"Andrew W" <nosp@m_ajwerner@optushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:3fe4b7c8$0$18386$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...

"Dario Western" <Dario_western@NOSPAMbigpond.com> wrote in message
news:Em1Fb.59754$aT.49089@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

The reason is that wisdom is only found through pain and loss.

Those aren't the only ways to acquire wisdom.
One can also acquire it through observation and
critical or deep thought.

It is knowledge, not wisdom, that may be acquired
through observation and critical or deep thought.
Wisdom and knowledge are not the same things.
Wisdom includes how you incorporate knowledge. It
is imperitive to take the long view and understand
how "knowledge" has been so very temporary and
trendy. Sometimes I wonder if todays "knowledge"
will last longer than the current style of clothes.

Do you think
that unconditional love means that we can do
what the hell we want and God
is always ready to forgive?

No.

What does unconditional love mean then?

God provided a solution to the spiritual
problem that all people have. Although
the Messiah was born into the Hebrew lineage,
Yeshua (Jesus) not only came for the Jews,
he came for the whole world. At that time,
Yeshua did not come to judge, rather Yeshua
came to save. What was unconditional love?
It was the divine love of God that provided
a solution for the spiritual sin problem.
If you look back, the Sinaitic Covenant was
a conditional Covenant made between God and
the Hebrews. There was a big "IF" that was
attached to the Covenant. There was a
consequence to breaking the terms (laws) of
the Sinatic Covenant. Well, it is obvious
that the Jews broke the Covenant and paid
the price for it. Well, this Covenant shows
us that people need more than the promise to
keep 10 laws (never mind 613) to maintain a
relationship with God. So, the master plan
of salvation entered the final step. Unlike
the Sinaitic Covenant, the New Covenant was
offered without any conditions. It was out
of divine love that the Word of God was given
to men so that the price of sin could be paid.
The Word of God became flesh; the Word of God
became the man Yeshua (Jesus). Yeshua was
the Messiah that sacrificed himself so that
people could enter into the New Covenant
with God. Can you do anything you want?
God forbid! No, if you feel like you can
then you haven't entered the Covenant. The
result of entering the New Covenant is that
the laws of God become written upon our hearts
instead of on external tablets of stone.

The truth is that hell exists.

Most christians no longer fully believe in a
literal hell.
It was simply used to scare naughty children
a few centuries ago and it stuck.

There are two places; Hades and Hell. Hades
is a place where people go when they die.
It's a kind of holding tank for those that
don't have their spirits reborn. People will
be recovered from Hades to face the judgment
of Yeshua in the future. Hell is the place
provided for those that Yeshua determines
haven't met the holy requirements of living
with the holy God. These will include those
who haven't availed themselves of the costly
sacrifice that Yeshua made.

A true god does not need to treat us the way
some parents treat their children.

It all depends upon whose Father they have.

[clip]

Thunder

Andrew W wrote:

"Dario Western" <Dario_western@NOSPAMbigpond.com> wrote
in message
news:Em1Fb.59754$aT.49089@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

The reason is that wisdom is only found through pain

and loss.

Those aren't the only ways to acquire wisdom.
One can also acquire it through observation and critical
or deep thought.

Who is to say what is truly wisdom? No two people have the
exact same belief systems. No two people have the same
definition of wisdom because what each considers wisdom is
different. The wisest (least ego-/ethno-/athropo-centric)
perspective I can think of is the communion with
uncertainty which I derive from this. I don't see anything
especially wrong with opinions, mind you. It just seems
healthy and open-minded to me to put the them into the
broadest possible perspective and to learn to appreciate
the vastly differing perspectives which one comes across
when one is curious enough to listen.

Do you think
that unconditional love means that we can do what the

hell we want and God

is always ready to forgive?

No.

What does unconditional love mean then?

In human terms, I think it means forgiving others for
behavior which brings about unpleasant emotions in you,
recognizing their humanity with empathy and compassion,
and remembering that every behavior is at intended to fill
some need. At the same time, it means being totally
genuine with others by letting them know (through "I"
statements, rather then pejorative "you" statements) how
you feel (whether the emotion's pleasant or not) as a
result of their behavior. Conflicts are resolved not
through coercion, but through discussion, brainstorming,
compromising, and sometimes waiting until they can decide
upon a mutually agreeable solution. This applies to every
relationship that I know of, from raising kids to running
a business.

The truth is that hell exists.

Most christians no longer fully believe in a literal
hell.
It was simply used to scare naughty children a few
centuries ago and it
stuck.
A true god does not need to treat us the way some
parents treat their
children.

One would think that an all-knowing creator would have at
least a rudimentary understanding of the psychology of
rules, especially if that creator were going to create a
set of rules by which to govern its chosen people. It's
interesting to note, however, the many ways in which the
Ten Commandments seem indifferent to such principles of
effective parenting/teaching/leadership. First of all,
rules just flat don't work. No set of rules or laws have
ever eliminated the behaviors which they were written to
extinguish.

When that which social beings do out of their social
instinct are made mandatory by rules, a couple of
unintended consequences tend to ensue. First of all, it
robs good deeds of the positive feeling they would
transmit if they were voluntary. As an example, other
social primates operate within a social structure based on
reciprocal kindness. This is most prominently seen in
their social grooming behaviors, the seemingly their
primary means of bonding with one another. Secondly, being
coerced to do something (especially by those we look up
to) is inherently stressful and leads to unhealthy coping
mechanisms. Consider the following list of coping
mechanisms which kids commonly adopt in response to
parental discipline:
(quoting Dr. Thomas Gordon in "What Every Parent Should
Know")
"-Resistance, defiance, rebellion, negativism
-Resentment, anger, hostility
-Retaliation, aggression, hitting back
-Lying, hiding feelings, clamming up
-Blaming others, tattlling
-Bossing, bullying
-Needing to win, cheating, hating to lose
-Organizing against parents, combining forces
-Submission, compliance, fear
-Buttering up, currying favor
-Conformity, lack of creativity, needing to be proper and
safe, passivity
-Withdrawing, escaping, fantasizing"

Would an all-knowing and benevolent shepherd utilize such
a counter-productive method to guide its flock? Also
consider that eight out of ten commandments are stated in
the negative ("Thou shalt not...") which has been
demonstrated to greatly decrease a command's efficacy. And
consider that the first four commandments are
self-aggrandizing, demanding the prostration and
self-effacement of its followers. This doesn't sound like
an omnipotent being. It sounds to me more like someone who
has some serious confidence and control issues. It sounds
to me like the culture of slavery talking.

No, I don't blame Moses; how could he know any different?
Anthropologically speaking, the culture of domination and
subjugation which still pervades our society seems to have
originated around 12,000 years ago near what is known as
the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Iraq). This was the
likely birthplace of the Agricultural Revolution, the
start of civilization as we know it, which has since then
slaughtered, converted, and crowded out most of the
indigenous populations of the world. As luck or fate would
have it, this event may have unknowingly been chronicled
as the parables which we now know as Adam & Eve and Cain &
Abel.

How could this be, you ask? Well, just south or the
Fertile Crescent lived the Semites, a nomadic herding
people who we now know as Hebrew or Jewish. These would be
represented as Abel, the good son. Cain, of course, would
represent the Caucasions who proceeded to water their new
fields with Abel's blood. Cain's banishment from the
Garden is perhaps a representative of CivilizAtIoN's
self-imposed exile from the sustaining hands of its
creator (Nature equates to God in most indigenous
cultures).Of course Cain's sense of *righteous
*entitlement is alive and well in our culture to this day.
People feel entitled to have something better than what
they have. Religion seems to fill this nuche nicely. Most
seem to think that their religion (civilization, at the
very least) constitutes the One Right Way to live. It is
my hope that we will stop to critically examine this
concept. After all, in ecosystems there is no one right
way to live. Such a concept would seem to contradict
evolution, adaptation. As students of the Industrial
Revolution we know that there is no one right way to build
a machine. Each innovation is improved by another
innovation ad infinitum. There is no End State in either
of these, as there is no known end state in the universe
-- only successive moments. Yet with CivilizAtIoN, it is
often unquestioned that this is the End State, the Final
Unsurpassible Evolution of human social organization.Why?
Well, read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael or Beyond Civilization.
That's a good place to start, anyway. Beyond Civ discusses
the "why", and Ishmael would explain Adam and Eve far
better than I could.

God gives us the choice to live our lives in
a way that is either pure and holy, or choose ways

that lead to impurity
and

unholiness.

To make informed choices one must be supplied with
sufficient information.
All we have is vague myths and mistranslated
non-sequiturs.
I've tried reading the bible many times. I find it
impossible to get any
sense out of it.

How many authors over how many years through how many
languages?

Whether you live or die cannot possibly hinge on whether
you can understand
the bible or not.
It wouldn't be fair because many people are simply not
biblically minded.

Well, the church introduced purgatory some centuries ago
to give a home to the many heathens who weren't baptized
and to the Christians who couldn't quite get into heaven.
Of course, reading the bible didn't come into fashion
until well after the printing press was invented. Come to
think of it, the printing press enabled Martin Luther to
protest the church's corruption regarding the issue of
paying your way into heaven. As far as I know, people
didn't start reading the bible in any large number until
long after King James commissioned his widely accepted
version at around the turn of the seventeenth century.
Hell, the serfs who clung to it most fervently couldn't
even read.

The good news is that by knowing hell we can

understand Jesus

and be of a witness to Him.

That is a stupid tyranny and fear based statement.
It goes to show how far christianity has been twisted in
some denominations.

When one does a kind act, is it for one's self or for the
other?

In any case what Adam and Eve did has nothing to do

with us so we have

nothing to worry about as long as we live a decent

life.

Adam & Eve is a mythological story, but it has

significant meaning as to
why

there is sin and failing in the world.

The only meaning it has to most people is that we have
to be blindly
obedient or we will be arbitrarily terminated.

Quinn proposes that the Semites were offering an
explanation for what they saw in their Caucasion brothers
-- that they behaved as if they'd eaten of God's own Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and now considered
themselves possessed of this knowledge and fitting rulers
of all of God's domain. That Eve (Life) is the one that
tempted Adam (Man) indicates that the temptation was to
reproduce. And how do farmers support a growing family?
They put more land under the plow, of course. Land,
however, is a limited resource. Add a dash of entitlement,
and voila! Cancer!

Obedience is what is required of slaves.
I hate to think that that's all we will be used for in
heaven.
A&E is a simplistic story from a barbaric time.
We should move on and leave it for those with such
minds.

As you see, there may be much than meets the eye.

The men who wrote the Bible were historians, and were

no more insane than

writers like Twain, Joyce, Grimm, Shakespeare, Hardy,

Heinlein, or Lewis.

But there's no reason to trust them at their every word
either.
Humans love to embellish and dramatize stories. It's a
passion for some.

Andrew.

Actually, I think Shakespeare helped to write the King
James Version. Can anyone confirm or dispute that?

jack_the_mormon wrote:

<snip>

Such in-depth pondering and soul-searching makes me think of a
similarly weighty question: If Spiderman and Batman were to fight each
other, who would win? Some answers may be beyond the human mind, but
we can always devote brain cells to try to reason out an answer ;-)

-Klowmhundur

Spiderman would win. He has superpowers - Batman does not.
-Jack-

Yes, the one with superpowers is likely to win (barring the unforseen), but
does might make right?