Christianity

[seeds]

Are you assuming that our life here on Earth is not for a good/necessary reason...perhaps even a reason that we 'ourselves' agreed to and orchestrated?

You seem to be implying that we pre-existed in some context of reality prior to our present situation here on earth.

I had a feeling I should have been more clear about that statement by adding "agreed to on some level".

I don't mean to obsess over this, Lace, but that clarification simply digs you a little deeper into the hole you're creating, for it still implies that we existed prior to our appearance on earth.

Again, you simply cannot throw comments like that into the conversation and not expect to be called-out on it and asked to explain what you mean.

How about we just leave all that aside and go with your next comment...

I do not know or imagine what else we are or what else there is -- I simply think we are much more than this physical/human reality, and that our connectivity to ALL is way beyond this Earth experience.

I can agree with that.

We are here doing this. Thinking there's something else doesn't necessarily help us do this any better.

I beg to differ, for I suggest that if every human on earth knew the true extent of the gift of life,...

(or at least was taught at an early age to "believe" that our eternal destiny will be equal, wonderful, and perfect for everyone)

...then perhaps it might help quell the spirit that causes hedonistic idiots such as this guy...



...to want to own and control everything (and everyone) in order to use for their own selfish purposes.

In other words, perhaps there would be less greed in the world, and thus those horrible images of suffering I uploaded in my last post would be nonexistent.

...all I am suggesting is that if that fact was fully revealed to us, then I'm pretty sure that most of us, especially the folks in these sorts of dire and oppressive situations...

I don't think there is a fact. There is a belief or an imagining. If you think something needs to be different than what is, then what are you going to do about it?

Regardless of whether I am right or wrong about the details, I am going to keep promoting a higher and more beautiful, equitable, and logical vision of reality.

What do you want other people to do about it?

I want other people to wake up to a new level of spiritual consciousness in which, again, the suffering and oppression captured in those images will no longer exist on this planet.

Clearly, the old religions have failed us in that regard.

I prefer to seek understanding for WHAT IS without automatically labeling it as a mistake. Displaying horrible pictures of suffering doesn't explain anything.

Again, I beg to differ.

They explain that humanity is in desperate need of a worldwide spiritual revolution in which we collectively realize that we're all in this together - as equals, and that horrible pictures of needless suffering and oppression must no longer be obtainable.

Again, the "old paradigm" religions have failed us, hence, my constant insistence on our need for a new "material/spiritual" paradigm.
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[henry quirk]

one is the democracy of individualism, opportunity, meritocracy, equal participation, etc. That's traditional American democracy, and Henry's kind, I suspect.

It sounds good 'cept for that pesky lil bit about how I'm supposed to do what the majority sez. It's a deal-breaker for me.

Heh. Right. Agreed.

Democracy isn't some sort of magical arrangement that came down from the clouds. It's a provisional political arrangement, a way of dealing with life in a fallen world, and keeping the autocrats from eating everybody alive. And like Churchill, or Disraeli are said to have said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other one." It's just the best of a flawed thing.

Seems to me: all we need is a means of binding arbitration. If we recognize each man as free with a natural, inalienable claim to his, and no other's, life, liberty, and property, then a common mechanism for settling dispute, and levying responsibility when life, liberty, and property is violated, is a good idea. Not seein' where democracy is necessary (narrow applications of a tightly bound democratic process might have a place in, for example, hirin' public proxies [though, legitimately, you could get the same results just throwin' all the names in a hat and lettin' a pretty girl in a cocktail dress select the winner randomly]).

[Immanuel Can]

The Buddha seems like he was wise in many respects, however, apparently he was wrong. History is full of charismatic figures who seem to have gotten it wrong about God and other things.

That is true.

But it's not particularly informative of anything. There were many wrong guesses about all kinds of things -- the shape of the world, the orbits of planets, medical treatments and human physiology...lots and lots of things. But in no case did it imply there was no right answer, or that nobody could have it.

That's the real question: who has the right answer?

[Immanuel Can]

That seems fine.

Seems fine to you maybe because you were born and raised in the "correct" religion. How do you think others of us may feel? Apparently we weren't chosen or matter enough to God.

No, a quick read of the first two chapters in Romans finishes that worry off. All men know.

Take my case. I was born a Gentile. If Judaism was "the right religion," and Christ is the Jewish Messiah, then I was born in the wrong place and time, wasn't I? It didn't stop me, though, and it didn't prevent God reaching me. God loves me and you just as much as he loves the most devout rabbi in Jerusalem. That's what the Bible tells us.

And he's reached you, Gary. So whomever you're worrying about, it isn't yourself. You have heard.

[Gary Childress]

That seems fine.

Seems fine to you maybe because you were born and raised in the "correct" religion. How do you think others of us may feel? Apparently we weren't chosen or matter enough to God.

No, a quick read of the first two chapters in Romans finishes that worry off. All men know.

Take my case. I was born a Gentile. If Judaism was "the right religion," and Christ is the Jewish Messiah, then I was born in the wrong place and time, wasn't I? It didn't stop me, though, and it didn't prevent God reaching me. God loves me and you just as much as he loves the most devout rabbi in Jerusalem. That's what the Bible tells us.

And he's reached you, Gary. So whomever you're worrying about, it isn't yourself. You have heard.

IC, I gave a woman I loved over $50,000, all my nest egg I had stored up over 30 years of working. I worked all those years in spite of having a mental illness. 2 years ago she came into my life and took it all. While she was unemployed and having hardship, I helped her with surgery she needed to have. I helped her when she needed money for a doctor's visit for he daughter. I gave her money to help with bills while she was unemployed. She took the money and blew me off, wouldn't even stick around to be my friend. She found a good paying job and is probably living a happy life right now. There's no justice in this world IC. I hate to break it to you, friend, but there's no God. God has yet to reveal to me that he does ANYTHING in this world. He may as well be a lame duck for all he's worth.

If God has been good to you, then good for you. Don't expect any of the rest of us to feel the same way. All those people who died on 911, falling or else jumping to their horrifying deaths weren't spared by God. THERE IS NO GOD just because you've had a good life, IC. I'm sorry, but I'm on my last nerve with this world. I hope you can understand. And if there is a God, then I hope he can understand why I don't worship him.

[Immanuel Can]

IC, I gave a woman I loved over $50,000, all my nest egg I had stored up over 30 years of working.

Wow. That must have just about ripped your guts out.

Are you now convinced you still did the right thing? Did she genuinely need it? Did you save her life by doing that? Or do you feel that you got 'taken'?

I guess the answer to that makes no difference, as your feelings about it are likely to be painful, either way.

There's no justice in this world IC.

You are exactly right!

And that is one powerful evidence "this world" is not enough. Justice is not being done here. So if you want a hope of justice, if you want to believe that the kindness you showed and the goodness of your generosity still have some merit, and you can still be repayed for your sacrifice, it won't happen by focusing on this world, will it?

But then, God never promised you justice in this world. In fact, He promised the opposite here, and justice beyond.

...just because you've had a good life, IC.

Heh. Don't be so sure you know my life, Gary. We've all got our struggles. As the old saying goes, "Maybe life is the best teacher; but it kills all its students."

Seriously, though, life is hard...for almost everybody, I think. And for those who have it easy, I'm not sure that produces the best in them, at all. I have not noticed that people who have never suffered, or who have only suffered lightly, are very deep. There's something about our struggles here that is profoundly deepening of the character -- if we find the way to react to it rightly, and find the way not to be broken by it.

Hence one important need for God. We won't make it through this world alone, without being misshapen and bitter by the injustice of life, unless we can find a context that gives us reason to endure and power to overcome. We all have need of that.

I'm sorry, but I'm on my last nerve with this world. I hope you can understand. And if there is a God, then I hope he can understand why I don't worship him.

Actually, I think you just gave a very good reason TO worship Him. He alone can bring about the justice for which you long.

Here's a good illustrative moment, Gary. As a result of your bitter experience, you can go one of two ways. One is that you can spend your life resentful and hateful for how your kindness has been abused. You can write-off any hope of justice, and spend your time shaking your fist at the indifferent universe, and die with no hope of redress. Or you can realize that your actions of kindness are actually redemptive: to the limited extent you could, you sacrificially gave of yourself to the good of another; and if she never repaid you, God can. And you can turn in trust to God, and say, "God, I'm suffering because of this. But please receive my sacrifice for the good of another as a tribute to the sacrifice you made for me, when you sent your Son to give far more than I ever gave. Yet, just as she turned her back on me, I have turned my back on You, and set your goodness to me as nothing. Please forgive me, and receive my thanks -- even if she never gives me any thanks -- and I will ask for your justice and reparation one day, rather than remaining bitter or seeking my own vindication now."

And that sounds like worship. It also, I think, sounds like a perspective that could redeem your loss, and let you become a better person for it, believe it or not.

So I guess that from here, you can choose one of those two roads. And which one you choose will determine what kind of life you will live, going forward.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The Buddha seems like he was wise in many respects, however, apparently he was wrong. History is full of charismatic figures who seem to have gotten it wrong about God and other things.

That is true.

But it's not particularly informative of anything. There were many wrong guesses about all kinds of things -- the shape of the world, the orbits of planets, medical treatments and human physiology...lots and lots of things. But in no case did it imply there was no right answer, or that nobody could have it.

That's the real question: who has the right answer?

The present direction of this conversation now veers from, let's say, an objective and considered analysis (of the structure, purpose and value of Christianity) to considerations far more sentimental and emotional.

The primary, and even perhaps the sole 'wedge' that is employed by the Christian evangelist seems ultimately to be emotional and psychological. In so many conversion cases the individual *comes to Jesus* when he is down and indeed *bottomed-out*. One can find these stories in almost all accounts of Christian conversion. Curiously, that aspect or factor does not seem to operate in other religious modalities. In any case not in such a predominant way.

There are two aspects to this two-pronged attack: one is cloying and even sidling; yet always, behind that, is the threat of tremendous torture if one does not *submit* and *give oneself to Jesus*.

Yet when the supposed 'reasonable approach' shows signs of not working so well then the heavier persuasive armament is wheeled out:

You were told. You know. You heard the Good News. You didn't accept. You rejected it. If you think the present situation is bad imagine it amplified a thousand-fold!

One has, I think, to stand back from all of this essentially maudlin display when one considers the function and purpose of Evangelical Christianity in the present time. One cannot, I do not think, argue Evangelical Christianity on its own merits in an abstract conversation that mimics intellectuality. Evangelical Christianity must be seen in a larger context of 'social manipulation'. And therefore the *techniques* of gaining a conversion, which I regard as underhanded and coercive, should be seen as elements of a larger spiritual, intellectual and mental disease that, in this sense, plagues our culture.

To bring this into a topical light what I have most strongly noticed about Immanuel Can's method is its deviousness. We have all noticed this, we have all talked about it so there is really no point in stating it again. But the devious operator never relents. Never admits to anything. And keeps pushing forward with the strategy which, of course, has shown that it is historically successful. As with the more studied and structured use of mind control in a prison setting (as with communist conversion) the individual must be weakened physically, emotionally and intellectually. Eventually all will surrender. Thus, the emphasis is on creating and exploiting spiritual weakness! The ramification here are far-reaching.

I suppose it could be said, with fairness, that seen in this way Christianity cultivates not 'manly strength' or a stoic 'facing reality' with an attitude stronger than the blows of fate, but rather cultivates a spiritual weakness, a giving in, a giving up, and the relinquishing a warrior's ethic.

[Immanuel Can]

The Buddha seems like he was wise in many respects, however, apparently he was wrong. History is full of charismatic figures who seem to have gotten it wrong about God and other things.

That is true.

But it's not particularly informative of anything. There were many wrong guesses about all kinds of things -- the shape of the world, the orbits of planets, medical treatments and human physiology...lots and lots of things. But in no case did it imply there was no right answer, or that nobody could have it.

That's the real question: who has the right answer?

The present direction of this conversation now veers...

No, it's on track.

[Alexis Jacobi]

He didn't. He has disclosed Himself to all men, as Romans 1 tells us.

But you're right in this much: His most absolute disclosure is in His Son, (Heb. 1:1-3) and that was to the Nation of Israel, that through them, as God told Abraham, "all the Earth will be blessed." One nation, whose job was to represent the One True God among the nations. That seems fine.

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:

Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

Now, here is an interesting *key*.

Just as the evangelist here present and operating among us with *absolute certainty* and *absolute conviction* operates from an apologetic platform that shows itself capable of deviousness and psychological manipulation by 1) breaking down the certainty or the integral structure of the individual through evangelical tactics, and 2) employing the threat of endless spiritual torment as a powerful tool to provoke conversion . . .

. . .with the quoted portion in Hebrews there is no alternative except to surrender to the apologist's conversion project because, as it is stated, the one and only real truth was given to the Hebrews, and then extended through them not simply locally, but universally.

In our present, of course, this fits into temporal patterns and temporal reality. That is, the politics of our day. And Evangelical Christians are deeply involved in *seeing the world* through these lenses. Indeed, and as an example, all American presidents since perhaps Roosevelt have been Christian Zionists. So from this perspective the last approximately 20-30 years of American wars have been, essentially, evangelical wars: wars in which this strange Christian spirit operates and acts in the world, and in extremely consequential ways.

This is really my point: to see, to notice, that these ideas -- absolutist, starkly divided notion of good and bad/good and evil, and the conversion of the individual to specific perspectives that open the individual to machinations of manipulation -- these things must be examined and understood.

The techniques that Immanuel Can uses then can be examined in their microcosmic dimension as the microcosmic plays out in the macrocosmic.

The world is then shown as being *owned* by god through the people god is said to have elected. Again, I merely wish to suggest that these are not truths but assertions.

Now, the way this is set up works like this: If you object to any part of this you automatically set yourself within the camp of the *opposition* which is defined as, at base, demoniac opposition to god's plan. You will either accept and obey, or you will reject and rebel.

The entire *system* then operates through this harsh and binary structure.

[Walker]

So I guess that from here, you can choose one of those two roads. And which one you choose will determine what kind of life you will live, going forward.

Fork-in-the-road territory. Always stimulating.

Tonglen practice is beneficial and does not conflict with Christianity. It’s simple, effective, and requires no belief to experience personal benefit, and the experience reinforces personal knowledge of its benefit. It's a way of leading energy. Sincere Christian belief has the same effect. Tonglen is more body-centric.

The ego, or intellect, requires a grand schema, an encompassing view. It requires reasons worthy of one’s own importance. The difficulty in living by a view is that stuff can be forgotten in the heat of passion, and compassion that blurs the obvious, and blurs one’s reasoning.

Tonglen is more of a simple doing and there’s time enough for the benefits to be made grand by the ego and the intellect, after the body experience has taken hold of one’s consciousness and naturally improves attitude significantly. One really need not know the reasons why it works for it to work, but the workings will confer and reinforce the knowledge of how it works.

The simplest explanation of Tonglen is that when with another, and with the other’s “problems,” then each time you inhale you inhale the problems and suffering of the other who is before you. You mentally, imaginatively, inhale the problems and suffering with each inhalation, and when you exhale you take the peace from within you, and exhale it into the other.

Why does it work? Because it’s an energetic doing of the body. Because it forces you to hear the other person, and most folks just want someone to hear them. Attention to your breath, with the imaginative, intellectual involvement of what each breath represents and is doing, slows your own breathing which bestows calm. The other person also becomes calm because of your effect. The focus of attention and the calmness changes your attitude, and places your attention elsewhere than with your own “problems,” elsewhere than upon your own suffering, which is the best place to be, to be of benefit to another.

There’s a saying: beware of any enterprise that requires new clothes. The same can apply to people. That’s doesn’t mean avoid, it simply means to beaware. Beware of new people who require your money, especially if they’re extra friendly, because after the exchange of the filthy lucre they will not be so friendly. They will not be so friendly in order to assert that you have not bought them. This is just human nature, although it sounds unjust.

The end point of Tonglen practice is when you spontaneously inhale the suffering of your enemies who would harm you, and breathe into them the peace of your still soul. However that’s venturing into Christ-like bodhisattva territory. Daniel in the Lions' Den territory, where intent must be totally sincere and uncontrived in order to not be eaten alive. There is where one’s own benefit has becomes secondary to compassion, one effectively becomes compassion and thus in the hands of Grace.

[Alexis Jacobi]

No, it's on track.

Do you feel you are making progress?

[Immanuel Can]

No, it's on track.

Do you feel you are making progress?

Doing fine. Thanks for asking.

[Immanuel Can]

Seems to me: all we need is a means of binding arbitration.

Yeah, that's tough, though. Who gets to "bind" is the problem.

At least with democracy, the selfishness of others is counterbalanced by votes from the other side, which, if nothing else, etiolates the powers of authority until they can do minimal damage. A bad arbitrator is voted down or voted out, eventually. In unilateral arbitration, if it works it works, but if the arbitrator's a jerk, it's really bad.

[Immanuel Can]

So I guess that from here, you can choose one of those two roads. And which one you choose will determine what kind of life you will live, going forward.

Fork-in-the-road territory. Always stimulating.

Tonglen practice is beneficial and does not conflict with Christianity.

No, sorry...it sure does "conflict." They have nothing in common, actually.

[Walker]

So I guess that from here, you can choose one of those two roads. And which one you choose will determine what kind of life you will live, going forward.

Fork-in-the-road territory. Always stimulating.

Tonglen practice is beneficial and does not conflict with Christianity.

No, sorry...it sure does "conflict." They have nothing in common, actually.

You're wrong. See my last posting for the reasons why.

And, I'm not sorry you're wrong.