Your relationship with your mother: a belief system?

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

Is your relationship with your mother a belief system?

Is your relationship with your father, brother, sister, boss, son, daughter, friends, etc. a belief system?

If you do not understand the question, think of it this way: You believe that you exist. You believe that your best friend exists. You believe that there are such things as friends. You believe that the person you consider to be your best friend meets all of the requirements to be considered one of the things called friends. Etc. Etc. Those and and other beliefs form a chain and that chain of beliefs is your relationship with your best friend.

That would mean that if your relationship with your best friend is a belief system then a hug is not part of your relationship with your best friend--a hug is an act, not a belief. A conversation, a fight, watching a movie together, etc. would not be part of your relationship with your best friend--they are acts, not beliefs.

Maybe I have got it all wrong and a belief system means something other than a chain of beliefs. But, anyway, is your relationship with your mother a belief system?

 

[Ana the Ist]

There is an idea of a Ana the ist; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Is your relationship with your mother a belief system?

No relationship is a belief system. Relationships are activities. They may involve beliefs, but are not themselves systems of beliefs.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Received]

With what Mark said, relating tears through the fabric of conceptualization. When I relate, my relating isn't conceptualized in the act of relating. If it were, I would be conceptualizing, not relating -- which is to say, relating to my own ideas rather than the other person.

 

[Gottservant]

The truth of this is best evidenced by the fact that you can add belief to the system and it stays within the system, by definition that makes it a belief system.

If I believe my mother expects me to get a job in finance, that becomes a belief associated with my system of relating to her.

What is strange is the use of the word system, since when a system is sufficiently weighed down with allowances (my mother is busy during the week, my mother doesn't like to drive around more than twice in a day, etc. etc.) it is easier not to regard it as a system.

However, I must stress that it is a system, since the dynamic component (searching for my mother, asking my mother to change, receiving advice about how to relate to my mother, etc.) are all disabled by things like foreknowledge of what my mother wants. If it were less than a system, I would not incorporate behaviours such as keeping an eye out for my mother, defending my mother, etc.

As such it is important to keep a legitimate term for my mother, who is in fact, not the person I will be dwelling on in eternity, but a foreshadow of that person (not my wife either) - the person I will be dwelling on in eternity will be my mother, but my mother on Earth is more like my Giver, since she gave me life.

For whatever reason Jesus said we are not to give possessive power to people in our belief system but only to the true Father who transcends our belief system. So indeed, a father is not a father, but a Sender, because he sends us into the world.

Right believing leads to right action, so thankyou for this opportunity to consider the importance of family.

 

[quatona]

Is your relationship with your mother a belief system?

No.

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

No relationship is a belief system. Relationships are activities. They may involve beliefs, but are not themselves systems of beliefs...

With what Mark said, relating tears through the fabric of conceptualization. When I relate, my relating isn't conceptualized in the act of relating. If it were, I would be conceptualizing, not relating -- which is to say, relating to my own ideas rather than the other person.

No.

That is what I have been saying.

And I have been saying as far back as I can remember that having beliefs in one's head does not make him/her a Christian. It is one's personal relationship with Christ that makes him/her a Christian. It is a relationship. Not the impersonal kind of relationship that most of us have with, oh, rocks on the ground. It is a personal relationship. And like every other relationship, no two people will have the same relationship with Jesus.

But in [thread=7603553]this thread[/thread] a response to all of that was that Christianity is just a belief system.

If we accept as a premise that Christianity is just a system of beliefs, and since part of the faith of most Christians is a personal relationship with Christ--talking, loving, getting to know each other better, growing closer together, etc.--then reason dictates that a relationship is a belief system. Therefore, your relationship with your mother is a belief system.

But I think that it is hogwash to say that a relationship is just a chain of beliefs.

 

[Gottservant]

You can have a transcendent belief system or a non-transcendent one.

 

[Ana the Ist]

No relationship is a belief system. Relationships are activities. They may involve beliefs, but are not themselves systems of beliefs.


eudaimonia,

Mark

I'm just nerdy enough to understand your new banner.

 

[quatona]

And I have been saying as far back as I can remember that having beliefs in one's head does not make him/her a Christian. It is one's personal relationship with Christ that makes him/her a Christian. It is a relationship. Not the impersonal kind of relationship that most of us have with, oh, rocks on the ground. It is a personal relationship. And like every other relationship, no two people will have the same relationship with Jesus.

Ok, but your relationships are your private business (particularly those with your invisible friends).
Now, when we address Christian doctrines, i.e. Christian belief systems, what do you think we should call them, if not Christian?

 

[Redac]

There is an idea of a Ana the ist; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.

I see what you did there.

 

[Eudaimonist]

And I have been saying as far back as I can remember that having beliefs in one's head does not make him/her a Christian. It is one's personal relationship with Christ that makes him/her a Christian. It is a relationship. Not the impersonal kind of relationship that most of us have with, oh, rocks on the ground. It is a personal relationship.

To an atheist, Christianity is just a belief system, since God doesn't exist.

I'm curious what you would call someone who firmly believes that Christ exists, but doesn't claim to have a relationship with Christ. Most people would call that person a Christian, and that's how the census form would be filled out.

I'm afraid that nothing in your thought-experiment in the OP does anything to convince me that it isn't belief that defines one's religious designation.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[quatona]

To an atheist, Christianity is just a belief system, since God doesn't exist.

I'm curious what you would call someone who firmly believes that Christ exists, but doesn't claim to have a relationship with Christ. Most people would call that person a Christian, and that's how the census form would be filled out.

I'm afraid that nothing in your thought-experiment in the OP does anything to convince me that it isn't belief that defines one's religious designation.

It also needs to be noted that if Christ exists/existed, we´d all have some form of personal relationship with Christ. Which would render "Christian" a useless distinction.

 

[Gadarene]

Wow, this is the "it's not a religion, it's a relationship" semantic wibble dialled up to 11.

The human objects of our affection can be shown to exist. The same is not true for God.

 

[Received]

That is what I have been saying.

And I have been saying as far back as I can remember that having beliefs in one's head does not make him/her a Christian. It is one's personal relationship with Christ that makes him/her a Christian. It is a relationship. Not the impersonal kind of relationship that most of us have with, oh, rocks on the ground. It is a personal relationship. And like every other relationship, no two people will have the same relationship with Jesus.

But in [thread=7603553]this thread[/thread] a response to all of that was that Christianity is just a belief system.

If we accept as a premise that Christianity is just a system of beliefs, and since part of the faith of most Christians is a personal relationship with Christ--talking, loving, getting to know each other better, growing closer together, etc.--then reason dictates that a relationship is a belief system. Therefore, your relationship with your mother is a belief system.

But I think that it is hogwash to say that a relationship is just a chain of beliefs.

This is, like, complicated.

With spirituality, you have a relationship only on the condition that there's actually someone there on the other end of the line. So to say "I have a personal relationship with Jesus" means that you assume (which isn't the same as believing) that there really is a Jesus there with whom you can relate.

It's a bit like when you talk with someone on the phone and for a brief moment you're asking, "Hello? Anyone there?" and you don't know if they're still on the line. For that moment of uncertainty, there either is or isn't a relationship there, and belief in either case does nothing to determine whether or not a relationship is there. You can say that you believe there is someone there, but that still doesn't mean that your relationship, *if there is one*, is constituted in any way *by* your beliefs.

 

[Eudaimonist]

It also needs to be noted that if Christ exists/existed, we´d all have some form of personal relationship with Christ.

How do you figure that? If one doesn't worship Christ and treats Christ as non-existent, I fail to see how there is a personal relationship there.

Anyway, considering one's religious status to be about a relationship needlessly invalidates any other religion in which one has a relationship with a deity, whether that relationship involves ritual, meditation, or tossing virgins into volcanoes.

However, we do normally consider members of religions that we don't believe are true to be members of those religions. If someone worships the goddess Shakti in India, it doesn't matter if Shakti doesn't exist -- that person is still some flavor of Hindu.

Therefore, it seems odd to implicitly require the reality of one's religious views to be a member of that religion.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

To an atheist, Christianity is just a belief system, since God doesn't exist...

So having a relationship with something depends on "believing" that it "exists"?

If a man has amnesia, dementia or something like that and does not remember his wife then they no longer have a relationship?

I'm curious what you would call someone who firmly believes that Christ exists, but doesn't claim to have a relationship with Christ. Most people would call that person a Christian, and that's how the census form would be filled out...

You make it sound like it is my own set of ideas that I came up with. No, it is what I was taught by others about Christianity.

I am theology-illiterate so I probably can't explain it very well. The Bible says this:

James 2:19 "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder."

Maybe I am completely misunderstanding what I have been taught, but I have always taken that and other teachings to mean that with respect to the Christian faith it means very little to say, "I believe in God".

After I visited a church many years ago the pastor contacted me. He did not say, "I want to hear what you believe". He said, "I want to hear about your relationship with Jesus".

Connecting all of the dots I have concluded that Christianity is about the unique personal relationship that each believer has with Christ, not about what "beliefs" are in one's brain.

In order for a conscious being like a human to have a relationship with something there probably have to be some beliefs, such as believing that what you are relating with exists. But it is my understanding that it is the relationship--one's personal walk with Christ--that is what Christianity is about.

When people give their testimony they are not saying, "I believe this. And I believe this. And I believe that". When a person gives his/her testimony he/she is saying, "This is what I have seen. This is what I have experienced. This is what Jesus has done in my life".

All of that barely scratches the surface.

I'm afraid that nothing in your thought-experiment in the OP does anything to convince me that it isn't belief that defines one's religious designation.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Who knows what you, I or anybody else will believe tomorrow. If a "designation" hinges on what beliefs are in a person's brain at a given time then designations don't mean much.

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

Wow, this is the "it's not a religion, it's a relationship" semantic wibble dialled up to 11...

I did not know that such a "semantic" existed.

It must be something from the theism/atheism debate--a debate that I do not follow.

 

[Chesterton]

Bear in mind that "relation" can be a scientific word. You do have a relationship with the planet Neptune just because you both exist and you exist at a certain distance. If the Christ exists/existed, you do have a relationship with Him, for better or worse, whether or not you acknowledge it.

 

[Received]

I've started a new thread here on this interesting question of relating to God whether or not you believe in him. Check it out.