All we can offer each other is the gift of ourselves. I can't speak in regard to your personal quest, only the history of my own, and I simply have to trust that whatever is important or valuable to you will resonate and the rest will be discarded.
If my own faith consists in anything, it is a reverence for the force that was in Christ and other men and women whose lives were profoundly changed by their commitment and adoration of Goodness and Virtue, not as a tepid desire, but as the focus of their lives, embodied in whatever form of God they chose to worship. Moral relativists will say this is nonsense, but, with a few exceptions, courage, compassion, fidelity, generosity, restraint, tolerance and forgiveness are universal values, esteemed by most cultures.
For the most part, I believe many Christian churches have betrayed the intense radical urgency of Jesus' desire to see the whole world transfigured by love and the justice of God. They have betrayed Christ by becoming bourgeoisie, exclusive, and obsessed with private emotion at the expense of social, political and economic justice. I also think they focus too heavily on the God of yesterday by obsessing about the Bible, which was written for illiterate people who lived in tribes and thought the sun revolved around the earth. Of course, Christ's being and Christ's message is eternal and universal, but, imo, the Bible has become a false idol and a graven image of the people who read it, rather than God.
I am more interested in the God of tomorrow, not the God of yesterday. We are all called to embody "Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven" and that should be the focus of our attention and efforts.
I believe that we, like Christ, are created to incarnate the "divine" on earth by making a total gift of ourselves to love. That is what both Joey and I are trying to do, from our own perspectives and understanding. Of course there is always a touch of ego involved in these things, but the motivating force is a sincere desire to be of service in some way to a person in need.
What has always struck me is that God seems to appear to people when they finally "give up". Jesus certainly surrendered to God at the point in his agony when His Father was absent. The Buddha roamed around for years experimenting with different ways to find God...austerity,prayer, service,etc....then gave up the search, sat down under a tree and BAM.
I've never had any religious experiences so maybe I haven't quite given up. But, you know what? Ive also given up on doubt. If I am worshipping a hope, a dream, and an illusion, so be it.
If my own faith consists in anything, it is a reverence for the force that was in Christ and other men and women whose lives were profoundly changed by their commitment and adoration of Goodness and Virtue, not as a tepid desire, but as the focus of their lives, embodied in whatever form of God they chose to worship. Moral relativists will say this is nonsense, but, with a few exceptions, courage, compassion, fidelity, generosity, restraint, tolerance and forgiveness are universal values, esteemed by most cultures.
For the most part, I believe many Christian churches have betrayed the intense radical urgency of Jesus' desire to see the whole world transfigured by love and the justice of God. They have betrayed Christ by becoming bourgeoisie, exclusive, and obsessed with private emotion at the expense of social, political and economic justice. I also think they focus too heavily on the God of yesterday by obsessing about the Bible, which was written for illiterate people who lived in tribes and thought the sun revolved around the earth. Of course, Christ's being and Christ's message is eternal and universal, but, imo, the Bible has become a false idol and a graven image of the people who read it, rather than God.
I am more interested in the God of tomorrow, not the God of yesterday. We are all called to embody "Thy Will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven" and that should be the focus of our attention and efforts.
I believe that we, like Christ, are created to incarnate the "divine" on earth by making a total gift of ourselves to love. That is what both Joey and I are trying to do, from our own perspectives and understanding. Of course there is always a touch of ego involved in these things, but the motivating force is a sincere desire to be of service in some way to a person in need.
What has always struck me is that God seems to appear to people when they finally "give up". Jesus certainly surrendered to God at the point in his agony when His Father was absent. The Buddha roamed around for years experimenting with different ways to find God...austerity,prayer, service,etc....then gave up the search, sat down under a tree and BAM.
I've never had any religious experiences so maybe I haven't quite given up. But, you know what? Ive also given up on doubt. If I am worshipping a hope, a dream, and an illusion, so be it.
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