On Psalm 109 and Faith

[lashbear]

I've always said you're a man of easy virtue, Flippy !!

[scaeagles]

OK, lots to respond to.

Alex, the short answer to the omnipresent thing....as I understand it, this has to do with the Holy Trinity, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. Obviously the son, Jesus, could endure being around sin, and he took all sin upon himself. The omnipresent aspect is the Holy Spirit, and I would presume (though I can't point to any specific scripture reference for this) that the Holy Spirit must have the same sort of thing going on.

CP, Jesus was called the ultimate and final sacrifice, setting man free from the old covenant of law to a covenant of grace and forgiveness. Prior to that, forgiveness was something that had to be earned through atonement and sacrifice. Now forgiveness is there simply by asking because of that sacrifice.

And I do struggle all the time with with whether or not i think that the judgement of God is fair or not. That brings me a little bit toward what Alex commented on, as far as goodness. I think the issue is that no one is good enough in Christian theology. Hell, I do crappy stuff all the time that certainly do not match up with my faith. While there are those out there (and I hate it that it is this way) that think someone has to clean up and be good to decide to become a Christian, i think that if you have made the decision, you desire to do the right things. when people point out Christian hypocrisy, like with your Jimmy Swaggarts and whomever else, yeah, that sucks, but they are human just like anyone else and make mistakes. when you're public in your ministry and lact holier than thou it might be a good idea to make sure you're living it, but the fact is no one can.

I never want to stand in judgement of someone else and their eternal soul. I have always thought that was the whole purpose of the "judge not lest ye be judged" thing (rather than making moral statements on behavior). That's not my place. My place is to be charitable and relational and make efforts to meet the real needs of people (I won't go deep into it, but in the book of Acts the apostles basicaly say they are too holy to waste time feeding the poor, and after that the focus moves from them to those who do take the time to meet rea, physical needs). I know people who say "mormons won't go to heaven". Who are they to say? I have certain doctrinal issues with mormonism, but last I checked they profess the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as well.

I have rambled on quite a bit here. Sorry if I missed anything anyone wanted a comment on.

[flippyshark]

I think you do a nice job of not being holier-than-thou in these occasional faith discussions, sca, and I would have heartily agreed with your answers back in my devout heyday.

Which means, of course, you just never know where your views might end up in the future. ( Join us ... join us ... he he he )

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

CP, Jesus was called the ultimate and final sacrifice, setting man free from the old covenant of law to a covenant of grace and forgiveness. Prior to that, forgiveness was something that had to be earned through atonement and sacrifice. Now forgiveness is there simply by asking because of that sacrifice.

Interesting stuff - still sounds like a Get Out of Jail Free card to my Jewish ears, but it does make some sense.

My counter would be, isn't the road to hell paved with good intentions? I could seriously beg for forgiveness and really mean it after I've cheated on my husband or abandoned my children or betrayed my friends, but does that mean I've been a force for good in this world? I'm sure there really are people who feel honest remorse after doing horrible things, but still, you did horrible things, and there has to be a line drawn somewhere, right?

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I never want to stand in judgement of someone else and their eternal soul.

I think I'm still confused on this. I read your post a few times and I feel it could mean a few things. Are you trying to say that you believe all of your non-Christian friends are going to be ok in the afterlife, because in your estimation everyone falls short of the ideal? Or that you would rather not think about it so you choose to ignore it? You may not want to judge people but when it comes down to it, we're talking about the ultimate fate of people you care about.

It's this exclusionary concept that, as others have mentioned, leads to wanting to be among "your own kind", so you don't have to worry about the horrible fate of others. I felt this pull myself during my religious years. If everyone else is wrong, how can you even look them in the face?

[scaeagles]

Again, I think too many get caught up in good vs. bad. The idea is that everyone is unable to be good enough, and that's why the sacrifice of Jesus was so important. And there's enough of it for everyone. There's a parable called the parable of the laborers. Vineyard owner hires some people at sunrise and says he'll pay them a days wage to come work. He goes out late in the day and hires more and pays them the same. The land owner rebukes the jealous that worked all day because they still got what they were promised. So, if someone has been horrible and a murderer, but truly repents and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus before he die he receives the same forgiveness.

When I say I don't want to stand in judgement of someone's eternal soul, I mean it isn't for me to say what is in their heart based up on their actions. I would hope that someone would try to live their faith as much as possible.

As a Christian, I want to build relationships with people and yes, share my faith with them. I've never been a turn or burn kind of guy, thinking that kind of abrasiveness turns pretty much everyone off to what I believe Christianity is. So how can I look them in the face? How can I not look them in the face? Why would I not want relationships with those who don't share my faith? How else would I ever share it with them?

[Betty]

If all religions claim to be the only way and everyone else goes to hell (or whatever they call for that faith), that's an awful lot of people that are still "good" but just believe something different. Sounds like a spiteful God to me. Believe in Me or suffer the consequences.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I keep trying to come up with posts without coming across as the angry atheist. It's hard.

I'm not angry at any individual for having their faith, though I will forever be baffled as to how adults can't recognize all of these competing ideas of God as nothing more than man's imperfect attempts to synthesize our shared gut desire for order and morality into fables and tales that make it easier to impart the lessons. Why people can't accept that it's myth, not literal, and instead spend time making up new rules to justify the increasing improbability of this unknowable being, is beyond me. So much energy spent in service of an analogy that could be better spent taking care of reality.

But for the most part I don't really care what other people believe. But as I get closer to having a kid, I'm growing more and more frustrated as the difficulty of being an atheist becomes clearer to me. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I guess that my parents (my mom at least) would have more easily accepted me coming out as gay then if I told her I'm raising my child without the Jewish faith. And what's crazy about that is that my parents are NOT religious people, per se. They are the epitome of cultural Jews. They're in it for the traditions, not the theism. They made a strong effort to teach me that all these things I was learning about god were allegory, that the REAL reason to be good wasn't because of fear of God but because making bad choices had real consequences, for myself and others.

Yet I know that even THEY would have difficulty letting go of that.

And I struggle mightily with how to handle it with my own child(ren). I still value much of what the structure of the religious tradition did for me. It's a ready-built community that makes the early imprinting of morality and responsibility very straight forward. Duh, that's why organized religion has been such a successful meme, it's good at what it does. And certainly my parents managed to balance their disagreement with the dogma with their desire for that structure and connection to family, immediate and extended. And I definitely don't want to disconnect my child from his family by not having him share the cultural foundations that tie us together.

But then I picture us, after a Seder, standing and looking at an open door with a full cup of wine on the table calling, in some relatively aggressive language, for Elijah to return and for God to strike down the nations of our enemies and I cringe. I picture a 13yo giving a bar mitzvah speech, talking about how he'll dedicate his life to god's teaching, and I feel a rush of dishonest shame.

I want the cultural continuity without the theistic dogmatism. But even my search for like-minded secular Jews has only turned up depressingly touchy-feely agnostics that just do a find and replace of the word "God" with "binding spirit energy that unites us all" or other such nonsense in the holy texts.

I know I'm asking for the impossible. That I can't just hope that secular communities with the strength of a community with thousands of years of consistency are just going to appear in the face of overwhelming societal pressure against it, even though I believe their impossibility to be simply a matter of circumstance, not nature. And I know that in the end I will in all llikelihood do what my parents did and do my best to take the positive community aspects while de-emphasizing the rampant smiting and rigid dogmatism.

Wow, that was a long way of saying a whole lot of nothing. I've lost my original point. I guess mostly I just want to parrot what Flippy's been getting it, that no matter how you drill down and come up with ways to allow for your particular view of a supreme being to operate and account for the apparent contradictions that arise, they all being with one very big, unavoidable "if". And "if" that is by its very nature impervious to logic.

And as a final note - does anyone mind if I pop this out into its own thread? It's far too civil and intellectual to be part of this one.

[Betty]

[quote=scaeagles;307267]Again, I think too many get caught up in good vs. bad. The idea is that everyone is unable to be good enough, and that's why the sacrifice of Jesus was so important. And there's enough of it for everyone. There's a parable called the parable of the laborers. Vineyard owner hires some people at sunrise and says he'll pay them a days wage to come work. He goes out late in the day and hires more and pays them the same. The land owner rebukes the jealous that worked all day because they still got what they were promised. So, if someone has been horrible and a murderer, but truly repents and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus before he die he receives the same forgiveness.

[\QUOTE]

That totally goes against my sense of fairness. I know I know. Life isn't fair. Whatever.

[Betty]

GD - at some point you just wing it. I tell my kids what I believe personally, what their grandparents believe and what others believe. Then I tell them I want them to decide what they believe.

For quite awhile Amy wanted to go to church with her friend. (a friend I didn't particularly care for I should add.) I told her if she wanted to experience church, she could go with her Grandparents. That way it was about religion and not the friend and I had some idea of what she would be getting into. She declined. (she wanted to go and hang out with friends more then learn about God and religion.)

Not too long after she decided her "friend" was a hyprocrit. Lot's of talk about God and being good but ultimately didn't practice what she preached. Now she's probably more atheistic or agnostic than not but I left things open for discussion.

What was important to me was to let her know I loved her if she believed in God or not.

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Betty

That totally goes against my sense of fairness. I know I know. Life isn't fair. Whatever.

Thus the parable of the laborers.