To be free

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Originally Posted by JunkYard

"The truth shall make you free"

You're are a Christian, so what is truth to you?


Junk~

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Essentially? Christ Himself. Pontius Pilate asked ironically "what is truth?" Well, It was standing right in front of him, battered and bloodied.

Cosmically, He is the origin and principle of all things - the "Logos of God." However for us, He is a brother, even a friend. Someone with a face, with a life, Who could even suffer like us. He was a person in history and in time, and like the major part of humanity (in all times and places), born, lived, and died in borderline poverty. He had a mom, family, and friends. A concrete historicaly person.

That "historical Christ" and the "Divine Christ" or the "Cosmic Christ" even that some new-age types refer to, are both distinct yet the same now. Christ has human and divine natures. This is the ultimate bond between God and His creatures - He has become one of them...and in turn, that means just as He participates in them, they in turn participate in Him. This was why the early Christians mingled water and wine at their Eucharist - it symbolized the union of the Divine and the Created (and specifically/especially, human) in Jesus of Nazareth, an obscure (certainly outside of Judea for those brief three years of preaching) Jewish carpenter Who basically changed the entire course of human history.

That is the essential truth of Christianity - that the created and the uncreated have met, and that it is possible for creatures to participate in the Divine Nature because of this.

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Originally Posted by sharer6969

Truth always liberates....

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but truth is relative. your belief gives you a certain set of truths, a narrow view of reality that removes you from other possibilities. to believe in "the great truth" or even a set of immutable truths seems foolish if you consider that everything is constantly changing. the very idea of some great truth which contains the answer to the question of our existence seems to be nothing more than humanity's vain hope that they will some day be able to understand the processes of a universe to vast for them to comprehend. religion provides a simple solution where understanding is not necessary, merely obedience. science provides a more complex solution where by experiment all questions may be answered. both expose the vanity of man, believing that he is capable of influencing the infinite or that he is important enough to merit its attention.

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Originally Posted by 40oz

Freedom is thinking for yourself and doing what pleases you.

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I agree. Of course, whether or not what happens to please us is "for the better" is a topic unto itself. But this is true, that in the end, freedom would be the ability to choose as one see's fit. And in Christian cosmology, it is believed this type of freedom really does exist (ex. satan.)

If God is, and created everything out of nothing, then there would be something outside of God, which I don't believe. In fact, I think that God actually created out of himself, which would make all creation a fragment of the whole of God. That being said, wouldn't this make all things divine in and of themselves? (being extensions of God) God is the all, or all that is - in my mind. To me, God is life, and God is love, (light) and everything that falls inbetween. "In him was life; and the life was the light of men."

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Originally Posted by delusionsofNORMALity

but truth is relative.

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If you said "our relationship to truth is relative", I'd agree. The object and it's audience are two different things. What we hope for, however, is that our apprehension of the object is at least a valid (and useful) analogy - because that's all our ideas can be, is analogies or metaphores. If they were anything more, they would be the object.

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your belief gives you a certain set of truths, a narrow view of reality that removes you from other possibilities.

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I think it's safe for me to say you're probably assuming an awful lot about my actual beliefs which is incorrect.

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to believe in "the great truth" or even a set of immutable truths seems foolish if you consider that everything is constantly changing.

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Yes, our relationship to the truth is always changing. Personally, I think our metaphores have only improved with time. However, I'm still firmly persuaded to believe that the basic Christian metaphore is descriptive of reality.

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the very idea of some great truth which contains the answer to the question of our existence seems to be nothing more than humanity's vain hope that they will some day be able to understand the processes of a universe to vast for them to comprehend.

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That's the thing though, I don't think Christianity really claims to know the ultimate reason for why we exist, and would tend to say we cannot know this. Being told what will bring peace to a person and will reconcile them to the Divine isn't at all the same as saying more fundamentally "why?" I mean, why does anything exist as opposed to not? That is unknown, and probably will remain such, for we can only know as human beings know. That may very well be something beyond our ability to comprehend.

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religion provides a simple solution where understanding is not necessary, merely obedience.

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Some religions maybe. I can't speak for everyone.

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science provides a more complex solution where by experiment all questions may be answered. both expose the vanity of man, believing that he is capable of influencing the infinite or that he is important enough to merit its attention.

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If man exists, he already has the "attention of the Infinite." "Science" is a methodology, and when people usually speak of "science" they really mean "physical science." In classical systems of reason (including those which were formative to the origins of the physical sciences) "natural philosophy" or "science" as people call it now, was understood to be a type of "science", but not the only one.

Observation with the physical senses can tell us alot of things, but mainly only about itself. Physicality is like a closed loop, or a circle - it only knows itself via itself. On it's own, it has no appreciation of anything. Human beings OTOH are obviously "purpose driven", they are interpretive creatures. As such, he has "types of knowing" which go beyond mechanistic physics, which can only tell one that how "the ball rolls down hill", and not why the ball ultimately does this. "It just does!" is what it is reduced to. And that's fine, because that's all that kind of methodology is supposed to do.

So falsifiable experimentation cannot (by it's very nature, not by any kind of weakness - it's like expecting a pig to fly or being surprised a venemous snake will bite) "tell us everything." If you think about such a statement, it doesn't even make sense. You may as well say "sensation is everything." That we're having this lovely conversations proves that it is not.

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Originally Posted by JunkYard

If God is, and created everything out of nothing, then there would be something outside of God, which I don't believe. In fact, I think that God actually created out of himself, which would make all creation a fragment of the whole of God. That being said, wouldn't this make all things divine in and of themselves? (being extensions of God) God is the all, or all that is - in my mind. To me, God is life, and God is love, (light) and everything that falls inbetween. "In him was life; and the life was the light of men."

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Then without realizing it, you're worshipping the creature instead of the Creator. Confusing the two is exactly what the Apostle was talking about in the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

People often say "God is the Creator" without knowing what they are saying, mainly because in modern tongues the distinction the Scriptures make between "creating" and "fashioning" are lost. Strictly speaking, only God "creates" - however, both God and man can be said to "make" or "fashion." Both can excercise their wills within the created order - both have "will" within that order. But only God creates, in that He brings out of nothing, and this because of His absolute freedom. Men on the other hand, are always fashioning out of pre-existent "matter" (whether physical or spiritual/intellectual); we're sponges and recyclers, we originate nothing - we only choose between what is basically put in front of us by others.

God is known, because He makes Himself known. However apart from this, He is utterly unknowable. He is "in essence" completely different than anything you can even conceptualize, let alone see or hear. What we know of Him, is to the extent He wants us to know of Him, and in terms we can understand (basically, analogies with things we know.) That is Who He is for us, because He "wants" it that way...and why? Who knows? I don't. Likely because I cannot. No one can.

So while His creation points to Him in it's details, and the "reason" He has made us with points to Him, and while inspired men "knew" Him in a special way (receiving "words")...none of this is of itself, Him/God. That is something we are ceaselessly moving towards, endlessly. Endless divinization, endless theosis. Endless revelation.

It says in the Bible that Moses was not like other men, because he came to know God "face to face." What that means, is that his relation to God was direct, almost hypostatic (oness of being) - for him (though I'm sure he couldn't communicate this save by analogies) "knowing God" went above categories or impressions - He (God) just "was", and he (Moses) just "was", together. That is how it would be, and that's still dumbing things down in language heathens like us can hopefully understand. Really this is the road everyone is headed toward - it's just Moses, alone amongst men (even amongst the Prophets) was "there" in this world, in this present life.

But yet as close as they were, God hid Moses' body from the superstitious Israelites, when Moses died. Why? Because they would have worshipped it "as God", just like they did the idol of the Golden Calf. Keep in mind, that according to the Bible (read carefully), they worshipped the Golden Calf as God. IOW. they called it "YHWH" (possibly pronounced "Yahweh" or "Yahuwa" in archaic Hebrew...we don't know....it means "He Who Is"), offered it sacrifices with YHWH's Priests officiating, etc. And why did they do this? Because they thought Moses was dead on Mt.Sinai, and to their superstitious way of thinking he may as well "be God".

But the Scriptures reject this. The creation is not the Creator - hence why, as great and lofty as Moses was, as close to God as he was...he was NOT God, and so his remains were hidden away (according to the Jewish midrash and a brief mention in the New Testament, it was occulted/translated into Paradise via angelic powers, but that's ultimately neither here nor there.)

If you think about it, even though Jesus Christ Himself is BOTH Divine and Human, God and Man, the two are still distinct - He wasn't pretending when He felt pains of hunger, or even wept at the anguish of His friends when Lazarus died. Indeed, He even felt anxiety and misery over the prospect of being brutalized and put to death upon the Cross, as the story of the "Garden of Gethsemene" clearly states. Christ is the "key", the symbol and figure of the entirity of existence - the unity and duality within Him, are the microcosm of the relationship between the creation and the Creator (just as it's been said that man himself is a microcosm of the created order.)

Consider this, sharer6969:

1 Corinthians 13

8. Love lasts forever. There are such things as prophecies, but they will disappear. There are such things as languages, but they will stop. There is such a thing as knowledge , but it will disappear. 9. We only know portions of thingg . We prophesy in parts, 10. but when that which is complete comes, the parts will disappear. 11. When I was a child, I used to talk about the things that a child would talk about. I thought and reasoned as a child does, but now that I have become an adult, I have put aside the ways of children. 12. At this time, we see only a blurred image in the mirror. At the time of maturity, we will see plainly--as one person looking at another's face. Now I know things only partially, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me. 13. Now these three things last: faith, hope, and love--but the most important of these is love.


If you are correct in saying that we are seperate from God, and created out of nothing, then all will perish. The only thing eternal would be the things of God himself. (Love), 'hope' which derives from love, and 'faith' which also derives from love.

My view is that God is life & love...

John 1

1. In the beginning, there was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was deity. 2. He was with God in the beginning. 3. Through him everything was made. Without him nothing which has happened would have happened. 4. He was the Source of life. That life was light for people.

If the scriptures I have quoted are true, and the source of life is light, and never dies (diety) then that source and that light and the verry essence of God must be Love, as love lasts forever. I'm not talking about the world, or physical matter, I'm speaking of "Life" as opposed to nothingness. Love is complete, love IS life, and love IS the divine.

"His life is the light that shines through the darkness--and the darkness can never extinguish it."


To put it simply, the Christ man was love made manifest in humanly form, (Born of God's Spirit" (Love) and this is the essence that saves, the truth that makes you free, and the light in darkness that never dies.


Junk~

FREEDOM....ahh freedom..what a interesting word.

For me Freedom is a state of mind but I would also consider it is an actual place that I mentally reside. Freedom from fear of death. Freedom from the "bad things" in life. Freedom from condemnation. Freedom from hate. Freedom from sin, the world, the devil, and anything that is against God. Freedom is knowing Christ! And living in his "free" world is purely stated.... amazing.
A world where he is my father and I am his son. A world where he wants the best for me and those I love. A world where I can call on him and he answers me. Not because of anything other than love. Wow...Peace :jointsmile:

And for those who read this and just think this is lame or whatever. I can only say that this is truely how I live. This is how I love. And I make no apologies for it.

Ritchie, my man!! :thumbsup: You get what few got, and what so many fail to see, lol!

Love,

Junk~

I have a definition of freedom for me, but it's not EXACTLY how I see freedom, just the easiest way to describe it, Freedom=without fear. Too many people are controlled by fear. I try to live without fear.