Seriously God, you chose them??????

[Neo]

 

[Mendalla]

IT is throughout his letters and in the account of his ministry Luke gives in the book of Acts. Much of his writing shows his use of intellectual resources and in various places he talks about his experience. If you can't see that I am not sure how well you have read him.

This is one thing I have often noted. Some people seem to be able to cite specific Bible passages chapter and verse as needed but don't seem to see (or even look for) broader patterns in the text. So you start discussing a topic and you get a bunch of passages thrown at you but if you actually read them in context, you actually see more than what is in those passages. That's why, when someone tosses a Bible passage into a discussion, I immediately Google it (which usually gets me that passage on Biblegateway) and read the whole chapter. Context matters. A lot.

 

[Waterfall]

Paul used Greek philosophy often and much of what he said reflects that.

 

[Jaebius]

This is one thing I have often noted. Some people seem to be able to cite specific Bible passages chapter and verse as needed but don't seem to see (or even look for) broader patterns in the text. So you start discussing a topic and you get a bunch of passages thrown at you but if you actually read them in context, you actually see more than what is in those passages. That's why, when someone tosses a Bible passage into a discussion, I immediately Google it (which usually gets me that passage on Biblegateway) and read the whole chapter. Context matters. A lot.

There's that. However, there's also the case where someone does understand the greater context, but chooses a scripture to post which they feel encapsulates said context.

 

[Mendalla]

There's that. However, there's also the case where someone does understand the greater context, but chooses a scripture to post which they feel encapsulates said context.

Oh, of course. That's quite legit provided you can back it up with WHY that passage best encapsulates that context. Not everyone is going to agree on which passage does that job best.

 

[airclean33]

Airclean, you can't even provide a valid description of "what" God is, yet you insist that that little voice in your head is from God?

Hi there Neo . you want me to tell you what I believe GOD is.? Another posted told me it would take her two mouths to explain something to me? I say to you it may take a year or so. Do you have the time?

I will say GOD is LIFE. airclean33

 

[Mendalla]

Hi there Neo . you want me to tell you what I believe GOD is.? Another posted told me it would take her two mouths to explain something to me? I say to you it may take a year or so. Do you have the time?

I will say GOD is LIFE. airclean33

God is Life? Or God gives Life? It is the same question I pose to those who say "God is Love". Do you really mean they are synonymous? Or just that God is the ultimate source of Life?

If the God=Life then how is your faith different from a pantheist who says God is All and All is God?

 

[Waterfall]

Hi there Neo . you want me to tell you what I believe GOD is.? Another posted told me it would take her two mouths to explain something to me? I say to you it may take a year or so. Do you have the time?

I will say GOD is LIFE. airclean33

I believe I said two weeks, not two mouths...although that might shorten the time it would take.

 

[Jaebius]

God is Life? Or God gives Life? It is the same question I pose to those who say "God is Love". Do you really mean they are synonymous? Or just that God is the ultimate source of Life?

If the God=Life then how is your faith different from a pantheist who says God is All and All is God?

God is love, but is love God?

 

[chansen]

All of these God descriptions are meaningless platitudes. I don't care if you take 2 minutes or 2 years, you have nothing, you want to make that nothing look impressive, and so you'll tell us how the description will take forever and you don't have time.

You have a belief that does not enjoy the company of evidence or reason. The great thing for religion is, evidence and reason have rarely been more unpopular than they are today. If you go around insisting you know God and what God wants, you're no better than the people denying climate change, or anti-vaxxers, or conspiracy theorists. Denying reality because you don't like it and you choose to believe something else because it "feels right" or you had an experience in a basement and you want it to be true is a growing problem. Taking one bit of information and basing your understanding on it while ignoring everything else is playing into the hands of those who really would manipulate you with photoshopped images on social media or bits of scripture which can be used for any purpose. Unquestioned, literalist religion benefits from the same lack of scrutiny and common sense that other scams exploit. When unsafe posts an image about eschewing understanding in favour of faith, I believe her. Valuing faith over understanding, and thinking that faith takes the place of understanding, is leading us down some dark alleys. More progressive believers have to figure out what they can do about this. You're the middle ground here, but you have no control over your crazy neighbours. Your arguments are simply rejected, as we see here.

 

[Neo]

Hi there Neo . you want me to tell you what I believe GOD is.? Another posted told me it would take her two mouths to explain something to me? I say to you it may take a year or so. Do you have the time?

I will say GOD is LIFE. airclean33

Yea, in some ways it would take "two mouths" to explain God. One "mouth" being that of our outer and manifested personality, comprised of a physical body, an emotional body and a mental body, and the other "mouth" being that of the Soul, that intermediate aspect of our being that stands between the life of the body (the personality) and the Spirit of Life, (the Energy of God).

I believe the Spirit or Energy of God to be the LIFE you talk about. GOD itself, however, stands both as the body of that outer manifestation, yet is something more than the sum total of the parts. Without this "Dweller" within the form, the form could never have been in the first place. In this way God is "most surely transcendent, but at the same time most assuredly immanent".

The following are just a couple of quotes from the Tibetan Master DK regarding this subject. Read carefully, there is wisdom in these words.

(1) God, the Universal Mind, Energy, Force, the Absolute, the Unknown – these terms and many others are forced from the lips of those who, by means of the form side, seek the Dweller within the form, and cannot find Him as yet. This failure to find Him is due to the limitations of the physical brain, and to the lack of development in the mechanism whereby the spiritual may be known, and whereby He may, and eventually will, be contacted. (3 – 238).

(2) What the scientist calls energy, the religious man calls God, and yet the two are one, being but the manifested purpose, in physical matter, of a great extra-systemic Identity. Nature is the appearance of the physical body of the Logos, and the laws of nature are the laws governing the natural processes of that body. The Life of God, His energy, and vitality, are found in every manifested atom; His essence indwells all forms. This we call Spirit, yet He Himself is other than those forms, just as man knows himself to be other than his bodies. He knows himself to be a will, and a purpose, [Page 132] and as he progresses in evolution that purpose and will become to him ever more consciously defined. So with the planetary Logos and solar Logos. They dwell within, yet are found without, the planetary scheme or solar system. (3 – 1136).

(3) Only as a man understands himself can he arrive at an understanding of that which is the sum total that we call God. (4 – 29).

(4) God Transcendent eternally exists, but can only be seen and known and correctly approached, by God Immanent – immanent in individual man, in groups and nations, in organised forms and in religion, in humanity as a whole, and in the planetary Life Itself. (10 – 162).

(5) In attempting to describe "Pure Being" or God, and in the effort to arrive at some understanding of the nature of divinity, the formula of negation has been evolved. God is not this; God is not that; God is no-thing; God is neither time nor space; God is not feeling or thought; God is not form or substance. God simply IS. (10 – 244).

(6) The Problem of God: The fact of God will be established, and men's questioning in this respect will end. Such a God will not be a figment of man's creative imagination, or an extension of his own consciousness, but a Deity of essential life, who is the sum total of all energies . . . a God most surely transcendent, but at the same time most assuredly immanent; a God of such immensity that the Heavens proclaim Him, and so intimate that the humblest child can recognise Him. . . . With the eye of the inner vision can God be seen, even when man is occupying a body of flesh. Not with the physical eye can Deity be seen, though the hallmark of divinity is everywhere. There is an eye which can be developed and used, and which will enable its possessor to see God working on the inner side of Life, within Himself and within all forms, for "when thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light". In that light shall we see Light, and so see God. (14 – 182).

(10) The Eastern faiths have ever emphasised God Immanent, deep within the human heart, "nearer than hands and feet", the Self, the One, the Atma, smaller than the small, yet all-comprehensive. The Western faiths have presented God Transcendent, Outside His universe, an Onlooker. God transcendent, first of all, conditioned men's concept of Deity, for the action of this transcendent God appeared in the process of nature; later, in the Jewish dispensation, God appeared as the tribal Jehovah, as the soul (the rather unpleasant soul) of a nation. Next, God was seen as a perfected man, and the divine God-man walked the Earth in the Person of the Christ. Today we have a rapidly growing emphasis upon God immanent in every human being, and in every created form. Today, we should have the churches presenting a synthesis of these two ideas, which have been summed up for us in the statement of Shri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: "Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain." God, greater than the created whole, yet God present also in the part; God Transcendent guarantees the Plan of our world, and is the Purpose conditioning all lives from the minutest atom, up through all the kingdoms of nature, to man. (8 – 144/5).

(11) Slowly, there is dawning upon the awakening consciousness of humanity the great paralleling truth of God Immanent – divinely "pervading" all forms, conditioning from within all kingdoms in nature, expressing innate divinity through human beings. . . . There is a growing and developing belief that Christ is in us, as He was in the Master Jesus, and this belief will alter world affairs and mankind's entire attitude to life. (13 – 592).

 

[chansen]

Yea, in some ways it would take "two mouths" to explain God. One "mouth" being that of our outer and manifested personality, comprised of a physical body, an emotional body and a mental body, and the other "mouth" being that of the Soul, that intermediate aspect of our being that stands between the life of the body (the personality) and the Spirit of Life, (the Energy of God).

*blinks*

 

[Mendalla]

God is love, but is love God?

Precisely.

 

[unsafe]

this is from got questions -----this is how they explain it -----
What is pantheism?

Question: "What is pantheism?"

Answer: Pantheism is the view that God is everything and everyone and that everyone and everything is God. Pantheism is similar to polytheism (the belief in many gods), but goes beyond polytheism to teach that everything is God. A tree is God, a rock is God, an animal is God, the sky is God, the sun is God, you are God, etc. Pantheism is the supposition behind many cults and false religions (e.g., Hinduism and Buddhism to an extent, the various unity and unification cults, and “mother nature” worshippers).

Does the Bible teach pantheism? No, it does not. What many people confuse as pantheism is the doctrine of God's omnipresence. Psalm 139:7-8 declares, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” God's omnipresence means He is present everywhere. There is no place in the universe where God is not present. This is not the same thing as pantheism. God is everywhere, but He is not everything. Yes, God is “present” inside a tree and inside a person, but that does not make that tree or person God. Pantheism is not at all a biblical belief.

The clearest biblical arguments against pantheism are the countless commands against idolatry. The Bible forbids the worship of idols, angels, celestial objects, items in nature, etc. If pantheism were true, it would not be wrong to worship such an object, because that object would, in fact, be God. If pantheism were true, worshipping a rock or an animal would have just as much validity as worshipping God as an invisible and spiritual being. The Bible’s clear and consistent denunciation of idolatry is a conclusive argument against pantheism.

 

[Neo]

*blinks*

I don't believe we are "just" physical people. I believe as physical people we are reflections of a greater aspect of ourselves. Just as a light source casts a 2 dimensional shadow on the floor, so does "something" cast a 3 dimensional shadow which we see to be us, i.e. physical people with height, length and width. Once that source of light is removed, we physically die. Analogy is one of the best tools we can use to understand the unknown. By analogy it would stand to reason, therefore, that this "something" is in turn but a reflection of "something even greater".

 

[Mendalla]

Actually @unsafe , I agree that pantheism is not compatible with the Bible. That's why I questioned @airclean33 about the statement that "God is Life". That could be seen as a pantheist statement and I don't think that is what airclean intended.

 

[Mendalla]

Having said that, that piece @unsafe posted reflects only one view of pantheism, esp. modern pantheism. For many modern pantheists, it is not a matter of each tree or rock or person being A god but seeing all things as part of a unified, interdependent universe. It is that totality which is divine, not the individual parts, though each part reflects that totality. So one could have a tree or rock as part of one's worship, but it would be a symbol of what is truly being worshipped. To say that the tree or rock is being worshipped would be rather like saying Christians worship crosses.

 

[unsafe]

airclean33 is right that God is life -----the Bible is a spiritual book and God is our bread of life in the spiritual world Mendalla -----without God we are just heaps of flesh dead to spiritual life -----The bread of life gives life everlasting ----maybe you misunderstood what airclean33 was meaning --this is where human reasoning looses it because there is sound reasoning in the spiritual realm-------just saying ----

John 6:35-40 (ERV)
Jesus, the Bread of Life

35 Then Jesus said, “I am the bread that gives life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry. No one who believes in me will ever be thirsty. 36 I told you before that you have seen me, and still you don’t believe. 37 The Father gives me my people. Every one of them will come to me. I will always accept them.38 I came down from heaven to do what God wants, not what I want. 39 I must not lose anyone God has given me. But I must raise them up on the last day. This is what the one who sent me wants me to do. 40 Everyone who sees the Son and believes in him has eternal life. I will raise them up on the last day. This is what my Father wants.”

 

[Mendalla]

“I am the bread that gives life.

Right. "The bread that GIVES life", not "The bread that IS life". There is a semantic difference there. I have no problem with Jesus' statement, but that's not what ac said. God as the source of life makes perfect sense but it is not the as saying God is life.

 

[Neo]

Right. "The bread that GIVES life", not "The bread that IS life". There is a semantic difference there. I have no problem with Jesus' statement, but that's not what ac said. God as the source of life makes perfect sense but it is not the as saying God is life.

And this what Shri Krishna meant in the Bhagavad Gita when, speaking for God, he said "Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain." God gives life, i.e. the "whole universe" as just a fragment of Himself, yet God remains.