Eternity. Lots of people mention it but I have found very few who can grasp the concept. Eternity scares me silly. I loathe boredom. You know, the too much of a good thing idea. So if I have to go through an eternity, I want to be a rock or something that has the patience for it.
First Love
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With this you condemn all who do not follow your interpretation of the gospels, which is what Paul was preaching. He was condemning all the other factions of Christianity at the time and saying he was the only one who knows the truth, just like you and Htz. That is not love that is discrimination. You don't seem to get how exclusive and unloving that is.
If their is loving god that created all that we witness, then it gave its word and knowledge to all peoples, in all geographic locations in all historical time frames. Just because you chose to focus on only one of those renditions does not make it the only one. You cannot believe in a loving creator and believe otherwise. That is what irks me about so called bible thumpers; their arrogance and self righteousness. If Jesus were to appear on Earth and proclaim the truth, Christians would be the first to kill him. Their dogmatic adherence to doctrine would not allow them to recognize the universal truth that he came to give us all.
I am so glad to hear from you tonight, Cliffy. Your presence and contribution inspire and enhance my experience of "First Love." Bless you!
Paul did know the old science that's why he railed against the others who were his contemporarys but bent on the fleshy Christ .Paul was Gnostic of the greek schools hung out in Alexandria for a while. It was nasty business early christianity of the fraudulent kind.
Why is dogma in a religion thread?
Yeah I see that now.
The only way I can differentiate the difference : religion is dogma, spirituality is without dogma. Or another way of putting it: Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell, spirituality is for those who have already been there.Why is dogma in a religion thread?
I suppose that would be hard to grasp unless your memory was lessoned. All of it is not something I can comprehend. I say, enjoy this day,,let the next day take care of itself.
There are different kinds of first loves. I guess to think hard on it for a spell, it would be the one who gave me life. Whoever that may be.
"Or he will make you suffer and burn and scream in pain for all eternity". You forgot that part. Can't you just feel the love?
Would you please post the Scripture reference for your quote above, Cliffy? Thanks.
The word religion has nothing to do with the organized cults of today. However it may be impossible to save the word such is the very bad taste left in the mind when speaking it. I've posted it before but here it is again, religion means a return to the origin, which entails remembering home. That's quite loose but close enough. If you remember my early post here I was loath to use the word without spitting and washing my mouth out with beer.
In a final form, the Messiah was the immortal spirit in man, or the Christ within, according to the language of Paul. Those who understood these things could not take to, or be taken in by, historic Christianity; could only think of it as did Celsus when he says of the Christians: "Certain most impious errors are committed by them, which are due to their extreme ignorance, in which they have wandered away from the meaning of the divine enigmas"; and as did Porphyry, who denounced the Christian religion as a "blasphemy, barbarously bold." The Christian doctrine of being born again was derived without knowledge from this Gnostic re-birth, which was the conversion of the total man, and his seven lower souls, into a likeness of his supreme or divine self, with the eighth one, the Christ-spirit, as the reproducer for eternal life. Paul sometimes claims that he possesses this Christ-nature, this Revealer within, because, according to the Gnostics, humanity could attain to the divine altitude, and demonstrate upon the Mount of Transfiguration the immortal element in the nature of man. The Christian world let go, and lost this basis that Paul found in natural, though supra-normal fact, when it ignorantly substituted the modus operandi of miracle applied to a physical resurrection.http://pc93.tripod.com/gmlectrs.htm
http://pc93.tripod.com/lostlght.htm
The Western world has too long and fatuously labored under the delusion that a pious and devout disposition fulfills the whole requirement of true religion. Ancient sagacity knew that piety without intelligence, or religion without philosophy, was insufficient and dangerous. It knew that general good intent was not safe from aberrancy, folly and fanaticism unless it was directed by the highest powers and resources of the mind. And the mind itself had to be fortified with specific knowledge of the nature of the cosmos and of man and the relation between the two. Following the dictum of the sage, Hermes Trismegistus, that "the vice of a soul is ignorance, the virtue of a soul is knowledge," the scriptures of old inculcated the precept that with all man’s getting he must first get wisdom and understanding.
The corruption and final loss of the basic meaning of these scriptures has been, in the whole of time, the greatest tragedy in human
Carpenter makes it clear that the coming of a Savior-God was in no sense a belief distinctive of Christianity. He explains that the Messianic prophecies of the Jews and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah infected Christian teaching to some degree with Judaic influence. The Hebrew word Messiah, meaning "The Anointed One," occurs some forty times in the Old Testament; and each time in the Septuagint, written as early as the third century before our era, it is translated Christos, which also means "Anointed." It is thus seen, says Carpenter, that the word "the Christ" was in vogue in Alexandria as far back as 280 B.C. In the Book of Enoch, written not later than B.C. 170, the Christ is spoken of as already existing in heaven, about to come to earth, and is called "The Son of Man." The Book of Revelation is full of passages from Enoch, likewise the Epistles of Paul and the Gospels.
What helped me grasp the concept of "eternity" and "forever" was starting with our solar system having one star. Then following the estimations of how many stars in our galaxy and so on. All the while remembering that our star is not the biggest star and yet it is still 1.3 million times the size of Earth and the distance between Earth and is 150 million kilometers. The next galaxy is 163 thousand light-years away (light travels through space at a rate of about 300 thousand kilometers per second and there are about 32 million seconds in a year). It would take us 163,000 years to get to the nearest galaxy travelling at the speed of light, so it is a fair ways away. The Hubble can "see" about 100 billion galaxies in the universe and as we improve technology, we are likely going to see a lot more galaxies.
Now try to envision that.
OR, one could try imagining how many cells make up our bodies (about 37 trillion ± a few hundred billion). Then multiply that by how many humans there are, then other anthropoids, then other animals, then insects and plants and so on. And then try envisioning that.
Whichever one you try envisioning, they are still finite. There is a limit. Forever and eternity have NO limit.
To me there is one first love. There are loves of different types but still there is only one first.
Like eating your first fruit. Regardless of oranges, peaches, apples, pineapples, etc. there is only one first fruit eaten.
What in your opinion is love?
Here is what the ancients believed.
Since man’s spirit is an indestructible fragment of God’s own mighty Spirit, truly a tiny spark of that cosmic Intelligence and Love which we call the Mind of God, the ancients typified the divine element in man by fire and in contrast the lower or human element by water. The fiery soul of man is housed in a tenement of flesh and matter which is seven-eighths water by actual composition!
The crossing of the rivers and seas and the immersion of solar heroes in water in olden mythologies, and the rite of baptism in theology, signified nothing beyond the fact of the soul’s immersion in a physical body of water nature in its successive incarnations.
Great question, DB.
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NIV)
Just a word that everyone has a definition of. To me it may fall under the I don't know category.
Sometime It fails.