how do you interpret this?
I interpret that as ridiculous rhetoric.
Anyone else?
well let me put it another way for you:
what do you think that Christians mean by it?
God, in that capricious way of his, demanded a blood sacrifice or else he would condemn all of humanity to eternal torment.
Lacking anyone worthy of such a sacrifice he sends a bit of himself in human form to be tortured and killed in a wierd self-mutilating way.
After this happens, God in his infinite love decides that only those who do not swear obedience to him will burn forever.
if he did then why would we be damned at all
shouldnt we just go to “heaven” as were supposed to
it doesnt make sense
I have heard this all my life. A metaphor for a good soul teaching us the way? I can’t buy the immaculate conception issue, so taking it further than a metaphor is ludicrous to me. I do like the spirit of Christmas tho’.
It could very well be literal. But regardless of the historicity, it’s a wonderfully rich metaphor about sacrificing the ego self to find the true self - the Kingdom of Heaven.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is upon us, and men see it not.”
The Gospel of Thomas
AsI understand it, normally we believe that the earth is here to serve us but I’ve come to believe that the primary purpose of man on earth is to serve the earth as part of the overall purpose of mechanical organic life which continually transforms materiality for the needs of the earth as part of a cosmic process. Sin is imagination that allows this relationship to continue and denies man the ability to experience consciously therebye limiting man to mechanical reaction.
Consciousness requires a certain quality of materiality to feed the parts of our psych capable of consciousness. This is a very high quality of materiality. Lacking efforts towards consciousness man gradually loses the ability to retain and use these nutrients and they are excreted. Sustained consciousness then becomes impossible and man lives in “sleep.”
Jesus’ life efforts produced a great deal of these nutrients within his being saturating it. His intentional death was of a very high quality since it occurred at the right age when it was possible to consciously stay present to the worst possible human situation namely the cross. The energy released from this conscious quality of death and considering the nature of his “being” to begin with, delivered a great deal of these nutrients acquired through such a profound conscious awareness into the earth and surrounding humanity. Temporarily man was given through these nutrients the opportunity to experience himself, the human condition from a conscious perspective. This allowed the Spirit to enter the void created by the “re-awakening” of consciousness. The efforts to continue and follow the path opened by Jesus became the initial efforts of spiritual organization and soon to be called “church”. Naturally there were only a few who could retain this awareness and gradually it began to be lost and replaced with opinions. Soon the natural division between Christianity and Christendom (man made Christianity) would become more acute and Christianity would be hidden.
But Jesus dying for the sins of man simply means artificially providing these nutrients so that man, even in a state of sin, could experience the consciousness necessary for “gnosis” and receiving the Spirit or the experience revealing the Christian direction of “re-birth.”
Well nick, that’s certainly unorthodox. But interestig none the less.
I think what christians mean by ‘jesus died for your sins’ is ‘god sent himself to sacrifice himself to himself so he could change a rule that he himself made’
makes perfect sense, right?
What rule was that?
That people couldn’t enter heaven.
When was that a rule?
Question - Have you even read the bible? Do I need to start digging up scriptural references? That was the whole point of the ‘sacrifice’ jesus made, that he would take away the sins of man and once again open the kingdom of heaven.
Dr.S
First of all Jesus as “son” is not God the Father but, like us, within God on a higher level then us and in the image of the Father.
Consider the following:
Jesus’ sacrifice within our cosmos was in accordance with the interaction of universal laws much like karma. His sacrifice was the result of objective rather than subjective knowledge. This is real magick. It is working with universal mechanical laws through consciousness and will.
The Christian idea (thank you, I have read the Bible) is that God, being perfectly good, cannot accept imperfections (evil people, for example) without having his perfection compromised. There seems to me to be some inherent logic in this idea. This is not a “rule” that God “made.”
He did however, offer a solution.
Nick, again, your ideas are interesting and worthy of consideration, but certainly are nowhere near the ‘vanilla’ christian ideas.
Jerry…so you are nitpicking over word selection? The ‘rule’ that people aren’t allowed into heaven because they were ‘evil’ was arbitrarily changed on a whim, or so the story goes. The reasoning behind this ‘rule’ (evil gives god the willies) really isn’t the issue.
How is it at all logical for a deity that is suposedly all powerful to have to go through all that just to change his mind about who constitutes adequate eternal company in his sky fortress?
Your problem (one of them anyway) is that you insist on contemplating God anthropomorphically, building straw men (“God changes his mind on whims“) then tearing the straw men down.
The resurrection story, in at least one way (and a well-regarded way) of considering it, brings forth a potential solution for the serious problem of how a perfect being may logically deal with the imperfections that are man. Namely, by sacrificing that part of us (represented by the crucifixion of Jesus’ human self) which is responsible for turning away from God (the ego self) and allowing that part of us (represented by the resurrected Christ) that is the true self - that part of us that is connected to God - to shine forth and allow God to be manifested through us, even (or especially) in the here and now. Your sky fortress is before you. You can’t see it. Pity.
The word ‘perfect’ is meaningless without referential context.
What foolishness.
Quote:
The Absolute can as little interfere in our life and substitute other results in the place of the natural results of causes created by us, or created accidentally, as he can beat the ace of trumps with the deuce.
you said what foolishness
i say yes the god is foolish
