anti-christ discussion, from middle p. 3 to end.

[Jersey Girl]

Excellent thoughts from both You and Honor! Enjoyed them very much. What has opened my eyes to my ownself journey has been stunning in a way. I rather got turned off to Jesus through my disaffection with LDSism and apologetics. In fact, yes, I sorta yelled at him for a few years and went all atheist on him just to show him what an idiot he is, you know, that kind of thing. I read Richard Carrier's book on the Historical Jesus and why the chances and probabilities that he is non-historical rather than real are really in favor of the non-historical Jesus, so I threw the book at him so to speak, and basically told him to lump it and refute it, you know, the old righteous diatribe of a heinous wicked apostate ne-er do well disgruntled and really pissed off Mormon kinda thing. After a few years I ended up re-reading Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, and Northrop Frye, the literary critic. It ain't history which turned me to at least look in Jesus' direction again, it is mythology. I find that just kind of sort of rather fascinating for me personally. And that's not because Jesus is a mere myth as opposed to an imagined concrete historical reality, that's because myth tells the higher truth of Jesus than history ever can.
Happy New Year you wonderful, sappy, beautiful people! I love ya all more than I can express and wish the very best for all of you!

I did the best that I could here. I still don't think I got to the heart of honor's thoughts. I think I may have colored his thoughts with my own. Honor thinks and expresses himself differently than I do and like I said a couple of times, I have to make a strong effort to get on the same page with him. I don't think I did such a hot job of it, but I tried. I think if I did color his thoughts with my own, it's an effort on my part to make myself understood because I don't want people to make assumptions about me, what I think and why I think it. I detest being put in a box with a label slapped on it, then folks assuming what I think/believe on account of the label. I want a chance to speak for myself and only for myself because I am not a "system".

Like you, Philo Sofee, I am on a journey. We all are. That journey can either draw a line between us and God or it can serve to erase it. And sometimes even when the line gets erased, it can redraw itself in unexpected ways. Look at what we know about the journey of Don Bradley. When I first encountered Don Bradley on Z, he was atheist. Then somehow and for some reason, he shows up years later and is back in the LDS Church. Stuff you never thought you would see, right?

Philo Sofee, there is you. You were a staunch defender of the LDS Church. You were searching for what one might call "Off beat" ways to defend it. Either that or you simply take an interest (and you do) in all sorts of topics and pursue them. You threw off those sparks and made me notice you. And then...I saw you show up on a board that you previously hated for all you were worth. You let me know that in no uncertain terms, too. I remember all too well your blistering comments---yikes! And yet you were here with entirely different perspectives. I know pastors who would tell me to stay away from you because you would have been viewed as being in a blasphemous "sin state". Well, guess what. When it comes to actual sin states, we're all in that state. So, no. It wouldn't even cross my mind to stay away from you. If you want to get technical, why would a Christian stay away from someone seen as being in a sin state? Did Jesus do that? I mean, his whole entire mission was about accessing people. What the heck. And no, I didn't see you as being in a sin state, that's how a pastor might label you. But that's not why I wouldn't stay away from you. I wouldn't stay away from you because I love you. It's a simple as that.

You know the corruption we're seeing in government right now? It's probably always been there but with T-man at the helm, it got permission to come out of the closet and do it's darndest. That very same thing is what happens in churches. I've always, always, said that churches would be great if it weren't for the people inside them. Certain people get their hands on something organized like that, and they wreck it because their goals are self serving. That's really the main reason (due to all the reasons under the heading of the main reason) that I left organized religion and set out on my own.

Yes, we are for the most part, a good group of folks here. I see folks dart in here and claim that everyone here is against them. Buncha atheists, a mob mentality. I have never once experienced that here. I don't go around shoving my beliefs or my sense of spirituality in anyone's face unless the topic comes up and they invite me to do so.

In any case, it's all a journey. As much as I want to know about people and their stories, I want to know who/what God is, and I know I can't get "there" but that doesn't stop me from thinking about it and trying to get there. For all I know, God is the Singularity. Somehow that connects in my brain. The Bible doesn't ask us to "know". Not really. It presents the stories and challenges us to have faith in the messages and the people who conveyed those messages, including the messages in the work attributed to Christ.

I love the voice of Jesus. I love that he challenged people. I love that he stuck up for people, you know, Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
and then after he stops the action about to happen, he tells the woman to basically go get her stuff together in life. He rebukes the crowd and then gives her a chance. I love that he called people out. I love that he got so stinking mad at the money changers that he went old school at the Temple and basically wrecked the place. I love that he fed people who were in what we might call today a kind of Woodstock group and no, I don't care how many fishes there were or how the fishes came about or even if it WAS fishes. It's the feeding I care about. The physical feeding and the spiritual feeding. Jesus was no push over, that is for sure. He doesn't ask us to know but he does challenge when after years of being with him he asks, "Who do you say that I am?"

That's the deal with Jesus. Who do you say that he is? Everyone's answer is going to be different to some degree and some folks are going to say that he didn't even exist and they have a right to say that because that is part of their journey.

I liked where you say that you sorta yelled at Jesus. So, you know I am a believer, right. About 10 years ago when a family member killed themselves and another family member was traumatized having witnessed it, listen. I was out at night on the back porch on a regular basis and for years, actually swearing at God. Yup, I went right to the top of the chain of command with that. If God exists, then I figure that God knows exactly what I was expressing and why, and didn't flinch at the words I used to express it. Now that I look back, I figure he gets that on a regular basis from human beings. If God is indeed a "he" and knows us and hears us. Or the Singularity. Or a nothing at all.

But don't ask me to KNOW. I don't KNOW. I've thought about knowing until my brain hurts and I know that I CAN'T know. So I just do what I do in life and I think for the most part, I do okay. But if Jesus were in front of me today and asked me, "Who do you say that I am?" I have an answer for him and the answer could be inaccurate, but he's not asking for accuracy. He's asking us based on the sum total of our experiences with belief or non belief, who do we say that he is. That's it.

You know I love this quote from Harry Potter.

“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.” ~ Sirius Black, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I think that if God exists, that's what he's looking for, too. The part we choose to act on.

Okay, I think you've all now got at least a snippet of the gospel according to Jersey. I don't mean to go on and on. I just want to try to be understood.

[dastardly stem]

Jersey Girl/Honor,

I enjoyed your brief back and forth and hope it continues, also hoping my interference isn't a distraction. I'd agree with honor in that I don't see the Christ idea at all helpful. It seems to me those who are most successful at incorporating the Christ idea into our secular, more mature or developed world by setting aside his most divisive ideas and replacing those ideas with intuitively good, helpful, or less problematic ideas are the ones who keep the Christ idea afloat. If Jesus was not a divisive hater...if God was not a tribal war deity on Old Testament teaching then what were they? We could, I suppose, suggest, the backward views of those authors and scribes who wrote or copied the Bible were just people, which is all true of course, who couldn't help but add to and exaggerate messages, or couldn't help but frame the stories toward their world view...we could, but then, where do we end?

It feels like we're forced to take the assumptions underlying our traditions as if they are good because they exist. They are true enough because they work, or some such idea...which does little more than forgive past offenses on the basis of people not really getting God in their assumptions and hoping our assumptions about God are any different, keeping us from re-doing our evils for his sake. On this everything just means God is good and there is no question to pursue.

If the idea that we are in a fallen world forever lost unless or until we believe something unbelievable, then what is a god who makes it virtually impossible to believe unless you are heavily influenced by the assumptions of a Christian society? If God metes out eternal blessing and cursing based on what brief moment we hiccupped here, how are we supposed to take him seriously?

[Jersey Girl]

Hey stem!

I never read this whole thread. I think I read one or two posts by huck and the one by honor that I posed a question to. I might have been reading the thread backwards which wouldn't be unusual for me and that's how I picked up those posts? I dunno...I haven't read any of your posts except this new one that bumped the thread back up.

If it's not asking you to reinvent the wheel could you tell me what you mean by this?

If Jesus was not a divisive hater

Why do you think Jesus was a divisive hater? I don't want to second guess you on that.

It's funny how you said you'd like to see the exchanges continue. Did you mean between myself and honor? Lordy. I hope he never returns to this thread because my brain is still recovering from trying to reply as thoroughly as I could to him!

Stay away honor! Stay away!

In any case, I don't mind trying to take up some exchanges with you. Just don't expect me to do it in a timely manner because I have to squeeze out some time (and interest) to reply here.

[Philo Sofee]

I don't see Christ so much as the divider as I do his putative followers who think they know it all about what he was all about... and then they wanna kill you if you disagree with them..... I honestly think Christ that we have been given in history is a small part of it based on very incomplete knowledge from those who had something to say......why base our only knowledge on them?

[Jersey Girl]

I don't see Christ so much as the divider as I do his putative followers who think they know it all about what he was all about... and then they wanna kill you if you disagree with them.....

Are you talking about back in the New Testament days? Or are you referring to how religious folks handle themselves in current times? If it is current times, who wants to kill you?

Or does it just feel like they want to kill you?

I honestly think Christ that we have been given in history is a small part of it based on very incomplete knowledge from those who had something to say......why base our only knowledge on them?

I'm surprised by the question you pose here. Why base our only knowledge on them? I'm assuming that when you say "them" you mean those that authored the New Testament? The Synoptic Gospels at least? Well, because they were closer in time to the events described and I don't exactly know who the "them" is but the Bible doesn't seem to be the only literature that holds what is thought to be corroboration and yes, I know about the allegations that other texts were corrupted to include material about Jesus. And yes, I know about the issues raised regarding the dating of the gospels. I don't really want to go over all of that again.

So where does that leave us? I don't expect a more contemporary source to tell us more, do you?

I often feel like some critics of the Gospel accounts are asking us to believe in an elaborate conspiracy theory when in these modern times, most of us poo poo conspiracy theories because they come from folks who are um..."out there". So my question to you might be if you place stock in the conspiracy theories regarding the Bible texts, how do you square that in light of things we're seeing this very day regarding conspiracy theories surrounding the election?

I'm willing to talk if you want to. If not, that is perfectly fine by me. I'm starting a little class but I'll be around.

[Manetho]

Apologies if I'm butting in — and I certainly don't mean to speak for Philo — but this topic brings to mind a blog post by a biblical scholar that I read a few years ago:

Just like clockwork, conservatives inevitably celebrate Martin Luther King Day by attempting to claim him as one of their own. (The first Google hit this year comes from Sarah Palin, who asks on her Facebook that the President stop "playing the race card" in honor of Dr. King.)

The naïve argument, coming from conservatives who have never bothered to read anything Dr. King wrote beyond a few quotes from a single speech, is that since King wanted people to be judged by the "content of their character," he must have been calling for a race-blind society free of government interference based on race or economic status.

This is, of course, complete bull____. King was a radical. He considered unfettered capitalism to be a great evil, and his primary critique of communism was over its atheism, and its subjection of the individual to the state, not with its goal of redistribution of wealth. The full name of the historic 1963 march was "The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." King supported ideas like universal healthcare, affirmative action, and GI-Bill style federal programs designed specifically to provide jobs and education for black people. Conservatives mistake his pacifism for passivism, but King was not a gradualist. He didn't couch his calls for justice in terms designed to make white people comfortable; he was calling for a complete disruption of the existing, unjust order.

I bring this up because it is illustrative to see how, in less than 50 years, the message of a historical figure — even one who wrote lucidly and prolifically — can be distorted by the mechanisms of social memory. By elevating him to the position of a secular saint, we have in many ways defused the very things that made him dangerous. We remember that he was a man of peace, but we forget that he was using peace to fight a war that is still not won. His message was not "Can't we all just get along?" but "We refuse to 'get along' with a system of violent injustice!" I think this is pertinent to biblical studies exactly because the radical message of Jesus — as near as we can reconstruct it — has been re-written time and again by similar processes.

[huckelberry]

Manetheo, welcome, you cannot be butting in this is a discussion forum and people with thoughts smf pointd of view are certainly welcome. People here look forward to hearing different points of view and ideas.

[dastardly stem]

Hey stem!

I never read this whole thread. I think I read one or two posts by huck and the one by honor that I posed a question to. I might have been reading the thread backwards which wouldn't be unusual for me and that's how I picked up those posts? I dunno...I haven't read any of your posts except this new one that bumped the thread back up.

If it's not asking you to reinvent the wheel could you tell me what you mean by this?

If Jesus was not a divisive hater

Why do you think Jesus was a divisive hater? I don't want to second guess you on that.

It's funny how you said you'd like to see the exchanges continue. Did you mean between myself and honor? Lordy. I hope he never returns to this thread because my brain is still recovering from trying to reply as thoroughly as I could to him!

Stay away honor! Stay away!

In any case, I don't mind trying to take up some exchanges with you. Just don't expect me to do it in a timely manner because I have to squeeze out some time (and interest) to reply here.

I'm similar, I'm missing some because I'm not reading along frequently enough. So no problem and understandable. That's how we are.

My Jesus comment was probably a very dismissive sounding caricature. And it might be overall. So I do feel I have some explainin' to do. But Philo said something interesting in his response too:

I don't see Christ so much as the divider as I do his putative followers who think they know it all about what he was all about... and then they wanna kill you if you disagree with them..... I honestly think Christ that we have been given in history is a small part of it based on very incomplete knowledge from those who had something to say......why base our only knowledge on them?

I'd wonder where do we think Christ followers get their ideas? It is the case Jesus tells, or commands, his followers who to hate. And he's pleased to give a description of those whom he ignores.

If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters...

Luke 14

Preaching hate, making hating those closest to you a necessity to please him is manipulative, at least, and seems to pose a very special kind of reverence for divisiveness.

In other ways he preaches division as a virtue:

Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division

Luke 12

Attempting to apply this thinking in our world seems rather impossible and is nothing short of a contradiction of what we naturally strive for and so it makes sense people, as they mature and come to their sense, treat these types of passages as foolish or ignorable, assuming, as it were, they really mean something special and helpful rather than divisive. But, the glaring ugliness of them could explain the atrocities that Jesus seems to have inspired over the course of history.

Of course this doesn't represent the sum of his teachings. Not in the least. But I don't see how we make up for this type of stuff with sacrifice that doesn't make sense or work.

Sorry I mentioned that Jesus teaches how he and his father have a special desire to ignore many believers as part of this. He mentions this in a few ways, in a couple of different contexts...the most prominent and explicit it seems to me is found in the sermon on the Mount:

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

This suggests there is a special kind of believer, one who builds his foundation on sand, who God simply dislikes, ignores and rejects. I suppose there are plenty of ways to apply this, like, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, when the sower is tossing out seeds they are said to fall, by happenstance, on good bad, or impossible ground. If in a certain mood the seed falls on someone's cold heart of pain or embarrassment, then it seems, God had already decided that is one such he shall ignore. apparently, upon his teachings, someone who happens to have a hard heart, or a foolish unprepared mentality can't possibly plead with God hard enough to catch his eye. For he, it appears to be, is merely one who works iniquity. I do believer honor's explanation of a fallen world, and how it's a problematic mindset, becomes manifest in this story. It can be, and is often, rationalized as God doesn't owe anyone anything. If one is ignored it is their own deeply seeded evil, apparently, that God rejects. But what can such a person do if God has already decided to put such a one on ignore? I don't know we can safely say these are simply the Hitler's who are out there whom God hates for their hating of father and mother. That doesn't seem to square with his desire to cause division. These are the many believers who weren't genocide-lovers but were the regular among us who simply are foolish from the start and can't ever get right in order to catch Jesus' ear.

Anyway, I don't mean to fight these things for any particular reason. There are plenty of believers who seemingly reject the division, in spite of it's prominence. but I don't think it puts us in a very good spot. If we are speaking about calling each other anti-Christ, the issue isn't the reality of the situation--yes, I'm not a fan of Christ teaching and will say so, so what's wrong with the true definition? the problem it seems to me is so many among us define good as Christ, and define evil as anti-Christ. the name-calling may seem accurate and perhaps dispassionate, but in many ways its saying "I hate you"..."you are a reject" and other such things. While it may work in an academic sense it fails in practice. It's an embrace of divisive, enemy-creating nonsense. And, to note, it certainly is a true way to be if you accept scripture.

[Dr Exiled]

I think it is too bad that Christ isn't around to correct the record. The gospels and other books in the Bible give a confusing story of what happened and perhaps never were meant to be history in the first place. People have taken advantage of the confusion to create more confusion and myth over the years. I guess that is what happens when emotion based thinking is popularized. Even so, it would be nice if the big guy would come and give the correct version. Perhaps he is too busy? Or, it is more likely that he was an ordinary man that started a movement that was stunted by his untimely death. Then his followers opportunistically created a myth surrounding him that has been added upon with each passing year. For me, the idea that God somehow didn't have the power to forgive his children until Christ was sacrificed is a big red flag that points to myth, regardless of whether or not Christ was a real man once or an amalgam of various jewish revolutionaries.

[dastardly stem]

I think it is too bad that Christ isn't around to correct the record. The gospels and other books in the Bible give a confusing story of what happened and perhaps never were meant to be history in the first place. People have taken advantage of the confusion to create more confusion and myth over the years. I guess that is what happens when emotion based thinking is popularized. Even so, it would be nice if the big guy would come and give the correct version. Perhaps he is too busy? Or, it is more likely that he was an ordinary man that started a movement that was stunted by his untimely death. Then his followers opportunistically created a myth surrounding him that has been added upon with each passing year. For me, the idea that God somehow didn't have the power to forgive his children until Christ was sacrificed is a big red flag that points to myth, regardless of whether or not Christ was a real man once or an amalgam of various jewish revolutionaries.

Excellent points. The scriptures, it seems to me, often amount to mixed messaging, and as such it's no wonder people use them to justify all sorts of contradictory things. And supposedly Jesus was did come to set the record straight...that's what the Book of Mormon was supposed to do. But when read it suffers from the same mixed-messaging. In that sense the two works of scripture do go hand in hand.