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Re: Jesus names as evil those who think his Father would break heavenly law and have
GIA, these thoughts, pulled from your response, are by leaps and bounds more appealing and worthy of comment than invective against a varieties of sects that do not happen to be one's own.
As a Jew, I came to terms long ago with the facts that I did not kill Jesus, that Volkswagons are not inherently evil because of some sort of mechanical collective guilt, and that not even the most doctrinaire religious apologist, who only disagrees with me, is the equivalent of Torquemada (which should be a relief to some here.)
And for me, that was the beginning of wisdom. There is so much to hate by way of history, that one can lose one's way.
So here are my pulls to comment on in your last post.
"I do not know how much in opposition other Gnostics are but admit that because of circumstances that that has become my major platform."
(and then you explain the circumstances, vis., the people brandishing their scriptures as if a weapon -- so it's a sort of preemptive strike, which in addition, you believe to be undeniably true.)
Think of the position that puts your reader in immediately. He has no real choice but to get caught up in the rhetorical repugnance of the approach (this is from your reader's point of view.)
--------------------------
"As a Gnostic Christian as opposed to a Gnostic of other traditions, my value and duty to them is to try to bring them to a higher moral position. As with this O P chastising them for embracing human sacrifice."
Honestly? I think you just like it.
By positing what it is about your viewpoint you prefer, you do the same thing. By referencing their notion of "human sacrifice" (and they'd immediately correct you and say "trinitarian sacrifice" or something,) you've lost the opportunity to bring them to any other moral position.
---------------------------
"Gnostics, like Jesus, believe that the kingdom of God is within all of us so none of us are above the other and that would mean that unlike most Abrahamic cults, we do not subjugate our women because they are Goddesses in their own rite just as all males are Gods."
This is close to my own belief, although I'm a monotheist. Of course, we'd be quibbling; I'd have us all participating in God, while you'd have a plurality of gods and goddesses.
But again, to the question of others' moral development -- lead with these core beliefs, and you have a "way in." Think Aristotle: You have logos, ethos, and pathos -- arguments, character, and emotion. Three ways in, that's it. In terms of logos, you've only hardened a position through heated rhetoric, not proved it true. In terms of ethos and pathos, you've closed off those avenues, because you will establish your character as something it's typically not once you ditch the catch-phrases. In terms of pathos, people are ruled by emotion, no more or less because they're reading on a bulletin board. It is useful not to start out in a position that will be read as hate, because it only engenders more hate.
--------------------------
"You are a Jew. Remember that in scriptures Jesus asked your ancestors if they had forgotten that they were gods. Would children of God expect any less of a title?"
:ugh: You see what you missed here, right? Jesus didn't say anything in Jewish scripture LOL...
As I say above, I am a believer in our participation in divinity. As I've said elsewhere, the personal God who is separate from his creation seems sort of a quaint concept to me. But my evolution's opposite to yours, I think, while no less celebratory of the sentient's participation in a sentient cosmos. Think of a brain and its neurons. You're the neuron.
For me, this has the advantage of an expansive view outside of myself, which, in some moments, I can feel I've "become," then return to the somewhat illusory limited self.
------------------------------
(Me) “"The godhead spoke to me and told me that you're worshipping the wrong guy."
(You) "You would deny me what all religions and my antagonists say!
Whatever happened to reciprocity being fair play?
I hope you have not taken up Christian morals my friend."
Chuckled at this one.
-------------------------------
"My main goal is not to sell my beliefs because all there is to sell is ------seek God. That is what I do perpetually as Jesus demands. My main goal is to have others not accept a version of a God that has absolutely no morals."
You have defined your main goal as a negation of others' beliefs, and have constrained their beliefs to a caricature embodying only the least flattering possible interpretation. Again, standard christology, while not a notion I find at all plausible, I do find enormously appealing. To sacrifice oneself for something larger - one's family, one's country, one's friends, or in this case, the whole of mankind - is an enduring "good" that repeats itself in culture after culture.
Now then: there are those for whom your interpretation is apt, who embody a rigid demanding and immoral notion of God and spirituality. But there are also enlightened Pauline Christians who have more in common with you than you suppose.
You limit yourself, your impact, and your thought, through obsession with ideological enemies. "Yes, but if you think about it, you worship a son-killing murderer," is all well and good as shield. As sword, it moots all that is positive in your own worldview. You are drinking poison, to paraphrase the Buddha, and expecting the other guy to die.
-----------------------
"It is just accepting the type of moral system shown in this clip. You will note that it is centered on others while most religious systems start with a God centered on himself which is an inferior system. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."
I'm not clicking on a clip to know an individual's beliefs, when the individual is right there. However, you pointed out the parts of your moral system you value -- a religious system centered on others (from one's own, and from God's, point of view.)
As I have said, you have this in common with the core of trinitarian, Pauline Christian doctrine.
--------------------------
“What does DIY mean?"
DIY = Do It Yourself. I'm guilty too.
-----------------------------
"Their [Jews'] history as killers, Joseph Campbell’s designation, as well as their captivity experience gave then a huge boost in spiritual thinking and insight in ancient days.
As I say, the Jews cannot be beat for their religious thinking and Christianity lost a lot when Constantine bought the Catholic Church and they reversed Jewish thinking. You do not like that I work with opposites but in reality I am trying to bring the Jewish theology that Christianity reversed back to it’s original and proper position."
Careful. You have to become an esoteric Jew in addition to an esoteric Christian for that. After all, the God of Judaism ordered us to commit genocides, ordered Abraham to kill his son, fu(ked up Lot to beat the band just to win a bet, and confounded languages and knocked down a tower when humans "would become like one of us" (According to the rabbis, he was addressing the heavenly court. According to historical critical scholars, he was talking to the other "powers that be..." i.e., possibly talking to other gods, in a very early historical stratum of the Bible.)
I agree with you that Jews had a lot of history through which to learn the lessons of what it is to be both oppressor and oppressed. It has filtered into our understanding of what our Torah is, and is not. That goes for all branches. We figured out "these are stories, these over here are commandments." The best I can say of us is in our name as a people, Yisroel: Struggles with God. It ain't supposed to be easy.
----------------------------
“I seek God and fight those whose God is inferior to the ideal God and who hurt all seekers and potential believers by polluting the God market. So to speak. Those are mostly the religious right."
Again vid da fighting... knock out the fighting, and what you do is seek God. Sounds much more to the point.
--------------------------
"Gnosticism is accepting the fact that there is no greater force for you than you. You are a God WIP, Work In Progress, and your moral obligation is to seek that God and bring him out into the open as Jesus says to do."
Much more powerful message. Use that. Look, I do messaging for a living. I'm telling you, that's your frame. Accepting the other guy's frame -- "fighting him on his own turf" -- means telling him "you win!"
Example: If you think lower taxes are "tax relief," that means taxes must be oppressive to begin with.
Dems in the 1980s lost this messaging battle. Pubbies were constantly carping about tax relief. The Dems walked right into it... "Yes tax relief is important but so is collecting enough taxes to blah blah blah..." Boom. You lose. You've just said taxes are oppressive, no matter how low they are, for all time. No they're not. They're the monetary face of building a great nation side-by-side with your countrymen. Or whatever.
Get out there with your message. Don't dwell on the other guy's.
So I know we've done this before. I'm trying to help here, from the point of view of someone who used to love nothing better than to rip people a new one when they foisted their theology on me.
I dropped that part, unless/until provoked, and tried to observe a certain sort of "proportionality" in such moments. I feel much better...
Of course, that's just me. But I think if you're honest, you'll admit that the reactive/negative side isn't the core of your belief. It's an impediment to you and to any you want to really discuss with.
Just my 2 cents
PFnV
GIA, these thoughts, pulled from your response, are by leaps and bounds more appealing and worthy of comment than invective against a varieties of sects that do not happen to be one's own.
As a Jew, I came to terms long ago with the facts that I did not kill Jesus, that Volkswagons are not inherently evil because of some sort of mechanical collective guilt, and that not even the most doctrinaire religious apologist, who only disagrees with me, is the equivalent of Torquemada (which should be a relief to some here.)
And for me, that was the beginning of wisdom. There is so much to hate by way of history, that one can lose one's way.
So here are my pulls to comment on in your last post.
"I do not know how much in opposition other Gnostics are but admit that because of circumstances that that has become my major platform."
(and then you explain the circumstances, vis., the people brandishing their scriptures as if a weapon -- so it's a sort of preemptive strike, which in addition, you believe to be undeniably true.)
Think of the position that puts your reader in immediately. He has no real choice but to get caught up in the rhetorical repugnance of the approach (this is from your reader's point of view.)
--------------------------
"As a Gnostic Christian as opposed to a Gnostic of other traditions, my value and duty to them is to try to bring them to a higher moral position. As with this O P chastising them for embracing human sacrifice."
Honestly? I think you just like it.
By positing what it is about your viewpoint you prefer, you do the same thing. By referencing their notion of "human sacrifice" (and they'd immediately correct you and say "trinitarian sacrifice" or something,) you've lost the opportunity to bring them to any other moral position.
---------------------------
"Gnostics, like Jesus, believe that the kingdom of God is within all of us so none of us are above the other and that would mean that unlike most Abrahamic cults, we do not subjugate our women because they are Goddesses in their own rite just as all males are Gods."
This is close to my own belief, although I'm a monotheist. Of course, we'd be quibbling; I'd have us all participating in God, while you'd have a plurality of gods and goddesses.
But again, to the question of others' moral development -- lead with these core beliefs, and you have a "way in." Think Aristotle: You have logos, ethos, and pathos -- arguments, character, and emotion. Three ways in, that's it. In terms of logos, you've only hardened a position through heated rhetoric, not proved it true. In terms of ethos and pathos, you've closed off those avenues, because you will establish your character as something it's typically not once you ditch the catch-phrases. In terms of pathos, people are ruled by emotion, no more or less because they're reading on a bulletin board. It is useful not to start out in a position that will be read as hate, because it only engenders more hate.
--------------------------
"You are a Jew. Remember that in scriptures Jesus asked your ancestors if they had forgotten that they were gods. Would children of God expect any less of a title?"
:ugh: You see what you missed here, right? Jesus didn't say anything in Jewish scripture LOL...
As I say above, I am a believer in our participation in divinity. As I've said elsewhere, the personal God who is separate from his creation seems sort of a quaint concept to me. But my evolution's opposite to yours, I think, while no less celebratory of the sentient's participation in a sentient cosmos. Think of a brain and its neurons. You're the neuron.
For me, this has the advantage of an expansive view outside of myself, which, in some moments, I can feel I've "become," then return to the somewhat illusory limited self.
------------------------------
(Me) “"The godhead spoke to me and told me that you're worshipping the wrong guy."
(You) "You would deny me what all religions and my antagonists say!
Whatever happened to reciprocity being fair play?
I hope you have not taken up Christian morals my friend."
Chuckled at this one.
-------------------------------
"My main goal is not to sell my beliefs because all there is to sell is ------seek God. That is what I do perpetually as Jesus demands. My main goal is to have others not accept a version of a God that has absolutely no morals."
You have defined your main goal as a negation of others' beliefs, and have constrained their beliefs to a caricature embodying only the least flattering possible interpretation. Again, standard christology, while not a notion I find at all plausible, I do find enormously appealing. To sacrifice oneself for something larger - one's family, one's country, one's friends, or in this case, the whole of mankind - is an enduring "good" that repeats itself in culture after culture.
Now then: there are those for whom your interpretation is apt, who embody a rigid demanding and immoral notion of God and spirituality. But there are also enlightened Pauline Christians who have more in common with you than you suppose.
You limit yourself, your impact, and your thought, through obsession with ideological enemies. "Yes, but if you think about it, you worship a son-killing murderer," is all well and good as shield. As sword, it moots all that is positive in your own worldview. You are drinking poison, to paraphrase the Buddha, and expecting the other guy to die.
-----------------------
"It is just accepting the type of moral system shown in this clip. You will note that it is centered on others while most religious systems start with a God centered on himself which is an inferior system. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."
I'm not clicking on a clip to know an individual's beliefs, when the individual is right there. However, you pointed out the parts of your moral system you value -- a religious system centered on others (from one's own, and from God's, point of view.)
As I have said, you have this in common with the core of trinitarian, Pauline Christian doctrine.
--------------------------
“What does DIY mean?"
DIY = Do It Yourself. I'm guilty too.
-----------------------------
"Their [Jews'] history as killers, Joseph Campbell’s designation, as well as their captivity experience gave then a huge boost in spiritual thinking and insight in ancient days.
As I say, the Jews cannot be beat for their religious thinking and Christianity lost a lot when Constantine bought the Catholic Church and they reversed Jewish thinking. You do not like that I work with opposites but in reality I am trying to bring the Jewish theology that Christianity reversed back to it’s original and proper position."
Careful. You have to become an esoteric Jew in addition to an esoteric Christian for that. After all, the God of Judaism ordered us to commit genocides, ordered Abraham to kill his son, fu(ked up Lot to beat the band just to win a bet, and confounded languages and knocked down a tower when humans "would become like one of us" (According to the rabbis, he was addressing the heavenly court. According to historical critical scholars, he was talking to the other "powers that be..." i.e., possibly talking to other gods, in a very early historical stratum of the Bible.)
I agree with you that Jews had a lot of history through which to learn the lessons of what it is to be both oppressor and oppressed. It has filtered into our understanding of what our Torah is, and is not. That goes for all branches. We figured out "these are stories, these over here are commandments." The best I can say of us is in our name as a people, Yisroel: Struggles with God. It ain't supposed to be easy.
----------------------------
“I seek God and fight those whose God is inferior to the ideal God and who hurt all seekers and potential believers by polluting the God market. So to speak. Those are mostly the religious right."
Again vid da fighting... knock out the fighting, and what you do is seek God. Sounds much more to the point.
--------------------------
"Gnosticism is accepting the fact that there is no greater force for you than you. You are a God WIP, Work In Progress, and your moral obligation is to seek that God and bring him out into the open as Jesus says to do."
Much more powerful message. Use that. Look, I do messaging for a living. I'm telling you, that's your frame. Accepting the other guy's frame -- "fighting him on his own turf" -- means telling him "you win!"
Example: If you think lower taxes are "tax relief," that means taxes must be oppressive to begin with.
Dems in the 1980s lost this messaging battle. Pubbies were constantly carping about tax relief. The Dems walked right into it... "Yes tax relief is important but so is collecting enough taxes to blah blah blah..." Boom. You lose. You've just said taxes are oppressive, no matter how low they are, for all time. No they're not. They're the monetary face of building a great nation side-by-side with your countrymen. Or whatever.
Get out there with your message. Don't dwell on the other guy's.
So I know we've done this before. I'm trying to help here, from the point of view of someone who used to love nothing better than to rip people a new one when they foisted their theology on me.
I dropped that part, unless/until provoked, and tried to observe a certain sort of "proportionality" in such moments. I feel much better...
Of course, that's just me. But I think if you're honest, you'll admit that the reactive/negative side isn't the core of your belief. It's an impediment to you and to any you want to really discuss with.
Just my 2 cents
PFnV
