That's certainly a beautiful perspective on Christianity MorningSong, and one that I would wholeheartedly agree with.

There is no need to try to impress God, or do anything drastic to try to earn any rewards.

If the gift is grace then just allow everyone to accept the gift gracefully without demanding that they adhere to any specific religious views in order to "earn it".

That can work out quite well, especially of people give Jesus the right to decide for himself who he will offer his free grace to.

Jesus may very well be offering his free grace to Buddhists, Wiccans, Atheists, and all manner of people.

There is no need to restrict Jesus by demanding that he can only bestow his free grace on people who appease Cowboy's criteria.

That's the wrong way to approach this religion.

I can accept Jesus as a Mahayana Buddhist, or totally reject the stories of Jesus as being most likely made up fables, and Jesus can STILL bestow me with his free grace.

Jesus is in no way restricted by Cowboy's personal views.

I personally like Jesus as a pantheist the best. He tried to straighten out a bad situation in a sick society and failed. That's a shame, but at least he tried. Gotta give him credit for that.

It doesn't. They don't.


Truly.

End of story right there.

Seconded, if something doesn't make sense no matter how many times you try to make sense of it, it likely just isn't true.

I don't think logicalness is a requirement of faith based religions.

Abra, a god of love is what I would love to believe is out there somewhere. A god who knows that guilt and fear or denial of our humanness are not requirements for love and respect. Unlike a rash of humans seem to.

As strange as this may seem I really don't have much trouble believing in such a God. On the contrary I'm intuitively convinced of it. Why? I can't say, because as you point out it's not logical, it's intuitive.

I don't even like to call it a "faith-based" belief, because it's not based on "faith", it's just an innate intuitive feeling. Period. I wouldn't even call it a "belief", actually. It's just a feeling, an innate "knowing-ness" that needs no explanation.

I don't need to defend it or sell it to anyone else. In fact, it's totally unimportant whether a person actually believes in a loving God or not. For it it were important, then the God would automatically become unloving.

What do I 'believe' intellectually? I don't.

I confess to being intellectually agnostic when it comes to questions of the true nature of existence. I confess it to any "God" that might exist. Because it's the truth, and I most certainly wouldn't want to lie to any God that might exist by pretending to know something I can't possibly know.

I confess it to the world, because I have no need to lie to anyone about this as well.

But most importantly I confess it to myself. I cannot know the answer to this question. I wish I could, then I wouldn't have any need to 'believe' because I would then know.

Could atheism be true? Sure it could. Just because I have a deep intuitive feeling that there is more to life than meets the eye doesn't make it so. I accept this. I am not troubled by this.

If life is not spiritual then I simply say, "What a shame". Such beautiful potential wasted on a mere hiccup of life. By the time a person truly starts to grasp the real beauty of life, it's over. And many don't even make it far enough in age to ever truly realize what they even missed out on.

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The only thing I do know is that if a person is going to believe in a God, that belief should be beautiful. Anything less than that is a total waste of time. There's enough crap in real life without wasting time believing in crappy religions.

I've personally fallen in love with my own personal version of "Wicca". It's beautiful and if there isn't a real God associated with then there should be. Some God is missing out on a really beautiful religion.

I enjoy this religion even if it's nothing more than pure fantasy. Hey, fantasy is fun, constructive, positive, and if fills a person with love, then they should embrace it. Fantasy or reality, it really makes no difference. If it produces love, then it's a good thing.

I would support the same thing in Christianity if it was as positive. But it makes no sense for people to go around using Jesus as a rubber doll to beat people over the head with who don't share an enthusiasm for the religion. Then it just becomes a negative unproductive thing.

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I don't know whether we are eternal spirits or not. Like I say, I intuitively feel that we are. Intellectually I can't say. However, I will argue against secular atheists who claim that science and logic actually support a non-spiritual existence. That's total hogwash and simply has no merit. It could go either way. It's just as absurd that existence is non-spiritual as it is that it's spiritual. Neither has a leg up on the other.

So as long as they are equally absurd, we may as well dream of the more positive outcome. Where can there be any harm in that?

Unless of course, people turn their spiritual ideologies into jealous angry Gods who lust to be worshiped OR ELSE!

That's just ridiculous.

If we're going to choose to believe in a spiritual essence to reality let's at least try to keep it POSITIVE.

Otherwise what's the point to it? If we're going to make something negative out of it we'd be better off with a pure atheistic existence.

So yes, either a LOVING God exists, or it's atheism all the way.

No demonic God's please.

At least I won't support that mentality. That's all I know.

If we are the creation of a demon, I'd rather not know about it.

there is beauty in balance

the most asthetically unattractive person, may not be obviously beautiful to the human eye, but they can in reality have a spiritual beauty that surpasses most

life could be good and innocent and easy all the time, but would the mortal mind appreciate it if it didnt have those bad, guilty, difficult times that make it so CLEAR of how good and innocent and easy those other times are?

I believe in a BEAUTIFUL and BALANCED God, whose beauty is more evident BECAUSE I have experienced the ugly and unbalanced experiences of this mortal life ,,,


but, it is not the same for everyone because everyone is not the same

I cant explain or argue with what someone else feels or experiences or the decisions those things cause them to come to

I know what works for me, and it is not the result of a belief in anything demonic or delusional,,,,

..thats not to say there are not those who have things or beliefs in common with me who do happen to be demonic and/or delusional themself

This is why it doesn't exactly fit that a God who created a world purposefully with good and bad qualities, can punish people for acting as they were made to act. The entire thing is by design. If God didn't want it to be this way, it never would have been. So for a God to make things, to make us the way He did and then expect us to act contrary to how we were created, is unfair.

Let me just agree with Kleisto on this one.

Especially with respect to a God who supposedly condemns decent honest people for merely not buying into a religion.

God created us, our physical bodies and spirit. God does not create your actions, decisions, or thoughts. Those are created by you. So no, it's not unfair, or were we made to sin. We were made to be perfect, by your choice, YOU choose to sin or not sin.

Point is, God KNEW ahead of time we'd be like this, and in fact made us in such a way that we would be. So there is no way that it's fair to punish us when we are simply acting as we were created.

It'd be like saying: "There's a nice tree over there......." not telling us it's poisonous, but just expecting us to know it is, and then punishing us when we touch it. It simply flat out does not work.

Again, you can not blame God for YOUR actions. God did not create your personality, God does not create your actions, you do all that on your own. God is not to blame for the actions you take, they are your choice. God didn't make you a certain way so you make certain choices, God made nothing in our personalities or we would all be the same.



Not true. God tells us what we are not to do. God even sent his only begotten child to tell us, what did we do to him? We crucified him, hanging him on a cross to die. People just aren't listening to God, that's it. God is out there telling us everything we need to know. Open your ears if you wish to hear.

lol, If you are to believe the Christian version we are the creation of a demonic god. He is the most psychotic god in man's creation, I believe.

I do not believe in a larger than life being as a god but you know that.

My senses tell me that the spiritual or bigger than us element is a connective energy type thing that is reflective of what type of living being we are(how we live). Bringing us back what we put out in the world. When we die it just joins the already existing energy of all living things.

The larger than life being of goodness and love has to be a figment of my imagination. It cannot be.

But if I were to live or wallow in my imagination the god of my dreams would be the collective of all pure unconditional love shown to others that is barely ever shown here by humans. Even when people claim to love others unconditionally they will impose their will on them. The love of a mother is suppose to be the most unconditional but the examples we have are mothers who place their hands/belts on their children to cause pain and fear in the name of this love for example.

Even if that were true, there would be no reason to focus on sin, unless YOU feel that you are personally guilty of sin.

Jesus, with his dying breath, relieved all innocent people from condemnation when he asked of the Father, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".

Therefore the only way to be condemned by Jesus is to know precisely what a person is doing and choose to do EVIL.

So now it has nothing to do with "sin". It can ONLY have to do with "intent".

That was the mission of Jesus. Jesus changed the very meaning of "sin" and removed sin from everyone FREELY with his GRACE.

Now, here you are trying to resurrect "sin" in Jesus' name.

You are trying hard to UNDO what Jesus did.

Not undoing anything. Once one has been told someone is sinful, wrong, against God's will, they can be held accountable for it. Regardless if they believe it or not, they have been told and know, just choose to ignore.

Notice Jesus said "They know not what they do". Once one has been confronted/informed of Jesus/the gospel, they do not fall into the category. They know, they choose to ignore/not believe.

The only problem with this is that no man or woman on earth has the right to tell another what is right and wrong so in truth, no one has technically been told they were not following god's wishes.

You YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TELL ANYONE WHAT IS GODS WISHES, so technically no one will be informed until god comes down and tells them to stop it and slaps their hands.

I agree, the Christian notion of God has no more merit than Zeus.



Why do you say that it cannot be?

I have found that even in mathematics and science, if I can't RULE something out, it's best not to. Why? Because I have seen too many things that were ruled out prematurely only to be discovered to be true later on.

As soon as you rule something out without sufficient reason, that's when it will be true.

Besides, I can actually imagine a perfect scenario for why no "gods" contact us directly.

Imagine that you are one of these spiritual beings. There doesn't need to be only ONE "Godhead". That's an extremely limited view right there. If there can be ONE God, then why could there not be infinitely many Gods?

So you are a Godlike spirit.

What are you doing here?

Well, this physical life, is like a movie that you have decided to watch and participate in. You bought your tickets and here you are.

Now if you had gone to watch a movie as a human being would YOU want someone to come running through the theater in the middle of the movie screaming out with a megaphone "It's only a movie folks!"

No of course not. You'd probably be pissed at the bozo for interrupting your entertainment, especially if you were really absorbed in the movie.

Well, it's the same way in this life. To have some higher beings come running into the theater screaming, "It's only a dream and you are all Gods!" would defeat the whole purpose of it.

A a God, you'd want your money back!

It's a mystery because that's what you paid to some see!

Now you don't want someone coming into the movie and telling you the plot! That would destroy the mystery.

So there you have at least ONE possible reason why things are the way they are.

Somewhere it's written that if something is possible, it WILL HAPPEN.

So there you have it. The mystery of life unveiled before your very eyes.

I'm telling no one, I'm merely passing on a message. It's your choice weather you wish to believe it has divine origin or not. I'm not here to change your mind on it, just merely discussing things of that nature.

You "ain't" passing on "no" message from god. You are trying to pretend you know something no one else knows, THAT ISN'T POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO KNOW, making you somewhat of a liar and a fraud, I do believe.



Hopefully no one is foolish enough to believe the self created importance that you grant yourself.

I'm not more important then a grain of sand, a speck of dirt. That is why I am so thankful for the blessings I receive in my life from God our father even though I do not believe I deserve. I'm nothing special lol.

You're not "passing on" anything other than your very own personal views.

Everyone has their own views of these stories.

Whether they are 'believers' or non-believers is actually a moot point.

As both Jeanniebean and MorningSong have pointed out to you, not everyone agrees on what these scriptures even have to say.

All you're doing is trying to sell your particular personal denomination of belief. That's all.

That's not "passing on" any message.

In fact, it's actually quite an arrogant stance to take that your personal views should actually represent anything in those scriptures any better than anyone else's views.

So you're not "passing on" anything. All you're doing is offering your own personal opinions of what you wish the Bible stood for.