We need the look of other eyes

Jenyar:

This bullshit started due to C.S. Lewis, yes?
Ever read his letters to an American lady? Not a passage goes by where he is not bleating some nonsense about God. The man was as steeped in faith, a sickling, as Dante with his first circle where the unborn and unbaptized- innocents- he flung to be tortured by wasps and hornets.

And great going with the referenes, damning your cause that way- Franklin, Washington, Hawthorne.....all, all, a load of Christians.

Ha.
Its more like you in the middle, in backwoods Australia and there's a red Porche doing a 100 heading your way.

 

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He was an atheist before, he was probably displaying the elation of discovery. And wherever Dante flung his innocents - they were safer where they would have been without God. Man tries, and tries, but he can't condemn. He doesn't have the authority. But he can praise and have faith, and for that you condemn them.

It seems we can't escape the culture in which modern English was born. Language and meaning had to come from somewhere.

 

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Jenyar,

There are two issues in this:
One: The term "pride" does come from the Christian tradition.
Two: But, as it has been often said, Christians themselves often weren't "Christian", they were the ones who irresponsibly generalized and secularized religious ideas.

Most non-Christian people, when dealing with Christianity, are likely to first think of the crusades, the witch processes, the violent conversions. These things were done in the name of the Christian God, like it or not.


What you seem to be expecting or hoping from us here is that we understand Christianity the way a devoted Christian would.

So we're back at the question "Where or what is religion?" -- Is it the scriptures? The believers? ...


One thing is sure though: In the past, the religious leaders, who were often closely connected with other rulers and kings, had the interest to keep people down, to have control over them. One way of doing that is to indoctrinate them the idea that being strong is wrong and against God's will.

 

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Jenyar:

You know, if it weren't for your positive presence in the Kaballah thread I'd drain the Christian blood out of you and have you bathe in it.

I'll be civil- barking up the wrong tree. I glory at the sight of honest faith. What irks is the finding that faith in our religious is a distillation of weakness, fear, animosity and dislike.
Virtues as we know them among the slave- goodness, love, piety- is an inventory of defense mechanisms from that which intimidates.

Be wary of those too quick to punish and diminish. Be ware of those who say things like this:

" And wherever Dante flung his innocents - they were safer where they would have been without God."

 

Jenyar,

He doesn't condemn? He doesn't have the authority?

If you peek ino the religion forum, you see Christians and Muslims speaking out condemnation to non-believers all the time. They are "only" quoting the Bible or the Quran, one may say.

But it really isn't comfortable, to say the least, to be met with "You're going to hell if you don't believe what I say." -- this is how many religious people come across.

It is their praise and their faith -- and it is part of their praise and their faith that they express their belief that non-believers are lowlifes.
Are you saying I should I like and respect this approach?

 

I might interject at this moment withe the contention that most Christians are actually demonstarting a lack of faith in God by their faith in God.

I am not suggesting this applies to you Jenya or any one specific for theat matter.

To have faith in God is to realise that God is responsible for his actions and all that he creates thus issues about sin and shame are Gods issue and no one elses.

He creates and achieves what he creates. He is totally responsible for his creation and has the highest degree of responsibility.

To believe in sin is to show a lack of faith in God's responsibility thus a lack of faith in God's integrity.

You may argue that he has given us sin as a way of giving us a challenge but at no time could you assume that he is not responsible for what he gives us. And by placing oursleves as in some way equal to God is also a lack of faith.

Pride is not only a sin according to the bible but is also a creation of God.

If we think we are some how free of God's creation we are demonstrating a lack of faith in his ultimate authority.

 

we need others because we r given life(birth) by others,if u can give life(birth) to ur self then u can live alone easily.can u give life(birth) to ur self? if yes ,then u donot need mr.wilson.

 

It's called spelling. Use it. Chat jargon is looked down upon in this neck of the woods.


However, it can be said that we are capable of giving birth to ourselves. To some extent. We take in our surroundings, including our social companions, and interpret them according to our own particular idiom. There comes a time when a shift in awareness takes place. An epiphany, so to speak. This may be reinforced by social contact with others, spurred on by social contact, etc. But, the effects it has on us all take place internally. The other cannot make you be anything. They can try, but in the end it is your decision to make. Internally. Where no other ever goes, except for the translation echoes of others which we never can never shake, even in absolute isolation.

Saying it is your decision is inadequate of course. There is no decision about it. It is based on internal factors over which one has very little control. But, although these factors may not be "you" they are still you. Responsibility for even subconscious things must be accepted.

 

Yes, it's a sordid past. In my mind, there are two Christianities: the one who had a vested interest in the political power - the Roman church, which later became known as the Roman Catholic church. This is the one people like to vilify. But it's an example of what happens when you make Christ something he never was or wanted to be: an earthly King. His life and teaching was humility and loving service - not pride. That's the mentality I'm defending. And because that is what Christ stood for, the antithesis would be pride, and maybe because the antithesis of Christ's positive ideal is negative, pride became associated with that "antichrist" mentality.

As a misapplication and assumption of authority, it is negative under any circumstances - realized without a bloated ego, within measured boundaries, pride can positive.

Isn't it an artificial use of language to divorce the various definitions of a word - even in a certain context, like a Christian one - from its other applications - secular or religious? Didn't my earler post make clear that there were other uses of the word - and that they were just as definitive in the Christian world, just as readily understood? As I've said before, I have no problem with redeeming the word, or rescuing it from it's 'Christian-term-in-a-non-Christian-world' stigma.

Don't you know me better than this by now? Even people who don't have final authority about something frequently find pleasure in assuming it. May I use the word "pride", or will that soil it with Christian meaning again? Kangaroo courts aren't real ones. A Christian condemning a sinner speaks with the assumption that he isn't one - "pride" again. A Christian who condemns a non-believer forgets that he is an unbeliever by all Jewish standards, and yet Christ - who he believes is the Jewish messiah - didn't think it made much difference to the seriousness of the sins that need forgiveness.

Anyone who says "you're going to hell if you don't believe what I say" has no idea what God said. He is making a personal judgment he has no business making. What we are allowed to judge is sin - our own part in it as well as others. Because if we judge and get rid of it ourselves, we won't go down with it. My point is: no "judgment" is complete if it isn't final - and only God reserves final judgment. I we take pride, it should be in Christ - for saving us while we were sinners and unbelievers. Our strength is our weakness - that we are saved by faith in God - so boasting about it is a bit of a paradox. To judge a person as if he were inferior to you is to put yourself above Christ, who made himself inferior to everyone - and that's nothing to be proud of.

1 Corinthians 4:7
For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?​

I hope I have at least shown what the Christian context of pride is.

 

No, I agree with you - many Christians become more fundamental as their faith lacks trust in God, but I don't hold it against them. Faith has been given in different measures. The important thing is not to let a greater faith interfere with the weaker faith of others, or to lord it over people. I'm just not sure I agree with how you apply this below...

It also means that you accept your lack of faith and understanding in all issues pertaining to God. Sin is a human issue - or Christ need never have become a man. It was people who got lost, not God. We were the ones affected by sin - it didn't make God less God, but it broke the relationship there should have been!

God held up His end of the responsibility - there was no reason for us to fall our stay fallen, He always held His hand out and the door open. To believe in sin is to realize that we don't like to accept his help or his love. It is to deny our own responsibility, which is what you are implying we do here!

Choice is not sin - and choice is not either A or B, either. That's simplifying life to the point of abstraction. Choice against God is sin, and no, He didn't give us that.

Placing ourselves on the same level as God isn't just lack of faith in God, it's no faith in God - and overconfidence in ourselves on areas we have no understanding about.

Everything is the creation of God - it's the abuse and misapplication of what He has created that is sin. Pride and sin aren't objective realities, they're words we used to describe certain actions and mentalities. You can't take them out and objectively say "there they are". We invent laws and social norms to try and do that, but they're also just compensations.

This is true in the sense of obeying Him with your freedom. I.e. displaying love and humility where you otherwise might not have. Having faith in God should limit your "freedom" to sin - but even the greatest faith on earth won't take away the ability to sin. For that you need to assume responsibility for yourself and others, which is what God intended all along.

 

if you don't mind a little bit of flattery Jenya I feel of all the supposed Christians I have come across your understanding of the "ideal" relationship with God is by far the most compelling.
How ever ( ha...there is always the however)
I think I am talking more in absolute terms at a slightly different level or context.

I may be making the mistake of talking from an assumed "God" perpective whilst you are talking from an assumed human perspective......my mistake...sorry.

 

QQ

Thanks so much

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. But I really won't take the credit; it's there for all to see.

No, it's important to make that destinction. It's implicit in the Bible as well. But it isn't wise to talk about God until you can appreciate that you are talking from a human perspective and can't really help it. God speaks for himself, but then again if you are too caught up in your human perspective you might miss it! Speaking in absolute terms changes the context from something we can deal with to something only God can deal with. It's tempting, but it leads to areas that are beyond our comprehension, where we either have to use analogies or resort to philosophies. In religion, people then become dogmatic about it and destroy the faith of many, or in an effort to be philosophical they leave the realm of revelation and come up with definitions of sin, omnipotence and omniscience which are so alien to the original context. It becomes like writing a manual on love.

 

Jenyar,

I am sorry that I came across so rude and deaf. I did it for the sake of the thread, as I saw where the problem was, and then felt I need to provoke an answer from the Christian side, to make matters clear.

I did it in a clumsy way, and I apologize for this. But what was I to do? Say, "Jenyar, would you please explain for our audiences your position on this issue? I know what it is, but they don't seem to."

 

You know, whenever I hear of this concept of god creating sin and then leaving a set of rules for man to deal with, I cannot help but get a picture of Nelson Muntz pointing his finger and yelling "HaHA!".

 

Jenyar:

You must excuse our last meeting, I had a tooth pulled and that day I was particularly...odious. I'm wanting to address something:

And is it not just as detrimental to assume based on faith?
Your Jesus walked through Jeruselam healing the lepers and poor and to the impoverished "Blessed are the poor in spirit", went he on the mound, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth"

This is your heirloom as Christian.
Even in your willigness to negotiate a healthier meaning of pride, your faith stands to inhibit it.
The philosophical among you speak of what man can do.
But your god only speaks of what you cannot.
You seek to reconcile in your lovingness of both man and faith the distortions suffered at the hands of the political, but those full in spirit your doors will shun as presumptious, unworthy brigands not meek enough for the hand of God.
Yes or no?
"What we are allowed to judge", says you, ".. is sin - our own part in it as well as others."
And in your judgements a wayward nun is condemned to a nightmare of atonement for her sins. Yes? She spits back in your contemptuous face:

"Hear me! Proud, stern and cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not. You are the destroyer of my soul, you are my murderer and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn infant's! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a penitent...And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? Coward! You have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of trial will arrive! Then you yield to the impetuous passions....when you feel that man is weak and born to err."
- Agnes to Ambrosio in Lewis' "The Monk"

Do you even realize your presence here in wishing to atone for such a word "Pride".... that you sin? Titus 3:9 demands that you not question your God, this entitity you feel speaks for himself.
You look on human perspective as obstacle and yet will quote a scripture written by Mark. Written by Moses.
Ezekiel.
James.
Luke.
John, Paul, Solomon.
Your God has never spoken for himself.

All we are here on this earth are a curious phenomena of lonely orphans playing with each other, and bashing our heads with opinions in our fight to redeem a loneliness that accompanies anyone without parentage.

Wolf:

Or a girl with big boobs sneering at the sex-starved from behind thick glass.

 

That might have worked

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. I just hope I fielded that ball with grace. I can already see the next pitcher winding up...

No need for apologies, really. I was expecting the pitch. And here is the next one...

My faith does not prohibit it, it requires a more subtle approach - an emphasis to love, and faith in what another has achieved instead of the self, which is what the "good sense" of pride is. The bad sense replaces that faith with a new god: the ego. Jesus was quoting from the Psalms:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret - it leads only to evil.
For evil men will be cut off,
but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy great peace.​

My God speaks of what man cannot do by himself. He promised to supply what we lack, and He did. Meekness is not defeatism or impotence. It's a gentle road to a subtle victory.

Christ atoned for her sins, and for everybody else's. There is no atonement left to make for herself.

"Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a penitent..." - Ambrosio is not God - "And where is the merit of your boasted virtue?" - she is condemning his pride, which fled from Christ - "But the day of trial will arrive! Then you yield to the impetuous passions....when you feel that man is weak and born to err" - which leads to a fall, because when he is tested he will rely on himself, his own judgment, and revelling in his own weakness he will be proved weak.

If his willingness to accept himself as "weak and born to err" has made him admit defeat, then he has lost the victory Christ gained for him. He took pride in meekness, as if that could save anyone.

He speaks to those who listen, but I'm a human being - I need to use human words, and you need to hear them from a human. We need the look of other eyes, and sometimes the words from other lips. But I'm not God. Human perspective is no obstacle, it's just a limited medium.

Yes, I'm ignoring Paul's advice to Titus by getting involved in controversies about words - like meekness and pride - maybe to my own discredit, but I'm not creating division - I'm doing it peacefully, hoping to promote agreement. Seeking mutual understanding is no sin.

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

- John 14:18.​

 

Jenya a small question of posiible contradiction I just thought of whilst reading your post.

Man was punished from eating from the tree of knowledge, so can I infer that the pursuit of knowledge is a sin?

How can you reconcile this notion for man has sort knowledge since man has been man even in the garden of eden he sort knowledge.

So in your current understanding is the pursuit of knowledge a sin?

 

Fair question, but it's actually a logic "leap" that doesn't follow from the context.

If you look at the mention of the tree in Gen. 2, it is called the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil". Some have said that "having the knowledge of good and evil" is a Hebrew expression meaning everything - as in "he's so vain, he thinks he has the knowledge of good and evil!" I can't find a reference so I won't rest my case on this, but it sounds reasonable.

We also have to take into account that they already had knowledge. Eve was able to tell the serpent that eating from the tree was contrary to God's command, meaning she understood the difference between right and wrong. They also had the ability to name all the animals. Webster defines knowledge as "The psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning". Just seeing something new is an act of acquiring new information - learning - and identifying it as something apart from something else is perception, and describing or naming it requires reasoning. God brought them the animals, He encouraged man's acquaintance with new things. He also gave them the garden of Eden to work in and take care of - which is hardly possibly if they were forbidden gain and apply knowledge.

Maybe you could rather say the persuit of forbidden knowledge is a sin, but the story emphasizes their disobedience, not what they gained. What they thought was gain was turned out to be loss; they could now see death, when it was no boundary before. The warning is implicit when God cuts access from the tree of life - seeking eternal life while they are separated from God like that would mean a loss of eternal life.

It sounds very Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones, searching for forbidden knowledge

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. Why can't we have it? It doesn't sound so bad, isn't knowing something always better than not knowing it? I think it's because it represents a false knowledge - a mirage in the desert. Eden - paradise, wisdom, eternal life - is God's property. We can't have it unless God gave it to us, and God promised to give it to us - if we want to sneak behind His back and steal it from Him, we reject that promise.

 

hmmmmm...so the pursuit of the knowledge of good and bad......was forbidden......and the knowledge of death i take it is considered as bad or is it considered as good?

The knowledge of good and evil, is it not about the knowledge of critical thinking and all that springs from it.

"I have the knowledge to build a good house rather than a bad house and choose to use it."

so man was place on a journey of suffering and pleasure to ultimately achieve what the tree of knowledge inspired, that being the knowledge of that which God has.

Sounds like adam was pretty ambitious hey? Wanting to become as God is or was.?

So humanity is on it's journey to fulfill the inspiration of the tree of knowledge and can't get off.

hmmmmmm.......what a story!!!.......might make a book one day.....( chuckles)

 

Now that was a little too facetious. But you're entitled to have your fun.

The knowledge of death, as I put it, was more than just the awareness that we are mortal - it was the realization (becoming clear and present) of losing the life God gave us. Life was something Adam and Eve took for granted, but couldn't anymore. They became *aware* of themselves: standing back from the mirror, they became aware of their shame.

What God provided as compensation was forgiveness and the possibility of reconciliation, although the terms are the same: obedience, which requires faith.

Every man has his own life, just like Adam had his. You didn't live an eternity of suffering. Everybody bears their own responsibility. Adam and Eve are a type. They represent every human being, and our every choice. We can only learn from them what we can apply to our own lives, what we can associate with. That is the purpose of telling their story.

God gives us the knowledge we need. The information is there. But the fruit is still as desireable - still lethal - because it stands opposed to knowing God. People are addicted to it, gourging themselves with knowledge, but learning nothing!

That ambition shows in the smallest desires - anything that places you or anything else in God's place or above his authority. Anything that damages the relationship between you and God, or comes between you and His love. If becoming your own god is your goal, you're on the wrong road. That journey was a dead end from the moment God told A&E that eating from the tree would bring death, from the moment they started walking it.

Once the knowledge was there, there was no unknowing it. Chaos, nothing, whatever was before, is older than life. Life is by definition a manifested antithesis of death, something in addition to it. We cannot live in it - we die. It was a daunting reality to be faced with, hopeless. But God is not limited by death, Christ proved we could have life again in Him. He gave us that promise and hope.

To be caught up in our natural lives as if it made no difference whether we live or die is to reject that there is hope - it is to persist in that journey from which we "can't get off". The fruit on the tree has been eaten, digested, and its poison is in our system. We aren't still looking for knowledge of good and evil - we already have it. What people are looking for now is the tree of life. Or do you deny that? Are you content with your own death, now having the promise of life?