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i do suffer from bipolar and social anxiety, so sometimes i do withdraw into myself.. what do you think?
am i just being weird??.
Ever hear this?: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you......
Whether or not you deal with a psychological issue doesn't mean you must push yourself into actions that are not helpful to your well-being.
The comments above make sense to me. Do what nourishes your spirit without torturing yourself with rule/doctrine.
Find happiness where you can.
i am in a spiritual void at the moment after a year out of the borg and 50 years in.. i'd like to hear 'brief' evidence for the existance or non existance of god/s without an argument between members here.. i'd like to get fresh view points as mine is now so critical it's telling me to be an agnostic or atheist.
why?
i am in want of evidence, not just words from a copy/paste troll & no links.. i just want to open up to new possibilities but with evidence to support it not just 'faith'..
I'm glad read this old thread, Punky. I wasn't online at that time.
I love not only the topic but the tone, the temper of the discussion.
I still miss Tammy's voice if not her voices. A fine line that--maybe our ways of expressing and receiving spiritual concepts are too fraught with the problems peculiar to language itself for us be anything but firm AND kind in discussions of G-O-D.
this has to be watched!!!
so thought provoking!.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyvcc8ui3cm&list=pl7420408e36541da4&index=2.
Here was the sickest part of the Abraham /Isaac story as I saw it unfold when I dealt with the WT:
Even given that there was latitude within the Hebrew language of Genesis 22 for Jehovah NOT TO BE A SON-OF-A-BITCH, the local elders (of course not allowing themselves to think beyond My Book of Bible Stories) and the Corporation/Organization prefered that Jehovah be a psychotic monster as the video portrays him--
They could see that the language of the story did not include the word(zebach) for a throat-slashing slaying--that the concept-word exclusively in the account (olah) had a nuance that allowed for a totally different idea of the intent that did not violate subsequent element of doctrine. They did not disagree with the evidence or reasoning. Yet they were fixed on the scenario of a bloody, tricky god who violated his own stated principles.
I told them that it was impossible to worship a god who behaved as the one featured in My Book of Bible Stories.
So the cogs of the Organization went to work......and now---- here I am.
this has to be watched!!!
so thought provoking!.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyvcc8ui3cm&list=pl7420408e36541da4&index=2.
Yes, stuckinarut2, incredibly sick. It is the very story that eventually got me out of the WT. I took i up wih the elders, who sent me up to the CO, and then I had to put it before the Brooklyn crowd.
I have the transcript of the whole year of it before I da/df in the JWN archive.
Maeve
... but most of my new (post jw) friends either don't know my birth date (if people don't specifically ask i won't tell them), or they are 2500 kilometers away in the netherlands... so all that's left to celebrate with me are my hubby, the two doggies, cat and my two rabbits... mixed feelings, i miss my friends and family around and haven't found friends in spain yet.
luckily our daughter will visit us the end of the month... and yesterday we've found a new rental house and we're moving into it next month already!
i'm thrilled and really looking forward to it, then we will finally be able to let all the rest of our belongings come to spain (2/3 of our stuff is stored in the netherlands).. so with this in mind, i'll just say 'happy birthday to me' and will enjoy my third birthday in espana .
La Bruja, your namesake and her 8 multi-color chicks send their best wishes-- I will get my daughter's pictures of their hatch to you.
Life is, well, LIFE. Sometimes sweet and hard at the same time. Happy Birthday!
back in the 60s, wt literature stressed that jesus died to offset adamic sin.. later, they started talking in terms of jesus dying for personal sins as well, but maybe that was ray franz's influence.. as a jw, did you feel that jesus died for your sins or only for adam's original sin?.
does anyone know the current wt teaching on this?.
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Loved the video, stuckinarut2.
It is brilliant --the points raised are perfectly valid questions about the idea of a ransom to "save" mankind.
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.
The god who was the one who empregnated Mary, raised the dead, the one of resurrection and miracles is addressed in this thread. This God of the Jews who is said to be Jesus' father is one whose actions violate the natural order--violate natural law. It is supposed to be his particular MO, that is the god of it ALL. He is going to do a rewind on the faithful as he did with Lazarus.
This thread challenges the Loving Bible God, the god of Christian Theism.
What god are you talking about Psac. I too, have adjusted my belief to this: "Love is god" but my ideas will not fit into the apostles creed/Nicene creed. It won't fit in church.
what god are you talking about--because it is not the god of the Bible.
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.
The God of christian theism is one that punished us with death and suffering, according to the bible. It is NOT natural--(Paradise Earth-remember?)
Suffering in childbirth and death were named early on for disobedience --with more to come....
Suffering and death in the OT was not designed and not understood as edifying us-- as anything but our fault for being children of Adam and Eve.
I am just not able to follow your re-invention of the God of the bible, Psac. Your points of reference to the Word of God no stronger than mine--and I don't hold to them at all.
What ground are you standing on? I, for instance, can stand on the teachings of Jesus' compassion teachings without having to support the dead weight of a NOT-self sacrificing diety. (hear, hear M*A*S*H)
Really, I can love the Jesus story and not believe in god at all---And Compassion is as bright and lustrous as ever. And even more so, devoid of the everlasting life motif and resurrection promise.
The suffering deaths of the thousands in the tsunami are just so many nail in god's coffin. Yet the story of the Good Samaritan is no less beautiful and relevant to me.
Maeve
is there any way we can try to start a crowd-fund to help terry get some wheels quicker than he currently can?
with craigslist and a couple of bucks from a few members we can help terry get moving.
does anyone have any ideas how we can do a "theists for terry" bike fund raiser and challenge the atheists to a bucket-head challenge?
Hooray!
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.
Compassionate people will help alleviate suffering where they can. This is a given whether or not you are a Christian theist or not.
The existence of God is not proven by the existence of compassion, is it? Also, suffering and death is a natural occurence you said earlier, Psac. (Although the bible says it is the punishment /consequence of sin--See Genesis and Romans.
How do you think that all this proves anything about God's love?
That the carpenter believed it was true is no proof either. He was as deluded as we all have been. Jesus believed in compassion, as do I.
Edited: It is easier to belief that we have invented God than to believe that there is a god who actually cares for us. I can believe that a jewish carpenter (as other gospels tell it) taught us to become true human beings in spite of the evil and greed that discourages compassion and selflessnes. It doesn't matter to me that he was the son of god.
Good examples are needed to help teach compassion. Jesus, stripped of diety, without pretensions for deity, is one of the best. But the Bible God has been a dry hole for a long time.
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