I cannot be saved

[ThinkerThinker]

Existential1, let’s say you are right and believing is something I already do. You then go on to say we experiment, design and alter turn the key and see what happens; if there’s the light you’ve hit the jackpot and there you have faith in God

So, it still depends on my mental attitude. The level of experimentation I can or cannot do, the level of design skill I am capable off all determine what I put together and if, when I switch it on, it flies or not. My critical mind leads to an inability to incorporate components I simply do not believe will amount to anything. So if my reasoning dooms me to failure. My reasoning has to change but it cannot because it is its own problem. It’s like asking a car to fix itself

If salvation is a matter of what you value then how do I value something I do not believe in?

If belief is a matter of courage then how do I know which belief to be courageous about?

IF Faith is a matter of sacrifice how do I know whom to sacrifice myself too?

The moment you answer these you will have to being reason into the equation and we are back to my question.

 

[Existential1]

I am not you, and you are not me.
Nothing that sustains one of us, need transfer as something required in sustaining the other.
What we share can be something other than what sustains either of us.
We can be as space-suited walkers, in an ether: where what we share is of the ether; and not of the technologies of our suiting.

What you can have, by way of reasoning or feeling: you must have the circuitry to engender and sustain; you cannot have what you do not have the sustaining circuitry for.

But, faith and salvation, all that is grounded in God, and for many of us in Jesus: has to do with our relation to the ether, the exigent ground of our epigenesis; where God is our moment of final approach to submersion in that ether, where we die absolutely to who we have been in this approach.

Everyhting has been in-house, in you: everything has been, and inescapably always is; a renegotiation of our absolute epigenesis.
We have arisen in God through faith: we take that epigentical process, which is never anyhting other than us, back as ours; we recover our origons in God, we are redeemed to again be in epigentical moment, we are reborn with a clarity as to faith.

If reasoning arises as central for you: then you must recover the grounds of reasoning; what is it, as an epigentical action, that you are about in having recourse to reasoning.
Perhaps to do this, you must go to where you can consider the alternates to reasoning.
At some point, if the faith God epigeneis is to become yours, then you must die to this impulse to reasoning, while consumating the resolution of exigency which first gave it apparent necessity.
Ultimately this is an event of absolutely personal epigentical gymnastics.
When we talk of these actions, we talk of moments, not of structural changes of life habits: where, in the eternal having capacity to existentially become nested in the temporal; I see a moment of faith emotion, what Jesus might have called love, being able to consumate a whole universe of reasoning.
Jesus burned in innovative circuitry, enabling reasoning and feeling, that again might best be called love: love of God, love of neighbour, love of self; where it is this love, which is existential and ontological action, which characterises Jesus.
Eventually, the answer to your questioning is Jesus: where to catch in to where you find yourself; you migh have to explore, and make your own, the reasoning that is reported as that of Jesus. Where crucial in this exploration: is understanding the moments where your reason sees you extending existentially and ontologically into God and your neighbour, where this reasoning begins to have qualities where you would allow the term love.
So, the one word answer to you questioning is love. Where the first place to go to, might be to where you find love in yourself.
Do not be despondent if it cannot be found straightaway: I think we have all found that to be the case at first; and many of us have had to wait until another loves us, before we find the love in ourselves.

Your capacity to reason is very powerful.

Existential1, let’s say you are right and believing is something I already do. You then go on to say we experiment, design and alter turn the key and see what happens; if there’s the light you’ve hit the jackpot and there you have faith in God

So, it still depends on my mental attitude. The level of experimentation I can or cannot do, the level of design skill I am capable off all determine what I put together and if, when I switch it on, it flies or not. My critical mind leads to an inability to incorporate components I simply do not believe will amount to anything. So if my reasoning dooms me to failure. My reasoning has to change but it cannot because it is its own problem. It’s like asking a car to fix itself

If salvation is a matter of what you value then how do I value something I do not believe in?

If belief is a matter of courage then how do I know which belief to be courageous about?

IF Faith is a matter of sacrifice how do I know whom to sacrifice myself too?

The moment you answer these you will have to being reason into the equation and we are back to my question.

 

[ThinkerThinker]

So, the one word answer to you questioning is love. Where the first place to go to, might be to where you find love in yourself.
Do not be despondent if it cannot be found straightaway: I think we have all found that to be the case at first; and many of us have had to wait until another loves us, before we find the love in ourselves.

Your capacity to reason is very powerful.

All very well said, Existential. But, I once was lost and then found Jesus, it changed my life in every possible way imaginable. I did, as you might say, fly. I devoted my entire existence to God and his works. It fulfilled needs long struggled with and I was happy and content. And in this contentment I had an insatiable hunger to learn more of this new found reality.

And the more I learned the more I questioned and the more a questioned and found answers the less I believed until I was left with one single thought: "I believe there is a God" And then that point became: "I believe in the probability of God" and the statistical probability became a tiny speck. So I cannot be saved because I've been there.

What I learned from my experience is invaluable but I cannot see it other than a part of the process of becoming mature. I cannot go back and have the same faith because I have unquestionably destroyed all arguments that sustained that faith and moved on. I am still content, still happy, still growing ... but further away. There is no compelling reason or argument for turning back. When I look back I can only say that I am glad I experienced religion for it fulfilled needs in a time when I was still confused but now I have clarity.

 

[Existential1]

I do not believe there is a God.

I believe in the living word of God.

I have faith, that all things arise through faith: and that the living word gives way of mastering this faith nexus.

I meet almost all others, in the self they have, and they life they live: as generally being concerned with things other than God, other than living word.
I meet some people who are genuinely concerned with faith: not as doctrine or orthodoxy; but as a metabolism of occurrence.

What I do is not directed at laying out any final metaphysic, but simply with meeting this traffic of faith and not faith: in remaining with my neighbours; but seeking out truth in each moment of this.

Reasoning, thinking, feeling, is all just underlying machinery in this: where it is faith capacity that I seek; where that entails a degree of reliance on providence, that if I exhaust in integrity, then God will speak through me.

What I'm driving at, is the extent to which reasoning, while powerful, remains a lower level housework functionality: it is not a vehicle which can move where faith can, nor does it have the processing capacity that faith must.

Imagine faith was the computing process of the latest computers, and reasoning was the mainframes of the eighties: if what sjould be being run as faith, gets dropped down to be run on the mainframes; then it will go through the sequential degradations you speak of.

Personally, I have no time for salvation, and little patience with doctrine which emphasises it; though its simply not important enough to argue about.

Everyhting about God and faith is about process.
What faith fruits are you getting?
What God process are you running?
The metaphysics of religion are generally misleading.
Religion should be about existential and ontological mechanicing: religion should just be a sequence of existential and ontological workshops.
The salvation merchants are doing something else. I think they are like the money changers. They don't really have any product. They have nothing in stock, or that they can do, that manifests God truth, here and know: so they have built this alternative sale pitch, with this ersatz product.
Jesus, by all accounts, was not like that. He spoke and was the living word: and through the living word he so handed out, people saw God manifested, experienced a living God as grounding their own very being; so they followed him.
That is just astounding. This guy appears: manifests God; awakens God as our father, and in us: and we leave what we were previously about, and we follow him.
I find that just astounding.
I simply see no connection, none whatsoever, between this walking talking Jesus miracle, and the purveyors of salvation.

People who cannot restrain their powers of reasoning, bear a cross: a cross that denies them complaceny avaialable to others; they must simply press on, to ever higher reasonings: where I see no reason to deny those reasonings the name faith.

All very well said, Existential. But, I once was lost and then found Jesus, it changed my life in every possible way imaginable. I did, as you might say, fly. I devoted my entire existence to God and his works. It fulfilled needs long struggled with and I was happy and content. And in this contentment I had an insatiable hunger to learn more of this new found reality.

And the more I learned the more I questioned and the more a questioned and found answers the less I believed until I was left with one single thought: "I believe there is a God" And then that point became: "I believe in the probability of God" and the statistical probability became a tiny speck. So I cannot be saved because I've been there.

What I learned from my experience is invaluable but I cannot see it other than a part of the process of becoming mature. I cannot go back and have the same faith because I have unquestionably destroyed all arguments that sustained that faith and moved on. I am still content, still happy, still growing ... but further away. There is no compelling reason or argument for turning back. When I look back I can only say that I am glad I experienced religion for it fulfilled needs in a time when I was still confused but now I have clarity.

 

[007wj]

Here is a question on faith

You have to believe to be saved. To get to the point of belief you have to be convinced of the truth of the argument. This means the sceptic’s salvation is directly related to his ability to reason logically. You cannot base the salvation on an individuals reasons of logic. Faith is not of logic or an individual's ability to reason.
The better he can reason logically and rebuff the arguments, and the more control he has over his emotions influencing his logic, the less chance he has of getting saved. Yes. If man can only see what he logically reasons, then he would not come to the conclusion that he needs to be "saved". If man can only reason with what he has been given, does he still make the right decision based upon his reason? No. Countless efforts have proven this. What we as man are doing, is relying on "seeing is believing" . I see not Jesus, therfore I belive not. So to say a man can logically reason and rebuff the argument, is unsupported.

The other option is to be emotionally persuaded. Here your salvation is directly related to the strength of your current emotions (fear, emotional attitude, etc) in comparison with the emotional package presented by the belief system. E.g. if your fear of change is greater than the fear evoked by something you do not yet belief in you won’t change.

On the other hand there is always to change that God does something to change your mind beyond reason and in the face of serious emotional odds but if this was the system why are we not all saved?

This is really puzzling

I am tied up in a bit of time right now...But I will continue. If man can only believe what he concluded logically reasoning, wouldn't he have fallen decades ago?

 

[ThinkerThinker]

Existential1, I don’t want Faith to be just another God reasoning cannot comprehend. I don’t want it to be something mysterious and above the physical reality. I don’t think that’s what you mean though? Faith is the evidence of things not seen – so in a sense faith, in the reasoning mind, could be those fundamental structures in the mind that defines not what you think but the way we think. Faith is the hard-wired connections on which all reasoning and all emotions run. It can change but only under extraordinary situations because the Faith defines the reason so the reason cannot easily adjust the Faith.

So maybe you have a point, 007wj, when you say: ‘Faith is not of logic or an individual's ability to reason’. - I would say the nature of an individual’s reasoning is of his Faith.

In that context I would say my Faith is in reason finding truth. This faith then drives me to ceaselessly explore new and creative combinations of knowledge in an attempt to find those that stand up to subjective criticism. Another’s Faith is in God and they accept the Word of God as the truth and their reasoning is according to their Faith.

If reason is then powerless to change the Faith it is based on, how do you change from one Faith to another, e.g. from reasoning to God? If Faith defines the way you reason then Faith has to be first and then the decision to accept it is born from the new way of reasoning. I can see how God could, in theory, to change our Faith but that draws into question our freedom of will because once your Faith has changed you reasoning will change as well. I can see a high level emotional event affecting a change but that’s hardly under my own control.

Both bring me back to my point that I cannot be saved through my own efforts even though the opportunity and knowledge might be there.

 

[Existential1]

[Both bring me back to my point that I cannot be saved through my own efforts even though the opportunity and knowledge might be there.

A JetPlane can place itself in the JetStream.
The Jet so places itself, through its specifically Jet mechanics.
Once in the Stream, its flying potential transcends those mechanics, and partakes of those of the stream.

...

God is not an extant.
God is divine: is from our using end of things, an instrument of divination; a means of having "evidence" as to otherness, a ground of having an available realm of otherness.
God is the ground, the structural aspect of that epigentical nexus, in which our faith conjures up all that there is.

..

So, yes, faith tends to become hardwired: there tends to a congruence between what obtains, and what in us runs the process that secures it.
But, we retain the capacity to redeem all that we have become: in re-entering our effective nexus of becoming, our epigentical matrix; and renegotiating the holistics of our occurrent architecture, and burning in new faith.

..

Reason can gather up all such nexus and matrix. It can get distracted, it can get it wrong. Where we get it right, and we feel ourselves freed in becoming consious in this way, we call it truth. The more truth we have, the freer we are: and the more coherent the discipline of its sustaining becomes.

..

What is important in reasoning: is that we take on reasoning that hooks us into the JetStream of being; the grace of God; truth.
The great religions, the sciences, the enlightenment humanities, and much much else: all are stewards of undending libraries of living word, through which we can hook this JetStream
That hooking potential is omnipresent. Here personal characteristics seem determining. But such psychology is all low level (can I relax, can I be happy, can I let go, can I be content, at peace, can I die to myself in this moment, can I unleash the determination to spend my being) so can be tinkered with: and a small change here; might see incredible outcome through hooking.

.....

Always, where we have unhooked, we have to explore ourselves as to what cul de sac we have parked in.
That cul de sac will always be self projected: we alone keep it in being.
If we find the toggles, if we find the projected reels: then we can change everyhting; through very simple changes of basics.
If you or I could make a series of very simple changes, completely: we could become extraordinarlily different persons. If you take a farthing, a quarter of an old Brit penny: and double it at each turn; after a mere 32 turns, we are dealing in sums of millions of pounds.
What probably holds us back in this: is the work of bucking congruences; the comfort of congruences: the fear of starting out again; the comfort of the known.
The existentialists probably wrote novels about this: someone comsumed in a complex angst; who in fact could change his life, by walking across a room and talking, or exchanging roles, or whatever

..

Existential1, I don’t want Faith to be just another God reasoning cannot comprehend. I don’t want it to be something mysterious and above the physical reality. I don’t think that’s what you mean though? Faith is the evidence of things not seen – so in a sense faith, in the reasoning mind, could be those fundamental structures in the mind that defines not what you think but the way we think. Faith is the hard-wired connections on which all reasoning and all emotions run. It can change but only under extraordinary situations because the Faith defines the reason so the reason cannot easily adjust the Faith.

So maybe you have a point, 007wj, when you say: ‘Faith is not of logic or an individual's ability to reason’. - I would say the nature of an individual’s reasoning is of his Faith.

In that context I would say my Faith is in reason finding truth. This faith then drives me to ceaselessly explore new and creative combinations of knowledge in an attempt to find those that stand up to subjective criticism. Another’s Faith is in God and they accept the Word of God as the truth and their reasoning is according to their Faith.

If reason is then powerless to change the Faith it is based on, how do you change from one Faith to another, e.g. from reasoning to God? If Faith defines the way you reason then Faith has to be first and then the decision to accept it is born from the new way of reasoning. I can see how God could, in theory, to change our Faith but that draws into question our freedom of will because once your Faith has changed you reasoning will change as well. I can see a high level emotional event affecting a change but that’s hardly under my own control.