An overview on religions, 2010…
In evolution it appears we just happened as an accident of multiple random selections. Evolution posits us at the mercy of forces beyond our control, so in essence, reducing humanity to an over whelming insignificance. Man prefers to understand his place in the greater scheme of things & then to self organize, to self determine in harmony with the forces that seem to govern us & seeks optimal opportunity within them. Our Gods comprise the framework for these endeavors. It is in God that we have our being, for without him we are nothing more than a collection of random accidents looking for somewhere to happen.
Our Gods form our understandings of ourselves & our world. They are our map, our compass & our centrality. Such is our need to make sense of our universe & mans place within it, we invest a great deal in both the formation & maintenance of our Gods. Thus we are not governed by what we do & do not want, nor by what education & resources might allow us to have; but rather, are governed by what our Gods equip us to have.
I cannot tell you what questions you should ask about God. You can only look in your own heart for your own questions. I can only tell you the question I ask.
To me the only question is… ~If humanity is to have any self respect & merit as a self-determining species; off all the claimants for the title God, which one is most meet for I a human to serve~
My heart answered… In Christ, better than we would otherwise be.
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Its lonely being a human, there are not many self determining intelligences around. Man, uniquely, has to create his own solutions. We have to create our own purposes, our own justifications, our own stability, our own security, our own dignity & our own worth.
Man faces challenges & opportunities no other species (known to us) faces. Our centrality is in the self aware ~I~ & we have no conception of the I either beginning or ending,
Animals mate, get born & die without awareness. Man is the only creature where children are a deliberate choice & one with an intentional purpose. No animal can say… ~I knew you before you were born or even conceived; I made you for a purpose (in me)~ To animals death just happens, while man is aware of his own eminent ending for the whole of his life. Man is the only creature which leaves an intentional inheritance, one through which his ~I~ will continue beyond his own ending. ~This is the torch of your fathers, carry it forward in sacred trust~ Man, uniquely seeks justification & meaning. No animal ever turned to God as did Rebekah, wife of Isaac, to demand… ~If it is to be this way, why do I live?~
Man has unique needs, peculiar to the precarious adventure of a self determining intelligence capable of higher development; one also capable of his own self destruction.
Unlike animals, trees or stars man has no defined place or purpose. Man is the oddball in the whole order of things. We cannot clearly define where animal ends & human begins, nor can we define where human might end or what we might become. We can gain knowledge of the universe, knowledge of physics, of biology, genetics, chemistry & science. All of which is to the good, yet none of it explains the single oddity off one free will self determining species on a minor planet in an otherwise ordinary solar system. A species capable of coordinating its capacity for abstract thought with the hands of a toolmaker. In this whole universe, man is alone. Man is the subject of many potentialities, no fixed boundaries, & many existential uncertainties.
The higher religions are all intentional efforts to address issues unique to humankind.
At this point, please allow me to refer you to, ~Omnipotence vs. ETERNAL~ 10 pages, & ~Original Sin~ 4 pages, under secular tab, CommuniChristi Webb-site.
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Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroasterism, Greek Philosophy, Judaism, Christianity & some others in developing societies; all the higher religions, evolved as regional responses to a common challenge. As man made the transition from hunter gatherer to permanent developed societies the pre-existing natural religions, like animism & paganism, proved unsuitable religious partners for higher development; civilization is based on mans capacities in the developed abstracts, it is not rooted in nature. You cannot burn down your existing house unless you build a new one, the higher religions were all invented or created artificial religions intended to replace the deficient natural religions. There were many disputes between them & with their established authorities, yet these were insider religions who shared common cause in partnering improved civilizations.
Islam is unique in being the only major religion to emerge after all the foundational concepts of civilization were already developed & put in place. As such Islam is reactive to the very existence of civilization, not a committed partner of it. The Arabs were outsiders looked down upon by civilized people; deeply resentful off & grudge bearing toward civilization. Muhammad was even more extreme, a self promoting little man who was rejected & excluded on the grounds of incompetence & on account of his being delusional or partly insane. If the Arabs were a rejected people, Muhammad was rejected even by the rejected. This was something he took very personally & the resultant Islam attests… hell hath no fury like the little man spurned; Islam is an outsider religion determined to subjugate all others.
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The instructions for building the Jewish temple required it be constructed from the best of the best materials drawn from all over the world. I hold the Jews, whose Israel was Gods model state & when outside Israel cultivated a niche specialty in public administrations, drew the best of the developed abstracts from all over the world & collated them into a monotheistic singular they were to call Y-H-W-H. Previously the abstracts were weak & divided, as they spoke with disparate voices. This new supra abstract spoke with one voice & had the unified authority to project his writ. As his elements were gathered from the best offerings all over the developed world, Y-H-W-H is held the universal father of civilizations.
I do not want to overstate the value of the original at a time when the developed abstracts were in their infancy. Suffice to say, the Patriarchs & Prophets collated the best of the best then available. This model was open at its top end, so allowing further abstract developments to be tested, proven & incorporated within him. Y-H-W-H was thus a continuous work in progress who would always remain… the most high.
The Bible is the earliest source of the great conceptual discoveries essential for civilization: equality before the law, sanctity of life, sanctity of property right, dignity of the individual, individual & communal responsibility, peace as an ideal, love as the foundation of justice. The Bible is not the sole source of these things as other civilizations part attempted them. Yet the Jews garnered the best of the best from all other attempts in the world, & sought to meld these elements into a ~no compromises~ working entity. When the Prophets declared ~Hear Oh Israel, the Lord is one~ it was these higher elements which had joined in oneness, & these alone would sit in judgment over the nations.
Later the Apostles & Disciples, plus a large supporting constituency; drew the best of the best of the higher humanities & day to day aspirations of ordinary people, then collated them into a monotheistic singular called THE Christ. While other mentors spoke separately, Christ provided the unified example to be our highest cohesive mentor. ~It is said that our God is light, & hath no darkness in him at all~ HE was & is both human & divine; individually we all have faults, no ordinary mortal can do this.
The resultant Christianity seeks to fulfill the natural relationship which exists between the perfect state (Israel) & the perfect human being (Christ) While some take the Bible literally, I prefer to take it representatively. ~I Believe~ is not a statement of literal fact, but a statement of commitment, as in ~I pledge my allegiance to~ The New Testament is just that… A TESTAMENT. It is not an assemblage of evidences, but an assembly of personal testimonies off transformative spiritual experiences, all of which are centered in the common spiritual community we call THE Christ. I have no time for historical Jesus cults, there is no verifiable history, there is only THE Christ of the Gospels who is a Jesus of testimony. Thus I ask how Christ’s two natures occurred within the natural law, to be a benefice of sufficient worth to man that so many say… ~off all the options available to man. The Bible offers the ones most meet for I a human to deify~
On page xxiii of the foreword to his 2006 book ~Jesus of Nazareth~ Benedict XVI says… ~study of the Gospels reveals a figure & a way… worthy of belief~ I am not sure the Pope & I agree on many things, but it seems both struggling peasant & struggling scholar agree… ~study of the Gospels reveals a figure & a way… worthy of belief~ Despite other differences which may exist between the Pope & myself, perhaps that is all any of us need to know to be a Christian.
On the same page Benedict attests… ~we cannot give up on the serious engagement off history~
Historical Jesus cults fail because of their cultic focus on a small segment of history which is limited in time & space. Christ is infinite & eternal. The historical Jesus exists as the sum of all history, past, present & future. I trust Benedict is serious about the eternal history of Christ; the only history in which the historical Jesus can be found.
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While some say no one ever had a coherent idea of the Trinity, it has always been remarkably simple. We know the Father when we know God as a remote & distant authority; we know the Son when we know God as intimately close & personal. We know the Holy Spirit as we experience it working within the creation & through we the created.
Refer to ~Integrity of the Bible~ 4 pages, &. ~Theology Two~ 9 pages, under Christianity tab, CommuniChristi Webb-site. Remember always, the Bible is the ultimate authority.
Let us consider the forty or so people who wrote the Bible. These are normal people with the same concerns as you & I. The voices they heard were representative, not literal & actual, Forming the basis of what we call, ~a calling to God~ They had inadequacies & faults as you & I have, they had the same limitations as you & I have; the Bible is fully transparent in presenting them, they rose to challenges even though they often struggled under the immensity & audacity of their undertaking & fell short of what they aspired to achieve. No false confidence here.
Even the bringing forth of Christ as simultaneously human & divine; whilst it required a communal higher inspiration; conceived by the Holy Spirit is achievable by means available to the pure of heart without requiring any literal act of external intervention. See ~Theology two~ Christianity tab, Webb-site The peoples Messiah, ~is off the people, by the people, for the people, through the people~ If I put the great universal questions to the writers of the Bible, I get templates you & I can apply to the tough challenges of life. As they are just normal ordinary people like you & I, we get practical guidance you & I can apply to life & the big question of God.
Thus I take my Bible representatively, yet I hold it represents truths off profound import.
After the Bible was written, Muhammad, who understood Christ merely as a normal human being passed off as God, decided to try his hand at the same game. The Arabs were already contemplating monotheism, Muhammad capped out a process already in motion by gathering up all the pagan deities in the Kabah, plus all the primal drives of man; collated them into a monotheistic singular he was to call Allah. Previously the primal forces had spoken in multiple voices; Islam calls the period of Jahillya a period of division & weakness. This new supra primal spoke with one voice, & had the unified authority to project his writ.
Refer to… ~Islam, point of origin~ 4 pages, ~Birth of Jihad~ 2 pages, under Islam tab, CommuniChristi Webb site.
The resultant Islam is not just an ancient religion, but a contemporaneous spiritual principality & an aspiring temporal ruler of this earth.
Good & bad have been part of life for all of time. Prime Cause may be indifferent & see both as necessary parts of the life process. At least we are alive to be moaning. Thus the argument over whether Christ or the Allah entity is the original God seems a bit pointless, as both may be as old as each other & so have equal claim to the title ~ancient of days~ More relevant I believe, is the question… ~Out of the two claimants, both of which live in & through me, which is meet for I a human to deify~
One of Islam’s proudest claims, is it purged & restored as pristine the laws which were already present in the natural religions, before they were perverted by Jews & Christians who falsified by the human hand. Christians remain obdurate… ~We are raised up & saved by the created law given by the creator God in the Bible, & pristine natural law is one of the things we are saved from~ While both faiths aspire to purity at law, it is two different laws each is trying to purify.
I agree with Islam, we are all children of the same Adam. I hold all Gods to be man made & drawn from the human capacity to know; our experiential, conceptual & projectoral capacities. Yet I hold Adam to be a creature of many natures, some worth deifying some not. All the elements of The Most High God of Israel, thou shalt raise no other Gods above me, & His Son Christ Jesus were drawn from the top end of the human capacity to know.
How does man draw Gods from the human capacity to know; from our experiential, conceptual & projectoral capacities. Draw a circle; the human capacity to know may be any multi-dimensional shape but a circle will do for this exercise. Draw a horizontal line which defines the top 20% of this circle. All the elements of the Father & the Son were drawn from this top 20% of our capacity to know. They were elected by means of rigorous peer group review before being incorporated within this common body, as my own work must be subject to such review. ~Thou shalt raise no other Gods above me, nor beside me~ We cannot go above the top end of our capacity to know, it is simply a fact.
Father and Son are a union between the most high & the most high, making them off the same origin, substance & essence as each other. The Holy Spirit, which emanates from both, is the Spirit of the most high. The three are held a monotheism by reason of their common community… the Most High.
Muhammad drew all the elements off his Allah entity from some other quadrant of the human capacity to know, one called our base natures.
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Note on sanctification & licenses received direct from God.
Most off the intermediate religions, are based on normal decently intended behaviors. Normal is underwritten by a natural license & requires no other authority. Many in these faiths endeavor to live good lives & take care of their own, yet have a policy of limited liability in defining just who & what comprises their own. While these religions embrace concepts of duty of care, they are restricted to kinship networks, not universal. Thus, religious offices serve the function of teachers of values, culture & history; while presiding as civil clerks, arbitrating civil disputes, & recording the normal rites of passage, birth, adulthood, marriage, death etc.
Judaism & Christianity set their sights in the highest, this abnormality has no natural underwriter; thus, the faiths of the Most High are dependent on a license received direct from God above. Isaiah 55:8-9 ~My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are you ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways~ ~Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, & strive to serve him with all thy might~ is also well above the norms of man. Love all of humanity as God loves them, has no natural underwriter so requires a divine mandate. The Prophets in the Bible are held to have dealt directly with either God or the Holy Spirit, & the Immaculate Conception was wrought by the Holy Spirit.
Islam, a power grab by the deficient Muhammad, set its sights in the lowest. It is not natural for humans to sustain practices of self harm & repression on themselves; nor is it natural to sustain such an unyielding distrust of ones neighbors, or maintain a policy of unrestrained malignancy towards other peoples. (Unbelievers). This abnormality too has no natural underwriter, so is wholly dependent on a license attributed to the Allah entity who is deemed to have spoken, both literally & directly, through Muhammad. Fear & reject the unbeliever as the Allah entity fears & rejects them, has no natural underwriter, so requires a mandate from a source of fear & rejection deemed to be divine.
In my mind the thing that stands out, is the uniqueness of the three faiths of Abraham. All three are outsider religions in the sense of being outside human norms. All three are unique in their degree of dependence on divine license. In Judaism & Christianity, the legitimate succession; the Prophets and Apostles labored mightily over thousands of years to bring forth the Holy instruments which would raise man up in the highest. Well above human norms. Muhammad later plagiarized from Judaism & Christianity, Islam, the illegitimate succession; then perverted these Holy instruments to serve his own unholy ends off subjugating & enslaving humankind in the lowest. Well below human norms. Little wonder the relationship between legitimate & illegitimate successions is deeply problematical, & Christians call Islam… the great tribulation.
Only Islam has the Sharia, but only Islam is based on the lowest common denominators, thus only Islam lives that close to the lower reaches of hell it needs a sub-floor. Faiths based on the intermediate common denominators have a greater comfort zone below them. Only Christianity has Canon Law, only Christianity is Gods agent on this earth, only Christianity can save in the highest. Christ within the Trinity is our only salvation in the highest, Muhammad & Islam a holding facility of last resort; where Muslims are saved from the lower reaches of hell, only to be stored suspended in purgatory pending their future salvation in Christ.
Refer ~Muhammad – essential to Muslims – irrelevant to Christians~ under Islam tab.
Note… I am New Zealand born, off Danish & English forebears, & part Maori. There is nothing which makes me a direct genetic descendant of Isaac, but I am as that is the spiritual lineage I adopted through Christ. A Chinese or Pakistani Muslim is not a genetic descendant of Ishmael, but they are as that is the spiritual lineage they adopt through Muhammad. We are all endowed with free will to choose our Gods; which are most meet for I a human to deify; & all will be judged & held accountable for the choices we make.
Thus I say to Muslims… you to your God… me to mine.
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All of my work is centered on man made, it works for the purposes I am called to fulfill & I make no apologies for that. Yet I agree the higher aspirations of the Bible have no natural under-writer so are dependent on divine license for their fulfillment. This makes my position with the Biblical literalist’s somewhat interesting, as I believe there is no replacement for holding the Bible as the word of God, yet we are endowed with free will, capacity of reason, decision & judgment as to whether we understand his word literally or representatively. Off import, the Bible must be upheld as his revered word, no matter which of the two understandings we apply.
My own position is to hold the Bible as imperatives received from God. Imperatives being a charge we needs assume, regardless off whether we hold them literal or representative truth.
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Footnote… if the above attributes of the God of the Bible sound too good to be true, we needs note the Bible stands on a firm foundation of realism. ~Thy Kingdom come on this earth as it is in heaven~ attests Christianities temporal charge, & this temporal aspiration is its reality check. Christianity is best described as a reality religion based on the highest ideals. While secular politicians, keen to purchase votes, are far too ready to pronounce bills of universal free rights & are strangely reticent on proclaiming universal bills of reciprocal responsibilities, the Bible is clear on the pre-conditions for the coming of His Kingdom. The Bible is even handed on linking rights to responsibilities & the coming of His Kingdom is conditional on a peoples fealty to the God of the Bible, specifically. Thou shalt have no other Gods but me. Lawyers & republicans with their doctrines of rights without responsibilities, & Christian Pentecostalism with its doctrine of free salvation, no cross to carry; would do well to ponder… ~Isaiah 55:9 ~As the heavens are higher than the earth, my ways are sounder than your ways~ ~thou shalt raise no other Gods above me~ That is all I want to say about free rights & free salvation.
Ken Maynard. e-mail… communichristi@gmail.com
Link to Home-page…. http://www.communichristi.org.nz
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