You do not need ANYONE to show you the way

Thomas said:
I would say that were true if one wanted to be a guru or some kind of mentor or guide. Again, this is what the ego sees in spiritual attainment, and this is one of its greatest attractions. What better than producing little versions of yourself?

But to approach the divine, all that's needed is humility.
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Yes, but to get to humility involves a ferocious battle with oneself, culminating, more or less, in the shock of getting a good look at oneself and not much liking what one sees. Culminating, in fact, may not be the right word here, because while there may be "big" moments where one understands one's motives and failings, the battle is an extended one. Unless one submits oneself to being beaten down (no, not beaten down from the outside, but from the inside, where one cannot glower at an enemy or rebel at a percieved injustice -- where it's just you and your follies, face to face, and nowhere to run), humility is out of reach.
 
Thomas said:
I think the thing that people miss is what religious affiliation does in the spiritual realm; the esoteric and occult aspects of an authentic Tradition. But that's a whole other landscape, and I doubt anyone would believe it anyway.
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I see spirituality as a Great Tree, which has many branches all of which draw their nourishment from the same, nameless, trunk. The world's great spiritual traditions are those branches. They exist in the form of religion, of communities, because the sap of the Tree is love, and it is meaningless to speak of individual, solitary, isolated, love.

So I fundamentally agree with you.

But this Tree is green wood, alive and vibrant. The great Tree does grow new branches. Historically new branches have grown at times of great cultural shifts. I think that the tumult we see around us is a sign the tree is preparing to grow a new branch. We know, for example, that Christianity grew from the trunk at a time when a great civilization was rotting from within, setting the stage for its collapse. We know that at the time the Roman empire was chockablock with mystery cults, many which had the cachet of having come from the "mysterious east", others which looked like an excuse for licentious behavior, some which were flagrantly fraudulent, and others which looked completely bizarre. Someone who ignorantly surveyed this anarchy would have dismissed the threads which would soon form the branch of the authentic trunk we call Christianity as just another crazy mystery cult.

I submit we are in such a time again. Modern civilization as we know it is undoing itself. And within all the spiritual turmoil -- most of which is nonsense -- there is a twig, growing from the trunk. It is yet nameless, and it is fragile. It is scarcely anything but a blister on the bark of the Tree, almost impossible to recognize for what it is. This new baby branch is not the creation of any individual, just as Christianity is not the product of one person, no matter how much we try to mythologize it so.

We will all see this new branch, this growing twig, when we begin to see people thirsty for the sap of spirit joining together. Right now this is a time when the the people who are the first shoot of this new branch stand almost alone. They are its generation of martyrs, in spirit if not in literal fact. They look to their left and to their right and see no one (some are isolated in fact, but others stand within a religious tradition that has ossified). So they draw their strength from the Tree alone, and filled with its sap must express the love that is its nature.

People don't hate religion. They say they hate religion because they've never really thought about what religion is. What they really mean when they say they hate religion is either that they hate some particular bit of corruption within religion or they hate the failure of a particular church to rise above the biases it inherited from earlier times. Or they mean that they are afraid of spirituality and religion reminds them too much of it. But no one anywhere wants to be alone. Everyone, everywhere, wants to join with people in community. Out of all this chaos and silliness will yet again come religion.
 
HCSpiritual said:
Yes, but to get to humility involves a ferocious battle with oneself ... the battle is an extended one ... Unless one submits oneself to being beaten down ...
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I can understand the sentiment, I just express it differently, without the 'violence'.
 
HCSpiritual said:
I think that the tumult we see around us is a sign the tree is preparing to grow a new branch...
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Possibly, who can read the future?

There is a tendency in every age to see 'our time' as a time of tumultuous change, and where that change will lead, who can tell? And we've gone through bigger upheavals than this ...

Until then, we have to go with what we've got.

HCSpiritual said:
... just as Christianity is not the product of one person, no matter how much we try to mythologize it so.
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Really? D'you think so?

HCSpiritual said:
... but others stand within a religious tradition that has ossified ...
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I would say authentic religion never 'ossifies', any more than authentic wisdom ossifies ... it's the human heart that hardens.

HCSpiritual said:
People don't hate religion.
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Quite. They just love themselves more. They always forget to apply to themselves the rule they critique religions for not applying! :D
 
Wil,

I live in Communist China and that video site is blocked. Feel free to give the gist of what the guy is saying.
 
Wil,

I read the online preface of the book. Two ideas jumped out at me:

He says the word Christ has evolved to us from the word Messiah. I agree that the modern definition of Christ may be a word mistakenly evolved from Messiah, and if Jesus is the Messiah (which I think is very possible), that in no way proves that Jesus is a deity.

The author also mentions how Jesus died on the cross. Does this mean that God died on the cross? How is it possible that God can die? I agree with the idea that Jesus' ability to die tends to point to his not being a deity.
 
The thought is the physical earthly body...material nature died on the cross eh?

That the spiritual nature and the heavenly body lived on... (not arguing that that is correct, just posting it to be corrected)

I'm gonna have to get the book back from my mom and re-read it. (She liked the books so much after I gave it to her she took it to her bible study group for a book discussion at her church)
 
Wil,

Yes, there are two sides to this question. I hadn't heard this "His death means he wasn't a deity" argument before and it agrees with my side of the debate quite nicely.

Wow, this is my 3,333rd post. Cool.
 
He is 83, his travel and speaking schedule has been greatly reduced. When I saw him a few years ago he traveled with his wife, wasn't spry, but wasn't particularly slow for his age... he said then his days of flying hither and yon and speaking back to back were long over. He's got a number of engagements before the end of the year...and has an email/blog following...

He's got both detractors and fans... Just as any spiritual leader...were he more popular, I am sure he'd have more detractors.... he ain't popular enough to have as many haters as say Muslims, Jews, Christians, Catholics in general have if that is what you mean...

Publishers still give him advances, his books still sell...
 
Thomas;290584 Really? D'you think so? [/QUOTE said:
Where is Christ wihout apostles? Where are the apostles without Paul? Where is Paul without Clement, Polycarp, John of Chrysosom, Cyril, Origen, Tertullian and all the rest? Where are they without those who followed them? And going back further, Jesus emerged from Judaism, which, though it points to Abraham and Moses, is a work too of other person, persons known (like David and Joshua) and unknown.
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wil said:
What does that tell us?
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You cited two articles on your "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism":
The Theistic God is Dead--A Casualty of Terrorism - Beliefnet.com
This article is interesting.

9-11 happened, and the Americans have a crisis of belief. Why? Probably, as you keep telling me, because conservative Americans think God is an American.

Or if not, then He's very definitely on the US side.

(This kind of thing doesn't happen to Europeans, because we've lived with invasion/bombing etc.)

Is Bishop Spong an Atheist?
Here we see the flip side of the coin, liberal fundamentalism.

But like the Rapture series, Spong knows his audience, he writes for them, and they buy his books.

As for serious scholarship. Well I think we all know God is not John Wayne, and the evidence of Spong's errors are there for anyone who's seriously interested in theology.

So it was that God came down from the sky and began to shape the dust of the earth into a human form as a child would make a mud pie. But when this creature was fully formed, he was still inert. So the Lord God swooped down upon this lifeless form in order to give this dirt creature mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, except that God breathed the living Spirit into the man through his nostrils." (Bishop John Shelby Spong, The Sins of Scripture, p. 75).
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Sorry, this isn't scholarship, this is banal, playing to his audience.

Spong allegedly wrote: "God, to me, is a call to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that I can be."
More banality. Interestingly materialist ... Spong's idolatry ... I can see where you get your 'it's all about me' philosophy.

Given that no-one would say 'God, to me, is a call to live half a life, to hate and to not be what I might have been ... ' See?

It's all about marketing. It's a sales blurb.

Bearing in mind it's axiomatic that Spong says he knows nothing about God (and nor can anyone else), what he assumes is that what turns him on, is good for God.

Go figure. :rolleyes:
 
It ain't just playing to his audience, it is a bold counter to the creationist mythology of the land...

That Chapel ceiling is what folks swear by around here when they look at G!d...and yup, they've got Evolution so backwards they think it says we descended from apes and insist that we were made from dirt by the HANDS of G!d and Eve from a rib.... most here buy the mythology hook line and sinker as literal fact...not metaphor or allegory... Spong is standing as a counter to this misguided belief that kept slaves here for so long, women under their husbands thumb, blacks segregated etc. YAY for him.
 
wil said:
It ain't just playing to his audience, it is a bold counter to the creationist mythology of the land... Spong is standing as a counter to this misguided belief that kept slaves here for so long, women under their husbands thumb, blacks segregated etc. YAY for him.
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He's just the flip side of the coin, as extreme as they are.
 
I'd say the flip side of the literalist creationist crowd is the atheist scientist crowd eschewing G!d and spirituality altogether.

You've got Bart Ehrman and Niel DeGrasse Tyson for that...

No, he is a don't throw the baby out with the bath water believer. He loves and holds onto faith and religion, while acknowledging the inconsistency, hypocrisy and various issues.

Without him, and people like him, millions of believers would not find a safe harbor in Christianity...

He and others provide a lifeline to people who reject the ancient dogma, for people who are willing to question and explore, for centuries we've been told to sit down and shutup, and don't look behind the curtain... we won't any longer, and it simply pisses people off.

Like gay marriage....don't like gay marriage, don't get one... We've made a choice to eschew conventional religion that has gone on for centuries...don't like it do like us....attend the one you do like, believe what you do like.
 
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