A loving God?

Whats wrong with a small \"Holy War\"?

Jon wrote:

Whats wrong with a small \"Holy War\"?

Is there such a thing as a small holy war? :blink:

Views on G/god/'s are always interesting to me. My cousin who is more like an older brother or close uncle to me as he is quite a bit older and whom I respect a great deal as he is very intelligent. We had some philosophical talks and one time I asked him, \"Do you really think God sits on a throne in heaven with long hair and flowing beard and all those angels singing his praises for ever and ever?\" He replied, \"Damn right I do, and that is the way it is.\" That ended the discussion as I find this ludicrous and totally hilarious. If he saw this he'd say boy God's gonna smite you and throw you straight to hell when you die for not believing in him.

I just cant believe it 'cause I have found myself in sublime states of gnosis on several occasions. Once when I was 19 (just about the time they invented dirt, just kidding I ain't that old :woohoo: ) I had a vision that the truth of things and God was hidden in plain view via numbers. I saw a huge number line (many other people have had this same vision it turns out) and I realized that, All is nothing and nothing is all. I didn't really understand zen and in particular Dzogchen until many many years later. Instead I looked at the mystery of the number Zero and man it is DEEP, zero has all it's own rules and many rules are made just for it and if you want the whole truth and nothing but, the truth.... It is a mathematical fact that if you add all the numbers together you will indeed get the answer of Zero.

This can be expounded further by noting in Genesis and other creationist texts that In The beginning God was alone and nothing else existed (in this I assume God as some thought-form... not sure though). Some postulate that he/she/it searched his expanse and found no end to himself and no beginning (much like zero the center and spawner of all negative and positive numbers) so he (I am going to use he from this point on to make it easier to write) centralized himself as much as possible to look inward toward his innermost point, now the circle with a dot in it's center is formed and the first point or primus or prime or primal awareness was spawned then with the circle and it's center you now have two things then two things grouped together equals a whole different third thing or it could be fractioned and from there on ad infinitum. The point is that once he went from limitless empty to limitless empty with a full centralized point of self reference all things sprung from there........ MTFBWY

And thanks for causing me spill my thoughts out.

It should've read \"And thanks for causing me TO spill my thoughts out.\"

I had to finish with a follow up, (I lost myself in my own banter) No, god is not a loving god anymore than you are a loving god to the cells, viruses, bacteria, and atoms that make up you own body yet, the cells and such in your body depend on you and the body depends on them can you see where I am going with this much like the river Tao story, \"My belief on connection to the Force\" posted by Innocence_Lost.

How liberating it feels not to fear being burned at the stake. :side:

I am glad I found this topic today. I went to church with my girlfriend, and her family, on sunday. Normally it is like pulling teeth to get me to go. I felt that I needed to be there, and sure enough the sermon was this exact topic.

The pastor has been working in churches in this area for the last forty or fifty years. He is a decent enough man, but his sermons are the complete opposite of what I think religion should be. \"If you don't have the blood of christ in your heart, you will burn for all eternity!\"

While I'm sure that Jesus wants to rule with fear, (hahaha) the people who preach his word most certainly don't have a problem with it. Time and time again I have been to this church, each with the same result, the congregation leaves scared, paranoid, and typically not happy.

No, I don't think that G/god/'s ( saw that in one of the other posts, and thought it would be appropriate), based on a religion of love, would want to send people to hell. As I was not raised religious this is the one thing I always thought was way out of line.

On the Holy war thing, there is no small war. Of any kind. I am glad we have the ability to see these things, it goes to show how much the Force can shape our lives. From the everyday mundane, to the great and wonderful beyond!

MTFBWY

KieranHalcyon wrote:

I am glad I found this topic today. I went to church with my girlfriend, and her family, on sunday. Normally it is like pulling teeth to get me to go. I felt that I needed to be there, and sure enough the sermon was this exact topic.

The pastor has been working in churches in this area for the last forty or fifty years. He is a decent enough man, but his sermons are the complete opposite of what I think religion should be. \"If you don't have the blood of christ in your heart, you will burn for all eternity!\"

While I'm sure that Jesus wants to rule with fear, (hahaha) the people who preach his word most certainly don't have a problem with it. Time and time again I have been to this church, each with the same result, the congregation leaves scared, paranoid, and typically not happy.

No, I don't think that G/god/'s ( saw that in one of the other posts, and thought it would be appropriate), based on a religion of love, would want to send people to hell. As I was not raised religious this is the one thing I always thought was way out of line.

On the Holy war thing, there is no small war. Of any kind. I am glad we have the ability to see these things, it goes to show how much the Force can shape our lives. From the everyday mundane, to the great and wonderful beyond!

MTFBWY

Just to re-itterate the views...

A Loving God Would Not Force Billions of People to Hell, Would He?

I would suggest the following view:

Would a loving God force people to spend eternity with Him?

Or perhaps this is a better way to look at it:
Do you Love your Children? Do you punish them when they are bad? But you still Love them right?

Do you remember the part that roughly said..... one of our lifetimes is but a twinkling in his eye. I think that writer was more in tune with what God was than most of the writers in the bible.

And if you are god and all things were created by you necessarily from you and must thereby be or once was part of you. That must be where the nonsensical, \"If your left hand offends thee then cast it off\" came from as if you are god of your hand and need to punish it to teach it a lesson?

I still find it comical. I really do not intend to offend or have others question their faith and I will take leave of this topic although I find it interesting... I have spoken my piece and will quietly watch for awhile.

One thought came to mind; how can anyone enjoy the loving presence of God if they are not able to appreciate or understand that?

\"Greater Love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.\" (Jn 15,13)

\"Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou logest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.\" (Ruth 1,16)

What you don`t possess you cannot give! To recognise Love someone has to know what that love feels like. To give Love someone has to have recieved that Love. To appreciate God`s loving presence is a constantly dynamic expansive movement out of our limits or understanding by first loving in the small things. The more we grow in our Love the more we enjoy His. His limitless Love gives room for our \"trial and error\" Love to find more space. This is nothing more than a relationship, and how can any relationship be forced. Would punishment on the other hand not only set up limits forcing the recipiant to stand still or reciprocate? Which child understands the motives of a parent`s repromand? They would only know where to go, what the consequences are, and how to act in the future.

Punishing children is a teaching tool, not eternal damnation.

DK

On one side, a person could pose that punishing children is fleeting in the time that it consumes. The child learns its lesson, and then goes on to live with that lesson in mind.(or at least that is the ideal situation) If God were to punish with eternal damnation, that gives no \"second chance\" after we have empirically been taught a lesson.

On the other side of things, an equally understandable one, what is to us a very long lifetime in some instances, it could be argued that we have many chances to choose God's righteous path. However, we must do so without any physical evidence, and rather faith, which, also so happens to be the huge basis of the Christian religion.

I would say that if one is truly Christian, then there would be no matter debating this topic, because faith is a factor for them. The other side, of a non-Christian background wouldnt have a Christian faith, and so therefor the arguments made would stand very stable.

In short, Christians arguments will always be undeniable, because of the belief that is relative to them, and the other side will also have an undeniable argument, when looked at it from that logic.

My question when it comes to the idea of God being all-loving, would be that of damnation for those who have never even witnessed any form of God. Look at all the millions of people over the world who grow up in third world countries, or within countries where no one even knows anything about Christianity, and these people have absolutely no influence, or even chance of choosing to follow God's path. Are they immediately damned from the start? We are still humans after all, and beings of our environment, if we never have a chance to witness God's light, then should we be damned for living in the only shade we have ever known, and moreover, in some situations, the shade that we have been taught since infancy is right in every way?

Thats my question for the topic.