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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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My take on the Bible
#18349593 - 05/31/13 03:11 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Here's some of my thoughts on the story in the Bible. I was mostly inspired by the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez on Liberation Theology, Slavoj Zizek, my Professor Jamie Anne Read who teaches a course on Evil, and the Bible itself.
The story begins in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. IMO this represents when Mankind existed as small hunter-gather egalitarian communities. Human language and culture at this time was little more then names of animals, which can be seen in cave paintings. "And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field." (Gen 2:20) Humans lived at one with nature. We were ignorant, but we were probably content. Then comes the next step of human development, eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I take this as representing the explosion of human culture during the Neolithic Revolution. Notice how right after Adam and Eve ate from the tree they begin farming: "therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken." (Gen 3:23) Culture is a framework that tells us what is valuable and what is to be avoided. The Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is Sin because a cultural framework will create classes of Oppressors who are seeking the good and avoiding the bad and the Oppressed who are denied the good and given the bad.
Exodus shows us the powerful Egyptians enslaving the oppressed Israelites, and the God favours the oppressed, not the oppressors. Following this book, a lot of the Old Testament is about the sins and evils of the cultures of the time, such as Babylon, and rules to prevent or remedy the sins of the society. Isreal was often called a sinful nation, and it's often talked about throughout the Bible of whole nations being judged, not individuals. The Catholic Curch has long focused on personal sins, with rituals such as the confession booth, but I don't believe this is the right way of understanding sin. Sin makes more sense to me in terms of social sin as taught in the South American movement Liberation Theology. I believe this is the meaning of Original Sin.
Original Sin is the Sins inherited to us in the society we live in. We have to live and operate in our culture, and often what we are taught as the status quo of our culture is down right evil. For example, in Europe during the 1700s, it was common knowledge that Blacks were inferior to Whites, and Whites should rule Blacks. This was taught to children since they were born, so even operating in that society, a White man was probably causing much indirect hurt to other humans. A more modern example, us in developed western countries are experiencing a time of abundance, mainly due to the labour of poor 3rd world countries who build our gadgets and mine our resources. I'm not responsible that I'm born in a rich, abundant nation, but I'm still responsible for the evils the society I contribute to commits. As Paul states: "death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's offense" (Rom 5:14).
Now comes Jesus and the Good News. Jesus preached of the Kingdom of God, which involved the dissolution of social hierarchy, condemned the love for riches: "You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24), and teaches men to love their neighbor as themselves. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." (Luke 10:27) Jesus taught that what we do to each other, we do to God: "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me." (Matt 25:40). I like Slavoj Zizek's interpretation of the Good News. To paraphrase: That an egalitarian collective outside hierarchical structures, bound by love, is possible. This would be the end of sin since the oppressor & oppressed relationship would be eliminated.
Finally, on the symbolism of the Cross. 'Christ died to pay the price of our sins' imo doesn't mean that it was a divine transaction. Paying the price I like to think that Christ, one who spoke out against the evils of society, payed the price of the sins: human suffering. We send ourselves to Hell by creating Hell on Earth due to our excessive greed, pride, vanity, the will to dominate the weak, and on and on.
Edited by White Beard (05/31/13 05:55 PM)
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PocketLady



Registered: 01/18/10
Posts: 1,773
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Interesting read 
Personally I've never been able to take the bible particularly seriously as a complete book because I think the people who put it together had a massive agenda. There is wisdom in it for sure, but as a complete book...?
Did you ever read any of the Nag Hammadi or Gnostic texts? Put a whole different spin on the bible for me.
-------------------- Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death. Tomorrow, when resurrection comes, The heart that is not in love will fail the test. ~ Rumi The day we start giving Love instead of seeking Love, we will have re-written our whole destiny. ~ Swami Chinmayanada Saraswatir
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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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Re: My take on the Bible [Re: PocketLady]
#18350422 - 05/31/13 07:27 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Thanks. I've read the gospel of Thomas and the watched a documentary on the gospel of Judas. The gospel of Thomas was mainly the parables with a lot of stuff cut out. From the gospel of Judas doc I gathered it presented something more like eastern mysticism.
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PocketLady



Registered: 01/18/10
Posts: 1,773
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Yeah it has a lot more in common with with eastern mysticism than traditional Christianity that's for sure. The Apocryphon of John is probably the most interesting one. The old testament especially has taken on completely new meaning since I read that.
-------------------- Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death. Tomorrow, when resurrection comes, The heart that is not in love will fail the test. ~ Rumi The day we start giving Love instead of seeking Love, we will have re-written our whole destiny. ~ Swami Chinmayanada Saraswatir
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palmersc
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Hello,
I perceive you are a man who desires to know God. However, I see the evolution of your understanding of the Bible has taken you in a direction that seeks to reconcile the divisive words of Jesus with that which is fundamentally at odds with Him. Jesus did not come to set up a utopia on earth, or give us a plan to construct our own. Jesus did not come to say what the philosophical and religious systems of this world were already saying are are saying today---just in another way.
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." (Mat. 10:34)
The truth is divisive. It separates, cuts, and divides (please see Hebrews 4:12) Jesus came to offer His life as payment redeem you and I, to pay a price in blood for your sins, and mine, which are very personally our own. It most certainly was a divine transaction, otherwise it is powerless and worthless and something which we ought not even busy ourselves with trying to glean usefulness from. As Paul said:
"But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—-if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. (1 Cor. 15:13-19).
Jesus never argued with people, He never forced Himself on others, He never begged people to follow Him, and so it remains today:
"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." (Mat. 11:28-30)
If we do not see our need, He will do nothing for us. We will remain outside in the icy cold rain drinking from broken cisterns which never satisfy and continue chasing after the wind. But, when we perceive our need, then the cure can be applied:
"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." (Mark. 2:17)
The beauty of the Truth is that it is not a mere intellectual ascension to a set of facts, but is a living reality which quenches that thirst we all have before coming to know Him. Truly , truly,
"If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." (John 7:37-38)
Praying for you and wish you well, from one pilgrim to another.
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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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Re: My take on the Bible [Re: palmersc]
#18352996 - 06/01/13 10:49 AM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Why did Christ have to die on the cross?
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MarkostheGnostic
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Registered: 12/09/99
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I have read several interpretations of biblical myth, and probably the best psychological (Jungian school) I have ever read is Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche by Edward Edinger. The Genesis stories recount the birth of consciousness, of which the individual ego is the center, from the much larger sphere of the psyche, namely, the unconscious, the center of which is the Self. The "Great Round," the Mother-Mater-Matrix-Matter-Matriarch from which all humans emerge is the 'Garden of Eden,' - the womb from which the primal parents (duality is symbolized by the "Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil") become separate from the Archetypal Mother. We must struggle against our unconscious identification with Mater-Matter, the "Great Mother," ("by the sweat of our brow") until we realize our psychic autonomy - Individuation.
Christ is the conscious union of opposites. The ego is crucified in the act of self-sacrifice in the service of God, the Transcendental Self. Christ is suspended on the cross of space-time coordinates, between the Good and Evil 'brigands' (usually "thieves"), between Heaven and Earth, during a solar eclipse when the sky was darkened as Sun and Moon are in Conjunctio - symbols for Blood and Water, which emanate from the Heart Center (Self) of Christ, pierced by the 'spear of destiny.' The relationship of Christ to God, or, symbolically, Son to Father, is symbolic of everyone's ego to Self, Head to Heart consciousness. The "ego-Self axis" is the conscious, or better yet, transpersonal relationship wherein we continually allow our ego to die through humility. When we surrender our egoic-mind, Synchronistic events (miracles) constellate around us, as biblical stories illustrate. Of course, the miraculous healings and resurrections of the dead (e.g., Lazarus, L' Azar [of Asar, or of Osiris, Greek for the Egyptian Asar]), are all cullled from the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts of Egypt. Nevertheless, it is all mythological anyway, not historical, and myth is made from Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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MarkostheGnostic
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Quote:
White Beard said: Why did Christ have to die on the cross?
If you ask a Jungian analyst, you may get the kind of response I just posted on the book Ego and Archetype. If you ask a Christian clergyman, you might, if you're lucky, find a rare clergyman who has received Jungian training (like my 2nd analyst, a Jungian analyst Catholic priest). Otherwise, you might hear a fundamentalist Baptist minister give you a very literal interpretation about a divine plan wherein a 'loving' Father-God sacrifices his loving Son (not in the original Hebrew meaning of a Son of God, meaning one having the divine right of kingship, but in a mythic virgin birth sense), through a barbarous torture-execution. Such a concrete description is intended to work up a number of emotions including pity, regret, maybe compassion and empathy, but more likely, hatred toward those "stiffnecked Jews" who refuse to believe the Greek myth that God impregnates virgin woman and produces God-men (demigods), that has become the most popular gospel of John.
You might find a priest or minister who can parrot the 'vicarious sacrifice' theology (like those listed in Gustav Aulen's book Christus Victor) that has been derived from Paul's writings, which in turn derive from Jewish ritual sacrifice of lambs at Passover (hence, "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world"). Or again, if more fortunate, you might hear a more hip clergyman who has read the Christian existentialist theology of John MacQuarrie. If you are really fortunate, you might read or go hear a lecture by Rev. John Shelby Spong, who has spent his life demythologizing the Bible, allowing for an understanding in which faith and reason can be held in mind simultaneously and without conflict, because one is no longer comparing modes of knowing, but seeing two different 'dimensions' of one thing. There IS Mystery to existence, and Mystery is not apprehended by reason. Looking at the Bible with the eyes of reason alone has the effect of misunderstanding, because one is trying to project a higher dimensional existence onto a lower dimension. It is like looking at the shadows cast on the floor and wall of a 3-dimensional cylinder, and proclaiming that a cylinder is a rectangle or a circle based on a partial observation of its reality. This illustration is one aspect of what psychiatrist Victor Frakl called "Dimensional Ontology." Those people who throw the Bible out because its writings contradict reason, are falling into this kind of reductionistic trap. Mystery is impervious to reductionism, yet those who throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater are doing just that, attempting to reduce something of a higher dimension to its shadow, which is a false reading of the thing-in-itself.

So, my bottom-line answer to you is that one needs to have multiple perspectives to arrive at even an approximation of the truth of anything, including your question about the death of Christ. Listening to one or two responses is gonna be like looking at the shadows forming a circle and a rectangle, and reducing a 3-dimensional cylinder to one or both of those projections. All too many people do this kind of reductionism all too often, and go through life with a mind full of half-baked notions about most everything. The Buddhists are astute enough to understand this, which is why their philosophy of "emptiness" is so profound. Most people routinely take shadows for reality. That is what Plato's myth of 'the cave' is all about. Your's is a good question, so do not accept fluff for an answer, neither dismiss the question because so many others have looked only by applying reason to mythic image and symbol. Myths and symbols embody Mystery, and Mystery can only be experienced through the eyes of Awe, not reason or cold logic. Read Joseph Campbell on this, or read Mircea Eliade on "the Sacred." The Sacred is not science, but Mysteriously, both exist simultaneously.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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palmersc
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The mind desires to KNOW. The natural mind desires to store up knowledge, to achieve, to attain, to ascend to some spiritual plane of hidden knowledge which few can ever hope to achieve. Knowledge alone is not the path to salvation, knowledge does not hold the key to spiritual closure and true fulfillment. Pursuit after knowledge by our own intellectual endeavors does not produce anything but pride when it is seen as the means and the end.
"Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him" (1 Cor. 8:1-3).
Quote:
White Beard said: Why did Christ have to die on the cross?
God is a just God. God is also a merciful God. He cannot tolerate sin, and no sin will go unpunished. (Unless we see the gravity of sin we will remain aloof to the cross.) So how can God remain just and also extend pardon to those whom He loves? The cross is the ultimate demonstration of love, Christ as the vicarious, sinless sacrifice. The truth is that blood is the only payment satisfactory in God's eyes for the atonement for sin. Why blood? Because the same God who established the laws of physics, the chemistry of neuroscience, and the syntax of DNA has declared it be so.
Jesus said to his disciples who were arguing about who would be the greatest,
"Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Mat. 18:3-4).
The problem with man is that he desires to do something to earn his position in this universe. Man desires to do something to say "Look what I have done." The wisdom of God is resting in what He has already done for us. It is being like that little child in the backseat of his daddy's car who trust's his dad to get them where they are going while enjoying the mystery of the rolling landscape along the way. There is knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to be had in Christ, but they are the servants of a man who is rightly related to God, a man who is operating in a spiritual reality who "knows the love of Christ which passes knowledge, filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19).
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White Beard

Registered: 08/13/11
Posts: 6,325
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Re: My take on the Bible [Re: palmersc]
#18358917 - 06/02/13 04:02 PM (10 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
palmersc said: Why blood? Because the same God who established the laws of physics, the chemistry of neuroscience, and the syntax of DNA has declared it be so.
That sounds arbitrary. The way I understand sin, it isn't arbitrary that blood is the cost for sin. It's because sin causes bloodshed. Consider Cain and Able. Cain sinned and murdered Abel, yet God doesn't kill him, he instead puts a mark on his head so no one is allowed to kill him. Cain wasn't killed because the cost of blood for sin was already satisfied: Abel's blood.
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palmersc
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I like your thinking. Yes, the blood is certainly not arbitrary---as I contend nothing God has made is, though we may not understand why something may be the way it is.
But forgive me for taking such a sacred truth and relegating it to an analogy running parallel to the more common elements of this mysterious world---A good God proclaiming something to be so is good enough for me was my line of thinking.
The best Scripture that comes to mind which reveals the spiritual significance of blood is:
"The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul" (Leviticus 17:11).
You are right, sin is violence. It is lawlessness, and the wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23). Sin is the reason we all die, and there are very real physiological consequences to spiritual choices we make.
Yes, Cain, the first murderer of his brother Abel, the first glimpse into sin coming to outward fruition. Bloodshed.
However, Abel's blood does not atone for Cain's sin. He is guilty of shedding blood, that blood is on Cain's head and demands justice. For God said,
"What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground" (Genesis 4:10).
As we study the Word of God, and see the unified and cohesive message it contains, we see that the Old Testament is a shadow of the New. All of the records and accounts of the Old are meant to point to a greater reality, namely to Christ. God dealt with the nation of Israel to teach us about His Son. Though it is shrouded in mystery. He concealed it till the fullness of time, For,
"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter" (Proverbs 25:2)
Once Christ was revealed, Paul reveals through the Spirit,
"Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel" (Hebrews 12:24).
No finite man could atone for the infinite nature of our offenses against an infinite God. Only God could and did pay the price.
Sin is a word which has been so sanitized by our culture, sometimes said casually with a smirk and a chuckle. The patience and goodness of God leads some to repentance and others to increased rebellion since judgement is delayed and we do not see the immediate consequences of sin. However, we are outlaws who take pleasure in breaking the law and rejoice in it before coming to know Jesus. Even after coming to know the beauty of Christ, the insidious sin nature which wars against God dies a slow death and grieves the man quickened to the true nature of sin till he breathes his last.
SIN is man's dilemma. We can ignore it, philosophize it away, or scoff at it. But any man who still has a conscience and sees the darkness and coldness of this world cannot, in good conscience, stick his head in the sand as evil covers this globe.
A worldview devoid of sin is sin.
Jesus, Lion and Lamb, Law and Grace Justice and Mercy
Indeed, there is power in the Blood.
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Mr.Al
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Quote:
White Beard said: Why did Christ have to die on the cross?
He died on a tree, he died because he needed to Transmute Original Sin.
That is why he is the Christ, he saved All Sentient Beings from Destruction.
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