What is belief beyond ability to understand? What is faith beyond security. I am confused, self contradicting, and unresolved. I feel a struggle between what I do and what I profess to do. I am not who I claim to be. And yet, through all of this, I find myself clinging, hoplessly, to the hope and secutiry I find in what I know to be unknown, unsure. What is it about the humble aproach of ignorance that is so scary to us? Why is such a paradox to have faith in not knowing. This is vague, but still so puzzling.
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
-Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)
It's so true. It's so questioning. Unsure. The very things our innermost truths compel us to flee from. But it is hard kicking against the goads (Acts 26:14). Even so, the question is unsettled: How do I find security in a belief that I do not comprehend fully, and ultimately do not know? The answer I have is in the question itself, and probably more of a paradox than the question itself: You simply submit to ignorance. Understand that you don't understand.
The peace that came over me, though faded away and revived many times, when I decided to put my trust my "faith" in not being insecure, I found that very security.
It's hard to explain and I honestly an incompetent to do so. So I will let the inspired word of God do it for me. Place your hope in something You don't understand, in something we aren't certain of. I know I often back out because I've been let down by so many other things I put my faith in (friendships, family, knowledge, goverments, ect..). But you don't have to worry with God.
"And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."
-Romans 5:5 (NIV)
Again, a paradox. I'm making a habbit out of it. How do I rely on God's message to know that I can rely on his message? How do I know I won't get hurt? If his word really is going to disappoint us, what use is this scripture? How am I sure? Where's the guarantee? Where's my pension, my warranty, my fall back, bla bla bla...
It's a step of faith. I can assure you that it will be hard, and you might not be happy. I can guarantee you won't be happy all the time, but I can also guarantee you that you will be overwhelmed with JOY through it all. You won't be full of emotions that don't last, but you'll have eternal joy that can not be denied by anything. There will be a song on your lips, even when you have no words to speak of.
And know that when you don't understand, God's not contradicting himself, you're just confused. And so am I.
I know this isn't the usual Blog, I break rules, and write about whatever as it comes along. But, I don't care. I have things to say. I'm going to say them, and however confused and jumbled it comes out, that's ok too. Because, I know that I won't change the world, or even come close. No ONE can, and no ONE will. But, GOD is not a ONE he's God. he can, is and has changed the world.
Amen.
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If you submit to ignorance, why accept the existence of god? Why not settle for agnosticism?
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
The whole point of submitting to ignorance is to be humble. You can't believe you know everything, try to, or even want to. When you reject God's existence, you still don't know everything, and the same puzzling questions about Christian faith will still puzzle you. But with God, there's a hope that there is an explanation, and more so, you're love for him will make every cry of antichrist, or paganism or whatever seem childiish and unfulfilled. the opposite of a life with God.
Rest in peace
yourfuneralguy
http://www.lowercostfuneral.com/rbrianblog
Do not quote the Christian Scriptures call it Christian from the Public domain. Most folks here will be able to understand you better and will not get emotional readers block.
I honestly don't understand what's so humble about saying that, based on a total lack of evidence, you (generally speaking) know there is an omnipotent, benevolent being out there who cares enough about you that he will, if you follow a certain set of beliefs, will grant you life eternal. This is not a humble belief.
Further more, your belief in the Christian God may make peganism, or any other religion (or lack thereof), seem unfufilling, but that is because you disagree with the core of the belief system. To me Christianity is as unfufilling as peganism (I'd also find peganism unsatisfying, for the record) would be to you. And, to be honest, peganism is no more silly or childish then the 'great' religions of today.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
I'm very sorry, I was unclear in my explanation. It's humble to admit that you don't know it all. Unlike some belief systems where you go be alone and all knowledge is found from within you. Of course that's a little blunt, but it's the basics.
And I do believe that many christian traditions and commands are silly. Like dunking someone in water and calling it "new birth" or whatever other name you can think of. Or passing around juice and a cracker to munch on. Closing eyes, bowing heads, doing miscelanious hand holding, rasing, whatever.. it's silly. But I believe and practice it even so. And if you ask my why, I say He loved me first, and I couldn't deny it whenever I looked around the world and saw God's love, and more so, his love for me.
What belief system is there that revolves around the idea that all knowledge comes from within you?
Then why make the distinction that paganism is silly?
And, I still have to question the humility of a belief that, in spite of the evidence or lack thereof (as you admit), an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being loves a person, a group, or even a species. To be fair, most religions claim that, but that does not make it any less arrogant a belief.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
I'm still questioning
Why do you say that Paganism is silly like that of Satanism. Why does it have to be the Christian God? What makes that religion so damn special. Why is Buddha and all the other god (kinda buddha wasn't actually a god) so trivial and Jesus Christ so amazing?
Saint O Nothin' Says
PEACE
Rest in peace
yourfuneralguy
http://www.lowercostfuneral.com/rbrianblog
That Jesus Christ is the only one claiming to be God who rose from the dead.
Egyptian Religion really is fascinating. Isn't it Osiris who rose from the dead in that religion? There's no less evidence for that occurance than Christ's.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Well I have to say it's what Jesus said and did that makes him different. Read Mathew 5-7 if you're really interested.
It's been said that many other people carried the same ideals as those expressed in Matthew 5-7 and I agree. But, most of those people (Ghandi, MLK- some obvious choices) were influenced heavily by these very chapters. And for the others that weren't influenced by Christian beliefs, good morals isn't limited to any religion, or lack of.
"good morals isn't limited to any religion, or lack of."
As a lesbian and the best friend of an atheist, it is a relief to hear a Christian acknowledge that one does not need to be Christian to live a moral life. I get so tired of the blogs that claim the only morality is through faith in Jesus. There are tons of those arguments on here, and they make no sense to me. So thank you for acknowledging the goodness in those who disagree with your beliefs. It's a slightly huge thing to do.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
While most of what Jesus is said to have said is highly moralistic (with some striking exceptions, such as hating your parents), this does not make him any more likely a candidate for being a deity than anyone else.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Well, you're right. But I have to say that it's impossible for Jesus to be just a good, or moralistic person. That doesn't make sense. Jesus was either the Son of God and was completely without sin, or, he was a liar, and a fake, deceptive, and even malicious. So either Jesus is the true son of God, or a pagan sinner. Your choice of what to believe. But I have to wonder if any hoax would surrvive in the hearts of men (and women) and continue to shake the world even 2,000 years later. Why would anyone give up everything, even his life, and his family for something of fiction? Either Jesus was the son of God, drove demons out, healed he blind, and the lame, turned a few loaves of bread into full course meals for thousands, died, and rose from the dead, or he didn't and the most promenant book ever written is a lie. Life on earth is no accident. look up the statistics. Everything must be PERFECT for life to exist. I believe in a God, and his Son, and the Spirit that lives within me, if you don't, that's fine, But you're rejecting the Word that has changed the world multipules times, and the lives that have been changed aswell.
But you had to bring up the 'trilemma" argument, didn't you? ... OK, to be technically correct you only had the LORD & LIAR options, you left off the LUNATIC option.
No it's not. Since what we actually KNOW about Jesus is so limited, you could make a case for that. I don't happen believe it myself. I think Jesus was an OK guy but nothing special.
(1) It makes as much sense as your option here. I'll show you
(2) So you believe that Jesus is the son of God. Let's look at what that would entail
(2a) God had intercourse with a virgin (without her knowledge) and his DNA was capable of fertilizing an ordinary human egg.
(2b) God was a molecular biologist who synthesized some DNA and "teleported" it into an egg of a virgin to fertilize it.
(2c) Mary was an hermaphroditic (having qualities of both male and female) and god stimulated a cell to parthenogenetically develop into a male ... if he used this route then he did something to turn off the DNA that was masking Mary's SRY region (the region of DNA normally found on the Y chromosome ... but can be in other spots of the genome following a Robertsonian translocation of the Y chromosome ... that has the testis-determing factor gene needed to produce a male) or else Jesus would have been a phenotypic female.
All of that sounds pretty ridiculous for an omnipotent dude like God, doesn't it? Also it sounds pretty immoral to me too. Mary's permission was never asked for any of this. You might say that God being omniscient knew she wouldn't object, but that just shoots the shit out of your "free-will" arguments for other things.
Why didn't God just whip up a new human from dust Adam-style? That way he could have accomplished the same thing without any of the above problems.
(3) Now let's look at your LORD or LIAR dilemma, ... no, I'll include McDowell's LUNATIC option and look at the whole trilemma.
Here is the argument:
(3a) For the first part of the analysis, let's assume the premise that Jesus was either LORD, LIAR, or LUNATIC is well-formed. The truth of the conclusion then rests on whether or not Jesus was not a LUNATIC or a LIAR. The strength of the argument lies in a person's unwillingness to admit that Jesus was neither of these things. I, however, am an atheist. I don't suffer from that problem. Jesus could easily have been either ... and still have been a good person.
Suppose Jesus was crazy. Suppose Jesus really believed himself to be the son of God but wasn't. Does that make his message to "love thy neighbor" (ignoring for the moment that that message is actually from the 10 commandments) any less valid? No, it doesn't. The message's truth (or falsity) rests with the message not the messenger.
Suppose Jesus was a liar. Suppose he knew he wasn't the son of God but claimed to be knowing that the claim would give his message a broader hearing. We know by the reasoning from the above paragraph that it doesn't make his message any less valid. But does it make him a bad person? Well, that depends upon one's personal definition of "bad person". I think a reasonable case could be made that IF Jesus was certain that his message was important, AND it would be very unlikely to be heard without such a claim, then Jesus was within his rights to make that claim.
(3b) My own personal opinion is that none of that is true. I believe this is a false dilemma ... er ... false trilemma?! I do not think it is true that Jesus was either LORD, LIAR or LUNATIC. I think that there are probably a whole host of other options, but in keeping with the L alliteration, I'll only mention LEGEND.
What do we really know about Jesus? You would probably argue that what we know comes almost exclusively from the four gospels. You might claim that Paul and Josephus give us some more information but they really don't. They tell us nothing about Jesus that we adds anything to the 4 canonical gospels. All they really do is give us a bit of independent evidence that Jesus was an historical person.
Let's for the moment stick with just the 4 canonical gospels. We divide them up into two groups. In one group we have the SYNOPTIC GOSPELS; Mark, Matthew, and Luke. In the other group we have John. We can divide them so because if we read Mark, Matthew and Luke we recognize similar stories, similar timelines and even similar wording. John is very different. So different, in fact that it cannot be reasonably harmonized with the Synoptics. I doubt if you will agree with that but to anybody who gives them a fair reading it so obviously true as to be beyond doubt. Mark, Matthew and Luke (MML) have Jesus spending virtually his entire ministry (which chronologically would fit quite well within a single year) in Galilee with his only visit to Jerusalem being his crucifixion. John has Jesus going to Jerusalem often (for at least 3 passovers). Virtually none of the pericopes from MML in which the apostle John plays an important role is included in John.
So right away we have a strong indication that at least some of the stories concerning Jesus are legendary. Now, let's look at just the synoptic gospels. While very similar MML do have very interesting differences. Take the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Again to anyone who reads these fairly ... it is obvious beyond reasonable doubt that Matthew and Luke are telling two separate traditions for the birth of Jesus. At least one must be legendary ... in actual fact they both probably are (but I'll not go into that at the moment). So if even something so important as the birth of Jesus is legendary then what else is?
Now, let's look at another problem. The four canonical gospels are not the only gospels. There are a many others. Almost all of them claim to have been written by people who knew Jesus. There are gospels that discuss Jesus' infancy. There are gospels that discuss how Jesus only appeared to be human. There are gospels that make no mention of the virgin birth and imply that Mary was not a virgin (a case could be made for that claim concerning Mark). Where did these traditions come from? Who knows, some very learned people think that there is a kernal of the real Jesus not found in the 4 canonical gospels in some of them (the Jesus Seminar thinks that the Gospel of Thomas has some valid sayings of Jesus; John Dominic Crossan thinks that the Gospel of Peter also contains early traditions of Jesus).
So what is true about Jesus and what is legendary? That is a subject of quite a few textbooks. There certainly is no consensus. But one of the things that certainly SEEMS to be legendary is the idea that Jesus claimed to be the son of God. So it is certainly possible that Jesus was neither the Son of God, or a liar, or a lunatic.
Anything that people desperately wants to be true will be believed. Pagan religions dominated for that long. Hindu's have believed in multiple gods for 5000+ years. If you are right, they are wrong. That has lasted a lot longer in the hearts of men than has Christianity.
Islam is growing faster than is Christianity. It's been around almost 1500 years now. If you are right then it is wrong. Yet people readily die for it.
Strangely, I fully agree with this. But I'll bet that we differ in the conclusions. This is what I find fascinating about people like you.
The son of God idea is ridiculous enough. Jesus doing parlor faith healing tricks seems so cheap. Besides we have pretty much found out that everything we thought was caused by "demons" aren't. They have naturalistic causes.
The loaves of bread ... what did God do? ... Violate his own conservation of mass/energy laws and whip up some more bread from nothing? ... If he could do that then why did he make those damn conservation laws in the first place? They have been nothing but a pain in the ass since creation (irony intended).
Died and rose from the grave? Ridiculous (and cruel) ... what did it do that gave God the ability to let us into heaven that he couldn't have done without it? If God really exists that is something that never should have happened.
The ridiculousness of that along with the HUGE NUMBERS of verifiable inaccuracies in the bible gives me no hesitancy to question its reliability.
LOL ... It was in the high 90's today with a high humidity. Everything isn't perfect ... yet life exists. Oh wait a second, you must be talking about the anthropic coincidences
I believe in reason. By rejecting that you are rejecting something that has changed the world multiples of times ... and verifiably so. You are rejecting that which has given us the progress that we have made since Galileo. I'll take mine over yours any day.
Cheers,
DB
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
Seriously? Wow.. I'm impressed, not gonna lie. You broke down an entire comment I made to tell me that Jesus doesn't make sense. You could have just said Jesus doesn't make sense, everything about him, and no one really knows what is and isn't true about him. It's a lot easier to say that. And I would even agree! What are you arguing about? I agree completely with saying Jesus doesn't make sense. It's in the title of my blog. It says "Faith... PARADOX" I know it doesn't make sense. The first line of what I wrote says "what is faith beyond the ability to understand?" You obviously understand, or don't, whichever way you want to look at it. Congratulations, you haven't proved anything that I haven't already delighted in saying in the original text. And you want to know something, I only read about half of what you wrote. I just wanted you to know that I'm not going to read a novel just to try to figure you out. You didn't write that for me. You didn't write it to my benefit or any others. You wrote it for yourself. You wrote it to justify yourself before all the 5 or 6 people that actually stumble upon it. Dude, get over yourself. I believe in God, and his son. I have faith. The whole point of faith is not understanding, of course it doesn't add up, if it did, then it would be knowledge not faith. calm it.
Er ... no. I broke down your blog to tell you that you are wrong ... and to show you exactly where you were wrong.
If that was the case then you should have known that your trilemma/dilemma argument is fatally flawed and should have never used it. You didn't.
Your argument in your comment.
Normally people don't take pride in believing in things that they know doesn't make sense.
Actually in your blog, which I was not directly responding to, your first line is:
Your statement on faith says:
Actually I gave a lot of evidence and reasoning for things that you "haven't already delighted in saying in the original text". You would have a shot of figuring that out if you read the rest.
I DO write for myself. It helps me organize my own thoughts on things. I also write for anyone who wants to read it, which at last count was 153 people. If you don't want to read it then no one is going to make you. However, you DID write the comment. If you are unwilling to read opposing views then you are just not here for discourse ... just to proselytize.
It depends on exactly how you define faith, doesn't it. I have faith that when I flip the light switch in the morning that the light will turn on. I think it makes perfect sense. The reason it makes perfect sense is because I understand the system. The flipping the light switch completes a circuit and electricity flows across a resistance in the light causing it to glow. By understanding if I happen to flip the switch and NO light appear, I can immediately think of a number of possible reasons ... The light is burned out, a fuse is blown, someone forgot to pay the electric bill ... and I can take steps to remedy the problem.
However, having faith in something that you proudly say doesn't make sense is ... senseless. And like I said, normally people don't take pride in believing in things they know don't make sense.
So while I am trying to get over myself, why don't you try think about things.
Cheers,
DB
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
Whether he wrote it for himself or not, I'm glad i have the privlege to read it. Honestly I have learned more from ProU than any other blog site. His answer to your entire blog ripped you apart, so you answer with
"calm it."
nice
Saint O Nothin' Says
Always go FORWARD, going straight will get you no where!
-Greenday
"Jesus was either the Son of God and was completely without sin, or, he was a liar, and a fake, deceptive, and even malicious."
Or he thought he was the messiah and the son of god, but was wrong, or maybe he never claimed that, but his "biographers" did. Or maybe, he was a liar and a fake but the charachter depicted in the bible is, for the most part, a good guy who could be looked up to.
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
Rest in peace
yourfuneralguy
http://www.lowercostfuneral.com/rbrianblog
without exception supports the resurrection of Jesus Christ from completely secular sources. Problem is historical evidence is not acceptable these days.
I would truly love to see these sources
could you Provide a link or some book ?
(other than the bible which for some reason keeps getting revised)
but please i want to see this proof
Saint O Nothin' Says
PEACE
OH and see what GOD and the J-Man really thinks of you at
http://progressiveu.org/093043-god-does-not-love-you
Er ... no it doesn't
And the problem is that we have no examples of anybody ever having been resurrected. It seems to be something that is absolutely impossible. So why should believe this putative one?
Cheers,
DB
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
...and call "B.S." on this one. I am pretty well versed in the "historical evidence," and am aware of no such source that would meet any credible standard. Perhaps you can enlighten us with an overview of the sources to which you refer?
TTFN,
Blackout
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Yes, I've changed my username from "percivale" to "Blackout." Go here if you want to know why.