It isn’t.
…
1 Like
Define heaven …
Define heavenly father …
Define reality …
Define factual evidence …
Define providential interventions …
I have a sympathy for and an appreciation of how people can come to describe their experiences, but these stories are like old attempts to force a particular behaviour. My grandmother used to tell horror stories to make us children sleep at night, especially at Christmas when we were all excited and some adult would bring presents to the foot of our beds. We shut our eyes and dared not look up for fear of having coal tipped on our bed. When I had a child, I swore never to tell him such stories.
On the other hand, I did warn him that human beings have a proclivity towards gaining power and control, and I also made sure that he realised that this was in his own heart as well. Our task is to understand that and realise that love is the only way, and everything that is not done in love has unwanted consequences. That is what I learnt from Jesus … not that he was the product of some supernatural intervention, other than the experience of love, which I believe is divine in nature.
That’s a non sequitur, telling horror stories to make children sleep at night! No wonder you’re messed up! 
And how are horror stories like people describing accounts of God’s interventions! The stories I tell are factual instances of God’s interventions are delightful to me, and when I hear others’ accounts I delight as well! Speaking of stories, I need to thank you for giving me one, the first entry in three months that I’ve made in my Co-instants Log (if anyone is interested in it – not that anyone would be, they can PM me).
And regarding all your ‘Define’ demands, I do not need to waste my time – you would not accept my understanding and knowledge of them anyway. All I need to say to you is what Jesus said to those who did not believe in the resurrection, “You are badly mistaken!” and leave you to your own unenviable devices.
1 Like
With many words you have said absolutely nothing, and you can’t define any of the things I mentioned. The only thing you come up with is, “There are factual instances of God’s interventions” and I tell you that they are stories symbolic of their perceived immediate participation in what they understood as a cosmic drama. They are quite understandable as such and, in fact, have great value as records of human development. It is just that at some stage, probably in what was called the ‘Axial Age’ by Karl Jaspers and which refers to ancient history from the 8th and the 3rd century BCE, Jaspers says that this time was a turning point in human history. They learnt to disengage from that ‘immediate participation,’ step back and review what their stories were telling them.
It is then that they came to realise that it is man’s proclivity to power and control that is what was previously understood as “possession” by evil, and in Israel we find the Prophets saying that God had no pleasure in sacrifice. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” and in the NT “to love Him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, which is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
This is a paradigm change which the High Priest, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were not willing to accept. That is why Jesus was killed on the cross.
1 Like
I’m curious… what do you mean what was believed to be possession ( are you referring to something like demonic possession ) was actually just peoples tendency to lean towards wanting power?
Eye run knee.
No, I won’t, not can’t, because it would be futile.
I guess you could say reality is symbolic of reality. (‘The only thing’ is that I am quite happy about all of them. ; - ) What you are ‘telling’ me is that you are kidding yourself.
The biggest thing you’re missing is the reality. There are facts imputing unmistakable meaning (to those who are not denialists) to the time and placing of events – here are only a few. The aforementioned Co-instants Log contains four decades of co-instances (my substitute terms for coincidence, as opposed to Jung’s godless ‘synchronicities’) in my life and a couple of decades of retrospective entries before that.
Too bad for them because the reality of participatory experience is way more fun than mere philosophizing and conjecture. You’re a Brit, right? Maybe you are familiar with George Müller, an amazing man of God who founded several orphanages in the nineteenth century (I love that face! ; - )… he experienced the reality and documented the facts:
I’m glad you quoted that because it’s true and worth seeing, but to what end I don’t know because it’s another non sequitur since you don’t believe it. And citing Jesus is again silly because so much of what he said you discard.
The main reason Jesus was killed, in big picture, the ‘VFA’’, the view from above, not losing the forest for the trees in the ‘VFB’, the view from below, the main reason was to save his people from their sins so they could be adopted into his Father’s family for eternity.
1 Like
It’s truly a wonder to feel the banality of the plural pronoun as it’s uttered by the non-dualist
2 Likes
And I tell you the main reason Jesus let himself be killed was ‘enlightened self-interest’:
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2
(That joy is us, I tell you, if we belong to him.)
1 Like
Now you’re telling Dale what he’s doing and thinking??
Besides which, if you’re referring to the scriptures your assertion is just plain wrong – very little of the accounts are the right kind of literary type. This is just the same sort of sentimental nonsense put out a couple of generations ago by scholars who hadn’t even bothered to investigate the documents they were talking about . . . but has continued to simmer here and there.
No, it isn’t. He was killed because He identified Himself with God.
1 Like
First of all, we see how some people believe in the presence of angels and, logically, of Satan/Lucifer or whatever name you choose, as well. What would the influence of such an adversary be?
In “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis, the devils use various strategies to manipulate human behaviour, such as exploiting their weaknesses, encouraging selfishness, fostering doubt and discouragement, and distorting their perception of reality. Screwtape advises Wormwood to target areas like human relationships, prayer life, and individual virtues to create confusion, discord, and ultimately lead the individual away from a virtuous life.
Many Christians I spoke to believed that Lewis had not just written a satirical novel, like I thought, but had described the way the devil works.
The narrative that is widely assumed by Christians is a mythology, the line between Adam and Jesus is a mythology. I am not critical of mythologies per se, and they can be meaningful if they are not confused with history. But to be honest, I ask myself who is the sentimental one here.
Rob, I’ve read through your post a number of times and don’t really see any opening for discussion or comment beyond agreement or disagreement. All concepts of good and evil held by christians have been declared mythology, so we are done discussing that. Everything else stems from that mythology, which all christians seem to handle improperly. And there’s an end to it.
Is there a question or point you want to discuss here?
3 Likes
I obviously wasn’t clear in my statement that arose out of a discussion I had about the profundity of mythology and literature, which portrays principles in a drama rather than explaining them. The same goes for good and evil, of course, which is portrayed in the Bible, and by Christian authors like Tolkien, as an embodied evil or evil entity.
The human experience reveals though, that good and evil are expressed through humankind, which has a singular ability to intend people either wellbeing or suffering. I was expressing my concern, that an all too literal understanding of literary portrayals project this proclivity onto imaginary entities, rather than seeing the problem in humanity.
It isn’t a case of mythology being “only” mythology, as modern people tend to regard it, but that it’s profundity lies in its ability to move people emotionally. But it is more than a love or horror story, it is moving them towards a different behaviour, which one only sees if we realise that it is us the story is talking about.
1 Like
That’s not how I believe in Satan personally. I don’t think of Satan as a being that supernaturally influenced people like a demon on one soldier and an angel on another. I don’t think Screwtape letters were accurate at all.
I think God had a race of being with him called the hosts of heaven and that part of their job was to help rule over the cosmos just like we were to be corulers over earth. I think these “gods” communicated with people like humans do or through things like visions.
But I don’t really think about them so much because I believe that they are all dead. I think they died in the first century and will never exist again unless they were resurrected by God through universalism.
But I’m also open to them never having existed at all and are just symbolism as well for people stuck in things anti goodness and happiness. After all if we know that God did not make us, but instead we evolved just like everything else, why would Angels be magically made. They would need to have also evolved and we see no evidence for the evolution of things like that.
But it’s mostly challenging because it would make it an odd way to interpret the confrontation Jesus had out jn the wilderness. It’s not presented as metaphorical or symbolic. It’s presented as a real event.
1 Like
- From the TV series, Annika. Season 1, Episode 4,
- “I believe that engineers have identified six different types of bridges, There’s a beam bridge, which is, well, It’s just a slab of concrete or even a log across the stream. There’s an arch bridge, like the Rialto in Venice. It’s very nice. There’s a suspension bridge, like the Golden Gate in San Francisco. There’s three other types of bridge. What they all have in common, though, is that their purpose is to cross a divide of some sort. And on the whole, they can be very successful, but that’s assuming that the two sides are happy about being connected. 'Cause sometimes all you do is let the enemy across.”
4 Likes
That’s the thing: to realize that myth isn’t a debasement of reality but rather the most nearly adequate way we have of representing the sacred aspect of reality. Or so it seems to me. I wonder if @Christy has any more informed take on it than that?
2 Likes
Or provide access to more media for the yeast to propagate and insinuate itself, which suits the yeast just fine.
Yes, I think myth is a way of communicating about meta-narratives that give meaning to reality. Some philosophers have written about the ideas of “mythos” and “logos” and how both can be vehicles of truth.
I disagree with the OP that the Christian story is “based on” the cosmic struggle of good against evil. That makes it sound derivative of other stories, when in reality, the cosmic struggle of good against evil is a metanarrative that has interested humanity for ages. And yes, the Christian story is a framing of that narrative that is also found in other stories, because that theme is powerful and strikes at the heart of our human questions about meaning and purpose.
2 Likes
This is a conclusion for which you haven’t provided any support, only your assertion that it is so. The line between Adam and Eve may fade into mythology the farther back it goes, especially once it is farther back than David and then past Moses (the authenticity of Abraham still being completely up in the air), but that does not make the entire genealogy mythology.
I add again: if you’re referring to the scriptures your assertion is just plain wrong – very little of the accounts are the right kind of literary type.
Calling all or even much of scripture “mythology” is the sort of thing that sprouted from the highly unscholarly work of [u]The Golden Bough[/] and its ilk that had more to do with sentiment than objective study.
2 Likes
Ah – I see the problem: mythology isn’t the only type of literature which does that.
Or, for that matter, which does this:
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
If we use the book of Enoch to understand certain statements in the New Testament (e.g. Peter’s reference to spirits in prison) they didn’t die but were locked up where they have no ability to influence anything in Creation – but when judgment comes they will die.
Though it seems to me that being locked up unable to influence the world at all when once they managed to get people to worship them might just be worse punishment than dying, especially if they are able to watch events here!
An interesting question. The usual response is that angels were made to function/live without sin(ning), but that runs aground on the proposition that Lucifer for a third of the angels to follow him.
1 Like