I CHOOSE to believe that the Bible is the way God wants it to be.

I don't.  See, I think men got themselves all full of pride and thought that they could decipher what god wants by picking and choosing what's in the bible, and they kind of screwed up in doing so.  I don't think that the bible was ever intended to be a complete document.....and we have, in our infallability, taken it upon ourselves to 'finish' what wasn never meant to be finished.

 

No one can make you believe

I wish someone would tell that to the evangelical christians and marguerite perrin.....

As a postscript to what I wrote in post #16 I thought I'd add this. I often go back and read Eliot's poem Little Gidding from his Four Quartets. This one verse has always summed up lifes journey, for me at least:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot -- "Little Gidding" (the last of his Four Quartets)

Well, I appreciate the thought, but leave me out. I'm an atheist with my own ideas of the beginning and middle of the story and would prefer to orchestrate my own ending.

Hahaha, I have never ever met an atheist who didn't think religion was trying to force their own path. You cannot be left out, you have free will, just as every other human on the planet. YOU make the story. YOU are the story, whether you choose to be or not. The Bible doesn't have to be your story, but you are a character in the Great Story, because you live, not what you choose to believe.

I'm looking for god. I'm looking for purpose, for security, for answers to questions that the bible alone can't answer. I already FOUND holes in Christianity, and most of those have been filled by what I discovered in Gnosticism. I found holes in Buddhism too.....and those too have been filled by Gnosticism. It hasn't answered ALL the questions, but i don't want it to. There HAS to be some stuff that you take simply on faith, if that makes sense.

First, I apologize. I thought I had the answer, and I would rush in, shed some of my knowledge, gain a little of your respect, and then get out like the Good Samaritan. How wrong was I...

Dharma, you and every other person in the world is looking for the same thing. We are all human, with inherent questions that cannot be answered by something written down. If you just read the Bible, or read the Gnostic texts, or the Socrates texts, or the Descartan Principles, or anything, you will not understand. You are looking for an answer when there is no question, as everyone is. We must find a question together. The Bible can answer the Why's and When's of life, but you must travel to the beat of your own drum, find your own place, find your own question, and then I believe you will be fulfilled. Fulfillment to you might not come in the answer, but the lifelong journey to the answer.

I can honestly say that I will never know. Every question I have every answered through introspection, philosophy, religion, or experience, has come back to me in the Hydra effect. I hope, however, through my journey in life and Catholicism, if I choose to remain Catholic, will eventually lead me to spiritual fulfillment, and I hope all of you will find that in the religion, or lack thereof, that you so choose.

It was dark. It was quiet. I looked up at the dark sky and saw endless stars and in between them, endless darkness. I felt without purpose. I felt small and insignificant. I felt vulnerable. I wondered what the heck this was all for.

My father calls me a high-functioning autistic. I have the social-aptitude and emotional quotient as a large sack of potatoes sin sprouts. However, I sometimes am able to see, or am unable to see, things not evident to my peers. I have looked up at the night sky, much the same as you might have, and saw endless stars, endless darkness. I have felt without purpose. I still don't know what my purpose is, or if I will ever get it. I feel small, I feel vulnerable, and I still wonder what this is all about. I know I have a purpose though. I can feel it, even as I sit here. My back starts to tingle, the darkness seems a little darker than it was before, the stars seem a little brighter. Where I thought there was silence, I hear a ringing, tingling sensation in my eardrums. The hairs on my neck and back stand up, my arms and legs tense so that I feel their power. Adrenaline races through my body like arc-lightning, and my mind teams with thoughts. And I simply wonder...

I sometimes just laugh at God. I think some people are so fixated on an omnipresent and remote dictator, where all of your acts are controlled. I know, or think I know, God has a sense of humor and I love it. Do you like number theory? I am fascinated by it. I am not the brightest mathematical mind, but I just love things like Pi. Someone finally figures out how to get the radius of a circle using this number. They think, "Wow, I can find the area of this perfectly round shape!" Then they think about it, and their like, "How the hell did this perfect shape come from this ugly number?" THen some other genius figures out the equation for Pi. (I memorized it because i think its sweet 16arctan(1/5)-4arctan(1/239) So someone finds out how to figure out how to get Pi. The great thing is, whenever someone thinks they have figured a number out, or a function, they realize that each and everytime they climb one hill, they find one even taller than that. Just makes me wonder...

Just then the light on my back porch lit up. The back door opened slowly and my wife poked her head out. She asked me why I was still up, and what was I doing standing out there alone. Then she told me she had a nightmare. It had been bad enough to wake her up in a cold sweat. She said she reached out for me but when I wasn't there started to worry, so she came looking. She said to come in and come to bed. I looked at her. I looked back up at the stars. I smiled. I came to bed. I had found my purpose. I felt secure, because I knew I made her feel secure. The vulnerability was gone. Someone needed me.

You know, that's a very nice story, but.....the issue with having  another human be your purpose, your raison d'etre, is that they are both mortal and fallible.  I'm not looking for someone to need me.  I needed someTHING, not someONE.  I needed god, I needed to be reassured that there IS something bigger than this.

I think that I have found it.

Fulfillment to you might not come in the answer, but the lifelong journey to the answer.

EXACTLY!  I'm not looking for ALL the answers right now.  That would be incredibly boring. 

I have the social-aptitude and emotional quotient as a large sack of potatoes sin sprouts.

Aww, I don't think it's that bad!!!  That was pretty funny though.

I sometimes just laugh at God. I think some people are so fixated on an omnipresent and remote dictator, where all of your acts are controlled. I know, or think I know, God has a sense of humor and I love it.

EXACTLY (again)!  There's all this worshiping and prostrating oneself and worrying and fretting.....there's no need for it.  Really. 

I needed someTHING, not someONE. I needed god, I needed to be reassured that there IS something bigger than this.

I needed someTHING also. The thing I needed *was* to be needed.
I also needed to be reassured that there IS something bigger than this. I found that love *is* bigger than this.

AS for being mortal and fallible. There are others in my life that need me. Others that will live long past my existence, and being fallible is why they need me. For that matter, being fallible is why I need them.

I am content with my life. I am content with my answers to life.

I can see that you too have found many of the answers you want to reach that contentment. I am happy for you.

I don't. See, I think men got themselves all full of pride and thought that they could decipher what god wants by picking and choosing what's in the bible, and they kind of screwed up in doing so. I don't think that the bible was ever intended to be a complete document.....and we have, in our infallability, taken it upon ourselves to 'finish' what wasn never meant to be finished.

Again, that is your choice to believe that.

I wish someone would tell that to the evangelical christians and marguerite perrin.....

The Bible tells its readers that we need to show and tell others about Jesus. Frankly, I think a good example, a life well-lived, says much more than "Hey, sinner, rise and be saved by the blood of JESUS, or beware the flames and fire of eternal damnation in HELL!" ~shrugs~ But that's just me.

You know, that's a very nice story, but.....the issue with having another human be your purpose, your raison d'etre, is that they are both mortal and fallible. I'm not looking for someone to need me. I needed someTHING, not someONE. I needed god, I needed to be reassured that there IS something bigger than this.

I agree. Ryan doesn't make me "better" or make me more "whole". He is my companion. I love him. But he's not my reason to be alive and to continue on with life. If he was, the first 22 years of my life would have been meaningless.

My mother has been a widow going on 7 years now. She loved my father. They were married for almost 25 years before he passed away. But my mom has hope in something more. My dad wasn't the be all, end all for her. She's still mourning, but she's continued living because she has her faith, and she's confident in the promises that God has made her. If she remarries, I fully expect that she won't make that man her reason for living either.

It's nice to be needed. But I think it's better to be wanted.

I know, or think I know, God has a sense of humor and I love it.

Wouldn't He have to? I mean...penises. Our ugly feet. One of my favorite renderings of Jesus is of Him laughing.

Well, I am with singrdave on this one.

I have no problem believing that The Bible, while a wonderful work of inspired writers, is incomplete, incorrectly translated in many places, and simply one tool which God has given us to get to know Him just a little bit. But the end? Only a beginning.

singrdave already summed up a lot of our beliefs. But I still believe God calls prophets. I still believe they give us inspired teachings that expand, strengthen and enhance our understanding of the divine. I still believe that we are each entitled to spiritual communication from the heavens if we are but willing to listen and seeking that instruction.

"We believe all the God has revealed, we believe all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God" -Joseph Smith, Article of Faith #9

So, to answer the final question "Would it change things for you?", the answer is simple: Nope, not at all.

Good thoughts Dharma.

I needed someTHING also. The thing I needed *was* to be needed. I also needed to be reassured that there IS something bigger than this. I found that love *is* bigger than this. AS for being mortal and fallible. There are others in my life that need me. Others that will live long past my existence, and being fallible is why they need me. For that matter, being fallible is why I need them. I am content with my life. I am content with my answers to life. I can see that you too have found many of the answers you want to reach that contentment. I am happy for you.

I dunno if I am just wierd or something, but doesnt that seem like and endless loop of fallibility, or did I read it wrong? Basically, it is like saying I believe in the Bible because it tells me I should.

I dunno if I am just wierd or something, but doesnt that seem like and endless loop of fallibility, or did I read it wrong? Basically, it is like saying I believe in the Bible because it tells me I should.

It *is* his choice, though. Even if we don't agree it's his choice.

I'm kinda glad it stopped where it did. That's all the world needs is more religion...

Actually, there were over twenty commandments.

Think of it this way: Christianity is like looking through a keyhole into a room. You can see some stuff, but you don't get the whole picture. Add these other texts to what is contained in the Bible, and it's like opening the door to the room slightly. You see more of what's beyond.......

Like evolution and the Dharma?

I dunno if I am just wierd or something, but doesnt that seem like and endless loop of fallibility, or did I read it wrong?

What I'm saying is I believe in love because I feel love and it is more than enough to answer the question of why I am here. Fallibility, both mine and that of those that surround me, is just one of the many, many things that contribute to why I feel that love. For me, and I am *only* speaking for me, this answer is *the* answer.

It is very difficult to discuss these things, using words that have absolutely no meaning *to me*. God, bible, heck even theist and atheist have no real meaning. They are just sounds, collections of symbols, that indicate nothing in my existence. I simply believe that there is nothing special beyond this existence. It was not there. It is not there. It will not ever be there.

And you know what? I'm very content and happy with that knowledge.

Peace everyone. I'm excited that all of you have found your own answers and that those answers make you happy and content. Isn't that what the quest is all about?


So, to get back to the original questions. And I will answer them only from withing my frame of reference, since that is all I have:

"What if the Bible isn't the end of the story?"

The Bible isn't the story at all.

"What if there's more to the nature of the divine and man's relationship with such?"

I cannot speak to such things since, in my existence, they don't exist.

"What if the Council of Nicea only got it partially right - what if there are other teachings that are just as valid that expand upon the teachings of the Bible?"
What if? How would that affect your faith? Your beliefs? Your perceptions of what is real and what isn't?

I suppose, from a purely scholarly perspective, it would be an interesting investigation.

"What if?

Would it change things for you?"

Not at all.



Peace and love.