Honesty

[James_Lai]

Because society rejects God and Christianity I am constantly being challenged by article, programes in the media and having to examine what I believe.

Faith is not a leap into the dark but an acceptance of what can be shown to be true.

example, Jesus rose from the dead. If you have a reasonable explaination I would cease to be a Christian. The reverse is true for you, why are you not a Christian if you cannot prove Jesus didn't rise from the dead.

How about some information that can never be shown to be true or untrue? Do you question it? For example, what happens after death.

 

[Martinius]

if you don’t think dogmatic approach is necessary for religion, then is there anything that’s beyond question to you? If so, why? At which point can you stop your quest and be satisfied or what doctrines or which of the ideas you accept by faith do not deserve similar level of scrutiny as, say, amount of veneration of the blessed Mary?

Marvelous questions. The answer to the first question, "is there anything that's beyond question?", is no. Not to me. Everything is open to question. Questioning does not mean denying or disagreeing with something; rather, it means being open to looking at every facet, every view point, all the data, all the evidence. Questioning is inquiring and wondering, thinking and reasoning. It is essential to advancing knowledge.

"At which point can you stop your quest?" There is no such point. Life itself is a quest, one which I don't expect to ever finish.

As to the level of scrutiny, it varies by the doctrine. For example, there are lists of Catholic doctrines that contain around 250 items. Some are obvious, many are incomprehensible. But a "good" Catholic is expected to believe (or at least not openly deny) them all. Most are not essential to our faith and have little to do with what Jesus commands of us in the Gospels. Regarding Mary, people can venerate her as much or as little as they like; veneration in itself is not a doctrine that I am aware of.

People explain to me the idea of God. It sounds pretty anthropomorphic… OK I accept God as this “superhuman” not bound by space and time with supreme but still human-like abilities. Then I’m thinking, does He really have to be like us? Why do we assign our humanity to Him? In a very expanded way, of course.

This specific question was not addressed to me, but was contained in a post similar to the one I responded to above. Yes, we have created an image of God that is anthropomorphic. We cannot truly know God; that knowledge is beyond our limited human abilities and intellect. And God is not like us, although much of the Hebrew scriptures present God that way: Jealous, angry, vain, inconsistent, often petty. These and many other human qualities humans have assigned to the Deity.

Paul Tillich called God "The Ground of Being". God is beyond the finite realm. And mankind is definitely finite. Raimundo Panikkar said that "No one can either control God or know God. God is incapable of being…reduced to an object, to an experience of."

I think the problem we all have is that we need or want to have an "image" of God; we are very uncomfortable with a blank slate. We want to make God into a being, a supreme one, and we want God to be in a place, heaven, although we cannot say what and where heaven is. We want to give God qualities, and since the only qualities we know are human ones, that is what we assign to the Deity.

One could take Tillich's idea and change it to say that God is "a State of Being", one that is totally different from any "state" that we can understand or even detect. Certainly nothing like our human and temporal state here on earth.

 

[Sketcher]

Faith in one thing and doubt in another. I understand. How about the teachings you accept by faith without any doubt? Do you revisit them, as reviewing to be true or not?

I've revisited a few things, same basic conclusion, but better underpinnings.

Just to give you an example. People explain to me the idea of God. It sounds pretty anthropomorphic… OK I accept God as this “super human” not bound by space and time with supreme but still human-like abilities. Then I’m thinking, does He really have to be like us? Why do we assign our humanity to Him? In a very expanded way, of course. So I always question everything. It’s really hard for me to accept any idea as the one and only and the final truth, an axiom.

A few things to keep in mind about what we teach about God as you explore this:

• God is a Person, but far greater and more complex than human. Jesus of course came in human flesh, but there is the greatness of the Father, and the Holy Spirit's presence and work, and how hard the Trinity is to really understand. The more I think about that, the less I see God as some glorified superman.
• God gave us our humanity, though it became corrupted later. So the personal qualities we see in God are actually a bit of a backwards view - he gave us the Imago Dei, making us in his image. We are lesser of course, he is more of a Person than any of us is, in a sense - yet holy and not corrupted like we are. We can use our humanity to understand certain concepts of God and his relationship to us, but we shouldn't go too far with it. Projecting on another human being is bad enough, let alone projecting on God.

Even in science, I read a textbook or talk to a specialist in a field and sometimes see dogmatism. It’s okay to say this is what we propose, but it’s another thing to be certain it’s the way it is and to outright reject whatever is in disagreement with the accepted and established postulates.

It sure can feel that way when people don't see the process and everything that was looked at. That being said, I don't think certain discoveries are going away.

So going back to the idea of God, what if we are wrong. Or in our model of God, what if He’s a God of the solar system only for example. Or of the Milky Galaxy only.

That's closer to a Mormon view of God, from my understanding. They teach that good enough Mormons get to be gods over their own planets someday. Christianity rejects this of course.

To answer your question, there's too many variables for one "for sure" answer. If God were to be only some sort of regional God, one could claim that we would still be under his domain, and subject to his standards and at his mercy. Or one could suggest that there's another god somewhere else whom we would be under instead at some point in the future. But you would then need to go back to how that all got set up, and who would have set that up.

In most if the OT, God was the only force in the Universe, later on the Jewish thought and much more so the Christian thought switched to good vs evil, God vs Satan dualism, which worked better to explained human suffering. What if in reality, if we accept the dualist nature of the supernatural spiritual world, what if God and Satan are more or less equal forces? Like in Zoroastrianism. And what if there won’t be a final battle where the good wins once and for all?

If that were the case, I would think one would need to be firmly on one side or the other. And if we're going to do that, then consider how God told us to treat each other in the Ten Commandments:

Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet anything that is your neighbor's.

Now, if people are going to firmly pick the other side, that would obligate them to do things more like this:

Dishonor your father and your mother.
Commit murder.
Commit adultery.
Steal.
Bear false witness against your neighbor.
Covet anything and everything that belongs to your neighbor.

When we have people firmly on the side of doing the opposite of the last six commandments, we have a world that I don't want to live in.

So it’s not so much about separating what is more fundamental truth and what is a dependancy or falsely imagined dependancy. It’s more about approaching all doctrines within faith with intellectual honesty of “let’s scrutinize everything”.

You're exploring, so that's more of where you're at. When it comes to faith decisions though, that's where the dependencies come in. To accept it or reject it.

 

[disciple Clint]

So could be true about other religions? Some exist even longer, or similar period of time.

Do any of them have a savior that died and then came back from the dead? Now very simply if the Gospels were false, one: there were people still alive who would have declared them as false and two: people would not suffer the kind of deaths they did when they simply could have said, "its not true, we made it up, dont torture me" but that didn't happen did it?

 

[FutureAndAHope]

Thank you. Miracles in your life, could you tell what they are?

Some of them are mentioned at Everybody Matters Ministry | Online Church but there are more than that. But that site will give a basic idea of some of them.

 

[James_Lai]

Do any of them have a savior that died and then came back from the dead? Now very simply if the Gospels were false, one: there were people still alive who would have declared them as false and two: people would not suffer the kind of deaths they did when they simply could have said,
"its not true, we made it up, dont torture me" but that didn't happen did it?

Technically speaking, according to the Scriptures Jesus was not resurrected, i.e. brought back to life in the same physical body. He was transformed into a new, heavenly glorified (supernatural, non-physical, spiritual, transcended) form. We can see that from His ascension to the rigid cold and almost airless stratosphere or immortality. Jesus wasn’t the only one in the Bible to experience such postmortem transformation. Enoch, Elijah, Moses also existed in energetic bodies after death. On the Mount of Transfiguration Elijah and Moses appeared in a form identical to Jesus’ form after death.

Founders of other religions are said to have experienced in exactly the same manner a transformation into an energetic body upon their deaths. It’s just not worded in those terms as in Christianity. However, in essence we see the same kind of event happening to them as well. So we can say they resurrected, too.

It’s actually very interesting, as people assign unique abilities to religious figures both in life and in death as a sign of their higher status to us, mere mortals.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Why? What’s the point of religion if it’s only concerned with the material? Then we can ditch it and stay with science

We need to learn to walk before we can run.

John 3:12
"If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?"

 

[James_Lai]

We need to learn to walk before we can run.

John 3:12
"If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?"

Yes, but the purpose is eventually to set on a marathon, not to remain perpetual walkers?

 

[James_Lai]

Some of them are mentioned at Everybody Matters Ministry | Online Church but there are more than that. But that site will give a basic idea of some of them.

Thank you, indeed very interesting! I don’t see miracles there, though. I’m happy for all those people nevertheless for the positive events in their lives.

 

[Martinius]

How about some information that can never be shown to be true or untrue? Do you question it? For example, what happens after death.

We don't know, we can only guess. It seems that every religion supposes some state of being after physical death, such as the continuance of the soul, or entering into another plane of existence, or being resurrected into a "new body". The answer may be nothingness, or it may be something we can't even imagine.

 

[disciple Clint]

Technically speaking, according to the Scriptures Jesus was not resurrected, i.e. brought back to life in the same physical body. He was transformed into a new, heavenly glorified (supernatural, non-physical, spiritual, transcended) form. We can see that from His ascension to the rigid cold and almost airless stratosphere or immortality. Jesus wasn’t the only one in the Bible to experience such postmortem transformation. Enoch, Elijah, Moses also existed in energetic bodies after death. On the Mount of Transfiguration Elijah and Moses appeared in a form identical to Jesus’ form after death.

Founders of other religions are said to have experienced in exactly the same manner a transformation into an energetic body upon their deaths. It’s just not worded in those terms as in Christianity. However, in essence we see the same kind of event happening to them as well. So we can say they resurrected, too.

It’s actually very interesting, as people assign unique abilities to religious figures both in life and in death as a sign of their higher status to us, mere mortals.

I believe a review of the Gospels will indicate that Jesus was in fact resurrected in a human body and still has that human body today.

 

[James_Lai]

Marvelous questions. The answer to the first question, "is there anything that's beyond question?", is no. Not to me. Everything is open to question. Questioning does not mean denying or disagreeing with something; rather, it means being open to looking at every facet, every view point, all the data, all the evidence. Questioning is inquiring and wondering, thinking and reasoning. It is essential to advancing knowledge.

"At which point can you stop your quest?" There is no such point. Life itself is a quest, one which I don't expect to ever finish.

As to the level of scrutiny, it varies by the doctrine. For example, there are lists of Catholic doctrines that contain around 250 items. Some are obvious, many are incomprehensible. But a "good" Catholic is expected to believe (or at least not openly deny) them all. Most are not essential to our faith and have little to do with what Jesus commands of us in the Gospels. Regarding Mary, people can venerate her as much or as little as they like; veneration in itself is not a doctrine that I am aware of.


This specific question was not addressed to me, but was contained in a post similar to the one I responded to above. Yes, we have created an image of God that is anthropomorphic. We cannot truly know God; that knowledge is beyond our limited human abilities and intellect. And God is not like us, although much of the Hebrew scriptures present God that way: Jealous, angry, vain, inconsistent, often petty. These and many other human qualities humans have assigned to the Deity.

Paul Tillich called God "The Ground of Being". God is beyond the finite realm. And mankind is definitely finite. Raimundo Panikkar said that "No one can either control God or know God. God is incapable of being…reduced to an object, to an experience of."

I think the problem we all have is that we need or want to have an "image" of God; we are very uncomfortable with a blank slate. We want to make God into a being, a supreme one, and we want God to be in a place, heaven, although we cannot say what and where heaven is. We want to give God qualities, and since the only qualities we know are human ones, that is what we assign to the Deity.

One could take Tillich's idea and change it to say that God is "a State of Being", one that is totally different from any "state" that we can understand or even detect. Certainly nothing like our human and temporal state here on earth.

Very interesting, thank you.

Then my follow up question or a request for clarification would be as follows. At this point of time, the things that you believe true about God, Jesus, the devil, angelic and demonic beings, people, yourself, your present and future, the Scripture - I’m interested mostly from a theological i.e. spiritual or religious perspective, do you at any time doubt if anything you hold as true by faith could be untrue? You say you examine everything and no teaching is beyond objective and honest investigation. How about the existence of God, for example? Creation? The Scripture inspired by God for the purpose of educating us about the path to secure a better outcome in the afterlife, about salvation of the soul? These are just general examples and I’m not stating it’s how you believe. Or any other fundamental and important theological ideas? I’m only talking about the doctrines you absolutely hold as true, you believe in, not those you don’t believe in or are researching to come to accept or reject. I’m not so interested in less important teachings or purely historic details, e.g. on what day Jesus was crucified.

About God being a projected image of ourselves, I totally agree that it probably stems from the kind of mind we’re equipped with and our experiences. We look at clouds and see people, animals, trees. Or in poetry we say about the fall it’s a season of sadness when the rain is the heavens crying or the spring being happy and waking up from sleep, the melting snow streams singing joyful songs to life.

My point was, isn’t the fact of religious or even non-religious teachings being limited to our own way to see the world screams we could be completely wrong? Kind of suspicious. I’m not saying it’s an automatic conclusion, but a red flag maybe?

 

[James_Lai]

We don't know, we can only guess. It seems that every religion supposes some state of being after physical death, such as the continuance of the soul, or entering into another plane of existence, or being resurrected into a "new body". The answer may be nothingness, or it may be something we can't even imagine.

I agree. The point of the question was to look at a teaching that’s accepted by faith as true. If you’re agnostic on the subject or are in some stages of considering different possibilities, then you don’t have faith in this matter and my question doesn’t apply

 

[James_Lai]

I believe a review of the Gospels will indicate that Jesus was in fact resurrected in a human body and still has that human body today.

Regular human body dies. Jesus Christ is immortal and ascended into Heaven to sit at the right-hand side of God the Father’s throne. Jesus could teleport from one location to another, He was staying alive in the stratosphere. So His resurrected body may look or feel to touch like a regular human body, but in fact it definitely isn’t. Paul explicitly says it was a different kind of body, a glorified one. When Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus, he just got his old body quickened, resuscitated. He had a prolonged NDE.