I think Jesus did the right thing. Because if He did accept that, he could never enjoy it. Because if He had all that he knew that he would have to protect himself from everyone who didn’t have it all. To do so would mean “imprisoning” Himself under the guise of “protection”. I would have told Satan to screw off too. To me, it is common sense.
As I have said before " if everyone shared everything, everyone would truly have everything their hearts could want". can anyone prove this to be untrue? It would even benefit the rich, they would have more than they already do, and be able to enjoy it without fear of someone trying to take it from them. The problem is…They are not willing to accept the fact they are equals to the poor, NOT their gods. They must be superior.
We are not here to be gods over one another! That is what they cannot give up. Until they do, they are going to continue suffering the consequences of their actions. They will keep bashing their heads into walls, only difference is now they will know WHY their heads are hurting.
Hi Kvn
Thanks for the input. Though we do see it somewhat differently, I basically agree with what you said here:
There is an apparent division between heaven and earth. Yet in the Lord’s Prayer it says “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So even though they are different, there seems to be a connection possible that doesn’t exist now but is a desired good.
IMO a great deal of harm has resulted from people mistakenly believing they know what this “will” means and strive to ignore this separation through secularization thinking they are creating heaven on earth and doing God’s will. This conception of God’s will is just egotism IMO and as such must change as do all natural cycles such as the tides on earth.
Hi David
I see you are an idealist. Respectfully, I cannot agree that it would ever be possible or even desired to share everything.
Take for example the question of sex. In order to take competition out sex for men all men will have to have equal access to all women. How as men do we share the women so that we all get an equal sample of different types so that no man feels denied?
Hopefully you can see that this would never work and only lead to women trying to castrate men for even thinking such a thing. 
Life on earth for collective mankind is a reflection of the collective level of “being” of man at which I believe the idealism you suggest is an impossibility. People strive for prestige and not for equality that denies prestige. Jesus’ mission was to raise the being of individuals open to the message for both their personal good in connection with the Kingdom, and the spiritual good in relation to man on earth. It would be useless for Jesus to strive for an impossible equality in secular life knowing full well it is normal for man’s “being”.
Hi Kvn
Thanks for the input. Though we do see it somewhat differently, I basically agree with what you said here:
There is an apparent division between heaven and earth. Yet in the Lord’s Prayer it says “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So even though they are different, there seems to be a connection possible that doesn’t exist now but is a desired good.
IMO a great deal of harm has resulted from people mistakenly believing they know what this “will” means and strive to ignore this separation through secularization thinking they are creating heaven on earth and doing God’s will. This conception of God’s will is just egotism IMO and as such must change as do all natural cycles such as the tides on earth.
Hi David
I see you are an idealist. Respectfully, I cannot agree that it would ever be possible or even desired to share everything.
Take for example the question of sex. In order to take competition out sex for men all men will have to have equal access to all women. How as men do we share the women so that we all get an equal sample of different types so that no man feels denied?
Hopefully you can see that this would never work and only lead to women trying to castrate men for even thinking such a thing.
Life on earth for collective mankind is a reflection of the collective level of “being” of man at which I believe the idealism you suggest is an impossibility. People strive for prestige and not for equality that denies prestige. Jesus’ mission was to raise the being of individuals open to the message for both their personal good in connection with the Kingdom, and the spiritual good in relation to man on earth. It would be useless for Jesus to strive for an impossible equality in secular life knowing full well it is normal for man’s “being”.
the life of christ is all a lie
letters and numbers show
his name is really 666 so
christians are mislead by
a evil soceity trying to keep
secrets that won’t last long
the god trinity would leave
man left only to be gay because
in the past they believed in the lies
all the info you need is right under
your nose jesus always made mistakes
if someone is blind help them without
“special” effort and tickets to heaven
where 9 out of 10 evryone sins and isn’t
forgiven so hell might as well always be busy
not only that humankind itself dosen’t need
any help with lying to itself already done
false education and a lying religion
you people can be convinced any way you want
but hey i’m not afraid to go to hell but “god”
has to pay his own price sooner or later
like being wiped from our memories ,
there is no such thing as good we all need
imperfection,lies, and payments even
though neither of them are “true” there is
no such thing as truth because all that’s going to happen
is were gona get sen’t back for lsearching for nothing
42 isn’t a answer it’s just a number and if your going
to walk down 42 roads might as well make another you idiots.
seriously whats so great about 42? it dosen’t explain anything
it dosen’t have a reason for being what it is just like us humanity
is only useful for flesh purposes like on the matrix that part is true
no the architect isn’t god a eternal idiot more like it if that suits
your beliefs we are also good for spreading the wordvirus a fake
belief able to manifest ones path in life im trapped in it because i was
convinced easily by liars who i wish were banished off this very planet
because im nothing more than a tool to them.
so i sin
you sin
they sin
we sin
nobody cares
because nobody is really there.
Nick,
As others have indicated, I think the problem with your question from the get-go was the assumption that Jesus (as the New Testament portrays him) was looking to establish “world peace”.
Interestingly enough, it is such a worldly messianism that most of the Jews were undoubtedly looking for - someone to expell the Romans, and further, to establish the earthly supremecy of the Jewish people and the cult of the Temple in Jerusalem, and through this, to usher in an aeon of world peace and plenty.
(…and now, time for a tangent…)
To be fair, such expectations are hardly unsurprising, given what one finds in the Jewish Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament for Christians).
There is, IMHO, a lot in the Old Testament which is just plain ugly - including a sense of entitlement for Israel, and something of a different standard of justice for Jews vs. “the rest of us” (goyim/gentiles/“the nations”). Keep in mind, much of the so called “lofty, ahead of it’s time” moral content of the Tanakh is directed toward fellow Israelites - a reality which is made clear in later Talmudic commentaries, in which it is obvious that the culture which gave rise to these books had a clear notion of “us vs. them” and “them” did not have the same rights as “us”. Of course this isn’t just a “Jewish thing” - you find it in most tribal cultures, and you still find shades of it today, even here in the west (ex. for some reason, the lives of our countrymen are more precious, etc.)
And it’s that ugly “me-first-ism” which was in large part glorified in popular messianic expectation.
This is why I tend to buy into the notion that Jesus was heavily exposed (perhaps quite directly, given the pagan cities which he lived so close to in Northern Israel - and given his family trade, he would have likely ended up employed and amongst said “heathen”) to classical philosophy and culture, and it had an influence upon him. Many who are not Christians feel some need of an exotic theory to explain what they know by their gut (that Jesus was somehow on a fundamentally different wavelength than most of his fellow Jews, at least in Palestine) - theories like he must have “traveled to India” or the like. In so doing, they manifest a lack of awareness of the profound thinkers and philosophical/mystical tradition which was native to the Empire in which Jesus lived and died.
Jesus was (at least in his thought) a clearly hellenized Jew, much like Philo Judaeus, the great Alexandrian scholar and biblical exegete (who was btw. a contemporary of Jesus.) There were actually many such Jews throughout the Greco-Roman world (particularly in Egypt), especially as one got further away from Palestine.
Such Jews had a vision which kept much of the popular mythology/narrative and ritual associated with Judaism, but gave it a universalist/metaphysical underpinning which came from the Hellenes. Christianity, particularly the popular form which endured, is very much the fruit of that marriage. Part of that marriage involved a heavily allegorized/selective reading of the Tanakh - to the point that the allegorized interpretation was vastly more important than any literal reading. While we unfortunately have nothing that Jesus may have wrote, we do see this in the likes of Philo Judaeus and his biblical exegesis.
Unfortunately, this “hellenic-Judaism” fizzeled and died out with the destruction of the Temple and the final crushing of Jewish uprisings in Palestine in the early second century. Afterward, the Jews became more insular, and less interested in this sort of intellectual synthesis - thus why Philo is a historical figure, but not at all regarded as a Rabbinical authority by modern “Orthodox” Judaism (which is in reality the Judaism of the xenophobic Palestinian Rabbis, further soured by the suffering and defeat they and their fellow Jews were handed by the Romans.)
I think these factors are probably why to this day, there is a huge chasm between Christianity and Judaism - it is more than any set of doctrinal particulars, by a fundamental difference in perspective/ethos. Though many Christians are not conscious of this, they are essentially “hellenizers” - thus when they read things like the “cursing Psalms”, rife with maledictions and all sorts of brutality, they can give them an enobled meaning… hence why monks were able to chant these without blinking. The same goes for a lot of the “Zionist” hopes and eschatological expectations reflected in the Tanakh (though sadly, some “Christians” have degenerated in this regard, and identify themselves as “Zionists”, based on a relatively modern eschatology - these are the religious base of the American neo-con movement.)
Hi Porch Guy
I can visualize you sitting outside on the porch smoking a pipe and thinking of all these things.
Quite true. It has become fashionable to define Jesus as the Prince of Peace in the context of secular life. I was hoping that by posting the idea in this striking fashion, it might introduce an additional wrinkle indicating Jesus’ mission not being world peace but instead re-birth into a higher quality of “being.”.
I agree with a lot of your “tangent.”
Just as Christianity degenerated into Christendom, I believe that the essence of Judaism degenerated as well. A lot of the Old Testament I consider to be karma with a face on it and this face became a personal God.
Though Christianity is connected to Judaism, I believe its roots are much more ancient and believe as suggested by St.Augustine:
IMO, Christ descended from above into the essence of Jesus gave life to the essence of the religion. Instead of defend Jesus as a hellenized Jew, I see him as being what the hellensitic tradition was searching for. In this sense he was beyond the tradition since his essence included the essence of many traditions. The essence of Christianity became more than philosophy but a living truth capable of aiding man’s conscious evolution. Of course as this essence gradually filtered into society, it lost its esoteric potency and began serving the function of a moral policeman for the sake of secular life. Christianity taken as a whole for me has Christianity at the top followed by gradual degenerations into sects.
Your ideas remind me a bit of what I’ve been reading concerning Simone Weil and her conversion from Judaism to Christianity. She realized the degenerating effect of the literal mind on Judaism and Christianity and its search for"power" so chose to remain a Christian on the outside of Christendom appreciating Christianity as advocating the need to abandon power for the sake of re-birth.
I’ve found esoteric Christianity to be open to all these ideas such as what was brought by Philo Judaeus, Plato, and the rest. For example Philo Judaeus suggests:
“God was without attributes and so high above everything earthly that intermediate beings had to interact between Man and God. These beings he called logos, and they were to be found in the spiritual world of ideas.”
This is cosmological and suggests levels of being between God and man that can be revealed through contemplation. Much New Age philosophy just considers the flattering conception that man as virtually God. Becoming open to the vast difference between levels of existence and inner space is ignored. It is no wonder then that the idea of help from above from within this vast inner space appears so strange.
But I would have to agree that both Christianity and Judaism have suffered because of this natural tendency to conceptualize their depth to support our egotism.
What can I tell ya Porch guy, we’re in a mess.
This topic confuses me. If you folks believe that Jesus was real, and was really what he is popularly reported to be, then how could he have made a mistake? Also, how can you even attempt to second guess him?
What I am reading is the work of people that don’t believe but enjoy saying that they do. How am I wrong here?
adler…
could be also people believe jesus was a man, not a god.
I can buy that, but then what about the devil part?
ok what if just saying what if god follows the following characters at the
same time
1.jesus
2.anti-christ
3.satan
4.god (himself)
that way humanity is cornered god is a entity made to destroy
all evil but if he is that same evil and can regain the power to
bring it back while on the verge of moving on to another universe
prooving “him” or “it” to be a selfish being impersonating
something or someone else who he holds captive out of the
universe we know of also as the mistakes add up “he” or “it”
makes he/itself suffer as payment for any mistakes it’s
high-intellect creations noticed.
Adlerian
I do believe in what I have written to the extent that it makes the most logical sense to me and my own spiritual experiences seem to justify it.
It seems naive to recognize that there is a virtual infinity of galaxies each comprised of a virtual infinity of stars. Orbiting around many stars are planets and many planets with moons orbiting them.
Assuming this vastness to be genuine, it seems inconceivable that this obscure planet that we reside upon is the only thing in this vastness that contains what we experience as consciousness. It makes much more sense to me that to assume that degrees of consciousness permeates the universe of which we are a part and that degrees of consciousness are connected in what is known as a scale of living “being”.
Christ existed as a quality of consciousness reflecting God’s wholeness but just at a lower level so is called “son.” It is like the relationship of High C on the piano to Middle C. It is the same note but an octave apart in vibratory frequency. This degree of wholeness was sacrificed to become scattered in his being like Man and became man in Jesus for the purpose of regaining what was lost while allowing man to follow out of its plight to become his conscious potential. The quality of his life and nature of his death were essential for his purpose. It was always known. There was no mistake. Why is another topic.
Nick, are you well? I’m serious.
Ad
I could get references and recommendations from my lady friend and like Data said on Star Trek: “I am functioning within established parameters.”
However though, when the moon is full there is a period of time when a laser like energy radiates from my eyes and smoke starts coming out of my ears. Then the real Darth_A comes into being.
Ok, that’s what I thought.
But can you see that Jesus mission on earth may reflect the existence of two distinctly different levels of being signified as heaven and earth of which man should reconcile but cannot as he is. As such he denied temptation even though Liberals of today would frown on such a decision attributing it to a lack of education.
This of course has nothing to do with the legitimacy of my laser eyes.
This is you former buddy, BlueGirl, from BN.
I haven’t read all the posts, but your first one was intriguing. I have a much more traditional view than you. I always thought Jesus rejected Satan’s offer as an example to show us a divine Son of God could not accept temptation from an evil source. Proof of His Divinity, if you will.
Hi there BlueGirl
When I see Kentucky I believe I know who this is. I do know of your traditional concerns for what you regard as Christian culture. We do disagree on some things but it’s what makes it interesting. I know I’m very torn on this question. I am in favor of the idea of a free society and do not believe it is possible to sustain one on secular values. A free society I believe requires a common value higher than itself to sustain its freedom and its culture should reflect this value. But how to do it? Exoteric or Cultural Religion falls back to the same level as society as a whole including all its hypocrisy, pettiness and radiating of mixed influences. Hopefully we’ll discuss this at some point.
Don’t forget that at the time of temptation Jesus was still growing and his rejection of temptation furthered his growth. He became worthy of the ability to sacrifice as he did once the spirit entered him. This made him worthy of greater temptation.
This is highly symbolic and suggests Jesus transcending living truth (water) and receiving its good through the Spirit and establishing a connection with the Father. The temptation begins in Matthew 4 and puts this understanding to a test. This is not teaching us what to do as much as establishing his understanding in respect to his being now that the Spirit has entered. I believe it concerns what we ARE more than what we DO.
Nick,
Religion is necessary to a moral foundation. All cultures had a religion on which they based their moral foundation.
At this time in history some of those people are adopting Christianiy as their religion, which is good in that it tends to tame the savage beast, so to speak. But I do not fall into the category of a convert. I am culturally Christian.
I think you know, Nick, I do not examine the Scriptures as those of you with an intellectual curiosity. I am inclined to get my inspiration from a great many people I listen to and/or read about. Many are secular.
The religion of the West is Christianity. No other culture can make that claim.
“Religion is necessary to a moral foundation. All cultures had a religion on which they based their moral foundation.”
It’s a side note, but I totally disagree with that statement.
Religion has taken ethics and changed it into morality and by doing so removed all meaning. This is because ethic concepts end up being transformed into universal laws that then become discredited due to their universality, which is palinly not true.
Relgion also has a cosmic hidden rule-keeper that will judge you in the afterlife. That means that no one ever has to deal with the consequences in the only real world that there is. Meanwhile, even a sports star has to deal with it if they violate a code of ethics. However, a person can break as many moral codes as they like and never face anything material, as the punishment comes after you are dead, but of course not really.
Following ethics takes a non-religious existentialist attitude to be successful.
Hi Blue
Yes I know you’re not a convert.
This is a very controversial idea. I don’t believe it to be Christianity but Christendom. Since Christianity for me is hidden the point is not important from the political perspective so I agree for arguments sake.
I do urge you to begin a thread on this and I know there are those here like Adlerian that will challenge you. A good thread will have to make people think including me because I confess to being unsure of a lot here.
For example, I agree with the necessity of morals for a free society. A lot of protests against this idea include offense at the phrase “In God we Trust.” I maintain that collective trust in something greater than ourselves is essential for a free society. But for those wishing to ban it, what should it be replaced with? In politics we trust? In good intentions we trust? In Hillary we trust? The one thing that will be agreed upon on the secular level is money. So “In money we trust.” But how is a free society maintained at such a base level especially when questions arise as to its distribution?
I don’t see this intense need to deny the influence of Christianity on the founding of this country.
If tempers are controlled, there are some excellent topics here. I know your interest in politics and if you want to learn what others think, I urge you to organize your thoughts and create a thread either here or in the Social Sciences section which may be more appropriate, I don’t know. I’ll contribute since I’m curious myself as to what others think.