Author: Interfaith

Love

Love

I was reading back over a couple threads and came across this statement; “Love means no strings attached.” (Tony)

My mind is restless when I read stuff and once again I started contemplating the statement.

This kind of love has to come from the Greek word Philo which means a certain type of love.  More of the “love your neighbor as your self”.  And then there is the word Agape as used in 1 Corinthians 13 which requires complete surrender of one’s self to one’s ego.

I would like to toy with the idea of what kind of Love God wants from us, not how we are to love each other.  Dialogue?

Are either of these words appropriate when it comes to how God wants us to love Him?

Is God an dictator that just wants a slave?

Does God just love everyone just because He is completely Merciful?

Does God just give us a bunch of rules and says if we keep them, then He will love us?

Does God owe us something just for being His creation?

Does God desire to be loved just because?

And you can add your own if you desire.

Thinking required 19/06/2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20697/

The one…with no name…and various connections

Contemplation from a friend.

Warning: this may push buttons and even offend but that is not my intention. Just sharing my thoughts. Take it with a grain of salt.

The word “Christ” means “annointed one”. It’s most famously associated with Jesus of Nazareth but it is not his name. He didn’t formally have a last name. “Buddha” means “awakened one” which would be a synonym for Christ and also not Siddhartha’s formal name.

In New Age/New Thought teachings, Christ is associated with consciousness. Jesus is often referred to as a man who expressed his Christ Conciousness in a profound way.
He taught that all of us can tap into this consciousness regardless of our religion, status, etc. He even spoke of others doing it in an even “greater way”.

Some examples of how Jesus expressed Christ-consciousness might be: uplifting others(raising their Spirits), seeing the best in people, putting God first in his life, loving himself and others, doing his personal growth work (40 day/40 night personal healing retreat), being hopefully optimistic and “BELIEVE”-ing in a better tomorrow, not being attached to the material world, devoting himself to his mission, and admitting his imperfections while acknowledging his worthiness.

Many before and after him have also expressed this Christ-consciousness. Siddhartha, Muhammed, Moses, Gandhi, Confucius and Krishna come to mind.

I think we all can aspire to living more of this. I also see the mythical character Ted Lasso as profoundly expressing this Christ-consciousness. Mr. Rogers is another for me.

Who do you feel expresses this consciousness profoundly?

wil Jun 9, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20679/

The treasure and shame of organized religion.

When we think of the wars, atrocities, sexual abuse, hemophobia, slavery, segregation and more that organized religions have supported, concealed, carried in their histories…what if the worst is yet to come?

I see all the world’s organized religions in having value, having sparks of inspiration, having a basis, roots which are honorable yet controlled and diluted by man, and greed.

It is like our politicians…they start with a passion a goal of governing, of supporting growth and justice for their constituents…yet once elected the goal is to stay in office…to fundraise for the next election because they need to stay in power to do the good they can do from that place of power…that the end justifies the means.

I see..albeit naively maybe an analogical alignment between the two.

It ain’t that religions have not done tons of charitable work, it ain’t that they haven’t done good, but that the lies and cover-up of obvious issues and hypocrisy…the divisions have created cracks in the foundation. Cracks which need to be exposed, examined fully, and repaired or the foundations will crumble, and the walls tumble…and the baby will be lost with the bathwater.

wil 13/06/2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20683/

Göbekli Tepe

Göbekli Tepe is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between c. 9500 and 8000 BCE, the site comprises a number of large circular structures supported by massive stone pillars – the world’s oldest known megaliths.

Anyone know any particulars?

wil 14/06/2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20686/

Wild speculation

Does anybody wonder over the fact that Jesus Christ offered Himself as the ‘Paschal Lamb’ (cf 1 Corinthians 5:7), the ‘perfect sacrifice’ – “And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10) – “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (Hebrews 10″14).

And that within a generation the practice of Sacrifice would cease …

Thomas 8/06/2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20677/

Can you relate?

“I said to myself, ““Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.”” And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.”


New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ec 1:16–18.

Thinking required  Jun 1, 2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20667/

December 25

There is a common assumption that says Dec25 was chosen by Christians to supplant a pre-existing pagan festival, usually Saturnalia or Sol Invictus.

The problem is there is no extant evidence at all for any of the supposedly supplanted festivals having an association with Dec25. Saturnalia, even when extended to seven days, it finished Dec23.

That Emperor Aurelian’s quadrennial festival instituted in 274 was held on Dec25 is without foundation, and the assertion that it was to Sol Invictus is dubious – again, there’s no evidence.

The ‘Calendar/Chronography of 354’ (sometimes referred to as ‘the Philocalian Calendar‘), refers to a festival of ‘Natalis Invicti’ (the Birth of Invictus). This is the earliest testimony to a festival celebrating the birth of ‘Invictus’. The calendar was accompanied by a register of martyrs, headed by Jesus and with reference made to his birth on Dec25. This document seems to go back to a list made in 336 – thus 336 is the latest possible date for the celebration of Christmas by Christians. Since this is only the terminus ad quem, it is likely that the celebration on this day predates this source.

Scholars had tended to assume that ‘Natalis Invicti’ is naturally Sol Invictus, but this has come into doubt. Nowhere is Invictus used as an honorific and a shorthand name for Sol. Furthermore, Invictus was an epithet used for many figures, including emperors and various gods, not only the sun. It is not even applied most often to Sol, and there are a multitude of references to Sol without the epithet.

Evidence for festivals dedicated to Sol put the date in August, October and the latest, Dec11 – none are astronomically significant.

Our earliest evidence then, establishes the Christian celebration on Dec25 before any pagan celebration on that date.

Moreover, we do not have any evidence that a pre-existing festival presented the impetus for celebrating Jesus’s birth on this day.

The earliest record we have of anyone referring to the date of Jesus’s birth is in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata 1.21 (c198-201). By his reckoning Jesus was born Jan6, 2BCE, died on April20.

In Rome we have Hippolytus (there is dispute over authorship, but dated) placing Jesus’s death on March25 (the vernal equinox), 29 CE and his ‘genesis’ on April2, 2BCE, which more likely means his conception rather than his birth. It is possible that he could have conceived of a December 25 date at this time, but he does not say anything definite in this regard.

Julius Africanus, writing at the latest in 222, places the first day of creation on March25, linking this date to Jesus’s ‘advent/incarnation’ some ‘5,500 years later’. Unfortunately, in none of the surviving fragments does he say precisely what date he assigns to Jesus’s birth, but there is at least a decent probability that he could have dated Jesus’s birth to nine months later, on or around Dec25.

Tertullian of Carthage, Gregory Thaumaturgus in Asia Minor … there are numerous references.

Ephrem the Syrian (306-373) in his Commentary on Exodus, says that Jesus entered Mary’s womb on the 10th of Nisan. He plays on a well-established typology of Jesus and the Passover lamb, linking the reference to the procurement of the lamb on the 10th of Nisan is a type for Jesus’s Incarnation (Exodus 12:3). Also, he confirms this with the notion that John’s conception was on the tenth day of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar, when his father Zechariah was in the sanctuary (Luke 1:8–10). This is because of a view in the early church that Zechariah was high priest and that he was entering the sanctuary on this date because it was the Day of Atonement. In his Commentary on the Diatessaron, relying on these same arguments, he also specifies the date of Jesus’s birth in accordance with the Greek rendering, Jan6.

Two things we can establish, is that there was an interest in dates for Jesus’ conception/birth and death from at the very latest 201AD, and that these proposed dates were dependent on interpreting Jewish chronological sources – such as the dates of Passover – commentaries on Scripture, such as Exodus and Daniel.

Thomas 4/06/2023

Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20672/

Introspection on the decline of morality.

There were a couple of posts recently about adultery not being criminalized and someone mentioned conservatives or something. It just made me start thinking.

I love older movies because they feel different when watching them and one of my favorites is Yours, Mine and Ours it stars Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball. I just re watched this yesterday. It struck me that this family sat down to dinner and prayed to the Father and ended in Jesus name. When did this stop being acceptable in Hollywood to portray a Christian family and be a wholesome story about family values? I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie with the same story of a family show portraying a Christian family teaching moral lessons and family values.

I personally feel and I know many others that do as well attribute the current violence the troubled youth and corruption to the removal of God from our government and schools. Removing the ten commandments and disallowing prayer in schools has not helped but hurt. The rise of pornography which I blame for the acceptance of things like adultery are harmful to people. They may be a personal choice but it negatively affects the injured spouse and the children. We have single parent families and nasty divorces and children being brought up by the schools and not by the parents. These injured children are the next generations of people to run our governments and raise the next generation of people.

I am the last generation to have experienced both sides of the spectrum and am very worried as I see the rapid decline. It seems to me we aren’t progressing but regressing. I do not see it turning around.

This post was all over the place.

My sons school would not allow the kids gather to have a time of prayer before school even started.

He attended an assembly where he was a minority white male in a predominantly Hispanic population. The Hispanic principal told the students about white privilege and how these students needed to work harder to get as much as white men get automatically. My 15 year old son sitting in this assembly felt guilty and ashamed. I was pissed. My son graduated on the honor roll and *** laude as a white male with mostly Hispanic teachers in a senior class of kids that either didn’t pass requirements or barely qualified for graduation. Is it because he was a white male or because he worked hard? I attribute it to a number of things . He grew up in a two parent household. He had a faith in God that taught him all the moral lessons like hard work and respect for people. He was in Boy Scouts that also taught essential moral lessons about hard work and respect for people.

I am not saying that Christianity is the only faith that teaches hard work and respect for people as any religious observation has been removed from the schools. I am only speaking for my situation.

This is a concerted attack on the family unit and children are the true victims and it’s spiritual from the enemy.

Faithfulservant  May 29, 2023

Visit Thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20653/