Figuring Out Religion

[Mountaineer]

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

curlew,

I think God would agree with you. A mind is especially a terrible thing to waste forever. Our gift of the mind is another of God's incredible gifts to us. As is his gift of emotion, body, and Spirit - and the ability to gain understanding by more ways than just reason.

Here are a couple of items to enjoy, a poem and a bit of Scripture. I doubt you would need to be a believer to appreciate the wisdom expressed, especially in the Scripture.

Have a blessed day.

... Mountaineer

“Mourning Into Dancing” - Tommy Walker

Where there was once only hurt, He gave His healing hand;
Where there once was only pain, He brought comfort like a friend.
I feel the sweetness of His love piercing my darkness;
I see the bright and mourning sun as it ushers in His joyful gladness.

He’s turned my mourning into dancing again, He’s lifted my sorrows;
I can’t stay silent, I must sing for His joy has come.

1 John 4
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

[MachineGhost]

Not worthy enough for the Documentaries thread, but it was interesting enough to mention here (don't expect a lot of deep intellectual thought):

http://unbelieversmovie.com/

[curlew]

I always liked singing Psalm 30, "Thou hast turned my mourning into dancing for me, thou hast put off my sackcloth". Also we had a song with the words directly from 1 John 4, 7-8 in the KJV - ended with "First John Four seven and eight". I think my favorite was probably Beauty for Ashes from Isaiah 61.

This would probably be my most inspirational Bible song nowadays....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M

Update: If you don't find that one inspiring here's a version of Beauty for Ashes you might like.... I still have to admit the Bible has some of the most beautiful words I have ever read....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q5k6uPMxv4

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

curlew,

I think God would agree with you. A mind is especially a terrible thing to waste forever. Our gift of the mind is another of God's incredible gifts to us. As is his gift of emotion, body, and Spirit - and the ability to gain understanding by more ways than just reason.

Here are a couple of items to enjoy, a poem and a bit of Scripture. I doubt you would need to be a believer to appreciate the wisdom expressed, especially in the Scripture.

Have a blessed day.

... Mountaineer

“Mourning Into Dancing” - Tommy Walker

Where there was once only hurt, He gave His healing hand;
Where there once was only pain, He brought comfort like a friend.
I feel the sweetness of His love piercing my darkness;
I see the bright and mourning sun as it ushers in His joyful gladness.

He’s turned my mourning into dancing again, He’s lifted my sorrows;
I can’t stay silent, I must sing for His joy has come.

1 John 4
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

[Xan]

The "real presence" is my favorite because it is an ongoing miracle and therefore testable and falsifiable. Either the wafer and the wine undergo a transformation or they do not and this can be proved by DNA analysis.

I realize that if such a test was performed and it turned out to be just plain old bread and wine this would have no impact on the faithful like yourself. It will be explained that the "real presence" doesn't mean "real" in a scientific sense or that God changed it back before the test because he wants it to remain a mystery. Actually, it will probably be said that it was a sinful thing to do because the Bible says not to put God to the test.

There are three groups of Christians who truly affirm the Real Presence: Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox. The Romans (maybe Murphy could chime in here) have a specific doctrine about how this takes place called Transubstantiation, which was invented in the 11th or 12th centuries. Transubstantiation imports Aristotelian philosophy about "substance" and "accidents". The substance is changed to the body and blood of Christ, and no more bread and wine remain. However, the accidents remain the same. I'm guessing they'd say that DNA is one of the accidents.

Lutherans believe it's wrong to go beyond what Scripture says about what happens. We believe that God promises that His true body and blood are present in the Supper, and so it must be so. The mechanism is not revealed.

I'm not sure what the East says about it. Maybe Ad Orientem could help us out.

The common thread, I think, is that the Real Presence is detected by faith, not by human means. A DNA test (in addition to being highly irreverent) would be meaningless.

As a thought experiment, let's just say that your DNA test were to come back with scientific evidence FOR the body and blood. Now put yourself back 100 years ago. You might (quite reasonably) say that since the wafer tastes like bread, that you have proven that there's nothing but bread there. But you later find out that there's another "layer of reality", so to speak, which DNA analysis reveals.

Back to reality: I think your DNA analysis would still be on a layer below what's actually happening.

Another testable proposition along the same lines might be whether or not partaking of the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner can lead to sickness and death as the Bible declares. (Does your church give that warning beforehand - it's in the Bible). This would be harder to prove of course.

All three traditions mentioned above which uphold the Real Presence DO warn about this, and forbid people who haven't been confirmed in their churches from taking communion.

There are some really-out-there exceptions in the LCMS (the biggest conservative Lutheran synod in the US), which is sad. And the liberal Lutherans, the ELCA, are very bad about this.

From the LCMS perspective, no churches other than those three in fact do have the Real Presence, because they officially declare that they don't. So people there aren't taking it unworthily, but they are missing out on it completely. We also believe that the ELCA lost the Real Presence when they declared full altar fellowship with for example Episcopalians. That's a roundabout way of declaring that they don't believe in the Real Presence.

IIRC, the Romans and Eastern Orthodox affirm each other's Real Presense. Lutherans affirm both. But I think both of those deny the Lutherans' Real Presence.

[Mountaineer]

Maria

She was baptized at 40 years old. New life in Christ came with an entirely new life for Maria.

For 39 years, she tried to prove that God does not exist. Her faith was firmly planted in logical proofs and physical explanations of the universe: “Pain is proof that God is indifferent to human suffering”. “God is nothing more than an imaginary grandfather in the sky”. “Praying to God does not heal sick people. Doctors and medicine heal sick people”. “Religion is the opiate of the masses”. “God is dead”.

In her twenties, she majored in biology and minored in chemistry. She wanted to be a scientist. After graduation, she worked briefly in a laboratory as a technician. A lifetime of menial chores such as measuring samples, charting results, and mating fruit flies was not her ideal career. Earning her doctorate would mean that Maria could have a slightly better position in the hierarchy of the laboratory.

In her thirties, she enrolled in a doctoral program to earn a terminal degree in analytical chemistry. Now she was the one telling people to mate the fruit flies and measure the chemicals. However, all she was really doing was relaying the orders from the primary investigator to the lab technicians. Nevertheless, it surprised her how much she enjoyed being off the bottom of the beaker in the laboratory.

It also surprised her how much she liked one of the other students in her program. Gabe was also studying analytical chemistry. He was different in from Maria in every imaginable way: She was loud and he was quiet. She was from the west coast and he was from the midwest. She was from a big family and he was an only child. She was an outspoken atheist and he was a committed Christian.

Maria and Gabe made an immediate personal connection. Choosing research stations as close to each other as possible, they became fast friends. And then they became more than just friends. They saw each other in the lab. And then they would see each other at the coffee shop until closing time. She went to visit Gabe’s family at Christmas time. She even went to church with the family. (But that was just to impress the family.)

The frequently talked about Christianity. Maria appreciated how Gabe gave her room to disagree and raise counterpoints. Most of the time he gave a clear and cogent response to the issues Maria raised. Occasionally he would admit he did not have a good answer or did not know. He told Maria he would get back to her after he had researched the question and had a response. Even if it were six months later, he always came back with a thoughtful response. Long after she had forgotten the question, Gabe would call her up and say: “Remember when you raised that question about the Book of Jonah? I just finished reading a book on Jonah that discussed that very question …..”

Marriage was not a part of her graduate school plans. But then again, becoming a Christian was not part of her graduate school plans either. She emphatically agreed when Gabe asked if she would be his bride. And during their engagement something else happened to Maria: she became a Christian. She came to faith in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit led her to trust in Jesus for her eternal salvation. It was a very quiet trust at first. She did not tell anyone that she had become a Christ follower. She kept it secret from her friends and parents. She even kept it a secret from her soon-to-be husband.

Gabe found out eventually. He found out when Maria was baptized. As they drove to church one Sunday, she told Gabe that she was really excited for worship that day. They arrived, and Maria led Gabe to the front row of pews. He looked in the bulletin and saw her name next to some bold words: The Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

After her baptism, Maria struggled with many questions from a lifetime of atheism. She would find an answer to one question and stumble on ten more questions. She muddled through her daily Bible reading. She would read a verse, become confused, look at the study notes in her Bible, go the verse referenced in the study notes, read that verse, become confused, and then look at the study notes. She would continue doing this until she had a headache. The next day, she would go back to the initial verse and reread it. It was always a little less confusing on the second day.

Praying was equally confounding. She tried improvised prayers. She tried praying prayers written by other people. She tried praying the Psalms. She tried praying with a specific outline. She landed on simply praying the Lord’s Prayer and adding additional prayers on to the end. Maria preferred this way of praying because it was biblically based, historically practiced, and taught by Jesus. She had researched the different options and determined the Lord’s Prayer to be a better practice than praying the Prayer of Jabez or offering up a litany of confused thoughts.

Once in worship - on Trinity Sunday - the congregation confessed the Athanasian Creed. Maria noticed that everyone around her appared a bit confused by what they were confessing. It bothered her for the rest of the day. The next day, she emailed her pastor and arranged to borrow a book on Church history. She spent the next week learning all about Athanasius, Arius, and the Trinitarian Controversy.

Maria would not remain confused. She wanted to knnow what she believed, why she believed it, and how she could rationally defend it. She always approached her scientific research in the laboratory with seriousness. Before her Baptism, Maria determined that she would always take her Christian faith with an even greater seriousness. Her rationale for this decision was cogent and clear: mating fruit flies is temporary, but knowing Jesus is eternal.

From “Being a Lutheran” by A. Trevor Sutton

... Mountaineer

[MachineGhost]

The common thread, I think, is that the Real Presence is detected by faith, not by human means. A DNA test (in addition to being highly irreverent) would be meaningless.

Are you serious? Faith is not a valid objective function for proof of anything. Faith can mean, refer to or be defined as anything you want it to mean. It's a metaphysical bottomless pit.

[Xan]

The common thread, I think, is that the Real Presence is detected by faith, not by human means. A DNA test (in addition to being highly irreverent) would be meaningless.

Are you serious? Faith is not a valid objective function for proof of anything. Faith can mean, refer to or be defined as anything you want it to mean. It's a metaphysical bottomless pit.

I didn't say it proved anything. It's just that God has said that something is true, and you either believe it or don't. If you do believe it, then you perceive the Real Presence. Not by the senses but by faith.

[curlew]

The common thread, I think, is that the Real Presence is detected by faith, not by human means. A DNA test (in addition to being highly irreverent) would be meaningless.

Are you serious? Faith is not a valid objective function for proof of anything. Faith can mean, refer to or be defined as anything you want it to mean. It's a metaphysical bottomless pit.

I have a question about the Real Presence that I have never heard asked before but I can't be the first one to do it. If the bread and wine go into the body as the the Real body and blood of Christ, then do they come out the same way?

[MachineGhost]

I didn't say it proved anything. It's just that God has said that something is true, and you either believe it or don't. If you do believe it, then you perceive the Real Presence. Not by the senses but by faith.

Oh okay, that I can grok! But I'm going to argue that just because you believe something by faith, doesn't make it literally true in a scientific sense. It's like being paranoid about extraterrestrial aliens. It's not going to stop them from coming after you...

[Mountaineer]

The common thread, I think, is that the Real Presence is detected by faith, not by human means. A DNA test (in addition to being highly irreverent) would be meaningless.

Are you serious? Faith is not a valid objective function for proof of anything. Faith can mean, refer to or be defined as anything you want it to mean. It's a metaphysical bottomless pit.

I have a question about the Real Presence that I have never heard asked before but I can't be the first one to do it. If the bread and wine go into the body as the the Real body and blood of Christ, then do they come out the same way?

curlew,

To the best of my knowledge, that question is not addressed in the Word of God (Lutherans, i.e. Christians, should not try to make up answers to questions that God has not addressed). My suggestion is for you to become a Christian, then you can ask God after the Last Day when you face Him. Or, if you do not become a Christian, you can still ask Him after the Last Day when He is judging you, if that is the most important thing to you at that point.

Best, ... Mountaineer

[curlew]

The common thread, I think, is that the Real Presence is detected by faith, not by human means. A DNA test (in addition to being highly irreverent) would be meaningless.

Are you serious? Faith is not a valid objective function for proof of anything. Faith can mean, refer to or be defined as anything you want it to mean. It's a metaphysical bottomless pit.

I didn't say it proved anything. It's just that God has said that something is true, and you either believe it or don't. If you do believe it, then you perceive the Real Presence. Not by the senses but by faith.

The only thing I can see that is "Real" about the "Real Presence" is that Christians of various denominations have Real disputes about whether they believe it or not and what it actually means. I doubt that even one Christian in a thousand could explain what it means, though a much bigger number can probably tell you whether their church believes it or not.

"The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a term used in Christian theology to express the doctrine that Jesus is really or substantially present in the Eucharist, not merely symbolically or metaphorically."

Excuse me, but if it isn't symbolic or metaphoric but "substantially present", yet it can't be measured, quantified, or even detected in what we know of as the "real" world then I have to ask in what sense it can possibly be "real", unless there is a special religious meaning of the word "real".

(Another word I've observed being used in a similar way by Christians is "error", as in there are no "errors" in the Bible - but that's an argument for another time).

[Xan]

Excuse me, but if it isn't symbolic or metaphoric but "substantially present", yet it can't be measured, quantified, or even detected in what we know of as the "real" world then I have to ask in what sense it can possibly be "real", unless there is a special religious meaning of the word "real".

I don't pretend to know what the mechanism is. It's beyond my understanding. I just trust that it is.

[MachineGhost]

Excuse me, but if it isn't symbolic or metaphoric but "substantially present", yet it can't be measured, quantified, or even detected in what we know of as the "real" world then I have to ask in what sense it can possibly be "real", unless there is a special religious meaning of the word "real".

Haven't the ghost hunters tried? They certainly capture evidence of paranormal activity, so why not this "substantially present" thingy? Yeah, I know its all "faith" but this would be a scientific way to see if there's any evidence for it.

[MachineGhost]

Excuse me, but if it isn't symbolic or metaphoric but "substantially present", yet it can't be measured, quantified, or even detected in what we know of as the "real" world then I have to ask in what sense it can possibly be "real", unless there is a special religious meaning of the word "real".

I don't pretend to know what the mechanism is. It's beyond my understanding. I just trust that it is.

Isn't that the problem? You could be trusting in something that is complete bullshit. That doesn't worry you? I mean, at the end of your life when you look back on the overview (in the afterlife), when you find out it wasn't true, aren't you going to have regrets that you wasted your life believing in what didn't exist? Or do we just chuckle and not worry about it because, well, you're dead and you're moving onto bigger and better things?

[Xan]

Excuse me, but if it isn't symbolic or metaphoric but "substantially present", yet it can't be measured, quantified, or even detected in what we know of as the "real" world then I have to ask in what sense it can possibly be "real", unless there is a special religious meaning of the word "real".

I don't pretend to know what the mechanism is. It's beyond my understanding. I just trust that it is.

Isn't that the problem? You could be trusting in something that is complete bullshit. That doesn't worry you? I mean, at the end of your life when you look back on the overview (in the afterlife), when you find out it wasn't true, aren't you going to have regrets that you wasted your life believing in what didn't exist? Or do we just chuckle and not worry about it because, well, you're dead and you're moving onto bigger and better things?

We all trust in unprovable things that might be wrong, even those of us who think they don't!

[MachineGhost]

We all trust in unprovable things that might be wrong, even those of us who think they don't!

That seems suspiciously like left wing thought as applied to religion...

[Xan]

We all trust in unprovable things that might be wrong, even those of us who think they don't!

That seems suspiciously like left wing thought as applied to religion...

How so? You may be right but I'm not sure what you're saying.

[Pointedstick]

I ran across something that spoke to me today:

https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/

Religion in the second half of life is finally not a moral matter; it’s a mystical matter. You can’t keep making all of life a question of what you’re doing, your moral proficiency and perfection. Paul calls this approach “the Law”; I call it the performance principle. Almost all of us start with a performance principle of some kind: “I’m good because I obey this commandment, because I do this kind of work, or because I belong to this group.” That’s the calculus the ego understands. The human psyche, all organizations, and governments need this kind of common sense structure to begin.

But that game has to fall apart. It has to, or it will kill you. Paul says the law leads to death (e.g., Romans 7:5ff, Galatians 3:10ff). Surprisingly, Paul has had very little effect on Christianity. This man was a radical teacher. He strongly critiqued his own religion, Judaism, for seeking salvation through the law, and then the new Christian movement for being exclusionary. Yet many Catholics I meet—religious, laity, and clergy—are still trapped inside the law, believing that by doing good things or going to church, they’re going to somehow attain worthiness or acceptance from God.

One of the only ways God can get us to let go of our private salvation project is some kind of suffering. This is why we Christians hang the cross at the center of our churches, why we kiss the cross, and why we say we’re “saved” by the cross. Yet for all this ritualization, it seems we don’t really believe what the cross teaches us—that the pattern of death and resurrection is true for us too, that we must die in a foundational way or any talk of “rebirth” makes no sense. I don’t know anything else that’s strong enough to force you and me to let go of our ego. Somehow our game has to fall apart. However we’ve defined ourselves as successful, moral, better than, right, good, on top of it, number one . . . has to fail. It just has to.

This is the point when you don’t feel holy; you feel like a failure. You don’t feel worthy; you feel very unworthy because usually you’ve sinned. When this experience of the “noonday devil” shows itself, the ego’s normal temptation is to be even stricter about following the first half of life’s rules. You think more is better, when in fact, less is more. You go back to laws and rituals instead of the always-risky fall into the ocean of mercy.

Yet that is the only path toward your larger and True Self, where you don’t need to prove yourself to God anymore; where you know, as Thomas Merton put it, it’s all “mercy within mercy within mercy.” [1] It’s not what you do for God; it’s what God has done for you. You switch from trying to love God to just letting God love you. And it’s at that point you fall in love with God. Up to now, you haven’t really loved God; you’ve largely been afraid of God. You’ve been trying to prove yourself to God. Finally, perfect love casts out all fear. As John says, “In love there can be no fear. Fear is driven out by perfect love. To fear is to still expect punishment. Anyone who is still afraid is still imperfect in the ways of love” (see 1 John 4:18).

[Xan]

I ran across something that spoke to me today:

https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/

Religion in the second half of life is finally not a moral matter; it’s a mystical matter. You can’t keep making all of life a question of what you’re doing, your moral proficiency and perfection. Paul calls this approach “the Law”; I call it the performance principle. Almost all of us start with a performance principle of some kind: “I’m good because I obey this commandment, because I do this kind of work, or because I belong to this group.” That’s the calculus the ego understands. The human psyche, all organizations, and governments need this kind of common sense structure to begin.

But that game has to fall apart. It has to, or it will kill you. Paul says the law leads to death (e.g., Romans 7:5ff, Galatians 3:10ff). Surprisingly, Paul has had very little effect on Christianity. This man was a radical teacher. He strongly critiqued his own religion, Judaism, for seeking salvation through the law, and then the new Christian movement for being exclusionary. Yet many Catholics I meet—religious, laity, and clergy—are still trapped inside the law, believing that by doing good things or going to church, they’re going to somehow attain worthiness or acceptance from God.

One of the only ways God can get us to let go of our private salvation project is some kind of suffering. This is why we Christians hang the cross at the center of our churches, why we kiss the cross, and why we say we’re “saved” by the cross. Yet for all this ritualization, it seems we don’t really believe what the cross teaches us—that the pattern of death and resurrection is true for us too, that we must die in a foundational way or any talk of “rebirth” makes no sense. I don’t know anything else that’s strong enough to force you and me to let go of our ego. Somehow our game has to fall apart. However we’ve defined ourselves as successful, moral, better than, right, good, on top of it, number one . . . has to fail. It just has to.

This is the point when you don’t feel holy; you feel like a failure. You don’t feel worthy; you feel very unworthy because usually you’ve sinned. When this experience of the “noonday devil” shows itself, the ego’s normal temptation is to be even stricter about following the first half of life’s rules. You think more is better, when in fact, less is more. You go back to laws and rituals instead of the always-risky fall into the ocean of mercy.

Yet that is the only path toward your larger and True Self, where you don’t need to prove yourself to God anymore; where you know, as Thomas Merton put it, it’s all “mercy within mercy within mercy.” [1] It’s not what you do for God; it’s what God has done for you. You switch from trying to love God to just letting God love you. And it’s at that point you fall in love with God. Up to now, you haven’t really loved God; you’ve largely been afraid of God. You’ve been trying to prove yourself to God. Finally, perfect love casts out all fear. As John says, “In love there can be no fear. Fear is driven out by perfect love. To fear is to still expect punishment. Anyone who is still afraid is still imperfect in the ways of love” (see 1 John 4:18).

PS, that speaks to me too. It sounds like a very Lutheran take on things.

[Mountaineer]

I ran across something that spoke to me today:

https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/

Religion in the second half of life is finally not a moral matter; it’s a mystical matter. You can’t keep making all of life a question of what you’re doing, your moral proficiency and perfection. Paul calls this approach “the Law”; I call it the performance principle. Almost all of us start with a performance principle of some kind: “I’m good because I obey this commandment, because I do this kind of work, or because I belong to this group.” That’s the calculus the ego understands. The human psyche, all organizations, and governments need this kind of common sense structure to begin.

But that game has to fall apart. It has to, or it will kill you. Paul says the law leads to death (e.g., Romans 7:5ff, Galatians 3:10ff). Surprisingly, Paul has had very little effect on Christianity. This man was a radical teacher. He strongly critiqued his own religion, Judaism, for seeking salvation through the law, and then the new Christian movement for being exclusionary. Yet many Catholics I meet—religious, laity, and clergy—are still trapped inside the law, believing that by doing good things or going to church, they’re going to somehow attain worthiness or acceptance from God.

One of the only ways God can get us to let go of our private salvation project is some kind of suffering. This is why we Christians hang the cross at the center of our churches, why we kiss the cross, and why we say we’re “saved” by the cross. Yet for all this ritualization, it seems we don’t really believe what the cross teaches us—that the pattern of death and resurrection is true for us too, that we must die in a foundational way or any talk of “rebirth” makes no sense. I don’t know anything else that’s strong enough to force you and me to let go of our ego. Somehow our game has to fall apart. However we’ve defined ourselves as successful, moral, better than, right, good, on top of it, number one . . . has to fail. It just has to.

This is the point when you don’t feel holy; you feel like a failure. You don’t feel worthy; you feel very unworthy because usually you’ve sinned. When this experience of the “noonday devil” shows itself, the ego’s normal temptation is to be even stricter about following the first half of life’s rules. You think more is better, when in fact, less is more. You go back to laws and rituals instead of the always-risky fall into the ocean of mercy.

Yet that is the only path toward your larger and True Self, where you don’t need to prove yourself to God anymore; where you know, as Thomas Merton put it, it’s all “mercy within mercy within mercy.” [1] It’s not what you do for God; it’s what God has done for you. You switch from trying to love God to just letting God love you. And it’s at that point you fall in love with God. Up to now, you haven’t really loved God; you’ve largely been afraid of God. You’ve been trying to prove yourself to God. Finally, perfect love casts out all fear. As John says, “In love there can be no fear. Fear is driven out by perfect love. To fear is to still expect punishment. Anyone who is still afraid is still imperfect in the ways of love” (see 1 John 4:18).

PS, that speaks to me too. It sounds like a very Lutheran take on things.

Ditto. Truly understanding that God did, does, and will do it ALL, is very freeing and comforting. We are free to love others as God loves us.

... Mountaineer

[MachineGhost]

Yet that is the only path toward your larger and True Self, where you don’t need to prove yourself to God anymore; where you know, as Thomas Merton put it, it’s all “mercy within mercy within mercy.” [1] It’s not what you do for God; it’s what God has done for you. You switch from trying to love God to just letting God love you. And it’s at that point you fall in love with God. Up to now, you haven’t really loved God; you’ve largely been afraid of God. You’ve been trying to prove yourself to God. Finally, perfect love casts out all fear. As John says, “In love there can be no fear. Fear is driven out by perfect love. To fear is to still expect punishment. Anyone who is still afraid is still imperfect in the ways of love” (see 1 John 4:18).

Replace "God" above with __________________ and it has exactly the same effect (cognitive bias).

BTW, after going on an orgy of watching nature documentaries that I've never been interested in before, two things have become starkly evident and dispelled any and all notions about a "magical experience" of nature: 1) There is obviously no "God" in any way shape or form imagined by any of the world dominant religions; 2) The objective function of life is simple: it is simply to breed; everything about surviving is in accordance with this objective function, i.e. staying alive long enough to get to the point of breeding and then protecting the end result, only to repeat the agony all over again, ad infinitum. And don't get eaten alive along the way!!! Hence, sexual selection and natural selection (i.e. evolution) occur as indirect end results of the this objective function. I paraphrase Hobbes: nasty, brutish and short.

[Maddy]

God won't violate His justice nor His promises.  The wages of sin is death.  We were told that before the Fall and chose to do it anyway.  That can't just be hand-waved away.  Fortunately for us, God Himself chose to come down and bear the penalty on our behalf!

As for having "other people" forgive us instead of God, are you talking about a priest forgiving at confession, or other people in general?  At least in the Lutheran world, part of the rite of private confession is "Do you believe that my forgiveness is God's forgiveness?", and in corporate confession, it goes something like, "In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins" (emphasis added).  So in that case, the pastor's forgiveness IS God's forgiveness.

I've often contemplated why the issue of forgiveness is so central a tenet--for precisely the reasons you articulate. However, if you consider that one of the principal preoccupations of human beings as they go through life is to escape the shame of past failings and to come to terms with the impossibility of going back and wiping the slate clean, the "sin/forgiveness" archetype makes sense.

[Xan]

God won't violate His justice nor His promises.  The wages of sin is death.  We were told that before the Fall and chose to do it anyway.  That can't just be hand-waved away.  Fortunately for us, God Himself chose to come down and bear the penalty on our behalf!

As for having "other people" forgive us instead of God, are you talking about a priest forgiving at confession, or other people in general?  At least in the Lutheran world, part of the rite of private confession is "Do you believe that my forgiveness is God's forgiveness?", and in corporate confession, it goes something like, "In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins" (emphasis added).  So in that case, the pastor's forgiveness IS God's forgiveness.

I've often contemplated why the issue of forgiveness is so central a tenet--for precisely the reasons you articulate. However, if you consider that one of the principal preoccupations of human beings as they go through life is to escape the shame of past failings and to come to terms with the impossibility of going back and wiping the slate clean, the "sin/forgiveness" archetype makes sense.

A pastor once told me that a non-religious psychologist (or psychiatrist or something) told him that if he could convince people to let their mistakes and those of others stay in the past, that most of their problems would vanish.

[curlew]

God won't violate His justice nor His promises.  The wages of sin is death.  We were told that before the Fall and chose to do it anyway.  That can't just be hand-waved away.

That's an interesting theological concept that "We" were warned before the fall and made a choice to do it any way. As I believe I said to Mountaineer a few posts ago, I wasn't there and neither were you, unless you believe in the pre-existence of souls. What kind of justice is it for the wrath of God to abide on all of humanity for all of eternity because two people named Adam and Eve were tempted by a snake and disobeyed God?

Having just posted to MachineGhost's thread about the irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm left wondering if maybe this isn't the mother of all irrational beliefs.

[Xan]

God won't violate His justice nor His promises.  The wages of sin is death.  We were told that before the Fall and chose to do it anyway.  That can't just be hand-waved away.

That's an interesting theological concept that "We" were warned before the fall and made a choice to do it any way. As I believe I said to Mountaineer a few posts ago, I wasn't there and neither were you, unless you believe in the pre-existence of souls. What kind of justice is it for the wrath of God to abide on all of humanity for all of eternity because two people named Adam and Eve were tempted by a snake and disobeyed God?

Having just posted to MachineGhost's thread about the irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm left wondering if maybe this isn't the mother of all irrational beliefs.

That event was the cause of sinfulness entering humanity. We all inherited it. And look around! Aren't we turned in on ourselves? Don't we want to be, and think of ourselves, as God?