Chrisentheism, a new way forward

Faith & Science Conversation
21

I still say no to the religion conning me to worship the devil.

It is comfortable to have the devil as your God because He will make your self-destructive habits look like a good thing.

But a God without such self absorbed habits will not not be so comfortable. You will always look bad by comparison. It will always be hard to measure up.

But perhaps the more important question is which is most convenient for those using religion as a tool of power and for their own benefit? When it looks like an invention of such people to serve their own interests then I cannot find it believable.

22

Was Moses being conned at the burning bush when told to take off his shoes? That’s what I’m hearing.

23

When you start hearing things which nobody is saying then maybe it is time to go see a psychiatrist.

People can sure find excuses for their use of religion for power and self interest in the Bible if they willing to add things to the text which is not there.

Here is Jesus’ explanation about what offends God.

Matthew 25:31 “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. 34 Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? 38 And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? 39 And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ 46 And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Oh and here is the explanation from Isaiah 1

12 “When you come to appear before me,
who requires of you
this trampling of my courts?
13 Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and the calling of assemblies—
I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you spread forth your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
17 learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
defend the fatherless,
plead for the widow.

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24

I’m glad you would have taken your shoes off and not said “This is not a God that Mitchell Mckain can allow himself to believe in.”

25

Indeed… and here you will find my defense of a proper fear of God.

But I don’t think this is because God is sensitive, prideful, or full of himself. Quite the contrary, I think God is anything but. When Jesus describes what it is to be great – to be a servant of servants, I believe He is describing God. There is a definite sense in which God allows us to walk all over Him as a complete doormat. But clearly it is not because He is weak – He just wants us to clean our feet, and He will do what it takes. Remember when Jesus did exactly that for His disciples?

The reason for a fear of God has more to do with what we lack and this is particularly a lack of understanding of both ourselves and reality. The indulgence of a parent will draw a line at what is harmful for his children. And so we cannot hope to manipulate God beyond that line. His is the correct understanding of reality and our own needs, and thus it is delusional to think God will indulge what is too often just complete nonsense and foolishness on our part.

I just don’t see much merit in comparing this to the human notion of lèse-majesté.

26

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”
Romans 14:11

As a sometimes sculptor, offense can be taken and pain inflicted if someone denigrates my work or harms it in some way, and by extension, me. I will defend God’s right to be offended and to make appropriate judgments.

Lèse-majestÊ at least falls under skeptical theism, which you already so generously allowed.

27

Mitchell I appreciate you input on this topic, reading your comments and your view of scripture, leads me to the conclusion that you really struggle with all human authority, you tend to reject the authority of man and want to place that all on God which is honorable. Its the struggle between the transcendence of God and the presence of God. We see the disaster of human fallenness in the world and our presumptuous and oft pious nature, and we want to reject all here below and run into the transcendence alone. The problem with that attempt is you end up in the unknowable mystery and thus unrelatable to both God and man. Christianity holds these two opposites in balance by the God/Man Jesus Christ. In his transcendence we peer into the mystery, in his humanness we can touch and see him.

Today for you and I we can still peer into the mystery, but Jesus left. so what now? Christ promised us the Spirit of truth buy which we still have his presence today, How ? the bible and the Church. So we to humble ourselves not only to the transcendence But also the presence of God, word and sacraments (church). This balanced or “narrow way” eases the tension we feel about God and this world. We then can be both humble and generous in our dogmas submitting to both authorities under the banner of Gods sovereignty. I hope that helps

28

Not quite… but your picking up on the general scents of it :slightly_smiling_face:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. (Ephesians 5:1-2)

For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; (2 Corinthians 2:15)

29

It was the way I was raised, not Christian but extreme liberal and quite well informed about everything wrong with the Christian establishment. And it is not that those criticisms were wrong. I simply found out that criticism of religion was a good portion of what the Bible is about.

I don’t think so. I don’t think that has anything to do with the issue of authority, which I frankly think is the fruit of the so called “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” There is no harm in knowledge, particularly not in knowledge of the difference between good and evil. The problem is taking on oneself the authority to say what is good and evil without real knowledge of it. Therein is the great harm of despots who think themselves gods. Assumed authority is far more the root of all evil than money is.

No one who knows me would think that describes me at all. You have connected to things which are completely unrelated. In fact, I regularly denounce this “unknowable mystery” rhetoric as meaningless.

Man and God are NOT opposites! Different yes and yet we are made in the image of God. I think that means our infinite potentiality reflects God’s infinite actuality. It means we were created for a parent-child relationship with God, where there is no end to what God has to give and no end to what we can receive from Him. This is the substance of eternal life.

In Jesus we are shown that God and man are not incompatible categories. God’s omnipotence means He can be whatever He chooses, even a helpless infant in a manger who knows nothing. This is because despite human obsessions with knowledge and power these do not define God. He is quite capable of setting these aside for the sake of love.

Such is the recipe for the ignorance of the dark ages by perpetuating the errors of people in the past. This is precisely the problem with deifying some belief or dogma. It is idolatry to make such our God when we should be watching and listening to all that God continues to send us from the earth and sky.

That is the favorite quote of universalists. LOL I am as skeptical of the meaning you take from this as I am of the meaning they have taken from it. As for me, I would suggest it touches on reason I have given for a proper fear of God. …pretty much the same as “the truth will ultimately prevail.” The truth cannot be defeated in the end because the untruth can only bring failure and destruction. God knows the truth.

That is because I followed the link where it is very much about the problem of evil. I don’t see that it applies in the case of lèse-majesté. Perhaps you need to find a link that serves your purpose better.

30

You do not know so much if you think I am a universalist. Where does it say all will bow the knee willingly? LOL yourself.

Perhaps you need to think better.

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31

Skeptical theism applies in that it may be is beyond our your capacity to understand it.

32

There I go, behaving badly again, returning insult for inferred insult. (LOLs do tend to make them implicit however.)

Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
1 Peter 3:9

Maybe we all need to grow in grace a little.

33

The moment it’s necessary to go searching for “proof texts” for a view I find that view immediately suspect; that’s really a backwards way of doing things. Pulling proof texts tends to end up pulling texts out of context all too often.

This goes backwards into a view of things held by the nations around the people of Israel, especially darkness as contrary to good. Note that the refrain “there was evening, there was morning” gives the boundaries of the period of darkness. This is part of the Genesis 1 polemic against the mythology of the Egyptians: to the Egyptians (and the rest of the ancient near east) darkness was an enemy of goodness and order, something that the gods had to fight against every night in order to make sure the sun could complete his journey and creation would endure for another day, but the Genesis writer makes darkness just another part of what God put together to serve Him – darkness is not an enemy, it is a tool. And that reflects back to the opening; in ANE terms it would have seemed familiar, darkness and waters everywhere as chaos for the gods to wrest into proper behavior, but the writer doesn’t leave it that way, he informs us that the Spirit of God was hovering/meditating over “the face of the deep”, i.e. the realm of darkness and waters was one the Spirit did not find in opposition but was instead raw material to be contemplated. Rather than anything bad, it was more the slate or canvas God threw out to “paint” on.

So, no: darkness is not something to be “counteracted”, since it is something God put there; “counteracted” leans towards a dualism foreign to the Creation account.

Similarly, the “chaos” – the “tohu wabohu” – is already God’s; it doesn’t need counteracting, it’s the “clay” the Sculptor is about to put to use. This fits where God says that He “creates calamity” – that calamity, that “rah”, isn’t in opposition to God precisely because He makes it, and that principle applies here as well.

That’s a really weird idea, isn’t it? The death of Christ is just one aspect of the Incarnation, so if anything is the “first cause and essence of creation” it wouldn’t be the death of Christ but the Incarnation.

34

The important question is why you think it’s negative, since the scriptures do not present it that way.

Or at the very least attributing inadequacy to God by asserting that when He started out creating what He made was flawed and needed to be fixed.

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35

Or a single cell in a dark womb…

36

I am not sure I understand you… Would you describe a parent’s relationship with a child that way? Have they created something flawed which needs to be fixed? Certainly that is not how most parents I have known think, and I cannot imagine those thinking that way would be good parents.

37

He created something that was not impervious to being damaged and that something more beautiful would replace it?

38

I could agree with the idea of creation being ‘very good’, not perfect only because I don’t believe in many notions of “perfect.” The only “perfect” I do believe in such as when Jesus said “you must be perfect,” is being without sin. That is because sin is destructive of all that is good. And I certainly do not agree that God created the world with sin.

I do not not believe the fall was necessary for a better world. I will never believe evil can be an improvement or building block for a better world. The possibility of evil is another matter. Without that possibility there can be no real love. Love must be a choice and thus there must be the possibility that love and the life which is offered can be rejected. But that is what leads to evil.

One can certainly argue that wherever there is life there is the possibility of evil and thus with abundant life it is inevitable there will be evil. But when you start a family and give gifts to your children your expectation is for goodness and not that they will be used for evil and self-destruction. The possibility may be unavoidable but it is certainly not planned. And such a plan is NOT what we see in the story of the Bible, where God’s reaction to the evil of mankind was regret that He created us at all.

The flaw in this is that the principle love involved is the love of God for us. Whatever love we have for God is but a miniscule reflection of that.

There is no way to magnify God and certainly nothing we do is going to accomplish such a thing. I definitely see this sort of dogma as the creation of religious people to magnify themselves and their own religious profession.

His purpose was a relationship between Himself, an infinite actuality, and His children, with infinite potentiality, so that there would be no end to what God has to give and no end to what we could receive from Him. This is the meaning of eternal life. In this there is no room for the self-destructive habits of sin, for these damage our potential and block our ability to receive anything from God. So yes God certainly did intend to create a world without sin which is the only meaningful understanding I can see in the word “perfect.”

39

He did create a world without sin, but any world in which sin can enter is not perfect!

40

No, of course not, literally. Surely you are aware that is not the only meaning of the word.

What did Mary say?:

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord
Luke 1:46

Much music has been written about it. Maybe you’ve heard of the Magnificat? (If not, you’re more provincial than I am! :grin:)