Contemplating my decision to leave Christianity (Buddha, eternal, philosophy, preach)
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I think most miss the mark wanting God to serve them, which is rebellion, rather than wanting to serve God.
If I go about doing things I think you want me to do, I’m wasting time .we don’t know one another.
Imagine the insult, me coming to you for a paycheck.
Adam had a relationship with God but traded it for an alternate source of knowledge, severing his relationship with God.
Jesus (God in the flesh) provided restoration in this relationship providing the Holy Spirit to teach God’s perspective.
Men use scriptures to fit their own objectives but the Holy Spirit speaks only God’s perspectives.
Churches often hide this aspect for their insecurity is their own lack of this relationship.
I have known the Lord since age 7, and seen more miracles than most preachers and continue to regularly. I do not manipulate God, I cooperate with Him.
.
What I don't seem to be able to get you to understand, Mystic is that the average person contemplating accepting Jesus or not is not interested in esoteric intellectual definitions of what exactly constituted Jesus. They are simple-minded people who only care if Jesus was real or not, and my questions go to "was Jesus real or was he imaginary", certainly not your brand of "what was Jesus' specific mission to the Jews and by extension to the world with respect to the later inclusion of Gentiles combined with not necessarily ignoring the early Essenes' and Gnostics' contribution to the syncretism of Hellenistic attributes and early Jewish beliefs and with regard to how the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE affected this syncretism before as opposed to after the Temple's destruction."
Get what I'm saying, Mystic? Your approach to Jesus is simply too intellectual and too way out there for the average person.
What I don't seem to be able to get you to understand, Thrill, is that your focus on the nonsense of the dogma and whether or not it can be validated historically is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT AND UNNECESSARILY DESTRUCTIVE. It undermines the message of Jesus for no good reason, potentially undermines the spiritual development of those who believe you, and will, IMO, cause you many regrets, remorse, and grief in the next life.!!!
The problem with your questions is that they do NOT represent what God wants nor why Jesus came as a Human. All this nonsense about why Jesus came, why He had to die, what it has to do with our sins, and what God wants us to believe about Jesu is a convoluted and very primitive human misunderstanding, period. What we believe is only important because of what it motivates us to BECOME, not because it pleases God to have us believe it!!! We truly are God's children and that means we are here to develop and mature our "Spirits" within our physical "wombs." Our death will simply be when we are "born again" as Spirits.
Wow, Mystic! I really, really like what I bolded so much, that I just had to tell you how much I like it, without reading any farther!
Quote:
NONE of us were developing as Spirits because we were completely carnal and fully absorbed in our physical existence. That is why God's Holy Spirit came as the HUMAN Jesus. It is WHY His birth was such "Good Tidings of Great Joy to All People!!!" He incarnated God's Holy Spirit to humanity connecting our collective spirits with God permanently. That is how we were all saved. Our salvation has nothing to do with us or what we believe or do not believe. BUT if we do not believe in Jesus, we might not emulate Him and His agape love which would lead to spiritual failure. What that failure entails is unknown but it is probably not pleasant!!!
Another "really, really 'like' moment! (Sorry, I'm being silly today)
Quote:
Our real task is to mature into INDEPENDENT, self-directing Spirits who WANT to be like Jesus, NOT forced into it by fear or lured by rewards or other EXTERNAL factors. The absolute proof or knowledge you seek would actually be counterproductive because it might not reflect what kind of Spirit we actually have BECOME, and actually want. Ironically, your rejection of all that external nonsense and your internal desire to meet God reveals a more successful spiritual development and maturity. Unfortunately, it is currently misdirected by your prior conditioning and indoctrination and your abreaction to the barbaric, NON-SPIRITUAL, and primitive nonsense of our ancestors.
Thrill, you need to read my response again without blinding filters — as I went out of my way to make the point and even give an example that you can experience God without Jesus, so why are you falsely insinuating I’m saying God is preparing you to discover Jesus ???? :
Rose, I'm trying to be incredibly decent about it. My position: if you had an experience of some kind with Jesus and you feel great about it that's....well, great! But it is completely disparate to my position that there is no reason to believe Jesus will lead a person to God like you apparently believe he did, because there is no evidence on an earthly level that the gospels Jesus was even real. On the contrary, in my other current thread I have laid out a small mountain of evidence why we can believe the gospels Jesus was a myth. So what you and Mystic believe you experienced with Jesus would not be acknowledged by science as anything more than a powerful hallucination--because science doesn't recognize actual supernatural experiences with a spiritual being. So you trying to convince me that I might have a "coming to the knowledge of the truth that Jesus is real" moment simply is never going to happen unless he appears to me in a way that science would recognize as a real experience. Did you happen to read my blurb that science sees that when a person is high on coke and when they are high on Jesus, on an MRI both light up the EXACT same centers of the brain that control the release of dopamine and endorphins--the brain's "Feel-good" chemicals?
"Believing in God can trigger the same reward regions of the brain as taking drugs
Brain scans have shown that religious experiences activate the same neural systems as drug taking"
So you can see that Jesus is just a drug no different than coke for people--because it stimulates the exact same regions of the brain as cocaine and heroin--the brain's "pleasure centers". The phrase, "Getting high on Jesus" is exactly the right way to express it.
I think most miss the mark wanting God to serve them, which is rebellion, rather than wanting to serve God.
If I go about doing things I think you want me to do, I’m wasting time .we don’t know one another.
Imagine the insult, me coming to you for a paycheck.
Adam had a relationship with God but traded it for an alternate source of knowledge, severing his relationship with God.
Jesus (God in the flesh) provided restoration in this relationship providing the Holy Spirit to teach God’s perspective.
Men use scriptures to fit their own objectives but the Holy Spirit speaks only God’s perspectives.
Churches often hide this aspect for their insecurity is their own lack of this relationship.
I have known the Lord since age 7, and seen more miracles than most preachers and continue to regularly. I do not manipulate God, I cooperate with Him.
.
I hear this, "God performs miracles for me all the time" from Christians, well.....all the time.
The "miracles" are usually along the line of "I locked myself out of my house and when I called a locksmith to open my door the locksmith got over to my house without getting into an accident, praise God."
Arleigh, why not call us when God actually turns the deadbolt to your door himself.
Rose, I'm trying to be incredibly decent about it. My position: if you had an experience of some kind with Jesus and you feel great about it that's....well, great! But it is completely disparate to my position that there is no reason to believe Jesus will lead a person to God like you apparently believe he did, because there is no evidence on an earthly level that the gospels Jesus was even real. On the contrary, in my other current thread I have laid out a small mountain of evidence why we can believe the gospels Jesus was a myth. So what you and Mystic believe you experienced with Jesus would not be acknowledged by science as anything more than a powerful hallucination--because science doesn't recognize actual supernatural experiences with a spiritual being. So you trying to convince me that I might have a "coming to the knowledge of the truth that Jesus is real" moment simply is never going to happen unless he appears to me in a way that science would recognize as a real experience. Did you happen to read my blurb that science sees that when a person is high on coke and when they are high on Jesus, on an MRI both light up the EXACT same centers of the brain that control the release of dopamine and endorphins--the brain's "Feel-good" chemicals?
"Believing in God can trigger the same reward regions of the brain as taking drugs
Brain scans have shown that religious experiences activate the same neural systems as drug taking"
[b]So you can see that Jesus is just a drug no different than coke for people--because it stimulates the exact same regions of the brain as cocaine and heroin--the brain's "pleasure centers".
The phrase, "Getting high on Jesus" is exactly the right way to express it.
Yeah. So does sex. So, by your rule of thinking, no one should have sex anymore because -- OMG -- it might stimulate the same regions of the brain as cocaine and heroin!
And oh...runners shouldn't run anymore because they might get 'runner's high'.
Try again, thrill.
P.S. I'm still trying to decide how to respond to your other post...
I hear this, "God performs miracles for me all the time" from Christians, well.....all the time.
The "miracles" are usually along the line of "I locked myself out of my house and when I called a locksmith to open my door the locksmith got over to my house without getting into an accident, praise God."
Arleigh, why not call us when God actually turns the deadbolt to your door himself.
What makes you think that hasn't happened before?
If it DID happen to someone, would YOU believe it?
Probably not.
And then you wonder WHY God hasn't "come to YOU."
Even if God Himself came and sat on your nose thrill, you wouldn't believe it. You'd be looking for other explanations. It MUST be a hallucination (even though there would be no reason for a hallucination), or you MUST be delusional (even though there's no reason for any delusion). It MUST be something else besides GOD.
Even if God Himself came to you, would you worship Him...and no one else BUT Him?
...
Do you think that 'worship' means, to spend 24/7 on your knees, with your hands raised to Heaven?
Because if you do, that's not even close--as one of the billions of Christians--who believes as *I* do, to who I see as God.
What I don't seem to be able to get you to understand, Thrill, is that your focus on the nonsense of the dogma and whether or not it can be validated historically is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT AND UNNECESSARILY DESTRUCTIVE. It undermines the message of Jesus for no good reason, potentially undermines the spiritual development of those who believe you, and will, IMO, cause you many regrets, remorse, and grief in the next life.!!!
(Fairly screaming at Mystic): Mystic, forget about me. Jesus' message won't matter a hill of beans to people if you cannot prove to people with historical proof he even existed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Fairly screaming at Mystic): Mystic, forget about me. Jesus' message won't matter a hill of beans to people if you cannot prove to people with historical proof he even existed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHY does it even matter?
Did Jesus speak the truth or not?
Even if Jesus didn't exist, does that mean that the truth of what he "supposedly" said, wasn't the truth?
Frankly, I don't give two hoots about WHO said that we ALL should "do unto others". I ask myself, 'Does that makes SENSE?"
Would this world be a better place if we DID do unto others?
Mystic's right. So many people are so immature when it comes to this stuff...
You mean, He didn't leave behind any witnesses that *you* think are "credible."
While the Gospels were 'published' so many years after Jesus' crucifixion, it doesn't mean they weren't started while Jesus was still alive.
They're not credible to a lot of us.
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(Sorry, I'm being silly today)
