Post: #26

Scorpion, I read the Bible most days. I'll go through Paul's writings again because you made me feel stupid.

I'll try to keep an open mind. But to me, Paul contradicts what Jesus himself said. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Post: #27

Also, in retrospect what I said about Paul was inflammatory. I don't usually apologize, but to anyone who was upset by that post, my bad. Should not have posted that part.

Post: #28

I try to at least stream the service from Resurrection Life, a great church that I have attended with my family on and off throughout childhood. I have tried a handful of churches since graduating from college and moving to my current city, but nothing has stuck so far.

I strive to become better in my faith, though, and have recently resolved to start reading the Bible every day, which I should have started doing a long time ago. The amount of knowledge and wisdom I have found in the few days I have read it since is astounding. I read The Sermon On The Mount today - Matthew 5-7, it's fantastic and worth taking a look at.

I'm still looking for a church to attend, and I've no doubt I'll find a great one with a cohesive community as long as I keep visiting ones in my city. Despite my individualism, I feel that getting involved in a church is an important part of being a Christian, a thought which is emphasized a number of times in the Bible.

Scorpion, you tell it like it is and are one of my favorite posters on here, especially on the subject of religion. Keep up the good work!

Post: #29

I am Catholic, but it's more of an ethnic background than anything else with me. Haven't been to church for a long while. By the strictures of Catechism I expect some of my views would be regarded as heretical.

Notwithstanding that: I believe Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God; therefore, I am a Christian. Where I start to get a bit funky is because I've probably imbibed deeply of the transcendental strain of Catholicism and/or Christianity - God being transcendental, I cannot therefore fully explain what the Son of God is in linguistic terms. I am content being in a state of perpetually not knowing for certain what God or Christ's nature is. I am prepared to entertain the possibility that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, but I do not think that the message could escape being filtered through a human and imperfect mind. Therefore the Bible requires constant meditation and personal reinterpretation, which indeed has been the approach of a deep vein of Christian scholars across the church's history.

Post: #30

(03-01-2015 09:15 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  By the strictures of Catechism I expect some of my views would be regarded as heretical.

Yeah, but they rewrite their doctrine every 15 years to keep up with the times. I'm sure you'll be viewed as ahead of your time in 100 years.

Post: #31

I've been going to church recently.

I do believe in a God or a something; I don't believe it is necessary to go to a church to connect with that. I think that can be done through meditation and prayer.

Nor do I believe there is one right religion or that religion is even necessary. Spiritual practices and disciplines can offer structure and keep you on the right path, but people get too caught up in the traditions, as I think most of us can agree.

But with the right church, the community effect can be healing and inspiring. It's especially refreshing after years of going all out in SEA and not having the support (and judgement) of friends and family around for so long. It's also cool to talk about real world wisdom in an intellectual fashion, as intellectual discussion, at least where I come from, seems less commonplace these days.

Sure, the intellectual is also spiritualized, but I do see most of life as a spiritual journey, so most intellectual things are spiritual to me.

Anyhow, today there was a very interesting sermon about marriage. I thought of you guys.

The pastor (and his wife) really stressed to the women that they should never question their man or give him shit about mistakes he makes (after all, all leaders make mistakes, and people who don't make any aren't getting anything done) or especially ever criticize him in front of other people. And that her role was one of a follower and supporting her man, who is always to be the "head" of the relationship.

They also included quite a bit about men having the role of loving and cherishing his wife, but I think a lot of men I've met would have no problem doing that (at least in theory) with a woman who followed and supported him in the manner the Bible instructs her to.

In any case, I don't believe everything they believe, and some of the Bible stories really just sound like childish and naive myths to me, so I find my attention waning too when they focus on old, simplistic stories too much. But it was refreshing to hear this type of relationship wisdom being preached in the modern age.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #32

(03-01-2015 09:15 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  I am Catholic, but it's more of an ethnic background than anything else with me. Haven't been to church for a long while. By the strictures of Catechism I expect some of my views would be regarded as heretical.

Notwithstanding that: I believe Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God; therefore, I am a Christian. Where I start to get a bit funky is because I've probably imbibed deeply of the transcendental strain of Catholicism and/or Christianity - God being transcendental, I cannot therefore fully explain what the Son of God is in linguistic terms. I am content being in a state of perpetually not knowing for certain what God or Christ's nature is. I am prepared to entertain the possibility that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, but I do not think that the message could escape being filtered through a human and imperfect mind. Therefore the Bible requires constant meditation and personal reinterpretation, which indeed has been the approach of a deep vein of Christian scholars across the church's history.

I agree a lot of what you've said. Martin Luther held a similar opinion. I've found that a lot of the good church leaders regardless of denomination hold a similar opinion.

Post: #33

^ In relation to "not knowing for certain what God or Christ's nature is"

There is no way to really "know". Christianity, and all religions, are at their core non-rational and can't be evaluated using the rules of rationality you would evaluate a claim about some earthly event. Faith goes beyond reason, because you are believing in something supernatural, meaning beyond the natural, physical, observable world.

You see this all the time in questions like "Can God create something so heavy he cannot move it?" Logically speaking, it's an unsolvable paradox, because God does not operate in the confines of physical reality and can't be judged using the tools of logic or rationality.

Post: #34

(02-27-2015 09:30 PM)scorpion Wrote:  If you don't accept the Pauline epistles as being the divinely inspired word of God, then you are not a Christian. They are nothing less than the doctrinal basis of the faith. Calling them "authoritarian garbage" is spitting in the face of God. You don't get to pick and choose your favorite books out of the Bible. You either accept or reject the entire thing. Nothing else makes sense, from the perspective of man or God. Christianity is not some kind of buffet religion where you just take what you want and leave the rest. Your post reeks of millennial generation thinking, solipsism and narcissism, i.e. "I want to be a Christian on my own terms." It's nonsense.

Also, your statement that, "The Earth is my church. God is everywhere," is pure Pantheism. Again, this is not Christian. Not even remotely.

Finally, the Gospel of Thomas is fictional and heretical.

If you are sincere about your desire to follow Christ, then you need to seriously reevaluate your beliefs, because as it stands now your faith is in great danger from these numerous heresies you're spouting. If you would rather hold on to them than change, then you should honestly stop calling yourself a Christian entirely, because currently, by what you've posted here you're more accurately just some kind of Pantheist who thinks Jesus was a cool guy.

Yeah, the Pauline Epistles really set the structure and beliefs of Christianity out. While the Gospels tell of Jesus' ministry, the Epistles tell of how Christianity spread and how Christian belief really evolves and is structured. The Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic Gospel that is very, very interesting from a biblical scholarship standpoint. It may very well indicate the existence of the Q source, which, if proven, solves the Synoptic Problem.

On another level, you can pick and choose what you like about Christianity. We call those people Unitarian Universalists.

As for my church attendance, I'm being baptized Catholic in about a month, so I try to go at least once a week. Sometimes I'm much more successful in that mission than other times. I have some very big issues with some Catholic doctrines, and I strongly question a lot of the guilt complex that seems to pervade Catholicism. That being said, I agree with enough of the theology that it's a good decision.

Post: #35

I don't go to services, and I do read the Bible often. Often times I do like to go into a church or cathedral when it's quiet and empty, kneel down, pray and think to myself in the enigmatic solitude. I never could bring myself to like services where pastors are preaching fire and brimstone. The doctrine and concept of hell I vehemently do not believe in and can not support a church who believes God would banish men and women that he put on this earth into eternal damnation.

Everyday I wake up alive and breathing with a pulse is a day to give thanks to God for another day on earth. Not only Sundays.

Post: #36

Irregularly, I'm somewhat lapsed.

Post: #37

(02-27-2015 04:46 PM)godfather dust Wrote:  On a side note, anyone read the Gospel of Thomas? http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

It's excellent. It's nothing but sayings of Jesus without the story of his life.

Yes, and that is a good translation. I took a roundabout road to Catholicism. First I began reading about shamanism and whatnot, the occult, and then was drawn to Gnosticism. Then, just to try it out, I attended a Byzantine Catholic mass. Then I kept going, and became Catholic. There is something powerful about the sacred ritual, something you cannot get through head knowledge of just reading the Bible by yourself. After all, the Bible is a product of the Church, not the other way around.

I got into religion around the same time as game. These may seem as very divergent paths, but not necessarily. It is the search for "red pill truth" even though I didn't call it that at the time, in both spiritual and worldly matters. Attraction, relating to women, and sex falls in both spheres.

Early in my game days my goal was to be able to say no to sex, to be a voluntary celibate rather than an incel as I knew I was. What true virtue is there in that?

But I didn't imagine how damn hard that would be, once I actually became able to get sex with attractive women.

I've been a very regular church-goer. Since going abroad, it's more rare but I still go to mass. I don't take communion unless I'm in a state of grace, and most of the time I am not.

Post: #38

Only during holidays, unfortunately.

It's difficult to go alone, mentally mostly.

Perhaps it's weakness, or lack of faith. I'm not sure, i guess I'll have to think about it.

Though, going to church isn't really a commandment.