Religious

[thaskalos]

[QUOTE=boxcar]

Originally Posted by nomad1102

But, sir, you have your own "dogma", don't you? Everyone does you know, whether you realize it or not. TJ's dogma is atheism. Actor's dogma is unlimited agnosticism. Hcap's is human secularism. Thaskalos' s unbridled, blissful ignorance. ShowMe's dogma are the doctrines of the RCC, etc., etc.

Oh, no. We're not absolved at all. We're still morally responsible. To be responsible, sir, does not necessarily mean ability to perform. In fact, the ability to choose between right and wrong is not even the primary definition of responsible. One has the moral duty to obey God (i.e. perform his word), which is the reason behind all the commands in the bible. Scripture tells us that the Law of Moses was added not to show the Israelites that they had the ability to keep the Law, but to show us how utterly sinful man is -- how morally destitute and bankrupt mankind is -- how incapable all men are at keeping God's holy law. This is why Christ came to fulfill the Law! To do for His Father's people what they cannot possibly do for themselves -- keep God's holy law perfectly.

And finally to answer your question about how one saturates his heart with the word -- by committing it to memory, which is how David "hid" God's word in his innermost being.

Boxcar

My friend,

I am ignorant, but I readily acknowledge my ignorance...which means that I am more knowledgeable than you...since you are completely unaware of the level of ignorance to which YOU have sunk.

[boxcar]

[QUOTE=thaskalos]

Originally Posted by boxcar

My friend,

I am ignorant, but I readily acknowledge my ignorance...which means that I am more knowledgeable than you...since you are completely unaware of the level of ignorance to which YOU have sunk.

Not only do you acknowledge it, but you glorify your ignorance. Sorry, but the object of divine revelation is to deliver readers from their self-imposed ignorance. And God has been exceedingly gracious to me by doing just that -- just as He did with Peter when he confess Jesus to be the Christ.

Boxcar

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Light

If you kill a man in defense of your family, you don't have to bring hate into it. You are simply taking care of business.

So, let me see if I have this right. A guy breaks into your home and murders your wife and little kiddies and you walk in on it and you're supposed to not feel moral outrage against the perp? Are you for real?

Let me try to put this into some moral perspective for you: Do you know that even the most hardened career criminals can and have felt moral outrage against other inmates who have committed certain crimes, e.g. rape of a child? Or an abduction and murder of a child, etc. If a morally depraved criminal can feel moral outrage, a thrice Holy God isn't?

The people of God are expected to feel righteous anger and moral outrage against evil. The people of God are expected to hate evil! A child of God CANNOT be indifferent toward evil. A child of God cannot love Good and Evil!

Amos 5:15
15 Hate evil , love good,
And establish justice in the gate!
Perhaps the LORD God of hosts
May be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
NASB

And,

Ps 97:10
10 Hate evil , you who love the LORD,
Who preserves the souls of His godly ones;
He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
NASB

These are commands! The people of God are supposed to look upon evil the same way God does! No one can say that they love the Lord thy God and yet tolerate or be indifferent toward evil!

How would you ever stand to be in heaven in which only righteousness dwells? If God did not have a holy hatred for all evil, I don't believe I would want to be in heaven with Him for all eternity. Only a hatred for evil would be consistent with his holiness, righteousness and goodness.

Boxcar

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by boxcar

If God did not have a holy hatred for all evil, I don't believe I would want to be in heaven with Him for all eternity.

Boxcar

So now you are laying down conditions on God as to whether or not he is acceptable to you for eternity eh?

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

So now you are laying down conditions on God as to whether or not he is acceptable to you for eternity eh?

Yes! I would much prefer to be with the God of the bible for all eternity -- not a god of man's carnal imagination. If God did not hate evil, what guarantee would I have that He wouldn't allow evil to enter heaven?

Boxcar

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Yes! I would much prefer to be with the God of the bible for all eternity -- not a god of man's carnal imagination. If God did not hate evil, what guarantee would I have that He wouldn't allow evil to enter heaven?

Boxcar

Men wrote the bible.
Men, according to you, are born of an evil nature.
You believe some type of Holy Spirit descended on certain scribes and they wrote the O.T. and the N.T.
Those men, also told you in what they wrote, that man is of an evil essence.
It's not like they didn't forwarn you.
But those red lights were ignored, like the horse rushing towards the train.
With blinders on your one track mind, that horse thought he was a part of the train, perhaps a boxcar, and like a moth kept going towards the light.
The interesting thing about your last submission here is the fact that you, boxcar, are laying conditions on God about whether or not you will spend eternity with him/her/it-.
To my mind, you might hope what God will and will not do.
But laying conditions on God...tells me that you are beyond the envelope on that- even according to your own epistles here.
Alex Colville might have had a man like you in mind when he painted the following:

[Light]

Originally Posted by boxcar

The people of God are expected to feel righteous anger and moral outrage against evil.

In Star Wars, the evil emperor tells Luke "Give in to your anger. With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant”. This is what you are advocating. To become a servant for hatred and evil.

This is why God's world does not "go there". When you enter the domain of anger, hatred or evil, you are not in God's domain.You are in the domain of the one you "hate". You cannot destroy or rid yourself of hate with hate.You will only sink further into it. Only when you rise above that low level of an eye for an eye,with God's love and God consciousness, will you be liberated and overcome that which afflicts you.

[Overlay]

Originally Posted by Light

In Star Wars, the evil emperor tells Luke "Give in to your anger. With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant”.

To carry your Star Wars analogy one step further, was Darth Vader then going even more over to the Dark Side when he killed the emperor (at the cost of his own life)? What was his motivation in doing that? Wasn't it anger that the emperor was about to kill his son? Was the movie then inconsistent in showing him posthumously "redeemed" as Anakin Skywalker, and restored to the good side of the Force once again as a Jedi (along with Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi)?

Or if you were to say that his controlling motivation was love for his son, rather than anger with the Emperor, why could God not righteously take similar actions on behalf of those He loves when they are endangered, against the forces or persons that are endangering them?

[hcap]

There are two major models of spiritual development both of which are valid. One is the Western framework of a hierarchical structure that sort of lays out a a "hero's quest" or a progressive journey to a different and as of yet unknown land. And a more direct Eastern experiential re-focus of inner faculties. Both work in unison.

The Star Wars saga is woven with the direct contribution of Joseph Campbell the author of "The Hero with a Thousand Faces " So yes Darth Vader reddening himself by destroying the evil emperor is a theme well founded in the western framework, but so-called "righteous" anger and consequently the act of putting an end to the cause of that anger is not a pass to feel emotional revenge and anger, rather a needed impetus to change direction that can only come about by direct first person experiential re-focus and Observation of inner faculties. So implicit in major myths and religious quests is "knowing" how to enact inner change. Silent action performed without the usual egos' involvement acting on it's own is the way of change. One of Taoism’s most important concepts is wu wei, which is sometimes translated as “non-doing” or “non-action.” A better way to think of it, however, is as a paradoxical “Action of non-action." The process of quieting the mind is accomplished by not fighting "'it", the noise, in the mundane way of beating up the other guy or usual human justification of self, but with less self.

[hcap]

I apologize in advance if this seems a bit over the top. But then again the literal picture painted by many of who and what God is, is unacceptable to most of us. And why we, the so called "skeptics" don''t buy into that literal picture. Don't blame me. Blame Samuel Clemens....

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/mark_twain_hated_god/

Extracted from "Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2"

Tuesday, June 19, 1906

....About the character of God, as represented in the New and the Old Testaments.

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless exactness. The portrait is substantially that of a man—if one can imagine a man charged and overcharged with evil impulses far beyond the human limit; a personage whom no one, perhaps, would desire to associate with, now that Nero and Caligula are dead. in the old Testament His acts expose His vindictive, unjust, ungenerous, pitiless and vengeful nature constantly. He is always punishing—punishing trifling misdeeds with thousand-fold severity; punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents; punishing unoffending populations for the misdeeds of their rulers; even descending to wreak bloody vengeance upon harmless calves and lambs and sheep and bullocks, as punishment for inconsequential trespasses committed by their proprietors. it is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading, by contrast.

It begins with an inexcusable treachery, and that is the keynote of the entire biography. That beginning must have been invented in a pirate’s nursery, it is so malign and so childish. To Adam is forbidden the fruit of a certain tree—and he is gravely informed that if he disobeys he shall die. How could that be expected to impress Adam? Adam was merely a man in stature; in knowledge and experience he was in no way the superior of a baby of two years of age; he could have no idea of what the word death meant. He had never seen a dead thing; he had never heard of a dead thing before. The word meant nothing to him. If the Adam child had been warned that if he ate of the apples he would be transformed into a meridian of longitude, that threat would have been the equivalent of the other, since neither of them could mean anything to him.


A bit more at the link.......

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

If God did not hate evil, what guarantee would I have that He wouldn't allow evil to enter heaven?

Maybe God is evil. Before the Babylonian captivity the Hebrews were polytheistic, with a pantheon shared by other Canaanite peoples. They viewed the captivity as punishment for their polytheism. In adopting monotheism they chose to worship Yahweh, the Hebrew god of war, and is not war evil? Meanwhile Baal, the god of rain, fertility and the harvest, lost the election.

[Light]

Originally Posted by Overlay

To carry your Star Wars analogy one step further, was Darth Vader then going even more over to the Dark Side when he killed the emperor (at the cost of his own life)? What was his motivation in doing that? Wasn't it anger that the emperor was about to kill his son?

No it was the love for his own son that caused Vader to turn against the Evil Emperor when he tried to destroy his son. Luke always felt Vader had good in him. Vader always ignored it.It took that intense moment for that good and love to emerge. Like I said, the bad can serve as a tool for the good.

Originally Posted by Overlay

Or if you were to say that his controlling motivation was love for his son, rather than anger with the Emperor, why could God not righteously take similar actions on behalf of those He loves when they are endangered, against the forces or persons that are endangering them?

I agree. It's also called Karma. But I do not agree with you and boxcar's emphasis on anger and hatred when this is done. You attach too much meaning to that part of it. In Star Wars when Vader disposed of the Emperor, he did it like he was taking care of business as I originally told you. He did not let the anger and hate consume him as you and boxcar emphasize.

Let me give you a better example.When Christ was crucified you can say 2 things. That God loved the world so much that he gave his only son up for it or you can say God hated sin so much that he gave his only son up for it as you and boxcar have alluded to. That distinction is of paramount importance because it is the source of that action that counts. If it is the latter reason, that God hates sin so much, then the origin of the act is from hate and has no healing power and all would have been in vain.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by Light

Let me give you a better example.When Christ was crucified you can say 2 things. That God loved the world so much that he gave his only son up for it or you can say God hated sin so much that he gave his only son up for it as you and boxcar have alluded to. That distinction is of paramount importance because it is the source of that action that counts. If it is the latter reason, that God hates sin so much, then the origin of the act is from hate and has no healing power and all would have been in vain.

Against WHOM does humanity sin? When people "sin" in their everyday lives...whom are they sinning against? They are sinning against God, of course. God has defined "sin"...and he has given us a set of rules by which to live our lives. I can still remember a sniveling Jimmy Swaggart going on TV and publicly confessing through teary eyes..."I have sinned against you, my Lord..."

So, the theory is that God would sacrifice his only son in the most horrific way...in order to wash out the sins that humanity is committing against God HIMSELF?

[TJDave]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

Against WHOM does humanity sin? When people "sin" in their everyday lives...whom are they sinning against? They are sinning against God, of course.

Man would do God a big favor in considering all sin as against his fellow man.

Worrying about not getting pie never stopped me from eating dinner.

[Show Me the Wire]

nomad1102,

My responses:

Isn't it "I am who I am".
Pure spirit?

Yes. Man is not pure spirit. Man is we are as we are created beings consisting of physical matter and spirit.

My will or Gods will?

Both.

Can they both exist simultaneously?

Yes.

Can and how do you distinguish between the two?

Yes, as God's will is all men be saved. Any graces which lead to salvation are God's will. Any rejection of these graces are man's will, which can be restated as man doing the evil one's will in rejecting offered salvation.

Isn't there somewhere in scripture where we are to remember God at all times and for all things?

Forgive me for not knowing the passage you are referring to. The citation would be appreciated.