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If the Bible has been edited, then why leave in the bad bits about God?

Thanks for doing me the courtesy of responding.

me said:
Does he declare himself to be Christ?
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itch said:
He did not need to. In this first immediate encounter, I knew I was in the presence of a power so beyond any human power. I knew immediately this was God the Creator of Heaven and earth - the God the Bible was telling me about.
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Okay, so it wasn't Jesus. It was God. How did you know it was the Christian God?
There are creation myths from all religions.
What about the encounter was - specifically - Christian?

I ask Christians this question and they never give me a straight answer, or one that makes any sense.
There tends to be very little consistency between accounts of divine encounters with Christ.

I realize that these things can be difficult to put into words, but please try.
I'd like to understand why you believe this is "the Christian God", or Christ himself, rather than just God.

Do you think Muslims have any connection to God, or are they all praying to nothing?
Do you have to be Christian and have a relationship with Jesus, to have a relationship with God?
Or is Christianity just an avenue to (the same) God (as all other religions)?

There's something slightly offensive about the Christian mentality, when it comes to ownership.
Christians insist to me that I have to have a personal relationship with Jesus.
All other religions are about having a "relationship" with God.
There can be cross-chatter between religions, via that commonality.
I hit a wall with Christians, when they insist that Jesus is integral to the spiritual process.
I mean - what does that imply - that the rest of the world is wrong?
Do only Christians know God?

This is where violence in the name of religion comes from: ownership.
Perhaps that's why Christianity has incited so much violence...
 
most of the many posts that deny the existence of Jesus or who position Him as just another guru - it is evident that when reading between the lines of these posts, self-determination and self-reliance still rule in these people's lives
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I have faith. I believe in God. I just don't think Christianity has any ownership, whatsoever. That's all.
I like the story of Jesus, and I like the story of Job, but I think it's unlikely that either were based on reality.

Whether or not I literally believe that Jesus was a man has no bearing on my relationship with God.
 
willow11 said:
^There do exist some good reasons to passionately deny the existence of god/christ. It strikes me a logical to try and remove the foundations of an organisation/s responsible for much sufferring and delusion throughout the world. Our society, legality and morality are all derived from religious faith which, to the non-religious, is like letting lego-men decide whats for dinner. The foundations of such can be weakened by cementing the idea that this is all pure fiction. Not saying I agree with such a crusade, though I do in principle- I just think its a waste of time.



Hmm,Godwin's Law anyone?

TBH, that surprises me as a comment from you meth....
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I simply made a comparison with a disclaimer it was only to be applied to those who truly believed the first Martyr's of Christ were made up.
But you bring up a good point.....
Where does your authority to dertermine what I am doing or what Hitler did is right or wrong in the first place?

ForEverAfter said:
^+1

Merry Christmas, everyone.

:)

(Skip the "captain" stuff, meth.)
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Hope everyone had a Merry one!!

And Sir, yes, Sir
☺
 
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I grew up in a pentecostal religion. I did accept Jesus into my heart, I was baptised and received the Holy Spirit. But all I learned and felt doesn't seem appropriate to the much larger spiritual world I came to decades later. The spirituality I now see seems to me far more in tune with any reality I can learn about The God stories seem filled with rage, jealousy, anger and malice; even the Lucifer story seems more like a Palace Intrigue than something that could possibly occur to the Creator of All Things.

I mean, seriously, how stupid would Lucifer have to be to think he could replace the one who created him?

So now I explore a much more complex and larger set of possibility than the limited version I was given as a child.

I also looked at other religious ideas (no capital 'r' OK?) after I walked away from the church I started with and what I found was constant references to a personal journey... eventually that sunk in and I walked away from Religion. A couple of decades or so later I found myself heading back towards spirituality and I'm still heading that way.
 
Ransom itch said:
Wow! No, the first step towards finding out about the reality of Jesus - this invisible God - is by and large a step that has to come from us. It's only our pride and self determinism that stops us from doing this. But when we do take that step and bow the knee, and when He then faithfully meets with us, that's when the scales fall from our eyes. As that famous hymn Amazing Grace states, was blind but now I see.
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I would have to agree with that. Even if I'm from then angelic linegage and he's from the human linegage there's no denying he can do better than most of us in physical form.
 
After reading my post stating that I believe I have met with the God of the Bible, Foreverandever said

Thanks for doing me the courtesy of responding.

Okay, so it wasn't Jesus. It was God. How did you know it was the Christian God?
There are creation myths from all religions.
What about the encounter was - specifically - Christian?

I ask Christians this question and they never give me a straight answer, or one that makes any sense.
There tends to be very little consistency between accounts of divine encounters with Christ.

I realize that these things can be difficult to put into words, but please try.
I'd like to understand why you believe this is "the Christian God", or Christ himself, rather than just God.



OK Foreverandever, I will endeavour to give you a straight answer to your questions. I believe my divine encounter was with the God of the Bible primarily because I adopted the methodology (if methodology could ever be described as the route to God? Sounds prescriptive when I write it but there are no other words) I took the steps as laid out exclusively in the Bible that confessing my sins to Jesus - sins which were heaped high I can tell you, believing that Jesus went to the cross and took the punishment of excruciating death in exchange for my wrongdoings and selfishness and then very soon after, as I have already written in the previous post, having that tremendously powerful encounter.


Do you think Muslims have any connection to God, or are they all praying to nothing?

A life-and-mind-altering book for me was reading a book on homosexuality and the church and a passage that called us as Christians to be builders of bridges not destroyers of them. This approach I would apply to any situation where my faith was called into question and set against another's belief system. What I learn from the Bible is that we are to love, the Holy Spirit convicts and God judges. So often, we get it round the wrong way.


Do you have to be Christian and have a relationship with Jesus, to have a relationship with God?
Or is Christianity just an avenue to (the same) God (as all other religions)?

Since you ask, Jesus says quite plainly, No-one comes to the Father except through me. My logic (again that word is so hard to apply when we are talking spirit and faith matters) tells me that in the beginning, there was no committee of Gods and I am quite settled on there being just One Supreme God.


There's something slightly offensive about the Christian mentality, when it comes to ownership.
Christians insist to me that I have to have a personal relationship with Jesus.
All other religions are about having a "relationship" with God.
There can be cross-chatter between religions, via that commonality.
I hit a wall with Christians, when they insist that Jesus is integral to the spiritual process.
I mean - what does that imply - that the rest of the world is wrong?
Do only Christians know God?


Again Foreverandever, I would reiterate that revelation as to who I believe God is came to me when I faced and owned up to my own sinfulness and bowed the knee to Jesus. I did not bow the knee to Allah, not to Krishna, not to Buddha, not to TM, not to self-guided astral plain travelling, not to any other new age techniques (although in my mind, there is nothing new under the sun and that the heart of the new age is really just a reflection of the myriad age-old routes to convenient, unchallenging gods (small g) of our own making)

This is where violence in the name of religion comes from: ownership.
Perhaps that's why Christianity has incited so much violence...

I hate the legacy of the bloody Crusades both old and recent and believe Jesus does too. So-called Christians with their fag-hating placards, those money-grabbing tele-evangelists, abortion centre fire-starters, child-abusing church leaders will all stand before God on that day and need to give account. Boy, does the church have a lot to say sorry for. None of this for me however detracts from the main argument that there is a Creator God who loves us and wants us to turn to Him. I found Him through Jesus.
 
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There are functions of Christianity that I quite like and I'm glad that it provided you an avenue to God.

I'm not convinced that there is a "Christian God" or a "God of the Bible".

I believe that they are all the same God.

Thanks for responding in such detail.

:)
 
meth said:
Where does your authority to dertermine what I am doing or what Hitler did is right or wrong in the first place?
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from being human in the first place: I personally prefer to build my ethics on the basis of our innate capacity for empathy, and then using our capacity to reason to build this into a generalized conceptual framework. Insofar as I interact with individuals employing a similar approach, it becomes possible to build an ethical community which produces an intersubjective space capable of functioning in terms of ethics.

Insofar as I require a god to anchor what is right in terms of his/her/its might, I have failed in this task of ethical reasoning: might still fails to make right, even in the case of omnipotence; insofar as I require a god to instruct me, I bracket aside the question of ethical reasoning, how we build an ethical framework, entirely. Another way of thinking of this (that I don't really subscribe to) is that god institutes a given system of ethics not because of his mere will (do you want a god that capricious?) but rather that because of the particular structure of his being and the body of creation that follows, a certain system of ethics must follow too.

ebola
 
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Ebola says

Insofar as I require a god to anchor what is right in terms of his/her/its might, I have failed in this task of ethical reasoning: might still fails to make right, even in the case of omnipotence; insofar as I require a god to instruct me, bracket aside the question of ethical reasoning, how we build an ethical framework, entirely. Another way of thinking of this (that I don't really subscribe to) is that god institutes a given system of ethics not because of his mere will (do you want a god that capricious?) but rather that because of the particular structure of his being and the body of creation that follows, a certain system of ethics must follow too.

Count the Is and wes in the above paragraph. Herein exactly lies the long, drawn-out battle against God, as far as I'm concerned. We believe we can construct an ethical framework for ourselves to the exclusion of God. Me, myself, I. What doesn't suit me philosophically, I'll pass by, if you don't mind. Please do not take this personally Ebola, it's merely an observation of the self-centredness of humanity in general, myself included. It's interesting that Humanist and Atheist organisations alike acknowledge that Jesus' Sermon on The Mount is the most credible manifesto for society in print. Here just one of many links substantiating this statement
https://godandsoul.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/an-atheists-admiration-for-the-sermon-on-the-mount/
 
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Count the Is and wes in the above paragraph.
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I went from noting my opinion to talking about what we, humans do in general.

It's interesting that Humanist and Atheist organisations alike acknowledge that Jesus' Sermon on The Mount is the most credible manifesto for society in print.
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This doesn't seem true. Have any links to articles or something?

ebola
 
Sorry mate but you want me to provide further links? I can indeed do that, in fact you could do the same by merely searching google. However, it's impossible to deny in the link I provided. that one of the chief proponents of modern atheism RD is in full support of The Sermon On The Mount.
 
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No, that one was fine. However, I don't think that there is consensus among atheists about the sermon on the mount; I certainly don't want Dawkins to speak for all or even most of us...

ebola
 
So the is not a consensus amongst atheists? My understanding of atheism is that its followers profess a very strong faith. But not unshakeable! Haha!:)
 
itch said:
So the is not a consensus amongst atheists?
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Not at all, no. You have a wide spectrum in terms of level of certainty of belief, and atheism doesn't specify substantive content of belief at all (ie, what one holds to be the fundamental structure of the universe, our place in it, etc.); atheism is mere lack of belief in something we would identify as a god, nothing more.

I tend to approach things with a lack of certainty, for one, but I favor that approach to all things.

ebola
 
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You need to read between the lies with the Bible. Personally I think St. Paul's writings are blasphemy and take what I can out of the Gospel.

My primary spiritual text is the Gospel of Thomas (google it.)
 
But unlike Islam, at least Christianity doesn't still fight "holy wars". I find it a bit hard to take someone seriously who sees more sense in that. But still, the grass is always greener (or more exotic) on the other side, and that's a main problem for Christianity.
 
Christianity is older than Islam, and there have been a shitload of Christian holy wars.
 
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