Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

It isn't so much that I identify as a Christian. Christ has called my name and I answered. Even though sometimes the answer is "no".
 

It seems that all along the time line of Christianity's existence identifying as a Christian require asterisk and numerous foot notes and commentary in order to clarify what kind of Christian you were. Strangely there only seems to be one kind of heretic however.
 

And, here's an extension of my remarks, in answer to Marhall Art's rejection, at his place, of my assertion that "Jesus is Lord," as a profession of faith, is about the only thing Christians, more or less, agree on:


"I assumed that anyone more than casually involved with Christian faith would realize how full and rich the profession 'Jesus is Lord' is.

"I'll unpack it a tad.

"Jesus -- what he said, what he is said to have said, what he did as well as what he is said to have done -- Jesus is the connecting link between humanity and God.

"Resting in that, trying to let all that Jesus said, whatever he said or didn't say exactly, and is, whatever he *is* exactly, permeate one's life, one's thoughts and actions -- that's saving faith.

"That's being a Christian.

"But how it transpires -- pick your concept of atonement -- is wonderful to ponder. Working through the false dichotomy of "faith versus works" is, I think, what it means to work out one's salvation. Anguishing over whether it's the giving of the gift or the receiving of it that "kicks it in" is part of the lifetime of maturing in one's faith life.

"But I don't think there are any firm answers to any of that. All we can do is fall back on Jesus.

"Being in the crowd of those trying to follow Jesus -- because they trust that Jesus is, or has, or points to, the Way to God -- that's enough."
 

RE both of ERs large sections:

Beautiful and beautifully concise and simple.

With two caveats:

First: "Truths, by the way, are universal if they're truths. So no, as far as the teachings of Christ, they're not unique."

I find unique truths in Christian reflection about the human experience. I find unique truths in Buddhist reflection on human experience. I believe in the uniqueness of what I have read regarding experiences in Sufism (though I cant' say I've engaged in the practice). Etc, etc. Now, we may find ourselves being struck by parallels in Christianity when we practice or read in another faith. But the experience is an anagogical lifting of echoes rather than a universal match. In other words, I am suggesting a negative answer to the question, could I have articulated the same developed notion I now have by exploring if, instead, I had remained in my one faith without dipping into that other?

Second: "blow off religious structures and traditions and rules when they get in the way of living and loving."

The right understanding of Christian religious structures and traditions is that they are attempted to ideally construct and reframe the experience of faith so as to serve love. So, just as nuance, instead of blowing them off, reform them; since they are necessary to love as a continually worshipping and reflecting community with needs for governance as such (bit of anti American-frontier notion of church, here).
________

Why do I identify as a christian? Mostly because I was born here.

But in growing up, I always find that everything that is beautiful in the world speaks "the face that is like a star in my heart", and I currently have no better place to go with human pain.

Why do I follow Jesus? hmmmmmmm, Much, much more difficult. To capsulize: love is the way and long is the road.
 

OK, I just read through the comments over at Marshall Art, and all I can say is . . wow. Does the guy not understand that the first confession, more or less, of faith was "Jesus is Lord", that it entailed all sorts of theo-political meaning, and really serves as the best shorthand for what it is we Christians believe?

As for his history of the Bible and early Church doctrine, well, I'm glad he wasn't teaching this stuff at seminary.

I will return, in any event, to my own statement, to whit, it wasn't I who did the choosing, really. Had I the choice, I would sleep in on Sundays.
 

I accept your first. Sort of reminds me of that ol' story about people not realizing they've been climbing the same mountain, 'cause they can't see one another, bein' on different sides of it, until they get to the top.

I accept your second, reform, as the logical next step from "blow off." :-)


Oh, and, yes, to be perfectly honest, "mostly because I was born here."


I'm also reminded of Affirmation No. 1 of the Phoenix Affirmations, to which I adhere to varying degrees depending on my mood, what I read last, what I happened to worrying about -- you know, as with everything else:

"Affirmation 1: Walking fully in the path of Jesus, without denying the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity;

"Matthew 11:28-29; John 8:12; John 10:16; Mark 9:40

"As Christians, we find spiritual awakening, challenge, growth, and fulfillment in Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection. While we have accepted the Path of Jesus as our Path, we do not deny the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity. Where possible, we seek lively dialog with those of other faiths for mutual benefit and fellowship.

"We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found wherever love of God, neighbor, and self are practiced together. Whether or not the path bears the name of Jesus, such paths bear the identity of Christ.

"We confess that we have stepped away from Christ’s Path whenever we have failed to practice love of God, neighbor, and self, or have claimed Christianity is the only way, even as we claim it to be our way."

I hasten to add: "Christianity," to me, in this sense, means the bureaucracy, which is no "way" at all, as opposed to the way of Christ, which, I think, is found in more bureaucracies than just Christianity. Wait. That's saying the same thing.
 

Oh, and thanks, Feodor for the kind words.


Geoffrey: Sometimes I want to put on welding glasses before I go over there.
 

ER, in re welding glasses: The stupid's so bright, you gotta wear shades?
 

More the blazing certainty.
 

Fedor: "....But the experience is an anagogical lifting of echoes rather than a universal match."

Is it?
How can you know that?
Isn't Jesus "universal"?
Thinking that another's religious format that provides a profound insight of truth is a mere echo of and not as good as ones own, smacks of a righteous schadenfreude and downgrades the cosmic truth of Christ to a mere messiah of a closed group.
 

Rudy said @ Lee's place:
"Re, "prophecies failed to come to pass (the immanent comming of the Kingdom of God within the life of those who were listening to him)." That, itself, being an interpretation, you are welcome to it. Forgive me if I disagree with you as vigorously as I disagree with my fundamentalist brethren who insist that the Kingdom of God he spoke about is still yet an eventuality, not a present reality. The Kingdom of God manifests itself in humankind now, as it did then, as it did pre-Jesus."

Ya know, I heard that kind of thinkin get preachers runned oft:)
 

Dr LBJ,

If the notion that Jesus is universal also includes the notion that only Jesus is universal or at least more universal than all else, that view can only come from a Christian believer (but not every Christian believer needs to hold such a view).

This view seems to be what ER quotes as Affirmation 1, because, while other paths are legitimate, there is the "baptizing" effect of, " such paths bear the identity of Christ." To me, this kind of like the way the widely respected Roman Catholic Theologian Karl Rahner calls walkers of other spiritual paths, "anonymous Christians."

This would not be my position.

If the notion is that Jesus, Gautama, Krishna et. al, etc. are all, ultimately universals together, then such a view can be equally shared inter-religiously.

This seems to me to be what ER originally indicated as his position.

My caveat is that healthy spiritual paths each have subsets of the Universal in which they share some anagogical relationship of likeness. Like in a family: children look more or less like each other because they are selections from the same limited spectrum of DNA possibilities. But it is meaningless to talk about them being identical in a universal sense, because while they are selections from the same exact spectrum, they each have their unique set of selections from that spectrum. Even in the case of identical selections, nature emphasizes differently the same DNA inheritance between children, and then further creates experiences where fraternal triplets (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are not exactly alike in personality either. In fact, in the cases of identical twins (sacramental and protestant), nature differentiates.

I'm getting too long here, but suffice it to say that The Universal can be posited but not identified. The unknown true God behind the linguistic/experienced God to which we each relate.

In this sense, to conceive of a fuzzy universal religion is to say we are all generally alike. But that is an impossibly gross generalization that cannot account for our individual value.

No one religion is a mere echo of any other. We can however, identify a particular image coming from one that "resonates" with the image coming from another. Christianity and Buddhism have similar noses, if you will. One is not more universal than the other and there is no universal nose to describe that contains these two particular noses. Though they clearly look like Dad's nose, they are not his nose either. The belong to Mark and Yuki alone.

There is a relationship, but the nature of the relationship does not itself have a reality that one can choose over the participants in that relationship, much less a reality more important than the participants in the relationship.

The participants are uniquely experienced and to relate to them is to have a unique experience that is cannot be superseded by having a relationship with "the family" that includes the participants, or I should say members.

In other words, complete relativists (those who refuse to choose to live as one member in close relationship with other members) lose out in the end, though less visibly than exclusionists, but, perhaps, no less damagingly.

I don't think this is as clear as I would like.
 

To be more pointed:

There is a relationship, but the nature of the relationship does not itself have a reality that one can choose over the participants in that relationship, much less a reality more important than the participants in the relationship.

Christianity and Buddhism can have a relationship. But, in my view, one cannot distill "the relationship" into a commonly shared set of universal truths that is thick enough to hold human faith. Even to distill all healthy paths down to the universals, in my view, would not end up with a whatever "faith system" (not meant to be technical, just sufficient for whatever the thing would be) durable or comprehensive enough to contain an rich experiential world to which a human being can belong to and be said to have a faith.

This, in the end, is an expansion of my view that Christianity and Buddhism are so unique as be lost in any universalizing comparison between the two.

The don't echo, they are in relationship, and that relationship disappears if the two or more participants disappear.

I'm working hard here but seem unable to get it down as clearly as I want.
 

On that last thing: You'd be correct. :-)

There's an old Navigator Press book I read in the early '80s called "Eternity in Their Hearts" -- wherein a missionary writes something to the effect that he and some others once encountered a tribe in the deep, dark of somewhere who welciomed them, listened to the Gospel as they presented it, said something oike, "Hallalujah! Thanks for telling us His name and filling in some details," then went merrily on their fuller in the knowledge of their salvation, so to speak. In othr words, they'd never heard the name Jesus. They knew, or believed, however, that God must have provided a way for them to connect -- and they trusted that such provision had been made, and they trusted in that provision. All of which is to say: It's always organized religion that causes the squablles among people who are searching for God, the Way, salvation, fill-in-the-blank. I thunk that anyone who surrenders and throws himself onto the Cosmos and trusts God to catch 'em, is gonna get caught, because God has to have provided a way for any to have been provided at all. Christians call his name Jesus.
 

Yes, ER, but am I not right in assuming that you do more than just call on Jesus? And isn't that More made meaningful by the fact that you start with the act of calling upon Jesus? And isn't that More shaped by your calling upon Jesus and isn't your calling on Jesus shaped by that More?

It is a dynamic, constantly synthesizing faith (your faith) more or less but operates always from the pole of Jesus. This pole does not inhibit, in fact yields greater, dynamism and synthesis.

My point is that dynamism and synthesis always threatens to loose its holistic satisfaction in human experience if it is tried without a "faith" pole.

A hula hoop can be spun around a pole, but it will not live like when is spun around a waist. Faith needs a waist - Jesus, Buddha, etc. to keep the dynamism and synthesis from becoming solely intellectual.

As for the tribe, if the buddhists had gotten there first, they could have made the same exact response. If the tribe were the Chinese, that that story becomes actual history and the evangelist was Massim Sthavirazers sent by Ashoka the Great.

Organized religion does no such thing. Some organized people do. Other organized people are pacifists, like the Amish and Mennonite, many buddhists, and still others are conscientious objectors depending on circumstance and/or stance regarding nation/state authority.

Name me a non-organized religion, by the way.
 

Fedor listening to you is like listening to my two Philosopher educated sons. Sometimes they wander around the chain of mountains rather finding a pass through them. It makes a more interesting trip, but boy is it long.

We all are looking at the same God, truth, love, grace etc..
We are all looking at the Truth through a dark glass.

A dark glass of our biological self. An ash cloud of our culture.

None of us can actually see it.
I emphasize, NONE of us actually see what is there.

Thus we embrace what our fathers said they saw because it does kind of look like that. Those tribal embraces of faith are our religions. They are our perceptions of the truth processed through that biological dark mirror. They are not the Truth.

Religion is most often the enemy of Truth, for religion is always composed of half truths.


Just like Lowell's canals on mars what we think we see is there because we think we see it. When finally we get there we will see that the "canals" were only in our dogma and not actually there.

And yes I think Jesus Christ has billions of other names...on billions of other planets....and other places on earth... In fact a Gnostic might say maybe one of those names might even be Feodor...
 

Ah, now, don't be blowing ashy smoke up my dress, Lobojo.

And it turns out that there is water on Mars.

Cultural inheritance is a reductive argument and makes too much of the simple "because I was born here" reality. My inherited faith resembles nothing of my faith except the name. It is what comes out of a man that tells the man, not what goes in.

Jesus has but one name. Buddha has but one other. Brahman, Muhammed, aša, יהוה , etc.

We call upon whom we choose or we only croak in the early morning light with a dimly remembered name which we spit out before the day's chores begin or we are silent. These three.

We cannot call out to anything the sovereignly real because it/they exist in a cloud of unknowing. The glass is Paul's trope about the limits of our epistiemology. The cloud of unknowing is more about the limits of our createdness. We cannot call out to the cloud of unknowing for long, though practicing empty hand or mind meditation is helpful for many reasons.

We cannot get beyond our createdness in any final and realized way.

And I am saying that syncretic, or puritanizingly astringent, efforts of faith to get beyond our createdness, i.e. resolving on universals alone, end up as unproductive intellectualization that diminishes our whole nature.
 

In other words, the beauty of this mountain is lost if you don't "wander around it."

And then the beauty of that mountain is lost if you dont' "wander around it."

I can't be in two places at the same time.

And "finding a pass through them" is to miss everything.
 

F: "Jesus has but one name. Buddha has but one other. Brahman, Muhammed, aša, יהוה , etc."

Really?
Allah has a hundred all by himself.
As for Brahma over his billions of cycles he has been and is called many things.

As for croaking out my morning prayers, I sometimes do walk out on my front poarch and wordlessly salute the four cardinal directions under the rising sum.
In God's inderstanding the croak is probably not any less inarticulate or directed than any of the prayers offered up worldwide this morning.


"...resolving on universals alone, end up as unproductive intellectualization that diminishes our whole nature."

Ever consider spiritual "enlightenment"?

If you can't in finality resolve on the universal level, be it macro or micro and everywhere in between, then you've paused at some tribal level comfortable at the time.

As for going around the mountain, it depends on whether your trip is the thing, or is it your destination that is the thing. Not to mention that by going around the range you never see the lay of the land from the heights.
 

F: "And it turns out that there is water on Mars."

And that justifies Lowell's canals?
 

I'm going to take a shot here at both Feodor and drlobojo, two folks I admire a great deal, and say that I think you are arguing over a very small parcel of intellectual and spiritual property. In other words, you're not that far apart.

I'm in agreement with Feodor and ER for the most part, although I cringe a tad at the whole "Universal" thing. Far more important is the question of living within my own tradition, what that means for me and those with whom I worship, and how that gets lived out in our lives, than any question of whether or not it has any meaning for the rest of the universe.

On the other hand, drlobojo reminds us that the human mind deals with the numinous in wonderful ways, little of which bear any resemblance to one another, and most of which contradict the rest; how far are we really willing to take our own conceit on understanding when other human beings have led full, productive, happy lives with very alien ideas concerning deity (or the lack thereof), the good life, and living with others inside their brains?

Again, a question now for the good older drlobojo, I think that, yes, there is something akin to meandering in what Feodor says, but as he says in response - don't we miss the beauty of the mountain if we concentrate so much on getting over or around it? We are in the midst of the most vast chain of the highest mountains in human history as we delve in to Religion. It seems to me taking some time to appreciate their sublime beauty is as important as cutting our way through the thickets of confusion, over the valleys of error, and up the slopes of doctrine, don't you? Especially since most of us - most assuredly myself included - are ill-equipped to be guides on the way?

It also assumes there is a destination to this journey, rather than the journey itself being the end-all and be-all. That may be - and Christianity certainly says that it is goal-oriented (that is to say, we are here to build up the Kingdom of God, which is nothing more and nothing less than a Kingdom ruled by the law of love and forgiveness) - but the journey is long, as we are but weary travelers looking for rest on occasion. Since we encounter others on this journey that offer their own answers to the question, "Where are we going?", we should at least be respectful enough to consider the possibility that our own journey is only a small part of this much larger human journey through time. Then, we can be on our way.

That's all I'll say. Gotta get some more coffee in me and enjoy a football game now.
 

There's a game? ... Kiddin' ...
 

GKS: "... I think you are arguing over a very small parcel of intellectual and spiritual property. In other words, you're not that far apart."

Of course! A good argument is always over the little things.

GSK: "...don't we miss the beauty of the mountain if we concentrate so much on getting over or around it?"

The answer to that would based on how many lives we actually have. If we only have one life time to get it done, then it needs to be got done. If it is a collective effort of souls to the single goal, or if we are individually reincarnated and have mutiple lives to accumulate the miles and altitude needed, then why hurry.

F: "It is a dynamic, constantly synthesizing faith (your faith) more or less but operates always from the pole of Jesus. This pole does not inhibit, in fact yields greater, dynamism and synthesis."

Now let me get this straight, ER needs to do what with the dynamic pole of Jesus that does not inhibit?
 

I confes to being a tad confused as to what I'm supposed to do, myself. :-)

Trust and obey comes to mind.

I'm teddin' ya, the best hymns cut through the crap. :-)

For there's no other way to b happy in Jesus. I'm just sayin'. :-)
 

A good chant is a good chant.
 

:-)

I dreamed was in a congregation singing "Softly and Tenderly" last night. :-)
 

I love it. What's not to like about these words?

1. Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
calling for you and for me;
see, on the portals he's waiting and watching,
watching for you and for me.
Refrain:
Come home, come home;
ye who are weary come home;
earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
calling, O sinner, come home!

2. Why should we tary when Jesus is pleading,
pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not his mercies,
mercies for you and for me?
(Refrain)

3. Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
passing from you and from me;
shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,
coming for you and for me.
(Refrain)

4. O for the wonderful love he has promised,
promised for you and for me!
Though we have sinned, he has mercy and pardon,
pardon for you and for me.
 

drlobojo,

Jesus as May Pole, with hair like ribbons.

By "has one name" I am trying to indicate that each faith understands itself to be referencing someone or something specific that others should not relativize at will. Jesus has many nicknames as does Allah, Brahman, etc. But whatever we go on to do with any one of them theologically, we must start with the one who is identified in the faith as a being with a particular identity.

At any rate, my point is that after the appropriate and necessary acknowledgments that no faith is to be seen as more true, I don't see how it is good to suggest that there is still a better place beyond if it is a place that no one can really live.

I understand we can posit such a place with our intellectual imagination: all religions contain reference to the ultimate truth. But what does this mean after saying it? Can it be a source of spiritual nourishment? Can it be a trumping source of moral action? If the Muslim gives up Islam and the HIndu gives up Hinduism and they stand together in peace is that a better peace than if they didn't give up their faith and still stood together in peace?

Beyond the morality of humility, what good does it do for the life of a community of faith, or for the relationship of the worlds' communities of faith, to claim that there is The Truth - reflected partially by all these communities' truths - somewhere in the beyond where no one can really live.

I think all it is, to say there is a Universal Truth above the truth of every lived faith, is a reminder to be humble. No one can believe in this reminder. No one can really live by faith in this reminder.

In fact - with the burdens and joys of human life that often are made holy and gracious by one's particular faith - it becomes only a partial truth itself to say that there is a universal truth... because it is only of partial help.
 

F: "I understand we can posit such a place with our intellectual imagination: all religions contain reference to the ultimate truth. But what does this mean after saying it?"

Saying it means nothing. Knowing it means everything.

"Can it be a source of spiritual nourishment?"

Yes, if you believe it.

"Can it be a trumping source of moral action?"

Now the source of "morality", when it is practiced by all sorts of non believers is hardly an tribute of God...

"If the Muslim gives up Islam and the HIndu gives up Hinduism and they stand together in peace is that a better peace than if they didn't give up their faith and still stood together in peace?"

Who said anybody had to give up their isms? I won't give up my Christianism, but I will abandoned all the bling, bells, whistles, and gore added over the centuries.


"I think all it is, to say there is a Universal Truth above the truth of every lived faith, is a reminder to be humble. No one can believe in this reminder. No one can really live by faith in this reminder."

Really? Spirit Enlightenment is unattainable? Was Da Vinci wrong that the noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

"In fact - with the burdens and joys of human life that often are made holy and gracious by one's particular faith - it becomes only a partial truth itself to say that there is a universal truth... because it is only of partial help."

Settle for what makes you comfortable or satisfied if want.
If a particular faith gives all the help in life you need that's fine.

I'm not looking for a God or Faith that helps me. Voodoo would do that pretty good I think.

For myself, I'm seeking Home.
 

Asked, over at Lee's place.

Did I ask this?

Doesn't sound like me - but hey ho.

I just ask, outside of the bible - what do we know about jesus.

Strangely there only seems to be one kind of heretic however.

That is not historically correct – Christians have been killing Christians for being heretics for years :-)

Lee
 

Nope. Havok did.

Re, your heretic remark: huh?
 

Re, "I just ask, outside of the bible - what do we know about jesus."

That's a first-grade question about a lifetime of pondering.

Outside of a science book, what do you know about gravity?
 

"I won't give up my Christianism, but I will abandoned all the bling, bells, whistles, and gore added over the centuries."

I get it. You are a modern, pacifist Puritan trying to shed your humanity along with your sins.

You're going to have to be more specific about your Spiritual Enlightenment for me to know where you are coming from, drlobojo, and whether we are really talking to each other.

The context of my remarks have to do with the move, prompted by PC motivations, to downgrade all religions by relativism to bow to a universal that is an unobtainable house in this life.

Buddhist nirvana is not the universal I think we are talking about, nor is the mystical union that comes in Christian meditation, Sufi dance, Kabbalah thought.

Do you have a name/s for what you mean? Do you have a community/ies to point to that lives by what you mean? Where is the practice done? What are the numbers of adherents, two million, ten, twenty?
 

Lee: ""Strangely there only seems to be one kind of heretic however."
That is not historically correct – Christians have been killing Christians for being heretics for years :-)"

Exactly! The only kind of heretic is a dead heretic.

F: "You're going to have to be more specific about your Spiritual Enlightenment for me to know where you are coming from, drlobojo, and whether we are really talking to each other."

My personal Spiritual Enlightenment is hardly a standard to start a conversation with. However I still don't quite understand why one spiritual enlightenment from one source couldn't be the same as that from another source. Why discount the ultimate goal of any religion (OK I can think of a few).

F:" The context of my remarks have to do with the move, prompted by PC motivations, to downgrade all religions by relativism to bow to a universal that is an unobtainable house in this life."


That has nothing to do with the context of my remarks.
You can trust that my motivation is not based in PC or liberal inclusiveness. And I don't downgrade all religions, perhaps the practice of such verses the rhetoric, but not and in of themselves. What I am suggesting is that spiritual enlightenment supercedes any organized religion. Indeed I would contend all religions, churches, cults, etc. are man-made and biologically controlled in the main. That they are a necessary stepping stone to another level is undeniable. But they are not the end of the process.

As for..."...a universal that is an unobtainable house in this life"

Hum, "universal" is not a house or a place or a trip or a destination or a creed or group, it is just what is, is.

Previously I stated that I believe in "universal" salvation, "universal" grace, etc.
So if I have a "group" well I guess it would be all sentient beings with souls in the universe.
If I followed Tillard de Chardin's Mystical vision of Soul, I might even include my cats in the mix.


You seem to be fond of names and labels and organization. "Modern Puritan" perhaps, "Quaker" some what.
As for my name, for what I think I might be, an Enigmatic Christian is one I have chosen to use mainly because I haven't figured out the puzzle yet.

As for "shedding sin" That's already a done deal, got nothing to shed.

Further more when you use the term "...in this life." it indicates that you see a dichotomy between "life" and "after life", I no longer do. Only "Now" touches eternity, it is all that ever has or ever will. I believe in a continuum of Now.

That's probably as clear as mud, but after all from that we are molded.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

"However I still don't quite understand why one spiritual enlightenment from one source couldn't be the same as that from another source."

vs.

"What I am suggesting is that spiritual enlightenment supersedes any organized religion."

What is the difference between the "good" source that lends itself to spiritual enlightenment and the "bad" religion that is superseded by spiritual enlightenment?

Are they different or are you switching moods really fast?

1. Spiritual Enlightenment does indeed process from sources and, I would add, necessarily so for this is how we are made - limited.

I question whether the procession of Enlightenment can emerge completely uncharacterized by its source. Christian enlightenment (I'll use a small "e") remains such but can carry on a remarkably creative, fruitful, and kinship conversation with Buddhist enlightenment. Where they are the same is beyond human existence.

2. Spiritual Enlightenment does indeed supersede the source but only in source framed mystical, ecstatic, and/or numinous moments that are true "hints" but only hints of the beyond. Like my tennis game can supersede my tennis game on four occasions over a decade of effort. But - and this is the human mud tragedy - it must always return; in other words, it never takes me ultimately away from my human existence and therefore it is never without reference to the source (as #1 above) and it is never unmoored from the source.

I cannot live in what "is" aside from ephemeral but reodering mystical experiences or psychosis. Spiritual Enlightenment does not provide a house to live in when my being in touch with what "is" takes its 23 and 1/2 hour break on the best day ever.

This is why sources are immensely important in this life: they have an indelible influence on the approach to spiritual enlightenment and they are the constant renewer of the efforts to attain spiritual enlightenment.

Ghandi, if ever there has been a spiritually enlightened human being in modern history, remained a practicing and experimenting Hindu all his life (though familiar with religious diversity from childhood), all the while counting each man and woman his brother and sister in flesh and faith.

How would one raise a child up in spiritual enlightenment that is sourceless. The stories I know of, of a few children raised that way in the sixties and seventies always included the child's choosing the frame of one lead faith - if they continued to value the spiritual at all - while leaning into spiritual enlightenment.
 

These are my positions because I share the conviction with Buddhism that only by intense focus on my locatedness, my specificity, my thoughts, my heartbeat, my breath, my itch right there at my elbow, only be returning to be in complete touch with my body and my mind and my identity do I eventually experience the silencing of desires and thoughts and reach nirvana. It is not a supersession in the end. It is a focused singular attention to me and then "me" loses its false boundaries and becomes...

My insistence on holding in one's hand one's specificity, one's source in order to approach enlightenment and your unmoored universal "is"ness is paradoxical given that you and ER are the regionalists and I the arguer for the cosmopolitanism coming for us all. My reading is that many are anxious to lose their specificity in globalization. And I think the motivation for universal truth is, often times, an effort to have one's regional cake and globalism, too. If I offer up my faith, perhaps they wont take my accent and my grits.

I am no longer anxious about being a Texan. I wear my boots on occasion because they feel good and I chose a Stetson Fedora for winter, but I have superseded the need for a spiritual sense of Texas. I have superseded the need for a spiritual sense of being white, too, and am longer anxious for white continuance. I don't dance too well and I don't mind the callouses on my heels (let him with ears to hear, hear) and I know I'm white but the limits of that don't scare me and I don't need to repress anything.

This is serene nirvana concerning my specificity on those counts. The Episcopal Church can pass away, too, and the patriarchal Orthodox Church, but sacramentalism - the bells, the fabrics, the incense, and chants that are like mantras, and the sacramentalism of silence - these are my full-sensory sources to enlightenment.

The two specificities that I remain anxious about are being male (what is the universal summing up of manhood in the way it is currently so feebly constructed?) and being thoroughly socialist in desire, like the early philosophical Marx (poverty is a scourge to my faith).
 

F: ""However I still don't quite understand....."

Sure does seems that you are right, you don't understand.

That's OK by me.
 

Oh, yeah, that's my quote. Oh what the heck, it works.
 

I'll buy the drinks.

What'll you have, since these spirits are most definitely not universal?

You read Thomas McGuane?
 

B.J Holidays Private Reserve for sipping, and nope haven't read any McGuane. I'll check it out. I'll start with the To Skin A Cat short story collection.
 

Make that B.J. Holladays Private Keep (not reserve).
 

Hi ER

That's a first-grade question about a lifetime of pondering.

Surely this wasn’t an ad homium attack to ignore the question?

Outside of a science book, what do you know about gravity?

Another logically fallacy?

No matter – I don’t mind… I will answer your question.

Take an apple, throw it in the air… now invent calculus to model its movement.

Simple really… and no science book required (just maths) :-)

Now, I was asking about a person, known as Jesus, and the historical record about him outside of the bible – I was not talking about physical forces (though I could if you like)

First grade question or not… can you tell me why my question is invalid? (Or do you think the subject of history isn’t a ‘real’ subject open to question? Of course not)

It should not take a lifetime of pondering – I don’t think you take a lifetime of pondering about George Washington do you?

Lee
 

ER Re, your heretic remark: huh?

It was in reply to drlobojo first comment on this blog.

drlobojo Exactly! The only kind of heretic is a dead heretic.

Eek - And guns are legal in the states... I've better be careful

Lee
 

Hey, Lee, hewre's a suggestion: Keep your powder dry, and don't stasrt being a jerk right off the bat.

My parry was no attack, for God's sake. You come in hrere guns blazing every time. Calm the hell down.

I deduce and surmise as much of what I've concluded about Jesus as most people have about gravity. That was my point.

Most people know what they know about gravity based on a little bit they read in a book, or that someone else read and told them about, but mostly by observing the effects of what they believe is gravity on other people and things.

Most people know what they know about Jesus based on a little bit they read in a book, or that someone else read and told them about, but mostly by observing the effects of what they believe is Jesus on other people and things.

There *is* a parallel in the concepts.
 

Hi ER,

Hey, Lee, hewre's a suggestion: Keep your powder dry, and don't stasrt being a jerk right off the bat.

I was just being short because of my lack of time - sorry about that, sorry if you think I am a jerk

How you spoke of Jesus comparing him to gravity... so Jesus wasn't a man in history, but a force?

On the subject of time, I now have to get a train.

Lee
 

Lee, I know you're capable of conversations where you're not constantly playing "gotcha" and throwing around false fallacy accusations, seeing strawmen under every adverb and otherwise goofing off. You don't do it on other blogs I see you see, unless it's a place where you smell blood in the water, sense low-hanging fruit, or otherwise come in and abuse people like a high-school boy messing with a bunch of grade-school lads.

So, stop it here, OK? There is education and experience lurking around this bpog enough to slay you and me put together. Engage it seriously, or not.

If you're pressed for time, then wait until you've got time to comment thoughtfully, please.

As to your point, there are enough references in nonbiblical writings to Jesus. Yeshu, Yeshua, Christ, Chrestus, etc., to suit me. And that is the sum total of all that matters regarding the question.

You are free to reject them all, and it's clear that you do. Enjoy it.
 

Hi ER,

Well, I feel truly told off now, so you have made your point.

Anyhow, yes - discussion is far more fun.

You say there is enough non-biblical references for Jesus and his deeds etc for you... that's fine, since I cannot argue against that can I.

It isn't enough for me and you already know that (which I hope you are also fine with)

It isn't that I reject the historical sources - just that what there is - isn't much (and they contradict themselves which is a major reason to doubt them).

So in fact, there is little to reject.

But, another time perhaps...

Hope all is well in ER-world.

Lee
 

Lee, you're in charge of your own feelings.

I want you to show me the same respect here than I strive to show you at your place, and at your friends' places. That's all. You do not, generally.

And seriously, the drive-bys suck, and are beneath your capabilities. Take time to comment thoughtfully, or don't bother.
 

Hi ER,

Drive-by in the sense of short and quick - you got me.

But not in the sense of fire a few shots into the crowd and drive away (at least, that wasn’t my intention, but it seems I better drive away fast)

As for respect - I respect that you, I respect that you are open to many challenging questions, I respect you that you are happy to have a conversation about your beliefs (That said, I still don't understand how you hold your view - but you know this.)

Now, if you followed me around the blog comments you might have seen me mention your good self several times. You (and many others on this blog) have a ‘good’ view of Christianity that I wish more fundies could be converted to from their science/reason rejecting position.

However, there seems to be just a couple of hurdles in your logic that I cannot understand (and they are pretty key)

I want to understand it better, but whenever I question them (either briefly or after many weeks of discussion) it all gets a little too ‘heated’ for me.

I am sorry about that. It isn’t what I want, I certainly don’t wish to be disrespectful to you personally – I really don’t know how I did it, but there you go... I did.

I must remember ‘not to mention the war’ (tips hat to Fawlty Towers) and build up slowly to the ‘hard’ questions.

All the best.

Driving away now... for a while, I hear the police sirens

Lee
 

:-) I might have ben a little touchy, myself.

Dude. You will always, ultimately, come up against a hurdle with me, as long as I believe and you don't.
 

Hi ER,

:-) I might have ben a little touchy, myself.

No worries... my fault I am sure.

Dude. You will always, ultimately, come up against a hurdle with me, as long as I believe and you don't.

Aye - I know that, so long as we can agree to disagree like people do on their choice of football team. I see no problems. (Though in England, even this can be fighting talk - erm, maybe cricket team would be a better choice of words)

I just like to try and understand your position - not change it.

See ya

Lee