Bullshit
Out of context: Reply #90
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hey discipler :)
well, believe it or not, no pun intended, Ive actually been to a church a couple of times since we last went to and fro on the matter..
Its a fairly 'modern' church, with a 'light' service, 90% of which was a study of some chapters of Romans..
Everyone was very pleasant, and there was nothing said in either the sermon, nor the bible study that contradicted any of my personal theology, indeed it was cool to be in an environment where such matters were discussed..
I did come away, though with a sense that it was all rather too abstracted, too intellectual, or dogmatic rather..
Christianity to my mind, has its strengths lie in what it says about love, and how to treat one another, in the light of the knowledge that we are all part of 'the body of christ'..
That we are one indivisible whole, made seemingly seperate by the illusion created by our minds, is the ultimate reality - how we behave towards one another knowing this is well covered by the teachings of christ, be he a fictional character, an historic figure, a spritual entity, or whatever, what is important is this truth...My understanding is that he said not to worship him, but what he said, in that we are all the 'sons of god', strive to act with that as your guiding principle, rather than idolatrise his persona..
It has always seemed to me that the church is too hung up on the abstract notion that christ was literally the physical offspring of a supernatural entity, which descends into such meaningless obscurities as 'give your heart to jesus', which I was urged to do whilst standing with my hand up..
Whilst I understand that to be more like this persona is indeed a step towards revealing my true nature as a temporarily subjective region of experience within a unified cosmic conciousness, just saying to oneself 'I give my heart to jesus and ask him to heal my heart and wash me from sin', doesnt really achieve much, indeed it rather negates the personaly responsiblity of self-realization and responsible action and personal growth..whilst I wish that to appeal to an entity outside of onesself for transformation is appealing, ultimtely I realise that there is nothing outside of myself, that 'I and not I' is an illusion created by my self-reflecting conciousness, and that the concept of christ to which I am appealing is a contruct of my own imagination.
It is only my concepts that separate me from the true god within me, my fundamental nature of oneness and universality; it is my notion of self, reflected back at me, that propentiates this illusion that reality is a combination of me and everything else, whereas this is the one truest thing there is to know..
Nonetheless, as I say, it was a pleasant time, even if the majority of the congregation were your average gun-owning, hunting-shooting-and-fishing death penalty proponents.