Response to Larry Righi's original post "I Love This Newsgroup"
Ramon Barbosa
How very much to the point, and refreshingly honest your observations
are.
I find it refreshing to read your post as you ask the questions that
people who are honestly reflective and craving to preserve self
respect would and do ask in an effort to sustain their intellectual
integrity.
I grew up exposed to Christian Pentecostalism. What I saw was, in a
word, 'spooky.'
Here's what I think. My comments are within the body of your post:
Larry Righi" <rig...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:8hp3kvc8sid0od5p7...@4ax.com...
> I have been a lurker on an off for over a year or two with several
> periods
> of absence but I can't help from coming back to this group. I used to
> believe that the fundies have everything covered and they knew what
> they
> were talking about...How little did I know that this is far from the
> truth.
> I am still not ready to completely believe that the bible is utter
> nonsense.
> I also am not ready to disbelieve in a God that created mankind, but I
> have
> to ask myself, who is this God? What is his real character? Why
> doesn't he
> reveal himself? Why are we reliant on flawed religious writings?
When people ascribe to a belief system while IGNORING what we might
consider as better judgment, they do so usually out of fear or dread
of the consequences of not ascribing to that belief system. This
behavior is a reaction to a form of coercion that is subtle but
nonetheless very real. In today's mainline Christianity, to question
the traditionally-held beliefs is to risk being ostrasized, and to be
told that your spiritual welfare is in jeopardy.
Such coercion, however subliminal, is characteristic of a destructive
cult! Imagine that! Mainline Christianity permeated by cultism??
Hoodathunk! So few free-thinkers are found in the ranks of Christian
fundamentalists because to freely question the assumptions of the
belief-system is to be accused with being in leaque with the devil, or
otherwise to risk God's displeasure.
I firmly believe that our heavenly Father gave us mind, and gave us
free will, to actually freely choose to seek out and thoroughly grasp
genuine TRUTH. In so doing, it is imperative that we investigate ALL
sources of truth. Following the truth wherever it should chance to
appear means acknowledging the inner 'ring' of truth regardless of the
social consequences. If it should lead to the discarding of outmoded,
illogical and nonsensical beliefs entrenched because of religious
tradition, then so be it! Believing that the Bible is inerrant or
that Jesus is Christ is NOT a requirement of God. Jesus does not
require that we believe IN him, but that we believe WITH him in the
loving watchcare and guidance of God as OUR Spirit Father.
In my experience, I have discovered that, in fact, the living God is
actually so magnificent in character and nature that human words don't
suffice to describe him. He certainly is WAY WAY better than I had
ever been taught that he was when I was growing up! I have found God
to be an infinitely loving, boundlessly merciful, and absolutely good
FATHER, my real Father.
But this is *my* PERSONAL experience. I could never "testify" to this
were it not that I *personally experienced* the living God, FOR
MYSELF, as a living spiritual presence within me.
I have since come to believe that our heavenly Father sends of
himself, a 'fragment' of his Divine Spirit, to live and work within
the higher reaches of the mind of each and every human, FOR FREE. In
this way, each of us on earth is his son or daughter as his FREE GIFT.
We are all *already* spiritual brothers and sisters.
It is by this inner Spirit of God that He knows ALL ABOUT each one of
us, individually. It is by his indwelling presence that we may
increasingly come to know him, spiritually. As He literally gives to
each one of us his *UNDIVIDED* attention, at all times, we can
increasingly choose to be guided by his will, allowing him to adjust
our thoughts to his own. It is in this way that He *personally*
reveals himself to us. To know God is to love him, and to love God is
to wholeheartedly desire to become more and more like him.
Each person may come to realize and daily experience this truth by
living faith, faith as the attitude of the soul, not as system of
belief. Living faith is the ONLY "price" one pays to "earn God's
favor," to "enter the kingdom" of God. "Entering the Kingdom of God"
means coming into a personal realization of, and an increasing
relationship with his Person. Grace is the breath of God that
enlivens and sustains one's spiritual growth. Growth in grace is a
function of one's wholehearted, joyous, and increasing cooperation
with the leadings of the Spirit of God that lives within the mind, in
the Superconsciousness. To cooperate with the Spirit of God is to
strive to become more and more like him, who is perfect, in unselfish
service and loving regard for one's fellows. That is his will.
Larry, if you were to allow yourself to embrace ALL literary sources
in the world as research material for your own personal journey into
the discovery of genuine spiritual realities, you will find that, in
fact, there was never a time when you were ever in spiritual jeopardy
or otherwise unworthy of God. You would discover that you have always
been free to accept, *and* worthy of accepting, what genuinely makes
sense *to you*, and to reject what truly does not make sense. You
would discover that our heavenly Father is ACTUALLY ON YOUR SIDE in
this very adventure of being a genuine truth-seeker!
Very much of what I write here is in consonance with what is found in
Scripture. Other points that I make here may seem to conflict with
accepted traditional teachings. I submit to you, however, that
anything that I write in this email that conflicts with accepted
religious ("traditional") thought is nonetheless TRUE in *my* PERSONAL
experience.
I thoroughly am convinced that there is nothing that can ever separate
me from the love of God, not even disbelieving that the Bible is
inerrant. Nevertheless, there is so very much in the Bible, as well
as in other earthly scriptures, that I personally have found to be
true and worthy.
I do not believe that God would ever intend that humans should
perpetually be 'reliant' upon flawed scriptures. I believe that
information is 'out there,' information that is being personally
discovered by those who sincerely seek it out. But although literary
works can be extremely helpful, they all inevitably can only serve as
a *catalyst* for one's emergence into the total clarity and
illumination that ensues from profoundly personal spiritual
*experience* with God. Therefore, no mere literary work should EVER
be considered as divinely sacred or 'holy.' Humanly sacred, maybe,
but certainly NOT the "Word of God" or inerrant. (More below)
> Have we
> been planted here by a supreme race of {GOD} like beings that are so
> far
> advanced that we are just an experiment in racial development. Why are
> fundies faith so weak that if you remove one building block of their
> perfect
> bible that their faith comes crumbling down. They will never in my
> opinion
> admit to errancy in their bible, they can't and still keep their faith
> in
> tack. One example of this is when Jesus said in so many words...ask
> anything of the father in my name and it will be given you...Well I
> have
> been a Christian for many years and I have to say ,it just isn't so.
> The
> fundies say that there is a condition to be met for this statement to
> be
> true.. What you ask for must be the will of the Father...Well Jesus
> didn't
> say that, did he? The fundies have to add this to keep the bible and
> what
> Jesus said intact. A lot of what Jesus said doesn't seem to ring true
> in my
> opinion..Then if you read what Jesus taught and later what Paul has
> twisted
> it into I have to step back and think about Paul and where he is
> coming
> from. Sounds like he was making it up as he went along kind like a
> Neil
> Young lead guitar solo. Jumping way back to Isaiah he seems to have a
> thing
> against women. If the bible is the inspired word of God why would the
> sin
> of hating women creep into the text.
There are several things in the New Testament that *misrepresent* what
Jesus taught. There are also things in the New Testament that are
outright untruths and which Jesus NEVER taught.
The gospel that Jesus *actually* taught became ecclipsed by the
religious cult ABOUT the risen and glorified Christ, with all its
theological fallacies.
The attitude of discrediting women certainly is among those things
that Jesus never taught. Paul most certainly injected his own
personal prejudices on this matter in his writings. The most blatant
untruth, however, that Paul injected into his writings, and which
subsequently became the cornerstone of the new Christian cult of the
risen and glorified Christ, was his pagan notion that Jesus' death on
the cross ... WAS AS A SACRIFICE ... to supposedly appease an offended
Lord, to assuage his fictitious wrath, to restore the Father's
affections toward erring man, to ransom mankind back from the
'Devil,'or to pay a price that mankind had supposedly come to owe God
for having supposedly inherited the "original sin" of the Adam and Eve
couple. The entire notion of ransom and propitiation is completely
misrepresentative of the Father's nature and character, and flies in
the face of what Jesus *actually* taught and of how he lived his life,
which was as a *revelation* of what God is REALLY like. Even to his
death on the cross, Jesus consistently did not compromise with the
revelation of the Father's absolute goodness toward and abiding mercy
for even his murderers. God is not, nor was He ever, a divided
personality, torn between attitudes. God is changeless, perfect,
infinitely loving, boundlessly merciful and absolutely good.
There is one thing to which you refer as an object of doubt but that I
have found to be true in my personal life. When one is wholeheartedly
striving to do God's will in daily life, living with the welfare of
others as one's overriding concern, then one may indeed ask of God for
those spiritual things that will serve assist in the expansion of the
spiritual kingdom, and such things may indeed be forthcoming, even if
in a form that was not expected.
Why does some of the stuff that
> is
> said to be penned by Solomon sound like he's suffering from a bi-polar
> disorder? Why does God tell Job off? In my personal experiences with
> this
> God he does have a nasty streak. As I stated earlier I am a Christian
> and I
> have petitioned God in prayer and he has gotten nasty and lost
> patients with
> me. Kind of like when I lose control with my children and become a bad
> example of fatherhood...Perfect God? If you read the bible carefully
> you
> will find out that God is not all knowing..Because at one point in my
> reading I ran across the statement that God was surprised.. How could
> you
> surprise a being that is all knowing? Wouldn't that be impossible? On
> the
> question of hell I can't make heads or tails out of what the Bible has
> to
> say about it. Jesus sounds as if he is talking about a real place but
> in
> the old testament it sounds as if hell is only the grave. What's with
> the
> contradictions about this subject. Then I have to ask myself why
> would a
> loving forgiving God condemn a mortal to never ending torment for only
> about
> 70 years of sin...But the God I know isn't very nice at times so maybe
> he
> does. Then I really have to shake my head at the story of the Jewish
> strong
> man.. He killed a thousand men with the jaw bone of an ass..If I
> remember
> correctly it was a even number of a thousand. I have to ask myself
> who was
> counting? When I read the story of genesis I can't help but think of
> a
> space traveling race teraforming a planet, like in a star trek
> episode, and
> then the story trying to be explained by a simple man of little
> knowledge,
> not knowing what really went on. Well I went on long enough...keep up
> the
> good work and keep pounding the obvious mistakes in the bible ...Larry
>
Larry, so often people take their cues about God's attitude and
actions by what they've been taught He is like in childhood. Even
those who should, in adult life, finally reject the erroneous ideas of
what God is like still must go through a period of re-adjustment in
order for entrenched psychological patterns to become fully
re-oriented to the new intellectual paradigm of what rings true about
his actual nature and character. Faith as the soul's attitude plays a
big part in such re-orientation to actual spiritual realities.
What is certain is that your own children, in their young ages,
naturally look upon you as an example of goodness and righteousness,
as well as a fount of unconditional love. As children mature, they
begin to associate what they have seen their biological father to be
like with their emerging conception of what God is like. To the
extent that fathers fall short, as they inevitably do, of exemplifying
the perfect Fatherhood of God, young adults must go through a period
of spiritual discovery to find out for themselves, through their own
personal experience, just what God is REALLY like. The process of
discovery is made easier or more difficult depending upon the extent
to which young people have been allowed to trust in their own
judgments and observations into adulthood. Blind, coerced loyalty to
faulty religious tradition is among the chief obstacles to the healthy
development of an intellect with integrity.
In my travels through life, in my efforts to find literary works that
nurtured the development of my spiritual strivings and my religious
thinking, I came upon a book to which I would like to refer you. It
is a hefty-sized book, and contains just about every thing under the
sun in terms of answers. *ALL* of what you have covered in your post
you will find addressed in this book. I have been a 'student' of this
book now for 24 years, and I still find myself in awe over what I
glean from it. It is an extremely important book, but it is not a
"holy" book. It is not a panacea. It has been in publication since
1955, yet it is proving to be **the most important book** on the
planet. It is called, "The URANTIA Book."
The Urantia Book is found in major bookstores and libraries, and can
be ordered online. It is also available online for free viewing in
its entirety, all 2,097 pages of it, at: http://www.urantiabook.org/
I trust that your angels, and the angels watching over your children,
will be successful in bringing into your personal understanding all
the blessed truths that are yours to receive and comprehend, and of
which you are, have always been, and will always be so richly
deserving.
Ramon Barbosa
RainLover
Barbosa) wrote:
VERY Large SNIP
>
>The Urantia Book is found in major bookstores and libraries, and can
>be ordered online. It is also available online for free viewing in
>its entirety, all 2,097 pages of it, at: http://www.urantiabook.org/
>
>I trust that your angels, and the angels watching over your children,
>will be successful in bringing into your personal understanding all
>the blessed truths that are yours to receive and comprehend, and of
>which you are, have always been, and will always be so richly
>deserving.
>
>Ramon Barbosa
Very interesting thread here... so interesting as to lead me to the
link you included in your response.
There seem to be a lot of concepts and ideas that make sense... more
sense at least than the standard christianity dogma that has risen
from their bible.
I found it interesting, in a Scary-Cult-meets-Star-Trek sort of way.
Here's a line from The book of Urantia:
"Orvonton corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate
into the English language of Urantia. . ."
"Orvonton Corps"? "Truth Revealers"? Who exactly authorized the
Orvonton Corps to do this?
Why is Earth called Urantia?
Why the need for science fiction / middle-earth gobbly gook?
There may be some good ideas in this BOOK, but every red flag I have
went up before I even got to the "first paper"
James, Seattle, USA, Earth... er, I mean Urantia.
Ostap Bender
Urantia Book does appear to be somewhat ´weird´ upon the first
contact. The terms and names do sound somewhat awkward, but whoever
wrote it has done wonderful job putting some rather sophisticated and
elaborate concepts in our coarse language.
Try to browse through the pages and find a topic that interests you.
The Book covers an increadible spectrum of topics. Many of the topics
are covered in a new and refreshing ways.
You might love it, you might hate it, but this book is most cerainly
one of the most fascinating work of fact (or fiction, if you will)
that´s ever crossed your path.
Respectfully,
Ostap
RainLover <SPAMBLOCK...@raincity.com> wrote in message
news:<bn4rnvkjuut5gt3ta...@4ax.com>...
Earle Jones
RainLover <SPAMBLOCK...@raincity.com> wrote:
[...]
> Here's a line from The book of Urantia:
>
> "Orvonton corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate
> into the English language of Urantia. . ."
>
>
> "Orvonton Corps"? "Truth Revealers"? Who exactly authorized the
> Orvonton Corps to do this?
>
> Why is Earth called Urantia?
*
Please stop referring to the Earth as Urantia. The Earth is Teegeack.
L. Ron Hubbard
*