The message of christianity is so positive, so welcoming, I wish I could accept it.
One of the hang ups I have is why Jesus, aka God only decided to make himself known for a measly 3 years.
If you want to convince billions that you exist wouldn't you do miracles all the time? Yet we don't have blind people suddenly seeing without science, limbs aren't growing back within minutes, your followers continue to make weapons instead of grain.
According to christians god has been active for 6k years, yet only 3 years have been recorded of his/it's existence...?
This is why I prefer the Historical Jesus to the Christian Christ. Everything makes more sense.
A Jewish man has a private religious vision (And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him: And a voice came out of the heavens, Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased.)
He lives in a time when pagans occupy the holy land, when the Temple priests are in cahoots with these outsiders, when the poor are crying out and those living by the Law suffer for it. He believes that his God is a God that keeps his promises, that his God is a God that will remove the corrupt and the gentiles from the holy land and instead establish a kingdom populated by the righteous.
Jesus thought this would happen soon, and this was his good news to the Jews: don't despair. God hears your cries. He is coming soon and you will be part of the Kingdom if you choose to obey his commandments and behave virtuously. Forget money and status. Focus on God and his instructions.
This message was a direct threat to those who held religious and political power. And they weren't about to let his movement get out of hand.
While Jesus remained in the backwater of Galilee he was mostly off the radar, but when he brought his message to Jerusalem - during the Passover with its religious and political paralles to his own, with Jesus as Moses and the Romans in the role of the Egyptians - he was never going to get out alive.
Either his message would be vindicated with the arrival of God or he would be yet another failed messiah claimant.
And we all know how that turned out for him.
Jesus had two dads, and he turned out alright.~ Andy Gussert
“Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions…for safety on the streets…for child care, for social welfare…for rape crisis centers, women’s refuges, reforms in the law.
If someone says, “Oh, I’m not a feminist,” I ask, “Why, what’s your problem?”
Is civilization making us any better or are we just as corrupt and brutal as back then? If Christ came to us today and rearranged our priorities would we be able to live in an honest non corrupt non brutal civilization? I wonder if human is capable of changing?
Is civilization making us any better or are we just as corrupt and brutal as back then? If Christ came to us today and rearranged our priorities would we be able to live in an honest non corrupt non brutal civilization? I wonder if human is capable of changing?
In other words, what's taking so long? When I was a child, adulthood seemed impossibly far away. I think we are still in our spiritual infancy. I do see evidence of change, albeit very slow and thus far disappointingly small. Slavery is no longer a routine way of life; slaughter of civilians in war is no longer condoned; torture is now a war-crime; genocide is now universally condemned as a crime against humanity. Slavery, killing of civilians, torture and genocide still occur, but less often, and they are reviled rather than accepted. These changes illustrate social evolution; and as social mores evolve, individual morality evolves, for we are social creatures.
We still have a very long way to go. Or at least, it appears that way to us now, just as adulthood seemed like a long way to go when I was a child.
As for what would happen if Jesus showed up today... see "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor," a parable presented in the novel The Brothers Karamazov. If what is described there would not happen today, centuries after the setting of the parable, then that, too, is an indication of social evolution.
I prayed for deliverance from the hard world of facts and logic to the happy land where fantasies and prejudices reign. But God spake unto me, saying, "No, keep telling the truth," and to that end afflicted me with severe Trenchant Mouth. So I'm sorry for making cutting remarks, but it's the will of God.
...why Jesus, aka (TRI-UNE) God decided to make Himself known for ~ 3 years (/ ~33 years in Man's history)...
The pre-existent God views His Created universe as an eternity, an infinity, without beginng or end. Man's existence is but a speck in that time, almost incomprehensible in terms of our "measly" measurements. The TRI-UNE GOD poured out Divinity without loss thereof into the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Messiah, the God-Man. And it was PERFECT TIMING!
Galatians 4: 4-6 ...Jesus came in " the fullness of the time"
...But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law (OT Mosaic), so that He might REDEEM those who were under the Law, that we might receive the ADOPTION as SONS...
Ephesians 1: 8-10 (NASB)...Jesus came to show the mystery of His (God's) WILL,
... In all wisdom and insight, He (God) made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him (Jesus) with a view to an ADMINISTRATION suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.
ADMINISTRATION:...at a PERFECT TIME! 1. Roman and Greek languages and laws 2. Historical documents being gathered and protected 3. public works ...linking and preserving the eastern cradles of civilization to western new worlds 4. a scattered and chosen people Israel who were super "historians" with covenants and promises...an OT 5. a world waiting for ....a NT
Is civilization making us any better or are we just as corrupt and brutal as back then? If Christ came to us today and rearranged our priorities would we be able to live in an honest non corrupt non brutal civilization? I wonder if human is capable of changing?
In other words, what's taking so long? When I was a child, adulthood seemed impossibly far away. I think we are still in our spiritual infancy. I do see evidence of change, albeit very slow and thus far disappointingly small. Slavery is no longer a routine way of life; slaughter of civilians in war is no longer condoned; torture is now a war-crime; genocide is now universally condemned as a crime against humanity. Slavery, killing of civilians, torture and genocide still occur, but less often, and they are reviled rather than accepted. These changes illustrate social evolution; and as social mores evolve, individual morality evolves, for we are social creatures.
We still have a very long way to go. Or at least, it appears that way to us now, just as adulthood seemed like a long way to go when I was a child.
As for what would happen if Jesus showed up today... see "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor," a parable presented in the novel The Brothers Karamazov. If what is described there would not happen today, centuries after the setting of the parable, then that, too, is an indication of social evolution.
Your comments do not reflect current studies. Check this out:
The pre-existent God views His Created universe as an eternity, an infinity, without beginng or end.
...
ADMINISTRATION:...at a PERFECT TIME!
4. a scattered and chosen people Israel who were super "historians" with covenants and promises...an OT 5. a world waiting for ....a NT
God created the universe... which has no beginning. Does not compute, though it is just pious rhetoric of no practical importance (as in, do you lead your life differently if the universe did or did not have a beginning?).
...
The Jewish people existed to be... historians, albeit with an covenant? And the world was waiting for a new covenant?
So far as I know, God's covenant with the Jews does not have an expiration date. And if the world was waiting for a new covenant, why was it necessary for the church to impose it upon people through indoctrination of children and forced conversion through threat of torture and death?
I prayed for deliverance from the hard world of facts and logic to the happy land where fantasies and prejudices reign. But God spake unto me, saying, "No, keep telling the truth," and to that end afflicted me with severe Trenchant Mouth. So I'm sorry for making cutting remarks, but it's the will of God.
Is civilization making us any better or are we just as corrupt and brutal as back then? If Christ came to us today and rearranged our priorities would we be able to live in an honest non corrupt non brutal civilization? I wonder if human is capable of changing?
In other words, what's taking so long? When I was a child, adulthood seemed impossibly far away. I think we are still in our spiritual infancy. I do see evidence of change, albeit very slow and thus far disappointingly small. Slavery is no longer a routine way of life; slaughter of civilians in war is no longer condoned; torture is now a war-crime; genocide is now universally condemned as a crime against humanity. Slavery, killing of civilians, torture and genocide still occur, but less often, and they are reviled rather than accepted. These changes illustrate social evolution; and as social mores evolve, individual morality evolves, for we are social creatures.
We still have a very long way to go. Or at least, it appears that way to us now, just as adulthood seemed like a long way to go when I was a child.
As for what would happen if Jesus showed up today... see "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor," a parable presented in the novel The Brothers Karamazov. If what is described there would not happen today, centuries after the setting of the parable, then that, too, is an indication of social evolution.
Your comments do not reflect current studies. Check this out:
I understand, humans1. Your theology demands that humanity be forever relegated to the status of wickedness and depravity and evil and... and... dare I say it?... SIN!
But your link actually proves my point: The story about modern-day slavery is a story exactly because we now regard slavery with abhorrence, which was certainly not true in eras past.
Try again.
I prayed for deliverance from the hard world of facts and logic to the happy land where fantasies and prejudices reign. But God spake unto me, saying, "No, keep telling the truth," and to that end afflicted me with severe Trenchant Mouth. So I'm sorry for making cutting remarks, but it's the will of God.
