I’ve been agnostic for at least 6 months now, and life has been fine. I became agnostic not because I wanted to, but my mind drifted into unbelief of some higher power. I’m not sure why a higher power though, for some reason I don’t want to say I believe that’s so unlikely. But the biblical God doesn’t sound tasteful to me. Even as a Christian, heaven didn’t seem that wonderful, only it was better than hell. Praising God for eternity? Doesn’t sound that exciting to me, or even living for eternity for that matter. A sinless nature? Who would I be? The idea of heaven has caused me the biggest troubles as far as faith goes, not something some atheist says, I could careless about dawkins, but the biblical idea of heaven has to me hurt its own self… and I haven’t found I want it, nor does it make sense to me.
I’m sure there are very few of you that can explain the idea of heaven, but I’ve heard some few say, they’d rather die and go to hell and stay themselves, then go to heaven and be someone else.
“God” symbolizes the personality of creative force, as an interpretation of higher cause. Specification on this, makes it into a theory, religion or science, which may be personified or systemized. Etc.
“Heaven” symbolizes an ideal and supportive environment for a certain kind of personality.
“Hell” symbolizes the theistic version of Hitlers concentration-camps. It’s all about suppression and tourment, but it’s still a political-piss, anyways.
Your ideas of religion have all the sophistication of those colorful illustrated children’s Bible story books one sees in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. What pimply faced 10th grader would not be agnostic about them? What makes you think you could handle the truth about spiritual reality if it were served to you on a silver platter?
That’s what most dim witted religionists say, they give a futile attempt because for some reason this subject is an untouchable. Real sophisticated answer though, i’m sure it gave your fingers good exercise or helped your personal problems for a short moment anyhow.
I’ve thought and wrote along similar lines, as most of us who don’t see much likelihood that supernatural divine beings exist. The “me” that seems to ascend to Heaven seems so unlike the real me as to be a completely different person. If human life is an eyeblink compared to the vast eternity that we’d be in Heaven, just what do we do to pass the time? And how perfectly whimsical to judge us on that eyeblink instead of that yawning gulf of infinity!
Of course a deist needn’t concern himself with thinking about such things- faith alone is enough. Hard to criticize that if that’s your thing, but it’s clearly not mine.
Felix is taking a strong tone because he's trying to snap you out of a spell, but essentially he's correct. The version of Christianity you are responding to, the version your criticising, is a modern, dumbed-down, childlike version that deserves the criticism you're giving it. For a sampler, the oldest, most traditional version of Christianity there is...
… doesn’t believe there is a hell that God sents people to.
… doesn’t believe that we’ve inherited the guilt of Adam’s sin, but only his nature as a sinning creature.
… doesn’t believe in Heaven as a places where stuff happens forever, but rather as the exact same ‘place’ as hell, the only difference is your relationship to God when you get there.
… admits things concerning what happens after we die, or what we’ll be doing 100,000 years from now as mysteries that don’t have answers, but loose direction, and acknowledges mystery as a part of the religion itself. Any kind of Heaven or Hell that you can picture, and say that it’s like something, or picture yourself there doing something, is a product of literature and modern interpretation.
So, all of that said, you say you have a problem with the biblical idea of Heaven. What is the biblical idea of heaven, then? Not what some guy says, not what you saw in some movie or what ‘everybody pictures’. What do the Scriptures actually say about Heaven, that you have a problem with? If you haven’t the foggiest idea without going and looking it up, then you have to admit felix’s point, that the sort of Christianity you are in rebellion against is a farce. It’s bush league. It’s pop.
As far as ‘going to hell’ and ‘going to heaven’ and the idea of staying onesself vs. becoming something else, according to the oldest Christian traditions, the people who choose hell to be true to themselves have it precisely backwards.
An old analogy for you:
Consider a firey furnace, the type a blacksmith would use. If a poorly-made blade is put into the flames, it melts, burns, and is destroyed. if a well-made blade is put into the very same flame, it is strengthened and tempered. Not only does it become a better blade, but it takes on qualities of the Fire- it gives off heat and light.
Thanks Ucci, I don’t have the time now to look up the verse that says we will be sinless in heaven, but I know it’s there. The bible talks about how we won’t have a choice to sin, not that we can’t make it, but that we won’t want to. Now there are different arguments one could take on an idea like this, I may change my idealogy, but still be myself. I may love pizza for many years and one day just stop, but I’m still myself. Maybe this is one answer. My discussion however has nothing to do with harps, angels, lovely singing or something off some movie, and for felix to even take a stiff tone without even understanding the dicussion to me is immature and foolish. This is a very good question, and I’d like it discussed, but everytime it’s brought up, people want to dismiss it. I’ve known pastors tell people, ‘they think too much’ when this question is posed.
Are we supposed to just say, “who knows”. And why is that we ‘philosophers’ think our own interpretation is better than many americanized red necked traditional thoughts?
I thought I did answer your question, Club29, especially with the analogy of the forge. But as far as losing yourself, I think you are on to something with your talk about pizza- you really don’t have a choice about becoming a ‘new person’, just look at who you were 10 years ago, extrapolate about who you will be 10 years from now. If anything, a person should be worried that in Heaven they will finally cease changing, not that they will become something strange.
My other point was that real Christianity, I don’t think can say enough about Heaven for these questions to be raised, it’s mostly just a big question mark. You talk about us not having the will to sin in Heaven. What kinds of opportunities for sin would there be? I’m not picturing shoplifting or murder to be an issue, and it’s not as though you can call in ‘sick’ to work so you can go fishing. A great deal of the ‘us not wanting to sin’ thing is surely caught up in Heaven being the kind of place where there’s not a lot of reason or opportunity to sin.
As to your last question, why philosophers think their interpretation is better than red-necked traditional thoughts, I have a couple things I want to say- first, if we're philosophers of religion, we're actually studying the subject matter. There's no comparison between ignorance and a learned opinion, speaking as someone who's a little of collumn A, and a little of collumn B. Second, there's nothing 'traditional', necessarily, about the way a redneck does Christianity. Christianity is [i]2,000[/i] years old. By comparison, even the Puritans of Salem were a modern-day fad. So don't think I'm saying that philosophy should be used to re-invent Christianity, to save it from the mistakes in how it's 'always been done'. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I'm saying is, it takes philosophy and experience to learn how Christianity 'has always been done', because in the English speaking world, we have almost no experience with it.
Yes of course there would not be much opportunity as I stated, but then again there was the oportunity for lucifer to sin. And perhaps maybe the fear is what you said, we ‘cease’ changing, in which case is really difficult to think about. I’ve heard many secular philosophers criticize heaven as an eternal bliss if it did exist, and maybe that’s fine… But maybe it’s the reason many don’t believe or don’t ‘want’ to believe. There of course has to be change on ourselves in heaven, and its all a question of what makes us who we are. On earth, our appearance has something to do with how we act, our family, our environment, our talents, our personalities, all come together to create us as unique individuals, but in heaven the bible says appearances change, and things we onced wished for or had cannot be possible anymore. There’s also the change of sinful nature, and somehow it feels this is a part of who we are, and perhaps we don’t know what we will be like without it. I do see where you and felix are coming from though. You can’t use something that we know very little of as a reason for not believing it to exist.
There are different opinions as to biblical knowledge though ucci, we can study it but there will always be disagreements. That’s the only point I was making, but sure, things like homosexuality- most red-necked people who go to church and have apple pies on sunday afternoon with family members are good people but still think being a homosexual is a sin and not just the act. Then of course I’ve heard that premillinialist are wrong by many biblical scholars, but this is also a very popular view of the end times- most people don’t want to believe what’s not comfortable for them. Just like evolution and the big bang, would you not agree ucci that the majority of the worlds religionist should upgrade and withhold a non literal view of genesis? and how much evidence behind the big bang? This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, only that these are the processes God set in motion perhaps. And I feel so embarrased seeing Kirk Cameron on television talking to the public using the blind watchmaker senario. The way to reach people, something many religious people need to learn to do, is learn about what goes against religion and learn how to discuss what the view at the time is wrong, and not some kind of strawman. I’m not saying you’re like this Ucci, you seem very well informed. There is alot of people though that having to update their way of thinking, would actually hurt their religious views, possibly having to take them out of what they’ve always known into a questioning, sort of like myself.
I think that’s why I’m agnostic now, I’ve realised I was wrong about some things, so what else am I wrong about? and I’m still learning, hopefully however I don’t die tomorrow and go to hell right lol, depending on how you view salvation- Most people who aren’t catholic believe once saved always, but in my case I don’t feel saved ne more, so maybe I should go catholic. Who knows, just wish it didn’t have to be so confusing.
Yes, good point! But then, Heaven is referred to as a new creation to some degree, so we don't know how things might have been different before the Fall, or how angels might have been different from people. All I'm really trying to say is, we aren't taught anything specific enough about Heaven for these questions to stick very well.
I’m not sure what you mean here.
Which is true. As far as change in Heaven is concerned, that seems reasonable- if angels and maybe saints are there now, doing things as they are described as doing, that implies interaction and change from what I can tell- but again, that’s just me coming to conclusions, it’s not doctrinal or Scriptural, so one can’t be certain.
Yes, definitely our sinful natures are a part of who we are. I think the important questions are, do we want to change that, and how does it happen in Heaven? I think a big part of the Christian life is learning to hate one's own sinful nature. As far as the change is concerned, it doesn't have to be like a violitional lobotomy.
Imagine if you were given 10 million dollars right now, no strings attached. Fast forward a couple weeks ahead, and you may find yourself living in some exotic location, doing whatever you like, etc. etc. Your life would be much different, you would be a different person in many ways, but I don't know anybody who fears that kind of change so much that they would turn down the money.
Absolutely, and that's true of anything. However, that doesn't have to be the end of the story. Some opinions are modern constructions to justify vanities, some opinions have been preserved since the time the Apostle's lived, some are somewhere between. One of the first things we have to decide as thinkers is how the 'many experts will always disagree with you' thing is going to affect us.
Well, that’s a whole new can of worms, innit? But presuming those people are wrong (that is your point, right?) then yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head. These people are going to be wrong about many things when it comes to Christianity, and there beliefs aren’t ‘traditional’ to anything but their culture, not Christian heritage.
No, I don't agree that they should [i]upgrade[/i] and hold a non-literal view of Genesis, for the simple reason that most Christians ALREADY have such a view I believe, and the older traditions always have. The people that hold a literal view simply need to step back in line with original tradition, and stop striking out on their own with these bizarre understandings of Scripture. Even those who took it literally back in the day (and there were quite a few, don't get me wrong) did so because they had no reason not to, not because it was doctrinally necessary.
For what it’s worth, if your religious background is as bad as you’ve described it, I think you’re moving in the right direction…so long as you keep moving.
As far as salvation is concerned, a necessary part of having salvation is to die. Before that, our salvation is always a work in progress I think.
The reference to “Lucifer†comes from Isa 14:12 according to the King James Version, but which literally reads, “How art thou fallen from the sky, thou star of light (Lucifer), sun of the dawn, hurled down to the earth, thou that didst throw down nations from above?
Keil & Delitzsch notes:
“ הילל (hêylêl) is here the morning star (from hâlal, to shine). It derives its name in other ancient languages also from its striking brilliancy, and is here called ben-shachar (sun of the dawn), just as in the classical mythology it is called son of Eos, from the fact that it rises before the sun, and swims in the morning light as if that were the source of its birth…
…Lucifer, as a name given to the devil, was derived from this passage, which the church fathers interpreted, without any warrant whatever, as relating to the apostasy and punishment of the angelic leaders. The designation is a perfectly appropriate one for the king of Babel, on account of the early date of the Babylonian culture, which reached back as far as the grey twilight of primeval times, and also because of its predominant astrological character.
A retrospective glance is now cast at the self-deification of the king of Babylon, in which he was the antitype of the devil and the type of antichrist (Dan_11:36; 2Th_2:4), and which had met with its reward.â€
This means that the idea of “Lucifer†is the model of self-deification who exalts himself and comes to a fall. There have been numerous examples of this and as an archetype was called to mind when people were confronted with such despotic rulers. The connection with angels is an assumed connection.
The Hebrew word for heaven “shâmayim†or Aramaic “shemaya†comes from a word for light and also indicates a “sacred†vibration (shem) that vibrates without limit throughout the entire manifested cosmos (-aya). Not only light “vibrates†but also the name of God, which unites all name-light-vibrations in itself. The Aramaic word for God is Alaha (unity). He who exalts himself as a god falls out of this unity, becomes at odds with the harmony of the cosmos. Indeed, the sin of mankind is its disharmony with the cosmos.
The “Kingdom of Heaven†in the way that Jesus coined the phrase according to the Gospels is a realm where people live in harmony with the unity of the cosmos (i.e. God) and not some “pie in the skyâ€. Often the word rendered in the Gospel as “heaven†(ouranos) could be translated as “above†in the sense of a “higher†authority, or “beyond†the aerial heavens or sky (epouranios). The imaginations you refer to are mainly due to visions and prophecies, not “placesâ€. If you begin to imagine God as a “being†you need a “place†for him – but where do you get that idea?
You are off at a tangent, although I can understand why, but it generally comes from the fact that people “quote†the Bible without actually knowing whether what they are quoting is actually written in the way they think. It isn’t so much a matter of opinions, it is a case of getting to the roots of what you are assuming and checking whether that is the way it was meant. As long as we do not go to the roots, we can disagree all we want – we might as well save our breath …
The way to reach people is to pull out of these pseudo-arguments and get down to the nitty-gritty. You may not reach many people, but Christianity wasn’t originally about many people. When people have been struck by the truth of the message of love, learn to devote themselves, experience the Grace of God in their communities and learn to love, all of these things that seem so important now will fade, because people will become healed, whole and happy.
If I’m not mistaken
You’re starting to sound awfully occultish to me…
You’re still speaking the defiled name [“God”],
But
You’re tapping into the deeper truths of nature.
I’m a little bit surprised…
This may belong in a different thread soon,
But I wish to ask you…
According to what you’ve mannaged to descern or learn,
Thus far,
Was the observable cosmos or universe created
Out of necessity?
Our, was the observable cosmos out of a surpluss of love? So that everyone may be given a unique existence?
Or, was it created out of a surpluss of violence, and a surpluss of self-imposition, and division between the [once unified] elements?
If there was any kind of meaning or desire before the act of creation…
What was that desire fundamentally most similar to, in earthly terms?
If you understand “occult†as something not apparent on mere inspection, then you are right, “Godâ€, heaven and other mystical and spiritual things are like that. The same use is made of the word “occult†in medicine. The idea that this is all only a matter of magic, astrology, or any system claiming use or knowledge of secret or supernatural powers or agencies is a modern hype that does the original sentience of the Sages and Masters no service.
I regard “God†less of a name and more of a description. It describes what the Ineffable is for me – “my Godâ€. The use of the word naturally opposes other gods and idols, just as the “Kyrie eleison†of Christianity opposed the Roman “Kyrie†or Caesar, but it opposes concepts rather than “my God is better than your Godâ€. Paul asked in his speeches whether the living God could be a lump of stone or a piece of metal that human beings had constructed, rather the sentient human being senses a presence that is more.
The “deeper truths of nature†were always what mystic religion was about, whether it was the nature of our existence or the way in which the Ineffable flows through all life and “blows†the breath of life (neshâmâh chay) into our nostrils, making us into a living soul (chay nephesh). That is why it is saddening when people like Club29 express disappointment with something as yet still occult to them.
If you are asking whether the Universe was a necessity or not, I’m afraid you are asking the wrong person. I believe that the existence of something rather than nothing is a mystery beyond the human capacity to comprehend. We ask for a cause and we ask why? Does everything have to have a purpose? No. But can the things we experience have a purpose? Yes, if we are ready to accept that the purpose is the rationale we give such experiences. But where does this rationale come from? Is it just an invention of a creative mind? Where does creativity come from?
The sentience we are given, given half a chance, can help us sense the flow around us. We can begin to sense the “Om†of creation and we can access that meta-level for a brief moment, full of visions and images which too readily become models for idols and gods. The “living soul†learns humility and discretion in such experiences, does not run out to build a graven image but perhaps heaps a few stones in remembrance. For this we need time and patience and we need to set ourselves apart from assiduous exertion and find peace.
In a way, the explosion of life on our planet, with varying ages and dominances is very briefly described from a human beings view in Genesis. It shows how humankind emerged from the flood of life-forms as the more industrious and therefore more adaptable animal, but with the added gift of sentience and cognition. Humankind is seen to be tasked with imitating the creative force that brought forth the abundance of life and to safeguard creation.
Love in Hebrew has to do with clinging to someone, or figuratively the joining of two together. In the OT, God unites himself with his people and is figuratively portrayed as a bridegroom. Another word for love is attached to the idea of the womb and the warmth and security given there. To love someone is therefore to be a womb for them and offer warmth and security. Yet another concept is to kindle a flame, plant a seed, encourage growth.
I think that the fact that these concepts are so old shows that it isn’t wrong to assume a surplus of affection, even when physical life isn’t always attractive and appealing. Mystics, often having a vocation that is of a serving nature, frequently retreat into the “womb of God†to gain strength for their task. The symbolism of mystic faith is that of the concepts of love above and more.
I think Ucc is correct, the bible doesn’t really tell us a whole deal about heaven and what it is like.
However, I think this is somewhat irrelevant. IMO the bible clearly indicates that the future life of any redeemed human being will actually be on earth. The big surprise is that human beings will NOT change the location of their existence at the end of human history, but God WILL.
Revelation 21
The New Jerusalem
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Preaching from the book of Revelation is difficult and many Christians just ignore these passages about a new earth. However, the doctrine of a new earth has been part of Christian theology for a long, long time, it just doesn’t get much airtime these days. Which is unfortunate.
I mention this little peculiarity of theology because I think it clarifies much of the issue of “what eternal life (or heaven) will be like”. If eternal life will be a life on a new earth, then we can probably assume that it will look something like the “old earth” but without pollution, global warming or species dying out every time we turn around.
We can also assume that each person on this new earth will have a job to do in taking care of this new earth, especially since the job of the first Adam was a gardener in Eden.
I realise that this view of eternal life is a little more “earthy” and practical than most views of heaven which imagine one long worship service extending into eternity (or was that hell, I can’t remember ). But I think it’s fairly biblical to see eternal life in those terms and it has the added bonus of making Christians a little more environmentally minded too.
Yup, that’s what I mean.
Subtle force.
Subtle nature.
Not unnaturally “supernatural”.
Maybe I’m glad that you haven’t lost that word yet.
I’ve lost my hope for the word.
The essential meaning of the word “religion”, has to do with the highest truths of nature, both morally and materially, and metaphysically, etc.
But it was about the ineffible…
It only has meaning once someone tastes and sees what was behind the words and the writers.
Repeating old hail-merries, in a musty box
Is so robotic.
Who really touches “God”?, and who pours out their entire meaning into higher “hands”?
It’s gone blind… Because it wanted to see what was not there.
I’d called it the death of meaning…
The original wisdom… slowly broken down into
The mental limitations of the religious fallowers.
I’d think it could be semi-comprehended.
A dead man wispers
Breathlessly:
“Nothingness
Emptiness
It is free space…
It still has room for infinite variety.
This empty cup can now hold anything.”
The higher value of
An understanding of this emptiness
Is probably only emphasized
In Buddhist and Taoist sorts of religions,
Maybe some Hindu…
You know what I mean.
But to develop “a direct percepion of emptiness”
Or to feel “true peace”,
“True freedom”,
“True emptiness”,
These all are so similar…
It’s a kind of “salvation” which is simply allowed, and observed.
One flows with it, and does not enforce it or grasp onto it.
In “atheist” religions,
The truth of that emptiness has often been saught.
In “creationist” religions,
A completion, or fullness of reality has often been saught.
I consider them both a sort of effort-towards-exporation
Of the deeper nature of “something”, and of “nothing”.
I’m talking very generally here,
But I know you understand, already,
As you’ve been through allot of cultures and texts.
I’ve noted that some things [without any purpose or meaning]
Are beyond purpose and meaning
In the same way that some states of peace
Are beyond all dualities of pain or pleasure, etc.
I’d called it “beyondness”, for lack of a better word…
Something that wishes for perfect fullness, and perfect emptiness.
Seeking the next paradigm, or the next level.
Those visions
Are so rich with meaning
That they are simply seen as a form.
When someone witnesses a fellow person,
They do not see all of their cells,
All of their organs,
All of their thoughts,
All of their future,
All of their passed.
They witness the simpleness of form.
The form is only an illusion when its meaning is completely shunned in favor of its first-hand appearance.
Deep, wise interpretation of form
Is allot like
A deep and wise interpretation of a religious text.
It makes all of the difference, the depth, the sense.
That’s quite a warm thought… But most of the universe is colder than ice.
I tend to think
That there is a direct relativity between moral meanings,
Existential meanings,
Astronomy,
Physics,
Subjective and Objective.
They all have common grounds or a common source
And can be unified…
But I don’t have any sort of optamism in this case…
Attractions and aversions can oh-so-easily defend ones fantasy from reality.
One of the main reasons why man is so untrue
Is because man is also so fragile.
Can a worm and a dog know higher truth?
If it’s some kind of knowledge
It needs a large enough memory in order to remember it.
It needs a strong enough brain in order to fathom it.
It needs a thick enough system in order to maintain it.
It needs a sharp enough sense in order to feel it.
Truth is a very codependant phenomenon.
A broken jar holds no water.
What happens to broken hearts?
Broken minds?
Poisoned souls?
Unclean dreams?
Unending nightmares?
Do they all hold salvations, and truths?
The fallen hath fell
Like a tree without good roots.
They were supported by
Those bad forces…
Determined…
Caused…
Unlike many
I am currently in the belief [as far as my experience has pointed out]
That the most unkind, ungiving, deceptive, and greedy beings
Hold most power AND most truth.
Demons, War-Lords, Shadows of pure deception,
Destroyers, Takers, and Infiltrators,
Those are the strongest beings in the cosmos.
Those are the strongest macrobes, and they are connected to all of the suffering and incompleteness of lower forms, in the same way that a sick liver means poison for each cell of the blood.
Abusive higher power – means abused lower power.
You and I are still in the physical cosmos.
Accoring to me…
The explosions,
Extreme heat and radiation
From the “big bang” era of the cosmos
Was due to a clash of “brines”.
This is the essence of violence.
This is such unstability, waste, loss, and destruction.
This phase took billions of years in order to burn out and slightly stabilize.
It wasn’t a miraculus creation from a perfect maker…
It was an insane collition, a catastrophy!
Separate forms of material, elements, different forms of energies, and geometries,
All emerged due to separateness.
Refining is a very destructive process.
All of these various elements and materials
Were once a unified, whole, and greater essence.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” ~Aristotle.
(^That’s one of my favorite quotes…)
I find myself and opposite ends with all human spirituality.
They worship their makers,
And love their makers.
But I call those forces the destroyers…
The bother places all of her incompleteness and her burdons upon her child.
She dies, un-able to bare her own load,
And she passes the curse unto her children.
In the same way that many, many fractures and cracks spread out
Across the face of a broken mirror,
Many dimensions, and species, and thoughts, and desires
Splintered out of the original act of murder:
The destruction of the prephysical universe.
Humans worship the destroyer of the prephysical
Because they themselves are also destroyers.
They must refine, and change all things which pass through themselves.
Never does substance go through a body unaltered.
These incomplete filters, and leeches
Grasp hold of their little environments
With powerful love and powerful pain,
In order to suppress and close the bit of solar energies that they’ve gleaned.
It is a wretched world.
It is a dishonest world.
Every desire, every feeling, is dishonest…
I want things to be like the way that they were before…
The “progressive” self-division and self-insineration of these cosmic fragments
Sees me as some kind of
Sick minded
Detestable
Meaty thing
To break and to take.
They are the breakers…
All ones whom eat.
I wish there was no matter,
No Earth,
No Stars,
No God,
No Humanity…
I want things to be as they were…
I miss the oneness and completeness of the prephysical.
This agony
Haunts me.
The agony would be so ugly
That it would be allot easier
To say that it was…
Pleasure.
Eaing
And reproducing
Those are the most thrilling things.
To destroy
To take.
And that is what “making” must now be,
Actuated by separate, small, temporal entities.
Little shambles
Of wreckage.
The best that they can do
Is talk to eachother
About Gods love
And smell some flowers.
They have to survive.
They isolate their finger-tips
On-top of the little bit of nourishing
Hopeful
Temporary
Incomplete
Failing particles
Of what they once were.
The body tries
To digest old tumors
And replace it with young flesh.
Health
Power
Wholeness.
Everywhere in the cosmos
From stars to organic creatures.
They all tend to die out
And burn up,
After a while…
But they rotate around one-another,
And are drawn to one another.
This fractured
Injured mass
Of unfathomable motion
Still wants to live.
It still wants itself.
But, out of fear
Or lost
Madness
Would it ever begin to worship
The one whom killed it?
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown comment: “Man’s soul is redeemed by regeneration through the Holy Spirit now; man’s body shall be redeemed at the resurrection; man’s dwelling-place, His inheritance, the earth, shall be redeemed perfectly at the creation of the new heaven and earth, which shall exceed in glory the first Paradise, as much as the second Adam exceeds in glory the first Adam before the fall, and as man regenerated in body and soul shall exceed man as he was at creation.â€
Now that sounds like reincarnation to me …
I prefer simple resurrection myself. Re-incarnation usually implies the re-investing of a soul with a completely different body of similar substance rather than a glorified body. But the dictionary defintion would appear to be on your side…
Main Entry: re·in·car·na·tion
Function: noun
1 a : the action of reincarnating : the state of being reincarnated b : rebirth in new bodies or forms of life; especially : a rebirth of a soul in a new human body
2 : a fresh embodiment
I like the mention of “tasting†God – which is really what sentient religion is about. The mystics have always spoken about a sharpening of the inner senses. “Whoever has God in his being … tastes God in everything†said Meister Eckhard. Claude Mayet said “Ah! How delightful it is to taste God! How happy you are when you feel that every attachment falls away from the heart, if only for a few moments, in order to adhere closely to God!†John of the Cross said, “To taste God and be completely seized by him, the soul has to be completely naked and bare and not fend itself.â€
This kind of devotion is rarely found outside of monasteries, where people are able to deeply contemplate and surrender themselves. It is also something which makes people suspect conspiracy or some other clandestine activity. Of course it is that, but the suspicions I have been confronted with were way off the mark. I am particularly blessed in connection with scripture in small groups, where we suddenly experience the awe of the presence of God – providing the group is open to that. Otherwise it is only partially experienced.
Many religious people are very fearful and can’t open themselves in the way that would help them, because they see demons and devils all over the place. They fail to understand that it is after a mystical experience that you are most susceptible to sin, not generally before.
I appreciate that those who fail to realise their religious hopes reduce those hopes to have some kind of expectation. It is often the way and indeed a path which I have trodden a few times too. It comes from preachers who restrict the mind rather than encouraging us to let go of our understanding. They want to suggest that the spiritual meaning of scripture is easily read and thereby suggest (whether they want to or not) that it is no more than I can fathom.
You might be right. I think we are approaching a time in which people have been made sensitive for the mysterious and mystical. People may begin to fathom what the Tao te Ching and Buddha is talking about and realise that Jesus used the same kind of language, as did the prophets of Israel. Then there is the inter-dialogue between Sufi’s and Christian Mystics which gives me some hope. Christians must give up their prejudices and bigotry to be able to listen to the low whisper of the Ineffable, like Elijah on the mountain.
Yes, that is a favourite expression of mine “flowingâ€, “blowingâ€, “breathingâ€. “The Spirit breathes where He desires, and you hear His voice; but you do not know from where He comes, and where He goes; so is everyone having been generated from the Spirit.â€
Yes, we are not “aware†at all times, but dulled by the flood of stimuli which our brain has to sort. There is that much to see and we are able to perceive in depth, perhaps sensing rather than seeing, or intuitively grasping a gesture or a motion. It helps if we don’t pres everything into a preformed idea.
True, and it is also what is often missing in such debates. I like your thoughts – although they were too many to answer …
