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still reading you gomey
don't know if you get on to check things out - but I visit occasionally.
you are number 9 in eligion and spirituality
posted by
Xeno-x
on February 5, 2013 at 12:33 PM
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you may not be here but you are read
posted by
Xeno-x
on January 29, 2013 at 8:14 PM
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I am also searching for the answers like you.
posted by
Straightforward
on December 10, 2012 at 6:05 AM
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Dangit...
Hi Gomedome! I was really hoping you were back on Blogit for real... Well, here's hoping you'll decide to stick around after all.
posted by
myrrhage_
on July 23, 2012 at 2:03 PM
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Jesus (Yeshua the Jew) talked about salvation like all great philosophers
he said it already exists.
religion gets in the way of salvation, says you are already evil and lost, then offers you a prescription by which you become saved, which, of course, is adherence to the religion.
Jesus said you don't need religion to be saved. You are. If you recognize it, then you can understand and feel pretty good about it.
We all are as good and as bad as everyone else. But there is really no condemnation. Just being. Just being that way.
We recognize faults and shortcomings and understand that they are not a source of condemnation, but just a part of what we are. We then work on improving ourselves, mainly our relationship with others.
This is what Jesus said.
posted by
Xeno-x
on April 15, 2012 at 1:18 PM
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I cannot answer any of your questions to your satisfaction. I and millions of others have a relationship with God. We can talk with him and get the answers to our questions. We are not without trouble and hardship but there is a peace never available without him. Just because I can't answer your question does no mean I think you should not ask it. God gave all men a right of choice. The believer and the non-believer has equal rights to their position regarding God. Faith is not dreaming, it is not an unstable mode of intelligence it is a choice I am so thankful for having made. What Wiley expressed to you here is an act of salvation. He could carry that to a magnificent relationship if he chose; however, he is saved and one of Gods children.
posted by
Justi
on April 5, 2012 at 4:45 PM
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heaven and hell
are mythological concepts taken from the Hellenistic Mythos.
fire and brimstone, etc. -- caves in Greece leading down to volcanic vents where the sulphur smell is very strong.
this concept, like much of Christian belief, was developed hundreds of years -- even more than a millenium afterward (take priestly celibacy for example), then established as dogma, as if it had been Jesus' (or Peter's [although there is no real evidence for the primacy of the man]) original teaching.
Then they take the Hebrew and Greek language scriptures and translate them to fit the beliefs they developed more than a millenium later, when the original language bears no real resemblance to what the medieval clerics decided it said (sort of like that test like when there is a line of people and one person whispers a statementin the ear of the next and so on until at the end of the line the statement bears no resemblance to the original).
bottom line: no eternal heaven or hell in the new testament -- but, as Paul writes in one of his letters, basically the fire of life's trials purging the harmful and useful elements of a person's psyche. He also said that God wills that all people be saved.
Food for thought.
posted by
Xeno-x
on April 5, 2012 at 6:50 AM
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Relatable, Gomedome..
I will be burning for eternity, according to some of my dear relatives. They seem to want to inflict their fears onto others. I cannot embrace man made religions, of the text; Bibles I have many, many doubts but I do feel a certain spirituality (for lack of a better word) or an awareness of something more than what I can see, hear or touch. I used to write about it, used to fall back on the most easily accepted terms - God, Jesus, but eventually that felt dishonest. I think none of us really knows what waits beyond this realm; I just try to live as unselfishly and peacefully as I can, meditate for deeper thinking and balance; probably am a new-agey kind of person, lol. Well, sorry for the ramble, sharing a few thoughts.
posted by
Katray2
on April 4, 2012 at 9:46 PM
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gomedome
My reconciliation with these questions only made sense to me after much help came my way in life as I wasTHINKING about myself. The hypocrisy of religion came to me directly in life by certain circumstances at different times.
In the first place in my case I had to work hard at sobering up, I was an active alcoholic. Well I had to accept certain things as not necessarily truthful, like going to confession and communion did nothing except let me accept forgiveness for drinking which gave me permission to go out and drink again.
At one time I was told that I should sign "The Pledge" as Catholicism taught at that time and even my drunk brain couldn't accept that.
I went to AA with a BIL-who now has dementia- and eventually I sobered up. I had a lot of difficulty with AA because I found they said the 'Our Father' in an un-Catholic fashion and I left AA at that time and went out to drink and think about that problem again.Great excuse for a drunk.
During this' sober one day and drunk the next' phase of my life, I was diagnosed with epilepsy so I went out and drank with barbituates and that made me crazy, a mental case.
In time I quit drinking and got sober 44 years ago because an AA member, an elderly man Eddy M, who talked to me one night at a meeting- and strangley enough was an ex friend of an uncle of mine who had been in AA but died drunk-and Eddy M said, drop all that God stuff talk or you'll never sober up.
Well after that I had a tremendous spiritual awakening, drunk as I was, where I screamed out for help to the sky one night and I felt an answer inside myself, in my brain, and this 'Entity' seemed to speak to me 'inside' myself.
I call that 'entity' Jesus because that is a name that had been presented to me in different ways, but seems always by people like priests and nuns who didn't talk to me about that silent 'Jesus' that came to me in my mind that night.
That 'Jesus' I met made me believe I had only one thing to do with my life, get sober, help others having trouble sobering up, live doing just that and live.
I have had 'messages' over the years from that same "Entity-Jesus" whatever pleases you and truly don't be afraid of anything.
For me there is no hell, man used that word and thousands of others to control other men. Death is a continuation of life in another way, and having nearly died one night, I had a glimpse of that and had no fear about it.
I try not to have any difficulty with anyone in Blogit or anywhere else. Anyone may believe whatever makes sense to them. I have come over time to have the residual guilt of Catholicism removed from me. That was a gift I asked for, and received.
Well I was happy to join your discussion, and just tell you what I do to survive, and hope my dissertation doesn't offend you or anyone else.
(Sorry for the longish comment-but delete if you like)
posted by
WileyJohn
on April 3, 2012 at 5:27 PM
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I'm afraid that there is no reconciliation of these questions that you ask and reasonable answers that would satisfy an unbeliever's troubled mind. The reconciliation that must come first and foremost is "Be ye reconciled to God."
posted by
TAPS.
on April 3, 2012 at 11:31 AM
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gome
They're irreconcilable because religious myths are in principle irreconcilable with reason. Human myth-making generally belongs to an activity of mind that has very little to do with reason. The best short, very short, way of chracterizing it might be to say it belongs to a state of the mind when engaged in dreaming...
posted by
Nautikos
on April 2, 2012 at 12:35 PM
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I have started my comment to your post several times. I am not the one
who can answer your questions.
posted by
Kabu
on April 2, 2012 at 11:03 AM
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