Thought for the Day

0

I got something photographed today which I felt to be interesting. It was posted by a church or religious organization on the billboard. Interesting as it may be, oddly seems to be a more secularized message.

None of the normal patent(TM) evangelical "absolute truth" undertones.

"There are no absolute answers to life - just Revelations."
"A path without obstacles probably leads nowhere."
I agree on both accounts.

My Agnostic Friend: The first billboard implies that revelation does not contain absolute answers.

Personal truths, perhaps, which are not patent absolute truths.

ehow.com › Mental Health
The Psychology of Personal Revelations. Throughout her life, an individual has the potential to have one or more life-changing events

.../personal-revelation-the-teachings-and-examples-of-t...
Personal revelation is the way we know for ourselves the most important truths of our existence.

My Agnostic Friend: Very moderate of them to admit that.

My other Agnostic friend says I'm not a Christian. I say I am. He said I'm agnostic. =) I don't think so.

From: Me
Date : 07/15/2012 12:01 am
Contents :
All agnostics seem extraordinarily mellowed out. =)

From : My Other Agnostic Friend
Date : 07/15/2012 12:02 am
Contents :
Don't have to be all uptight and always think we're right about everything.

From: Me
Date : 07/15/2012 12:09 am
Contents :
Lol... But thing is, agnostics often are..

From : My Other Agnostic Friend
Date : 07/15/2012 12:10 am
Contents :
Because we can see things from all different angles. Not just one angle that backs up our life and other beliefs......

From: Me
Date : 07/15/2012 12:19 am
Contents :
Ok... So does that make me agnostic?? Cos i was a real true ATHEIST for abt five seconds when i realized the bible was a book of myths invented by men..
And where do belief in god come from? Bible. So, god is a myth. I was in it... Atheist mind, y know? But thought, 'nah... Somethings out there. Not sure what... But something.' and that was 1990s and seen n tried every belief... And never found any 'absolute truth'. Agnostics are my favorite people... just are... I dont ask why.

From : My Other Agnostic Friend
Date : 07/15/2012 12:22 am
Contents :
Well, sounds like U are, but think about it too much. I think most of us know we'll not get the answers, so why bother discussing it or argueing it with other people. Not worth the waste of my time, and most likely not going to change their minds anyway.....

---

From: My Other Agnostic Friend
Date : 07/15/2012 01:26 am
U have to believe all that bs bible **** to be a christian. The teachings and morals are the same things that have been handed down through all religions and many cultures. To believe them alone does not make U christian....

From : Me
Date : 07/15/2012 01:34 am
Contents :
I think it does. :) ... A wannabe christian. I TRY to b nice and patient and then something happens and i mess up and say things i regret later.... But u've gracefully forgiven me. Christians are seldom forgiving 7x70... As jesus instructed to be. Noooo, many set around gossipping and slandering the innocent. Theyre not christian... U say they are... They say they are, but jesus says 'u will know my people by their fruits'... And i say, those people are christian, in name only.

From : My Other Agnostic Friend
Date : 07/15/2012 01:37 am
Contents :
Well look at my fruit; does that make me christian? If there is a heaven will I not get in because I don't accept christianity?

From: Me
Date : 07/15/2012 01:45 am
Contents :
Revelation states there is a resurrection of the dead, and all 'judged according to their works'. Note: it doesnt say 'according to one's creed'. Theists do that. A wise God would not and yes, i think any loving, righteous god would see u have love in your heart and the right priorities... Whilst some evangelists and priests are molesting kids. JESUS SAYS 'many will say Lord, we prophsied in ur name,' and told, 'Depart, i know u not.'

From: My Other Agnostic Friend
Date : 07/15/2012 01:47 am
Contents :
Well the vast majority (pretty much all) say I wouldn't get into heaven. Further proof that Ur not christian. :-p

From: Me
Date : 07/15/2012 01:53 am
Contents :
I am a christian and if many other 'christians' had their way, theyd reinstate the inquisition n theyd burn me at the stake for heresy and you n my buddy for apostasy. Jesus was also falsely accused, beaten and crucified by the same bunch of religious cronies... So ur in good company. The pious, self-righteous religious leaders murdered jesus, not the 'sinners' and simpletons of his day.

---

"Revelation states there is a resurrection of the dead, and all 'judged according to their works'. Note: it doesnt say 'according to one's creed'."

My Agnostic Friend: Exactly.

In fact, according to biblical scholars the book of Revelation appears to have been composed by a Judaizing Christian who agreed more with Matthew and his idea of the sheep and goats being judged by their "works," than with Paul's view that "faith" is what "saves." In fact, biblical scholar Elaine Pagels suggest that the author of Revelation was trying to correct the erroneous view as he saw it in churches of the Pauline idea that "faith" is what "saves."

Below are summations of Elaine Pagels's new book, Revelation:

Pagels emphasizes that the Book of Revelation was written at a particular time and place: a small island off the coast of Turkey, probably around 90 C.E. after the Romans had burned down the Great Temple and left Jerusalem in ruins. “We begin to understand what he wrote,” she says, “only when we see that his book is wartime literature.” In other words, much of the fiery destruction portrayed early in John’s narrative is not so much prophetic as historical, a florid depiction of the incomprehensible horrors that had left Jews stunned, scattered and frightened. In the wake of Rome’s brutal repression and the flourishing of its empire, John wrote cryptic “anti-Roman propaganda that drew its imagery from Israel’s prophetic traditions.” His “Revelation,” then, was a way of acknowledging recent defeats while knitting them neatly into a narrative of future victory.

More provocatively, Pagels claims that John “sees himself as a Jew who acknowledges Jesus as Israel’s messiah — not someone who has converted to a new ‘religion.’?” That distinction is significant, because it allows her to argue that while John was portraying Rome as the beast, he was also warning Jewish followers of Jesus against associating with gentile followers of Jesus inspired by “that maverick called Paul of Tarsus [who] came out of nowhere and began to preach a ‘gospel’ quite different.” In this interpretation, the Book of Revelation was part of an early power struggle among Jesus’s believers, an internecine conflict defined by stark terms of good and evil, faithfulness and apostasy, salvation and damnation. . . .

In the chapters that follow, Pagels goes on to demonstrate how — and how thoroughly — John lost the battle of interpretation over the story he left behind. As his “Revelation” became the culmination of Christian eschatology, his Jewish allusions were appropriated by a new sect that colonized the Hebrew Bible as the “Old” Testament, subordinated Israeli prophets to Christian bishops, and recast Jews as unbelievers set for hell.

Or this review. . .

We may imagine John, Pagels suggests, as an old Jew who had lived through the Jewish war with Rome, during which Jerusalem was decimated and the Temple destroyed in the year 70. He may have seen the thousands of Jews killed and thousands of others carried to Rome as slaves. Bitter about the dominating imperial power, he may have wandered through Syria and Asia Minor, along the way meeting other followers of the crucified prophet Jesus, other “cells” of worshipers of the Jewish Messiah who was killed and mysteriously raised from the dead.

But when he gets to western Asia Minor, he comes across many gentile Christians, quite possibly in churches founded by the now dead Apostle Paul. Unlike John, they seem to be relatively well off. They usually get along fine with their non-Christian neighbors. They may be prospering from the Pax Romana, the “peace” sustained by Roman domination. They are marrying and having children, running their small businesses, ignoring the statues, temples and worship of other gods that surround them.

For John, this Christian toleration of Rome and its idols is offensive. This is not a benign governmental power. It is the Whore of Babylon, arrogantly destroying the earth. John writes (in this theory) to warn the churches, and he relates his vision to provoke alarm at the Evil Empire. That vision predicts the destruction of Rome by angelic armies, followed by the salvation of faithful disciples of the bloody, horned warrior-lamb Jesus. Those who resist will, in the end, be rewarded.

Or this one. . .

What’s more original to Pagels’s book is the view that Revelation is essentially an anti-Christian polemic. That is, it was written by an expatriate follower of Jesus who wanted the movement to remain within an entirely Jewish context, as opposed to the “Christianity” just then being invented by St. Paul, who welcomed uncircumcised and trayf-eating [forbidden-food-eating] Gentiles into the sect. At a time when no one quite called himself “Christian,” in the modern sense, John is prophesying what would happen if people did. That’s the forward-looking worry in the book. “In retrospect, we can see that John stood on the cusp of an enormous change—one that eventually would transform the entire movement from a Jewish messianic sect into ‘Christianity,’ a new religion flooded with Gentiles,” Pagels writes. “But since this had not yet happened—not, at least, among the groups John addressed in Asia Minor—he took his stand as a Jewish prophet charged to keep God’s people holy, unpolluted by Roman culture. So, John says, Jesus twice warns his followers in Asia Minor to beware of ‘blasphemers’ among them, ‘who say they are Jews, and are not.’ They are, he says, a ‘synagogue of Satan.’ ” Balaam and Jezebel, named as satanic prophets in Revelation, are, in this view, caricatures of “Pauline” Christians, who blithely violated Jewish food and sexual laws while still claiming to be followers of the good rabbi Yeshua. Jezebel, in particular—the name that John assigns her is that of an infamous Canaanite queen, but she’s seen preaching in the nearby town of Thyatira—suggests the women evangelists who were central to Paul’s version of the movement and anathema to a pious Jew like John. She is the original shiksa goddess. (“When John accuses ‘Balaam’ and ‘Jezebel’ of inducing people to ‘eat food sacrificed to idols and practice fornication,’ he might have in mind anything from tolerating people who engage in incest to Jews who become sexually involved with Gentiles or, worse, who marry them,” Pagels notes.) The scarlet whores and mad beasts in Revelation are the Gentile followers of Paul—and so, in a neat irony, the spiritual ancestors of today’s Protestant evangelicals.

Pagels shows persuasively that the Jew/non-Jew argument over the future of the Jesus movement, the real subject of Revelation, was much fiercer than later Christianity wanted to admit. The first-century Jesus movement was torn apart between Paul’s mission to the Gentiles—who were allowed to follow Jesus without being circumcised or eating kosher—and the more strictly Jewish movement tended by Jesus’ brothers in Jerusalem. The Jesus family was still free to run a storefront synagogue in Jerusalem devoted to his cult, and still saw the Jesus or “Yeshua” movement within the structure of dissenting Judaisms, all of which suggests the real tone of the movement in those first-century years—something like the gingerly, ambiguous, now-he-is, now-he-isn’t messianic claims of the Lubavitchers’ Menachem Schneerson movement, in Brooklyn. “On one side are movement officials who say the promotion of Judaism throughout the world is the heart of continuing Schneerson’s work,” the Washington Post reported several years ago. “On the other are the messianists, whose passion is preparing the world for the coming of Schneerson himself. They are two distinct missions from within one movement—each in the name of the same man.” Apparently, when you have made up your mind to believe that your rabbi is God, neither death nor disappearance will discourage you. His presence is proof; his non-presence is proof; and non-presence can be conjured into presence by wishing it to be so. (“At recent Sabbath services, an older woman along the front row of the women’s section smiled and pointed to the chair. ‘He is Moshiach,’ she said, using the Hebrew word for messiah. ‘We can’t see him with our eyes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not here. He is.”) The two approaches—the Pauline, which says he’s already here in our visions; the “Johannine,” which says he’ll come back if we stay true to our practice—seem to be the pillars of any messianic movement.

Thanks for that extensive input. But I believe works and faith are equally important.

Through Faith in Jesus, one gains access to God's Holy Spirit. Certainly, God was never lost, and even the unbeliever is known to God, and perhaps the unbeliever finds personal revelation to lead them to faith. Through the Holy Spirit, a person's life becomes transformed, and you will know the people of God, by their works. Does God work through Agnostics? Why not? If God busies himself with counting the hairs on a man's head, or feeding ravens, why not use an Agnostic to his greater purpose?

That's as simple and as complicated as I can put it.

The spirit of God can transform (a.k.a., "Save") a man or woman who is, in spiritual terms, condemned.

Likewise, there are many who call themselves Christian, but do not bear the fruits of the spirit, and Jesus said of HIS PEOPLE, "You will know them by their fruits," (or by the same token, their "works"),

James 2:18 But someone may well say, "You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works."
Good works are good fruit, like grapes and figs, pleasing to God and profitable to men.
By the fruits of their persons, their words and actions, and the course of their conversation. If you would know whether they be right or not, observe how they live; their works will testify for them or against them.
http://biblebrowser.com/matthew/7-16.htm

But of those others in the end they will come and say, "But Lord!" and they will be told "Depart, I know you not."

---

Two thoughts.

#1 When Abraham spoke to God and asked, if ten righteous were found in Sodom would God spare the people therein... God says he will spare the city if ten righteous souls are found. Then Abraham questions, if five righteous were found in Sodom? God says if five righteous are found, he will spare the city. Then Abraham tests the Lord's heart and mind, and yes, if one righteous were found in Sodom, again, God would spare the city.

One must ask themself according to that account, if God searches the heart and mind and judges, long before the time of Christianity, also, needless to add, long before even the time of the law of Moses. Then it must not be according to one's creed, but by works, by the goodness of the soul, even in the heart and mind of an Agnostic that God judges.

#2 I attended a funeral of a man, who was by all accounts, by many in the community deemed "condemned" "unchristian" a "sinner," "unsaved". Yet, the preacher was in a position that he had to find something good to say at the funeral for sake of the family. He reminded the people that this man's life, even now, deceased, that all his works were not yet fulfilled. The influence, the effect his life had had upon others was yet to be known. Therefore, not to judge. In summary, only God could make that final judgment. That all would be taken into account.

...and the book of Revelation speaks of such a final judgment.

> > > God was never lost, and even the unbeliever is known to God, and perhaps the unbeliever finds personal revelation to lead them to faith...... a person's life becomes transformed... AND IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE OVERNIGHT... A DAY TO GOD IS LIKE 1000 YEARS.... why not use an Agnostic to his greater purpose?

The Bible also says, "Judge not lest ye be judged."

So who can say who will be kept out of paradise? The day of the great and final judgment has yet to come, yet, God is judging even now, one's whole life taken into account from God's perspective, a life in its full context; their life's works and every idle thought. Jesus merely taught how to live life well. :) Jesus taught a religion of LOVE. No human alive, has the wisdom to make such an insightful judgment on any other person, to know what their life will become, their life in its entire context, to truly know the heart and mind of any other soul. Every human soul is a Work in Progress and Under Construction. God alone has that wisdom.
So I agree with Jesus, that many "Christians" will come and say, "Lord we prophesied in your name," and told "Depart, I know you not." While many unbelievers who lived a life of good fruit, that is, good works, will inherit paradise, because God was always with them, though they never knew it.

My Agnostic Friend: The parable of the wheat and the tares says it's best to let them grow side by side otherwise you are likely to pull up some wheat with the tares, which means when they are young plants they look very similar. You can't tell what will be for anyone. Though some religious folks like to think they already know.

According to mainstream Christianity,

Is The Holy Bible Easy To Understand?
myth-one.com/chapter_18.htm
Jesus spoke in parables so that He would not be understood. In addition, there are several verses which indicate that the scriptures are "sealed." ...

So from where does your spiritual understanding of Jesus' parable come from??

Read More »