What is Contemplative Christianity?

[sojourner]

Why need to defend the emergent church rejecting the authority? they realistically rejecting the authority of God's word.

No, they're not. They're rejecting the notions of infallibility and absolute truth.

They compromised with the word of God like Mclaren, Brian. Emergent practitioner allowed to absorb and adhere the doctrine of other religious groups.

What "compromise?" They're as committed to love of all as Jesus was.

Can they claimed they are the follower of Christ despite they practice Buddhism and Hindu thoughts and principles.

Yes, because, AGAIN, following Jesus has much more to do with state of heart than with religious affiliation.

You cannot serve two Masters. You must choose who you will be submitted for? Jesus or not Jesus?

They are submitted to the love of God.

Yet there are some who practice like the evangelicals but still compromised in their views about the gospel and the Scripture. They are anti-infallibility of the Scriptures and ride-on already into ecumenical movement.

How do you preach the good news about Christ if you adhere to other religion's doctrine and beliefs. It is like a soldier who turned back/deny his own country that he is serving, thus, serving in another country. Where is now the nationalism here? The same with a follower of Christ (as emergent) who turned his back away from Jesus Christ. Where is the loyalty, commitment and spiritual submission here?

Christianity is nothing like nationalism. In fact, it's the antithesis of nationalism. No one's "turning their backs on Jesus."

 

[sojourner]

The physical outworking such as helping, clothing the naked, helping to transform the lives of others are the things that is called "good works." For those who is a follower of Christ, good works comes out naturally as Christ workmanship.
Eph. 2:8-10
8. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
9. not as a result of works, that no one should boast.
10. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

The gospel that you know is love ,so It is not surprising to know how you reacted with your comment. The gospel that Paul have said is the gospel of Christ. That is the GOSPEL.
1 Cor. 15:1-4
1. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand,
2. by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
3. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4. and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

Therefore, your reaction and comment proved that your gospel is not the same gospel that the Scripture preaching. Emergent have their own theory and doctrine. This is how we can explain what is emergent theology and what is not emergent theology. Crystal clear.

Thanks

Jesus preached love and liberation. Emergents preach love and liberation. You preach fear and conformity. Who's doing the better job of following?

 

[sojourner]

Absolutely true. Same with your friend Windwalker who displayed the picture of a book attached to man's face. Well, I don't know who is that man? How did he get that picture?

Thanks

You have it exactly backward. It is narrow-minded conformity that fosters enslavement and dehumanization, not the pointing out of such.

 

[sojourner]

The word Christian means the follower or representative of Christ. When we say a "follower, " he follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. This is the same with Muslim, Buddhist and Hindus. One example is the Muslim, could you say a Muslim believe in the incarnation of Jesus Christ? No. Can you say that they are holding the Holy Bible as their inspired word of Allah/Mohamed? Certainly not.

But how come for Christianity, the emergent and contemplative practitioner tend to degrade the word of God as the necessity in the "as needed" fashion. They agree to embraced others faith in exchange for Christianity. Why I don't hear Muslim, Buddhist and Hindus compromised their faith?

Is this an abuse in freedom in Christ or they don't know what is freedom in Christ? Do Jesus was pleased when Peter denied Him three times? how about those disciples who are gone during the captivity of Jesus by the authorities?

Did Jesus wants a loyal follower or a Judas who will betray Him?
Luke 9:23
23. Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

Denying Himself goal is for Jesus and not for Buddha. This is the word personally from Jesus. Others can deny Himself superficially and not carrying his cross DAILY. They don't want to carry that cross because they are afraid to commit and surrender themselves to Christ. We all know that this commitment is not easy to do. You will be hated by your family first because of Christ. This is the test of obedience whatever it takes, still, Jesus hands is open to all who will submit to him.

Matt. 10:37-38
37. "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
38. "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.

Phil. 2:12
12. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;

Eph. 6:5-6
5. Servants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ;
6. not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,

Thanks

My advice to you is to learn A. Lot. more about the Emergent conversation before you choke yourself shoving your foot in your mouth and down your throat any further. It's obvious to anyone with a brain stem that you don't know what you're talking about with regard to the Emergent Movement.

 

[sojourner]

Oh my" Mr. Osteen. Did his preaching focus on Christ? or what it makes to become in the light and feels good at it.

Thanks

His preaching focuses on money.

 

[Windwalker]

It doesn't sound like you know much of anything about either, since you never adhered to anything long enough to understand it. "Seems to me like you're being blown around by every wind of doctrine" without finding firm theological footing anywhere. Now, IMO, you're strung out on fundamentalism.

I think this cleanly summarizes everything of the last 56 pages. It's what I've been sensing through all of this. He doesn't understand Buddhism. He doesn't understand Hinduism. He certainly doesn't understand Christianity.

 

[InChrist]

In reality however, I actually find through critical reason and analysis, a greater depth of understanding and respect for it. It allows the jewels which do exist in it to shine through without being tied to outdated myths, dragging them down. Reason helps to free Spirit from myth, liberating the Baby from the bathwater.
.

I would like to ask you a question, in all sincerity, because I am trying to understand how you come to your conclusions or perspective concerning the scriptures. How do you determine which are "jewels" and which are "outdated myths" ? For instance, would you consider this verse below a jewel or a myth, a truth or a falsehood?

Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.” John 4:42

 

[InChrist]

Sin is a lie, because sin is not our normal condition. It's a condition we mistakenly place upon ourselves, and believe about ourselves. Sin is a fake condition that we must work our way out of, with God's help. Underneath the mask of sin, we are whole, human beings.

Would you say your view here concerning sin is similar to that of the Christian Science teaching on sin? From my understanding Mary Baker Eddy taught that sin is an unreality and a false belief because there is no sin.

 

[InChrist]

Love, by its nature, is a commitment.

I think you have touched on an important point. The OT stresses the importance of faithfulness toward God and repeatedly addresses the wrongness of unfaithfulness or spiritual adultery of Israel in their relationship with God and the NT emphasizes the importance of fidelity to Jesus Christ. Church history also testifies of those who were willing to give even their lives to remain faithful ( i.e. Foxe's Book of Martyr's ). When those of the Emergent movement incorporate various religious practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. How is it any different than unfaithfulness or spiritual adultery?
.
.

Did you physically walk, eat, sleep, speak, and fish with Jesus? No? The disciples did. the disciples knew Jesus personally. We do not. We come to know Jesus in a different way. Jesus now lives, not on the earth, but in our hearts. And it is through the heart -- IOW, deep, spiritual experience -- that we come to know Jesus. Not primarily through reading *about* Jesus in a book.

In all fairness, you, having said you've spent years studying the Bible, should realize that when born again believers read the words of the scripture they are not simply reading " about Jesus in a book ', but toe words of life, powerful, active, and alive illuminated by the Holy Spirit to the mind and heart of the believer. In other words, Jesus, the Word, is speaking.

 

[Windwalker]

I would like to ask you a question, in all sincerity, because I am trying to understand how you come to your conclusions or perspective concerning the scriptures. How do you determine which are "jewels" and which are "outdated myths" ?

These are actually two different questions and two different answers, albeight interrelated. The first is a matter of rationality, the second is a matter of spirit. If you sincerely wish to know, I'll explain in brief detail a high level understanding for you.

In the first, rationality, believing literally stories that say things like the rainbow was put into the sky as a reminder to God that he won't flood the earth again, is clearly, undeniably mythology (Gen 9:13-16). At one time before people understood cause and effect relationships in the world, which modern science excels in investigating, that was an explanation for natural phenomena which people just accepted, like the story of the Tower of Babble to explain why languages exist, and so forth. Believing that literally in this day and age is not a good thing. To deny what science tells us about the natural world in order to hang on to the belief the Bible "explains" nature and such stories should be accepted over science, is anti-rational, irrationality, and subsequently harmful to a spiritual life which by definition integrates the mind.

But understanding it is mythology does not mean it's "crap" and you need to dismiss and reject it as "false" or "a lie" or other such binary, black and white thinking conclusions. Not at all. Mythology contains truths of one kind or another within them, even for those who took them literally back in the day as they stood as 'placeholders' to explain the natural world. The myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a wonderful myth! I don't have to accept it rationally as literally how the human species came into being in order to find truth within its storyline! In fact, there are great many truths within it, even though such persons and such a garden never literally existed.

Arguments to defend the "It has to be true or it's a lie", binary-mind conclusions, citing that "Jesus believed it because he spoke of them literally", don't fly. I cite Adam and Eve all the time to make a point in discussions, or for myself as a great story which speaks of the human condition, without me literally believing in them as factual humans in factual history. But even if he did literally believe they we part of actual history, that doesn't mean anything. Jesus was fully human, right? That means he was fully part of his culture too. That means how they thought about history and the natural world would be how he thought about it. I accept he was fully divine also. But that does not override being fully human!

The problem is people's ideas about what being divine means. It doesn't mean Jesus would have had supernatural scientific knowledge! The divine mind, and the rational mind are different things. In order to accept Jesus was fully human, you also have to accept he was a fallible product of his own culture. I'll bet he would even make mistakes on a math test, had they had them, just like us! You see my point?

So all of that is the rational thinking mind. I can take into account all that modern research reveals and mentally understand scripture in light of this. But here's where the second part comes in: Spirit.

The "jewels" of scripture which I mentioned is referencing what I call them when in a place of being open in communion with Spirit in meditative states (meditation really is best described as a "state", rather than a practice). In such a state or condition of mind and spirit, various verses I have known throughout the years will arise to me in light of the moment in meditation, sparkling with meaning and depth previously unrealized. This happens all the time to me. This is very different than philosophically, rationally pondering the meaning of something to penetrate it (which is what you mistakenly understand as 'biblical meditation').

What I am describing is a certain illumination upon things in scripture, which the mind in its "normal" state cannot see, for simple reason it is embedded in its own ideas and its gaze is upon those. When you relax those processes of "thinking about" something, it opens to seeing things beyond your thoughts and ideas about them. This is very, very hard to describe to someone who has only ever known the thinking mind itself as the only mode of awareness. But it is quite true there are other ways of seeing and knowing beyond the thinking mind. It's actually all very natural, even if utterly foreign in experience to someone.

Now, to clarify for your benefit and avoid such an argument as I anticipate, this illumination of Spirit upon our understanding of scripture, or anything else for that matter, is NOT absolute and infallible! Questions of infallibility are irrelevant, as "truth" and "fact" are two different things. Think of it like the rays of the sun hitting a diamond laying in the sand. Depending on the angle of the sun, or your position relative to the diamond, different refractions of light will illuminate it to your perceiving mind. It takes on new colors and depths, depending on the angle and many other variables. One time you see beautiful blues, another stunning reds, another cooling yellows, and so forth. One doesn't argue which call is true and which is false. It is all colors which Spirit exposes in objects we see.

Spirit, like the sun, is the Source of illumination of the mind. And when we meditate, put ourselves into a place in order for the Sun to shine upon us, it is like stepping outside of the 4 walls and roof over your head into the daylight. If you look at a diamond in a dimly lit room, you may see some beauty in what little light penetrates its room, but when you move the diamond outside into daylight, many, many more refractions of Beauty are seen and understood.

So tying to two together, my rational reasoning mind becomes informed by what I am opened to spiritually, and what I see rationally becomes an object which becomes illuminated by Spirit, in which I am able to penetrate the depth of Spirit more fully. These things inform one another, in their own light source, and together they create a richer, deeper, and fuller experience of life as a spiritual person. I can certainly go much deeper in explaining this, but this is about the minimum I would need to say to begin to answer your question.

For instance, would you consider this verse below a jewel or a myth, a truth or a falsehood?

Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.” John 4:42

Well, again, I do not equate "myth" with falsehood. Myth is a non-factual vehicle of language to convey truths. I never use the word to say "a lie".

I would say to the above verse that it can be understood to have meaning, when read in a larger context that includes things like understanding how the human mind thinks and understanding the processes of spiritual growth and awakening. This is a "rational" understanding I could have of it, and in a sense there is in fact a spiritual jewel in there, but how I see it is coming more from my own effort of trying to understand it with the mind, as well as to some extent the heart in there too. It's not something that arose to me in a deeper meditative state. I had to think about it just now for a little bit first.

What I hear it is that the people who heard the woman speak of Jesus responded with faith to her words, hearing and paying heed to what their hearts were informing them of (something you say we should never trust). They responded in faith, listening to the hearts, but then when they had an experience of Jesus directly, firsthand, not-secondhand, then their faith became transformed through experience into knowing. This is the difference between being taught about God, and actually experiencing God. The two are related, but of entirely different orders of magnitude and impact on their lives. In other words, it tells you should go meet Jesus firsthand, through mystical experience, through Spirit, and move from simply believing the Bible, the woman's words, fallible as they were, take that faith and move into Awareness of Spirit, stepping out of the house, trusting the heart, and let Life itself illuminate what you cannot see hiding inside.

 

[sojourner]

Would you say your view here concerning sin is similar to that of the Christian Science teaching on sin? From my understanding Mary Baker Eddy taught that sin is an unreality and a false belief because there is no sin.

May be. It's also similar to the biblical teaching on sin, IMO. Take a look at Genesis. Adam and Eve "perceived" that they were naked, so "covered themselves." In covering themselves, they became sundered from the world around them. Sin is a mask that we put on, because we perceive that we don't like who we are. If we learn to love with the love Jesus taught us, we can shed those masks and embrace who we really are on the inside -- the very breath of God and the imago dei.

 

[sojourner]

I think you have touched on an important point. The OT stresses the importance of faithfulness toward God and repeatedly addresses the wrongness of unfaithfulness or spiritual adultery of Israel in their relationship with God and the NT emphasizes the importance of fidelity to Jesus Christ. Church history also testifies of those who were willing to give even their lives to remain faithful ( i.e. Foxe's Book of Martyr's ). When those of the Emergent movement incorporate various religious practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. How is it any different than unfaithfulness or spiritual adultery?

Look; religious practices are pointers to the Divine. They're tools. What's important is the state of the heart. One remains "in fidelity" to Jesus by being faithful to what Jesus taught, which is 1) love for the Divine, 2) Love for neighbor 3) as one loves oneself.

"Spiritual adultery" is achieved when one fails desire love, peace, justice, wholeness. There's a line from Eddie Murphy's The Golden Child that may be apropos:
Kee: "He believes in nothing."
Old Man: "And yet, he does what is right."

Jesus wasn't all about believing. Jesus was all about doing. "Do this," he says, "And you will live." Jesus came for the lost sheep of Israel. He commissioned us to go and envision everyone else as one, human family.

In all fairness, you, having said you've spent years studying the Bible, should realize that when born again believers read the words of the scripture they are not simply reading " about Jesus in a book ', but toe words of life, powerful, active, and alive illuminated by the Holy Spirit to the mind and heart of the believer. In other words, Jesus, the Word, is speaking.

In all fairness, can one who creeps up to the strand and dips one toe into the water say with as much conviction, "I've been swimming in the ocean!" as one who has ripped off all his clothes and dived in headfirst? Reading the bible may be experiencing "the words of life," but it's a fairly shallow experience, IMO, as compared to the deep experience of contemplative prayer. One can read a poem about sunshine and have an emotional experience, but standing naked in the sunshine is a different and deeper experience altogether.

 

[Windwalker]

Take a look at Genesis. Adam and Eve "perceived" that they were naked, so "covered themselves." In covering themselves, they became sundered from the world around them. Sin is a mask that we put on, because we perceive that we don't like who we are. If we learn to love with the love Jesus taught us, we can shed those masks and embrace who we really are on the inside -- the very breath of God and the imago dei.

Often time in my meditation practice a 'thought' comes to me, more my own mind wrapping a 'saying' around an impression that is deeply conveyed to my heart. I make note of them as a way to encapsulate the meaning of it into a 'saying', as it were. One such impression that came to me fits perfectly with what you say here. "When we accept the acceptance of God, we accept ourselves to God". There's actually a lot that can be unpacked in this, and again, it's more for my own understanding, a hook for me to bring it to mind.

To talk briefly about what you said above in a slightly different light, there is the self-contraction and the opening of the self. When we self-contract, we close off what is present and available at all times and in all things. Even though it is there, and freely available, we 'sin' when we self-contract, cutting ourselves off from it. This is complicated to explain as you have to combat certain modes of thinking about these things.

You have a child who is unaware of sin, only because they have not fully developed the idea of the separate self. They are much closer to their primal fusion with the world, the undifferentiated self. But as we naturally mature, that differentiation, the separate self-identity of "me versus you" deepens. This is a natural ego development, and necessary to function in the world.

But what happens in this process is we start to identify exclusively with these object that we see separates ourselves from others, this dualistic reality. It then leads to existential questions of being, "Who am I, really". It creates an tension, an anxiety brought on by the sense of isolation from others, from the world, and from ourselves. We seek to escape this anxiety, this existential angst, by building greater and greater senses of self in yet another object, projects of immortality, projects of wealth and power, projects of religious identities, etc. All of which hopes to bring us to a sense of peace in the midst of our isolation. But it is all sin. It is all falling short of the mark, which comes through the release of all of these substitutes.

We came to a place of self-identification with objects, and we fear releasing it completely because it feels like, looks like a dissolution of all we have come to know in the world, to know ourselves. It appears as death. The door of return to "oneness" with the world we had as a child is barred by the flaming sword of an angel blocking our return to the tree of life. We cannot crawl back into the womb either, as that too is a dissolution of self into nothing, into the infant mind unaware of self and the world. Our only course is to move through life, and awaken fully, as a fully differentiated self into Unity with Source. A return to Source, is dissolution, but to arrive at Source as an awakened soul is a marriage, a Union of the individual with its own Source. "I and my Father are One", is such a Unity. It is the Incarnation, the Union of Spirit and the manifest world, held in awareness.

Anything short of this, is sin. We "live in sin", when we self-contract, withdraw from Spirit into the separate self, believing it as the true identity of who we are, and living in misery as we look to find peace in it. It is hard for us to let go of it, hanging onto shame and guilt, fear and self-loathing. But "when we accept the acceptance of God, we accept ourselves to God". We let go of the judgments we make on ourselves through others outside of us, and accept that we are fully, already accepted in God. We accept ourselves this way, and then we take who we are and offer it to God, and live simply as we are in God, in the world. We become our true identity, in God, in the world. Unique, individual, yet One with the Father.

 

[sojourner]

Often time in my meditation practice a 'thought' comes to me, more my own mind wrapping a 'saying' around an impression that is deeply conveyed to my heart. I make note of them as a way to encapsulate the meaning of it into a 'saying', as it were. One such impression that came to me fits perfectly with what you say here. "When we accept the acceptance of God, we accept ourselves to God". There's actually a lot that can be unpacked in this, and again, it's more for my own understanding, a hook for me to bring it to mind.

To talk briefly about what you said above in a slightly different light, there is the self-contraction and the opening of the self. When we self-contract, we close off what is present and available at all times and in all things. Even though it is there, and freely available, we 'sin' when we self-contract, cutting ourselves off from it. This is complicated to explain as you have to combat certain modes of thinking about these things.

You have a child who is unaware of sin, only because they have not fully developed the idea of the separate self. They are much closer to their primal fusion with the world, the undifferentiated self. But as we naturally mature, that differentiation, the separate self-identity of "me versus you" deepens. This is a natural ego development, and necessary to function in the world.

But what happens in this process is we start to identify exclusively with these object that we see separates ourselves from others, this dualistic reality. It then leads to existential questions of being, "Who am I, really". It creates an tension, an anxiety brought on by the sense of isolation from others, from the world, and from ourselves. We seek to escape this anxiety, this existential angst, by building greater and greater senses of self in yet another object, projects of immortality, projects of wealth and power, projects of religious identities, etc. All of which hopes to bring us to a sense of peace in the midst of our isolation. But it is all sin. It is all falling short of the mark, which comes through the release of all of these substitutes.

We came to a place of self-identification with objects, and we fear releasing it completely because it feels like, looks like a dissolution of all we have come to know in the world, to know ourselves. It appears as death. The door of return to "oneness" with the world we had as a child is barred by the flaming sword of an angel blocking our return to the tree of life. We cannot crawl back into the womb either, as that too is a dissolution of self into nothing, into the infant mind unaware of self and the world. Our only course is to move through life, and awaken fully, as a fully differentiated self into Unity with Source. A return to Source, is dissolution, but to arrive at Source as an awakened soul is a marriage, a Union of the individual with its own Source. "I and my Father are One", is such a Unity. It is the Incarnation, the Union of Spirit and the manifest world, held in awareness.

Anything short of this, is sin. We "live in sin", when we self-contract, withdraw from Spirit into the separate self, believing it as the true identity of who we are, and living in misery as we look to find peace in it. It is hard for us to let go of it, hanging onto shame and guilt, fear and self-loathing. But "when we accept the acceptance of God, we accept ourselves to God". We let go of the judgments we make on ourselves through others outside of us, and accept that we are fully, already accepted in God. We accept ourselves this way, and then we take who we are and offer it to God, and live simply as we are in God, in the world. We become our true identity, in God, in the world. Unique, individual, yet One with the Father.

Have you read Buber's I-Thou?

 

[Windwalker]

Have you read Buber's I-Thou?

I've heard it referenced before, but didn't know who first said it. My understanding of I-Thou is the in the context of a 2nd person perspective of Spirit. The Holy Other whom you relate to from the separate self, and the place where you meet is the hyphen in between I and Thou.

I have a great deal I would love to share about the 3 Faces of God, but I'll take a shortcut and share this link here that will help in a high-level overview, if you're unfamiliar with it. It's a brilliant understanding of the different approaches to God and the different paths we take in them. I would love your thoughts, and a discussion about this. http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/462

 

[sojourner]

I've heard it referenced before, but didn't know who first said it. My understanding of I-Thou is the in the context of a 2nd person perspective of Spirit. The Holy Other whom you relate to from the separate self, and the place where you meet is the hyphen in between I and Thou.

I have a great deal I would love to share about the 3 Faces of God, but I'll take a shortcut and share this link here that will help in a high-level overview, if you're unfamiliar with it. It's a brilliant understanding of the different approaches to God and the different paths we take in them. I would love your thoughts, and a discussion about this. http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/462

Don't have time right now, but I'll get to it!

 

[InChrist]

These are actually two different questions and two different answers, albeight interrelated. The first is a matter of rationality, the second is a matter of spirit. If you sincerely wish to know, I'll explain in brief detail a high level understanding for you.

In the first, rationality, believing literally stories that say things like the rainbow was put into the sky as a reminder to God that he won't flood the earth again, is clearly, undeniably mythology (Gen 9:13-16). At one time before people understood cause and effect relationships in the world, which modern science excels in investigating, that was an explanation for natural phenomena which people just accepted, like the story of the Tower of Babble to explain why languages exist, and so forth. Believing that literally in this day and age is not a good thing. To deny what science tells us about the natural world in order to hang on to the belief the Bible "explains" nature and such stories should be accepted over science, is anti-rational, irrationality, and subsequently harmful to a spiritual life which by definition integrates the mind.

But understanding it is mythology does not mean it's "crap" and you need to dismiss and reject it as "false" or "a lie" or other such binary, black and white thinking conclusions. Not at all. Mythology contains truths of one kind or another within them, even for those who took them literally back in the day as they stood as 'placeholders' to explain the natural world. The myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a wonderful myth! I don't have to accept it rationally as literally how the human species came into being in order to find truth within its storyline! In fact, there are great many truths within it, even though such persons and such a garden never literally existed.

Arguments to defend the "It has to be true or it's a lie", binary-mind conclusions, citing that "Jesus believed it because he spoke of them literally", don't fly. I cite Adam and Eve all the time to make a point in discussions, or for myself as a great story which speaks of the human condition, without me literally believing in them as factual humans in factual history. But even if he did literally believe they we part of actual history, that doesn't mean anything. Jesus was fully human, right? That means he was fully part of his culture too. That means how they thought about history and the natural world would be how he thought about it. I accept he was fully divine also. But that does not override being fully human!

The problem is people's ideas about what being divine means. It doesn't mean Jesus would have had supernatural scientific knowledge! The divine mind, and the rational mind are different things. In order to accept Jesus was fully human, you also have to accept he was a fallible product of his own culture. I'll bet he would even make mistakes on a math test, had they had them, just like us! You see my point?

So all of that is the rational thinking mind. I can take into account all that modern research reveals and mentally understand scripture in light of this. But here's where the second part comes in: Spirit.

The "jewels" of scripture which I mentioned is referencing what I call them when in a place of being open in communion with Spirit in meditative states (meditation really is best described as a "state", rather than a practice). In such a state or condition of mind and spirit, various verses I have known throughout the years will arise to me in light of the moment in meditation, sparkling with meaning and depth previously unrealized. This happens all the time to me. This is very different than philosophically, rationally pondering the meaning of something to penetrate it (which is what you mistakenly understand as 'biblical meditation').

What I am describing is a certain illumination upon things in scripture, which the mind in its "normal" state cannot see, for simple reason it is embedded in its own ideas and its gaze is upon those. When you relax those processes of "thinking about" something, it opens to seeing things beyond your thoughts and ideas about them. This is very, very hard to describe to someone who has only ever known the thinking mind itself as the only mode of awareness. But it is quite true there are other ways of seeing and knowing beyond the thinking mind. It's actually all very natural, even if utterly foreign in experience to someone.

Now, to clarify for your benefit and avoid such an argument as I anticipate, this illumination of Spirit upon our understanding of scripture, or anything else for that matter, is NOT absolute and infallible! Questions of infallibility are irrelevant, as "truth" and "fact" are two different things. Think of it like the rays of the sun hitting a diamond laying in the sand. Depending on the angle of the sun, or your position relative to the diamond, different refractions of light will illuminate it to your perceiving mind. It takes on new colors and depths, depending on the angle and many other variables. One time you see beautiful blues, another stunning reds, another cooling yellows, and so forth. One doesn't argue which call is true and which is false. It is all colors which Spirit exposes in objects we see.

Spirit, like the sun, is the Source of illumination of the mind. And when we meditate, put ourselves into a place in order for the Sun to shine upon us, it is like stepping outside of the 4 walls and roof over your head into the daylight. If you look at a diamond in a dimly lit room, you may see some beauty in what little light penetrates its room, but when you move the diamond outside into daylight, many, many more refractions of Beauty are seen and understood.

So tying to two together, my rational reasoning mind becomes informed by what I am opened to spiritually, and what I see rationally becomes an object which becomes illuminated by Spirit, in which I am able to penetrate the depth of Spirit more fully. These things inform one another, in their own light source, and together they create a richer, deeper, and fuller experience of life as a spiritual person. I can certainly go much deeper in explaining this, but this is about the minimum I would need to say to begin to answer your question.


Well, again, I do not equate "myth" with falsehood. Myth is a non-factual vehicle of language to convey truths. I never use the word to say "a lie".

I would say to the above verse that it can be understood to have meaning, when read in a larger context that includes things like understanding how the human mind thinks and understanding the processes of spiritual growth and awakening. This is a "rational" understanding I could have of it, and in a sense there is in fact a spiritual jewel in there, but how I see it is coming more from my own effort of trying to understand it with the mind, as well as to some extent the heart in there too. It's not something that arose to me in a deeper meditative state. I had to think about it just now for a little bit first.

What I hear it is that the people who heard the woman speak of Jesus responded with faith to her words, hearing and paying heed to what their hearts were informing them of (something you say we should never trust). They responded in faith, listening to the hearts, but then when they had an experience of Jesus directly, firsthand, not-secondhand, then their faith became transformed through experience into knowing. This is the difference between being taught about God, and actually experiencing God. The two are related, but of entirely different orders of magnitude and impact on their lives. In other words, it tells you should go meet Jesus firsthand, through mystical experience, through Spirit, and move from simply believing the Bible, the woman's words, fallible as they were, take that faith and move into Awareness of Spirit, stepping out of the house, trusting the heart, and let Life itself illuminate what you cannot see hiding inside.

Thank you for answering my questions. I think we must even have a different definition of “brief”, LOL. Nevertheless, I appreciate you taking the time to explain and share your perspective.

So are you saying that many of the accounts in the Bible, if not all, when read in a straightforward, surface manner are not rational, but myths, because they do not line up with modern science and research, but they can be understood and deeper truths found through meditation? Do you believe that God is incapable of doing things which are not understood by rational human thought, or do you think God simply would not do anything which would be irrational from our perspective?

 

[InChrist]

May be. It's also similar to the biblical teaching on sin, IMO. Take a look at Genesis. Adam and Eve "perceived" that they were naked, so "covered themselves." In covering themselves, they became sundered from the world around them. Sin is a mask that we put on, because we perceive that we don't like who we are. If we learn to love with the love Jesus taught us, we can shed those masks and embrace who we really are on the inside -- the very breath of God and the imago dei.

So are you saying that people need to get beyond believing they sin and realize their innate goodness and oneness with God and contemplative prayer facilitates this realization? Is it also your perspective that the Bible narrative about sin, that says things as we are born in sin, that all fall short of God’s glory, highlighting that Jesus came to the earth as the promised Savior, or we need His righteousness and new life in Him is not true because sin does not actually exist?

 

[Windwalker]

Thank you for answering my questions. I think we must even have a different definition of “brief”, LOL.

I think every time I promise to brief, I seem to fail. Although, relatively speaking, I could have posted 20,000 words about this, so that was actually "brief".

So are you saying that many of the accounts in the Bible, if not all, when read in a straightforward, surface manner are not rational, but myths,

I think many of my points may have gotten lost in my version of "brevity". I did address this upfront in the post, but I'll mention it here in response. I would never say mythology is not "rational". It does have a logic to them, to be sure, but to take stories of things like rainbows exist because God made them as a sign to himself not to flood the world again, cannot be called 'factual' in a scientific sense of the word. To insist myth is science, is what is irrational, not myth itself. How one handles myth is what is either rational or irrational. In a modern scientific age, to read these stories as "facts", violates knowledge. I do not believe God wants anyone to sacrifice rationality in order to preserve faith. Faith is not served or benefited this way.

because they do not line up with modern science and research, but they can be understood and deeper truths found through meditation?

No, not exactly. There were two layers to it, as I tried to explain. Leaving out meditation for the moment, which is a whole other level, just through using the reasoning mind alone, in the context of modern research and understanding of the many areas we have insights into today in ethnology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, literary criticism, postmodernist studies, comparative religious studies, etc, etc, that context of understand sheds a whole different light of understanding than someone without exposure to them just picking up the Bible, reading it, and saying "It's right there in black and white. Don't you see the plain meaning of the texts?" The answer is, "No, and neither do you. The difference is context." Claims it's "simple" are more than a little suspect, to say the least when you factor in all these extremely complex variables. I realize the temptation to just "take what it says at face value", but the problem with this is so do others who disagree with your "plain reading".

So none of that has to do with meditation. That's just education and a more critical set of eyes looking at it. Now, the value one places on what they read in such a context is a whole other set of variables. But suffice to say, to recognize these, is not to dismiss them. That's a fear that those like yourself assume might happen to them if they held these things with a different point of view like this. The assumption is you would fall into chaos, but by no means does that actually hold true.

Do you believe that God is incapable of doing things which are not understood by rational human thought, or do you think God simply would not do anything which would be irrational from our perspective?

That's a darned tricky question to answer you. I would have to really expose an understanding I know you wouldn't understand at this point, in the context you see these things from. Even explaining the above in my "brief" post is going a little deep. This goes way beyond that. But I'll see if I can be "brief".

I think there are many things we don't understand about reality, and there are many things we do - such as the laws of physics for an easy target. When stories in the Bible about things like a global flood submerging all the continents and a rainbow coming into existence only after this event, meets the world of science of today, it becomes obvious this is not something "God could have done". If it had happened, there would be evidence, not evidence to the contrary. Rainbows did not come into existence 4000 years ago! This reads like myth, and it is myth. Could God have held back rainbows in the antediluvian world? To believe that is really just magical thinking to say the least. Why? Why would God change the laws of physics from before the flood to after it?

Do I believe God transcends human rational thought? Absolutely! That's why you need to practice meditation! It's what I've been saying all along. "The true worshippers worship in Spirit and truth." Spirit is not the same thing as the rational mind. To worship in spirit is to move beyond the rational mind. But this does not translate that God violates what we have clear evidence of to the contrary. Could God have created Adam and Eve outside evolution? I suppose, but that's not what the evidence shows us.

The easiest key to all this is actually quite simple. Change how you interpret the Bible if it's shown to be flawed. That's not a lack of faith. On the contrary, faith welcomes knowledge and changing what we understand about God, as hard as that is at times. Clearly, it's hard for many. But to me, that is honoring faith and God.

 

[sojourner]

So are you saying that people need to get beyond believing they sin and realize their innate goodness and oneness with God and contemplative prayer facilitates this realization? Is it also your perspective that the Bible narrative about sin, that says things as we are born in sin, that all fall short of God’s glory, highlighting that Jesus came to the earth as the promised Savior, or we need His righteousness and new life in Him is not true because sin does not actually exist?

No. People do sin, although I think "sin" is more a state of mind than an act. The acts are results of the mind set. But I do think that people need to realize their innate goodness and oneness with God. People are not innately separate from God. People make themselves separate from God, because they've been taught that they're separate and come to believe that they're separate. Sin does exist, but it's a lie. Just like the mask exists, but the mask is not our real identity. We need Jesus to save us from that false identity and to restore us to a right relationship of love -- the relationship we were created to be in.