And in a sense, you would be right. To say that "we" (as in, our separative existence embodiments) are God is indeed false. But to say that we, as in all of creation and as a collective spirit, is not.

 

.....and you consider your belief that the Bible is the word of God as a basis for your belief that no other religion is a legitimate spiritual practice. Excuse me for going ahead and putting two and two together.

 

If you've only read the parts that "matter", how can you know that the rest doesn’t matter?

How can you understand the Bible “properly” when you haven’t even read it?

The Bible does not present a monopoly on spiritual truth? Okay without using the Bible, please tell me:
Why do people die? Why do children die? What is the condition of the dead?
Why is there wickedness?
Why hasn’t God done something about death and wickedness?
There are more but I’ll leave it at that.

 

I noticed.

 

There is a difference but yes.

 

Meaning, I skipped over the pages and pages of genealogy, and large parts of the Old Testament, mainly all the historical sections and Leviticus.

Well, this is beginning to venture into the realm of belief, which you and I tend to disagree upon, so I'll keep it brief.
First of all, I don't really understand why you are asking me the first two questions. People die because of lots of reasons. If you are trying to pinpoint some fundamental REASON that is present in all deaths, then I don't think there really is one.
The condition of the dead is irrelevant because there are no dead.
You ask me why there is wickedness, but you already know my perspective on this. I do not believe there IS wickedness. I believe good and evil are all very relative, ambiguous terms whose definitions ultimately boil down to a matter of perspective.
So, following that logic, God does nothing about wickedness because there is no wickedness. Only perceived wickedness. And if God got rid of all perceived wickedness, then there would be nothing left. As for death, I don't really know why God would need to do something about that. Death is a natural process, and simply a transition into something else. One could say that life is only the preparation for death.