Posts by humbled

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

It doesn't justify it.

Paul's comment is a man's desperate acknowledgment that throughout the scriptures--which he knew so well--the problem of suffering and death had only grown. mankind, jews too, got more sophisticated AND TIRED of oppression and--- rules--and where was God? resurrection had gained in rabbinical discussions, there were the two sects Sadds and Pharisees. Paul was a Pharisee. the Jews had been more or less a step-child inthe palestine since the Babylonian exile. Not glorious times for the Jews.

Paul latched onto the resurrection like nobody's business. God just didn't come through with anything like consistency--that's the big take-away on the Job story in the OT. Of course, for public consumption there were the stories of heroics in the scriptures or god coming through for some--but, hey, we know all the stories that never made the cut in JW "experiences"(eeckkk!). Hell no, god didn't act for the common man. It is a measure of how" blame the victim" still persisted that the bystanders stood by when Jesus is fixing to heal the blind man"Did this man sin or did his parents?" People had sore eyes longing to see God do something about random suffering. (Actually, I think they only allowed the Job story because he was an Arab--not a Jew. they didn't want to seem like THEY had any complaint--O NO!)

I've said it before--Jesus taught love, and died as well as he could for it. If there is God, his only excuse after all, imho, is that he isa god of love and NOT POWER. At least no more power than love can muster. I don't believe love can resurrect the dead. Therefore, I can't believe it can restore.

It looks like Jesus bet on God's love first, his power second. The christian/jews really wanted to believe that god was going to come through... someday. because the deck really was stacked against them. They had all the rules to follow and god? What were his exactly?

A god without power is not for christian theists--Chrstians have to depend on a god of absolute power to raise the slaughtered, the drowned the miserable ones who had to eat shit to follow the rules. that god of christian theism, btw, doesn't raise the "unsaved".

Hogwash. Paul said what he did(1 cOR.15:19-20) because the prayers they got to say were so often answered "My strength is made perfect in weakness."

I think God is love. and would have stopped that tsunami but couldn not.

thanks for asking, thanks for listening.

Maeve

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

The problem of God and suffering evolved. It is the solution to suffering and death that has kept Jews and now Christians digging through old scriptures and writing new ones for centuries.

Christian theism has a big problem. There is no way it can have a loving and limited God(my personal best hope)--- it is depending on an all powerful God to reverse death.

Jesus was their front man.

Paul saw the resurrection as the last and ONLY hope for the God who had failed to come through for his people. Finally here was the way He would solve the problem of suffering and death. Not even the teachings of Jesus were as important as the resurrection.

"If for only in this life we have hoped in Christ we are to be pitied more than all men.........." 1 Cor. 15:19-20

Here is the problem^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^for Christian theism. God has to give a resurrection--even Paul is saying"Life sucks!"

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

Dear Pelican,

I hope you get a response to your question but the thread explores only one kind of theism: Christian theism that equates God with Jesus.

Personally, I think yours is a good question.

Good night,

Maeve

32

Born-in memories, etc this is my first post, guys ;-)

by ThunderStruck52 in

so i have decided to jump in and for the first time and share some of my random memories that seem to have been floating around my mind more and more lately.

mostly if all the weird anxiety i experience from time to time is related to it.

i guess that would be a different topic to post!.

humbled

Yes--amazing to make it out! Good for all your family that you have made with your husband to be out!--Mom and Dad still in?

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

Cofty--right, christian theism says Jesus is God. But is he--just because the church fathers said so??

It may be that Jesus was a man who tried to transcend a bit of the horror of theism--its rules and the disappointing outcomes of false stories. Supposedly theists had him killed.

Theist who have to work jesus into this defense of god have got an impossible situation.

8

Truth Be Told Screening Tomorrow in NYC

by JetSetter in

jw
friends

i bought my ticket to the movie screening for tomorrow at a movie theater in nyc.

it should be interesting, can't wait.. there will be a lot of xjw's there, i actually can't wait..

humbled

where is it being screened? two of my daughters live in the Bronx.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

Apog,cofty,

There is a crisis on the forum(I think it's a crisis) and in the thread itself that needs to be addressed so that we can learn something in this discussion.

This particular thread is addressing an old problem that religion cannot resolve when humans face suffering and death: How can a just/loving/powerful God(a god we have been told exists) can let violent natural deaths occur.

The OT records God's contract "You do right--I'll do right" That is the axis upon which all the OT stories and prophesy turns.

But the Book of Job showing up in the Tanak (hebrew)canon tells me something that is very important. Whether there was or wasn't that event or that person, whether or not I have a background in Hebrew or ancient mid-eastern history it tells me that even the old timers of faith were seeing that the god program wasn't working. FOR SURE damage control was needed EARLY ON to vent off the pressure from the cognitive dissonance among the Chosen People when they faced suffering and death too.

So apparently old Jewish believers had to walk(spiritually speaking) with a rock in their shoe to worship in their temple or synagoge. God didn't explain how he was loving/fair/powerful and....NOT.

The contract with God has loopholes for god's behavior that nobody could understand while the contract laws multiplied on his people. And the people needed to follow the laws carefully.

Jesus' version of God blew that apart.the laws didn't bind you to God--love did. Good news for some but it pissed off the religious rulers. God-'n-Moses wrote them, right? Love was in there, sure. But all those laws were IMPORTANT.

Of course they were upset with Jesus. Jesus' teachings about reconciliation with God was just so much crap. This wasn't the God they had limped with for so many years. They were used to walking with a rock in their shoe. so there was a New wine/old skin problem. New cloth patch/ old garment problem.

I think that's our problem now. On the forum. In the thread.

A theist on this forum is almost certainly hanging with Jesus. And how to talk about God letting children drown --well, that goes all over a Christian.Not even Job had to walk on arock that big and sharp.

Harder for us because we know that the loving-Jesus stories are tied up with the rest of the dark-god bible.

It's hard to get rid of the old god-rock in our shoe if we are afraid of losing contact with Jesus. So from Christians we can get defensive posts, off-topic, pre-emptive strikes with back stories because the old-rock-god doesn't fit with Jesus the god/man.

Tammy is an UN-orthodox Christian. She said this forum helped her process through some of her questions.(I hope she can return) She has a christian cosmology now that satisfies her. But it doesn't satisfy everyone.

Others of us don't see that she solved Job's rock-in-the-shoe problem. It feels too much like the same old rock to many of us only with a new name.

There were rough reactions to her ideas. Maybe some couldn't believe that she was honest about her motives for saying things. But i think we should understand where her dilemma comes from. She held tight to the love and tried to reconcile the rest. It got convoluted and lied, as many commented, on personal revelation. That said I think having Tammy's solution to the conflict between OT god and Jesus helped fashion the keys to unlock biblical theism's last prison. It was so impossible to reconcile Jesus' love and the all-powerful OT god that I discarded chunk after chunk of the bible. The only thing left was love getting to transcend life's horror. It left me with a carpenter who perhaps was as disturbed as Job at what he saw, felt the rock in his shoes and startd running barefoot. He is still my hero. Old theism has confined not only me but I think it has imprisoned Jesus as well.

It is as hard to talk about the problem of belief in god now as ever. I have been glad to bounce my experiences and observations around folks here......and listen to everyone's else do the same. and this time we are having the most prolonged exploration of god among non-clerics that I imagine I'll ever get to participate in. It is really important to us all to find a way to continue it. I'm afraid if we stop now we may never get it started again.

Maeve

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

Job is only a dark window into how Hebrews before the exile looked at disasters falling on good people. But it is my best touchstone with reality in the OT.

The OT promoted a "fear of the Lord". It was a contract for him to take care of you. The Mosaic covenant told you how to do right and prosper --he protected your borders, your health, your offspring.Do wrong and the sky became a bronze bowl --dry, drought, and you were invaded.

But the book of Job--some say is the oldest book of the OT--I value because whether there was or wasn't this actual man and real story, the book made the cut into the OT/Tanak because,often enough, people opened their eyes and admitted that even when they did not fail God-- he failed them. The book of job let them express the dark feelings of God being absent in their suffering.

Job talks straight--he wants to see God in court.

But the OT has no answer, there is no honest answer for disaster. Some OT writers flogged the Jews saying their sins brought disasters down from heaven in just the same way some Christian leaders do today.

Jesus walked into a void in an occupied land and talked about God being good and loving sinners.

But they already new this from Job: God let it rain on the Just and the Wicked both--no different

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

Are you referring to your OP?

Or the question of how to deal justly with a poster that is bothersome to certain other posters?

I am not being saucy.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

humbled

Believing in Jesus when the OT God is linked to him is disturbing to folks on this forum inparticular.--It disturbs me, at least.