Any of those helplines might have inspired you to do something other than to blame Santa for not fulfilling your wishes and giving you a world as you would wish it to be.
Gangrene has been reported as result of coagulopathy in Covid19 due to the clotting disrupting tissue blood supply. If he was suffering from Leprocy you still would not have needed to panic. And the helplines might have helped you to overcome your irrational fear and encouraged you to spring into action.
Crisis is dealing with homelessness, and they would have been most likely to give you a starting point where to go with him and how to handle such encounter. The one with the crisis is you.
I would not worry so much about the awakening after death but more focus on awakening before it, so we do not burn out on re-entry into the world not constraint by your physical self. I can only hope that this man, as well as you get fixed by God to receive his healing touch. Many of us look for a materialist God that fixes us physically, but as we can see from those that are suffering but are much closer to God, his healing touch is clearly something different. Whoâd want to be with a Good who only can physically fix them?
1 Like
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
62
Next time Iâll refer him to you. Why do you only hope that God is love? I know that if He is the ground of being that He will heal you of that doubt.
Next time why donât you want to go with him to A&E or take him into your house to die. From your description he should be dead by now anyhow.
I know that God is love and have no doubts about that. But I also know that this does not mean that I get what I want and that humans can decide not to love God because of that. If one lives by âI love you if you love me - you go firstâ one thinks of being God oneself, a far to common problem.
Ah, I understand that my post seems quite rash, it probably looks like I am one of those people that would say âGod is beyond us so even if he does something bad itâs coolâ and proceed to explain how all those cruel Bible verses are actually not that bad because whatever God does is good.
But actually I think we are on the same page that needless cruelty, killing and destruction is not something God would do just because he can, that would make him even if not immoral, just nonsensical, at least thatâs what I think you are saying.
What I am wondering about is if in Godâs perspective human death can be used as just another tool, after all, human body is repleacable, and even if it stops functioning soul still remains. For example if my body burned to dust, God would have no problem recreate it with ease. Wonât you agree?
I just think that this world is not the end of Godâs mission of salvation, why would it be? It seems that this world cannot always correctly assess if someone is ready for relationship with God ( e.g. a child dying quickly after being born, a tribesman knowing nothing about Jesus and believing in Sun God ). And if itâs not the end, then what is so tragic about God âkillingâ a person. Itâs not final after all.
So, what I ask you, why would God avoid killing a human at all cost given the previous statements?
I know my view of God can be tainted, after all I have probably a unusual idea ( someone would say itâs horrendous ) that suffering is not bad, for your soul itâs in principle the same as pleasure or surprise, just that body revolts because thatâs how it works, if you still have some patience for me I would be happy if you gave your ideas about this view.
1 Like
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
65
Iâve tried to help people who canât be helped for many years now. Ever more minimally. As I said, next time (not that there will be one) Iâll refer him to you as you have all the answers for everything. Iâm a 68 year old diabetic and didnât have eight hours to spare from 5pm leaving my wife at home all evening with crippling anxiety and a heart condition. So in my depressed, angry, useless privilege I didnât even watch which way he took his helpless death wish.
What we want is what we need, and if thereâs a God, what we deserve. He does. Transcendent justice. As there is no God to love in any meaningful sense until Heâs actually relationally, personally present with each of us, no decision is possible. And even then itâs irrelevant. Strange how you project the problem you see we having on God and canât see it. Heâll torture us forever if we donât love Him now. But you being a modern Sabbatarian will be an annihilationist. Oh no, sorry, thatâs @adamjedgar! You all look the same to me. Your merciful Idealized Self would just âeuthanizeâ everyone. In blind terror at being imminently burnt to death in lava. So that happens to my Dad twice. Why not let them lie? No that my atheist Dad fell in to a volcano. He took two days to die from 99% burns.
Iâm sure Iâll be in your Lake of Fire for not getting the guy a cab etc, at least Iâll be with my Dad. Youâre probably not annihilationist but something worse, but it was a good riff to go with.
I used to think that suffering can somehow work for the good of a suffering person, that the person is somehow ârefinedâ after suffering. Now I think that is a distorted view. The effect of suffering depends on the person, often exposing what kind of attitudes the person has. Some may learn compassion or avoiding of behaviors that cause suffering, some become bitter or aggressive. The writer of Revelation notes that suffering makes people scorn and blaspheme, not change the behaviors that caused the suffering.
I do think that suffering may be allowed by God for various reasons, including reasons we do not understand. You could even say that God sometimes causes suffering by allowing people to reap what they sow or get fair âpaybackâ from what they have done. Also âgoodâ people suffer, so payback can explain only a part of all suffering.
I do not support the ideas of Platon et al. who explained that we have a valuable immortal âsoulâ trapped in a less valuable physical body. These ideas became absorbed in popular thinking among Christians, so many think the ideas originating from pagan Greek philosophy are somehow âChristianâ thinking. Because of the pagan Greek influence, there is a need to be careful that we do not downplay suffering that damages the body.
physical death is not barrier in the eyes if God as its a natural thing for a physical body. Indeed as Christians we should know it is not the end. We also should ask ourselves why we would want to live forever as a separate unit from God, e.g. be selves forever. We live already in his presence if we acknowledge it and can be part of him.
The wish for a physical resurrection is the wish to be eternally separated from God, not to be part of him but to be like him as an eternal being, ideally with an Adonis / Aphrodite like body to attract others and some other superpowers. If thatâs the fruit one gets, eating from that tree upon which Jesus hang, it should be clear what it gets us to. Its not the fruit that makes us to want to be a part of God, to be one with him and be recognised for his acting out his divinity but the one to glorify ones own divinity.
sounds like you are tasting hell already, creating your own suffering for not having your will done. Rest assured that there is an eternity for you still to go through, and the suffering you experience is what you make it yourself. May peace come upon you before its too late. I am sure that God has and does reach out to you in many ways, that beggar might have been one of them. You just need to be willing to see it.
The stories of people (in the Bible and life) who respond to suffering with faith and love are quite numerous. So no, I donât think any suffering MADE people do anything. I think they chose to do what they did and chose their excuses for it also.
Why? Because I want an eternal relationship with God, where there is no end to what an infinite God has to give and no end to what we can receive from Him. I certainly have no interest in mere existence forever without that which would make such an existence worthwhile.
I donât agree with this âsoulâ idea of Plato and the Gnostics either. I go with Paulâs explanation in 1 Corinthians 15. According to Paul, the physical is powerless, perishable, and temporary, while the resurrected spiritual body is powerful, imperishable, and eternal. So, no, I donât think a personâs physical illnesses or disabilities is who they are. It is our choices and what we do with what we have been given, where our true self is to be found.
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
70
I like His sense of humour if His answer is you. Whoâs to blame for what youâre suffering? And he wasnât begging. He had a carrier bag full of shopping.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
71
Heâs still alive! Just passed him in the park, limping, with his buddies! He was grateful I let him use the toilet. Another guy just used my bossâs car for that.
i am struggling to follow your logic in this and here is why:
the bible theme is based on a handful of quite straightforward conceptsâŚthey are very simple to explain and understanding them is pretty easy given that the entire bible then goes to great length to provide illustrations and statements identifying meaning.
One of those conceptsâŚthe last one is Restoration.
Can you explain to me whether or not my understanding of the word ârestoreâ in the following illustration is accurate?
I purchase an antique table and chair set.
Whjen they were first designed and built, they performed their function well, however, over the years, people who owned said dining suit did not look after it properly. Indeed, they even used it for the wrong things and eventually it was tossed out into storage somewhere and forgotten until one day, i find said table and chairs in storage and decide that they deserve better. I have the skills and equipment to RESTORE said table and chairs back to their former gloryâŚtheir former state as described when they were brand new.
My aim in the restoration of that antique furniture is to return them to the originally designed and constructed state when they were brand new!
So in light of the above illustration, how then do you explain:
that Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden were very clearly not spirits?
none of the bible people after Adam and Eve were spirits?
individuals who died in the bible are literally buried in the ground?
Jesus died physically on the cross after living a physical life?
Jesus said to Mary on the morning of the resurrection, do not touch me for i have not yet ascended to the father, and yet a week later, Jesus says to doubting Thomas, âput your hand in my sideâ?
2 Peter 3:13
But in keeping with Godâs promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
all of these things point towards a rebuilding of a corrupted world back to its former state. I do not see anywhere in the theme of the bible where restoration is not associated with physical. The point is, it is BOTH physical and spiritual (where spiritual is about our relationship with God).
When Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden, they were cut off from God both physically and spiritually. So the restoration process is absolutely both!
therefore to make the errant claim our resurrection is spiritual only is inconsistent with restoration of this world and fallen mankind back to the original creation model! I believe this is a fundamental problem with Theistic EvolutionâŚit cannot accept that God created Adam and Eve as mature adults in that moment, and that the entire plan of salvation revolves around restoring us back to that Garden of Eden stateâŚphysically.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
73
No. It does not. These are your words found nowhere in the Bible.
Adam and Eve in the garden were physical bodies but they did not die physically on the day that they ate the fruit as God said they would. So if you would not call God a liar as Satan did, then Adam and Eve died spiritually on that day.
The people living on the earth were not spirits, but yes the Bible speaks of those who are spirits.
Most but not all. Some are said to be taken away into heaven.
Jesus died physically. But according to Paul, Jesus became a life giving spirit resurrected to a spiritual body â thus He was nothing like the spirits of the dead.
The spiritual body, Paul explains, is more powerful rather than less, but it is not of the Earth but of heaven.
It says a new heaven and a new earth. It certainly does not say a new physical body and a new spiritual body. 1 Corinthians 15 is crystal clear. The physical body passes away and the resurrection is to a spiritual body.
It is your claims which are inconsistent with the Bible.
You perfectly summed up what I believe in.
For sure my idea of soul has some similarities to Platoâs, but doesnât the Bible itself talk about soul often, and often shows a difference between body, mind and soul?
And then, you disagree with Platoâs teachings, but even if he was a pagan, he couldâve got some things right, just by coincidence, why not?
So I ask, what do you think about soul to be true.
Does it not exist at all?
Soul exist, but is just as valuable as human body?
Soul is part of God that makes us alive?
You disagree that physical body is not valuable, did I got it right?
But, I cannot understand how can it be valuable, itâs just bunch of atoms, is it not? How is it valuable except that itâs a device we can use? I am not surprised that one would see it as valuable, after all itâs all we see and can understand as ourselves. But I still donât understand, what would God see valuable in a human body.
And letâs make it clear, I donât believe that when spirit enters body, only then it works, if soul was removed from body, it would still work, mind would still function nearly the same, nothing much would change, other people couldâve not tell the difference. So it may seem rather stark, but I see the whole human body and mind, functioning and living, learning and thinking, and I still donât see it as valuable to God.
Why would it be?
Probably I got it wrong, as I often do, but could you further explain to me what do you mean by " not agreeing with the âsoulâ idea" ".
I really wonder, I understand the difference between two bodies, yet what connects them? They are not made from same materials for sure, are they? What is the second body based on? Perfect reconstruction of the first body, made of divine materials? Made based on ideas person had? Made based on his actions, on what God thought about him? On what body here achieved with what it had?
I understand that this is somewhat a project that is being done, and then based on information that we produce living our lives, God will later get the most important things about our lives and create a perfect body based on them. Is that what you mean?
I wonder, because soul, an umbrella concept, is what is beyond human body, what exists there, even when body perishes, if the spiritual body doesnât share the same soul with physical one, if the soul doesnât even exist, then what makes the spiritual body me? Do I even exist then?
Or maybe you just meant that you donât agree with how Plato sees soul? I donât agree either. But no soul? I wonder, this body alone is not much to work with, not only that, if this body is all we work with, I have perished already countless times, how many times I changed, throughout my life? Everyone can be so different with how they were 10 years ago for example.
After next 20 years, what will remain of me? A memory that my body in the future will have? Some habits that were ingrainded in me? Some skills that I learned from others? One amnesia could wipe even that. Even my behaviour can flip in an instant by some brain cancer, I can become aggressive, hateful, neurotic, and nothing from that would be based on any action I took, it can just happen.
When God created the physical world, it was good. Humans were part of the creation, so basically good. Something went then wrong and we may say that humans are today not fully good (some would say bad) but there is still something good and valuable in the physical body created by God. Otherwise, what was created by God would be bad or not valuable.
How the body was created, in a moment or through evolution is not crucial in this context.
The idea of soul has apparently changed through time. In the OT times, the word for soul was close to the word life or living creature. In the creation story, God took physical material, breathed His spirit in the physical body and Adam became a living creature (living soul). The same words were used from the creation of all animals, so the word (nephesh) that has sometimed been translated as âsoulâ was not unique to humans. Animals and humans became living creatures (souls). It includes the idea that a living human is whole, not formed of separate parts, except in the sense that before humans became living entities, there was a material body that was breathed to life by God.
When OT (Hebrew bible) was translated to Greek, the translation called Septuaginta, the word ânepheshâ was translated with a word that was used in Greek philosophy for the concept of âsoulâ. This may have mixed ideas of the Hebrew ânepheshâ and the Greek âpsucheâ (soul) in the hellenistic world.
In the Greek manuscripts of NT, soul seems to be mainly used to describe certain features of a human (one âdimensionâ of being whole human).
Jesus uses the word âsoulâ in connection of the word âbodyâ, in a way that needs interpretation. âDo not be afraid of those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hellâ (Matthew 10:28). This passage divides a human to a body and a soul that cannot be destroyed by humans. I do not know what word Jesus used in this context, probably not Greek (psuche). It should be noted that this passage does not include the spirit and it claims that God is able to destroy the soul in hell. My interpretation is that Jesus did not give a lesson about the parts of human but rather said that humans cannot destroy our eternity with God by killing the body.
To conclude, I think of a human as a whole where the body is a valuable part of the whole. Christianity teaches that we have a body in this life and also a body in the eternity, although the resurrection body is different (better) than the mortal body we have now. This differs from what the Greek philosophy was teaching about an eternal good soul in a bad or worthless physical body.
Something non-physical inserted into the body in order to make it alive or a person. Everything that makes us alive and a person is to be found in the nature of the physical body. There is no magical âlife stuffâ or âperson stuffâ animating the body. I certainly donât believe in the transmigrating âsoulâ of many religions that can move from one body to another.
I donât believe in a non-physical essence which has a space-time location in the physical body which then leaves the body when the body dies. Spiritual things have no part of the space-time structure of the physical universe. The disciples saw the resurrected Jesus as they saw Him because Jesus wanted them to see Him as they saw Him, and not because He had some physical location which could be examined or dissected with scientific instruments to study its composition.
I do however believe inâŚ
a mind as conceptually distinct from the body (including brain) though completely physical and dependent upon the body. The mind is a living organism (self organized entity) which exists in the substance of language concepts in the brain with its own needs, desires, and inheritance quite apart from those of the body.
a nonphysical (i.e. spiritual) component of our existence which has an almost entirely epiphenomenal relationship with our physical existence with regards to causality. In other words, where the causality is almost completely one-way from the physical to the spiritual. It is however dead and in need of resurrection.
Choices. The spiritual claims ownership of the choices made by the physical entity and from them derives its own form and nature.
No.
Like I said⌠the choices of the physical body. Its substance? As a substance monist I believe everything has its being from the same pre-energy substance of being from God by which God created everything. The difference is in the different forms it takes.
I believe that the difference between the physical and the spiritual is that physical things have their existence and nature from the space-time structure which it is a part of, and spiritual things have their existence and form from its own nature alone. For created beings this is from the choices which created it â and in our case it is the choices we made in the living of our lives.
The soul is vague concept with many meanings. The word translated as âsoulâ in the Bible means life or person and certainly not the thing described in other religions according to 1 and 2 above. The spiritual body is our true identity and its essence is the choices we have made - our desires, our dreams, our ideas, our selfness â both of the bodily form as how we identify ourselves to ourselves and others, and of the mind by which we know ourselves.
Our choices are not isolated entities but things with a context both in the world around us and in the history which brought them into being. In this way our choices encompass everything.
It is the same throughout our lives. So much is according to what we have been given. But these are just window dressing like our race and sex. Our real identity is found in what we do with all the things we have been given.
If this seems a little vague to you then you are probably looking for something a little too objective in nature. But I donât think there is much objective reality to the spiritual at all. It is the physical which operates according to mathematical laws which care nothing for what we want or believe â and that is the essence of its objective nature. I donât think the spiritual is in any way similar, but quite the opposite, where what we want and believe is everything.
There is, but I wouldnât say itâs intristically valuable, it doesnât need to be, it just needs to be a good tool. Like a computer, itâs not valuable in of itself, but we can use it and to us it is valuable, The World doesnât give much to God, all the knowledge it can give, God already has, so itâs not valuable to God as a static thing, but something he can use to bring us closer to himself, thatâs how it is valuable to him, and thatâs why it is âgoodâ.
I agree, âdestroyingâ means separation from God, and humans cannot separate us from God if he doesnât want it himself. I would not believe in God literally being able to make soul perish, yeah, still with this Greeky view of the soul, yet note, I donât believe in Greek philosophy, my view just has similar ideas, I donât believe that body is worthless, for example, or that soul is good.
So it would seem at last that this body is just what we currently use, later we will have different body and we will be good. This body is not an important part of us, if it can be exchanged for different, âbetterâ body. But obviously when we talk about human, then there cannot be human without human body.
If body is a valuable part of the whole, what other parts are there, and how do they work ( no specific explanation needed, just your overall thoughts )?
So from what I understand, you say that there is spiritual body that starts to appear when we make choices, we do a lot of choices, our body does them, and our spiritual body is formed. And in heaven the spiritual body will be what we are.
Will it exist itself or will God need to somehow change it or give some body to it for it to have relationship with him?
But then, hereâs what I donât understand, if spiritual body, our real essence ( this is what it is, right? ), is created by actions of our body, and our body is just thing made from around us, the world and history.
What is the choice then? The world has shaped our body and the body âactsâ according to how it works, then the soul is just a non-material construct that was taken from one part of this world, human brain to be exact, thatâs how I understand what you said.
If spirit doesnât exist until body acts, and bodyâs action are caused by the world, then the spirit is just further product of the world. What is special about it? What makes it worth Godâs time?
For example, a scientists created an AI, after some time, AI has developed, and it can respond to environment in itâs own, complex way, can you get a spirit from this AI actions? It would seem that itâs permitted in your world view. If not, then why AI choices donât count and choice of our body does? After all both are a mechanism made from the world they reside in.
And if human spirits are valuable to God, for sure animal, AI and whatever else spirit is also valuable to him? If not, why?
And if I got most wrong, at least tell me if I got at least one thing right, it will help me get closer to the idea.