Theists: what does your god want for you?

[Whateverist]

Do you have any idea what your god wants for you? Does He wish you to do the good you perceive and to grow in your capacity to perceive what is important and what is best? Or does He wish for you to follow His rules? Will those of you who believe in a judgment day be judged like Job and Abraham on your willingness to sacrifice all else to follow orders and do his bidding? Or do you think God really wants you to eventually stand up to him and stand up for what you think is right?

I cannot and never could imagine a God who wants only sycophantic rule followers. Of what possible value would that be to such a one? If God really were anyone you should want to spend eternity with, He should first of all be someone you can respect. Can anyone of any religion explain this to me?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Simple. We are to love the Lord and our neighbor as ourselves.

[Whateverist]

Simple. We are to love the Lord and our neighbor as ourselves.

I wouldn't expect you to argue for the worst theist response, the kind that seeks to infantilize mankind in relationship to their deity. And you haven't, but you also haven't answered my question.

I'm not sure if you believe in a personal god, but if you do, what I am wondering is what you think that god wants for you? I think you have answered what god wants of you. Or don't you think that's a separate question?

[Darkstar]

Simple. We are to love the Lord and our neighbor as ourselves.

I wouldn't expect you to argue for the worst theist response, the kind that seeks to infantilize mankind in relationship to their deity. And you haven't, but you also haven't answered my question.

I'm not sure if you believe in a personal god, but if you do, what I am wondering is what you think that god wants for you? I think you have answered what god wants of you. Or don't you think that's a separate question?

Maybe it just means he wants everyone to get along. Not that this was particularily obvious when he had his followers rip pregnant women open and smash babies' heads on rocks in the OT...

[Whateverist]

Maybe it just means he wants everyone to get along. Not that this was particularily obvious when he had his followers rip pregnant women open and smash babies' heads on rocks in the OT...

Perhaps. Certainly to live with a deep appreciation for one another certainly would be a good thing, an even better thing if all around you others did the same.

But as you indicate this hardly squares with much of what one finds in the bible.

[jstrodel]

God does not want sycophantic rule followers, he wants lovers, as in romantic/erotic/philosophical. To love God is like to have your mind opened to God's beauty and when you see it, you don't really care about a lot of other things. Most Christians don't get to that though, unfortunately.

Christian understanding of sanctification is more like marriage and sex than it is like rules, eventually. Read the mystics or the song of Solomon. Christ is the end of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes - When you believe, not "faking it till you make it" (which is perfectly ok, as it can be reasonable to accept the probability of religious claims based on non-conclusive factors that they are likely to produce knowledge in the future, if they are not knowledge in the present), but really believe, it takes work, you must seek, but when you really believe, it is like God paints on your soul like a man married to a women who, while the man is lying down starts to write all sorts of words on the person. It is like you lose your identity and become a spiritual person and the only thing that matters is I WANT TO BE A PROPHET. I WANT TO BE A LITTLE SPIRIT CHILD. THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING I HAVE EVER SEEN.

I want to decrease so that God can increase.

Christianity is not about rules, it is about being reunited with the divine telos. God, who is one, and has existed in the form that God is now is high above and exists in holiness. Immanuel Kant talks about the things which amazed him, "the starry heavens above and the moral law within". God established both with a single intention when God looked in to the world and released God's seed into the earth. The light went into the world, the majesty and beauty and unity and holiness, which is the wisdom and separateness of God (I know because God showed me, many visions, many powerful things).

What is holiness? What does it mean to be holy? Is holiness about following rules? No, rules are a means to an end to unity with God. Honestly, I see the moral life of Christianity like sex. To be united with God is to put on Christ, it is an exercise of the mind in which the person is not conformed to this world but is transformed by the renewing of their mind Ro 12:2. To be renewed in your mind is the intentional process of letting the law of God break your selfish pride, it is an ethical-epistemological-psychological shattering of the personality, of the ego, DEATH TO SELF - it is intense.

Have you ever felt like you lost yourself, lost in the glory of God, beholding God's holiness? It is amazing. The law of God, it seems harsh at times, but when you see, when you see the unity that comes - the Bible says "Christ is the end of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone that believes Ro 10:14". What this means is that when people believe in Christ, it is like the person of Christ and the revelation of His law function through belief, the assent of the mind with the spiritual principles of Christ and of the law which impart righteousness.

What is righteousness? Is righteousness not swearing, or not having sex before marriage? NO! NO! NO! Righteousness is the reunification of the teleological identity of the world with the divine intender. To be righteous is to turn Hume's law on its head, when before I could not go from 'is' to 'ought' now I sense the beauty and the majesty of a world formed through the TELEOLOGICAL BEAUTY AND SPLENDOR OF THE INTENDER!

I LOVE GOD I LOVE GOD I LOVE GOD I LOVE GOD.

You don't understand the beauty and the joy of seeing the starry heights above and the moral law within align and solidify and you see your language and your ethics and epistemology and your vision of the BEAUTY of the HOLINESS and CONSISTENCY of GOD it SHINES SOOoOO BRIGHT.

It shines so bright, I have seen it, I have seen the pieces fit together. I have seen the principles inside the mind of God, I prayed like Moses did "show me Your glory" and God did, God showed me the glory of the YHVH. I saw how God judged each thing. I saw past the futility of the divine command theory and saw the internal perfections of the all perceiving God his joy and suffering.

I saw Gods holiness and God's pain inside of God's heart when God saw all the people that God would kill and hurt because of the evil that they had done. I recognized in YHVH the ONLY KINDNESS I HAVE EVER BEEN SHOWN FROM ANYONE, bright, so bright, the princples of rational justification underlying the universe.

IT IS REAL. THERE IS TRUTH. THERE IS LOVE. Those words, they mean something. They aren't just feelings. I saw that those words entailed a paradoxical respect and REAL NATURE of things, that if things have a real nature, they are respect to have a form of identity and agency and autonomy.

What to do, what to do, as a Christian is to realize that this autonomy has separated people from the Holy telos of YHVH, that all we like sheep have gone astray, everyone each to his own way and the YHVH has laid on him Jesus the iniquity of us all. We see in God the love and integrity and HOLINESS that that each binds to each other that I saw my fractured linguistic philosophical categories attempted to piece together an appreciation of my nature, each revealed in Y'Shua.

Oh Y'Shua, all points end in Him. The Lord Y'Shua, I see in His blazing eyes of fire the honesty, the reality, the fearlessness, the hope, the patience, the courage, the masculinity, the Holy otherworldiness that is SO GREAT, it is like every broken shard of every noble thing that I have ever uttered or imagined was first concieved in Him, the Holy WORD OF GOD who existed before everything, the word who became flesh and dwelt among us.

I see in Christ's humility the COSMIC UNITY that I feel inside of me as I have hungered, when I was a political radical/socialist/anarchist I ABSOLUTELY LONGED FOR real sense of cooperativity, of unity, of a sense that the sense diminishes and there is only others, that my own will exists for the good of others, that my will is only to serve and not exist I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST, IT IS NO LONGER I WHO LIVE BUT CHRIST WHO LIVES IN ME.

Jesus is everything, it is not a platitude, Jesus is literally everything, everything was created for Jesus, in seeing Jesus Christ one witnesses the nature of creation, that it exists for the other, that it was created as an act of Gods love, redeemed through God's sacrifice, and that there is truth, THERE IS A REASON TO NOT BE SELFISH, I DON'T HAVE TO BE RESPECTED ANYMORE, I DON'T HAVE TO LIVE IN THIS FANTASY WORLD, I DON'T HAVE TO EXIST FOR ANYONE OR ANY SELFISH THING, I AM FREE FROM MY PHENOMENOLOGICAL PRISON OF SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED RESPECTS AND VALUES, FEARS AND PRIDES,

THE ONLY THING THAT EXISTS IN SIDE OF ME IS HUNGER FOR MY LOVE TO BE REUNITED WITH HIM AND EXPERIENCE HIS HOLY LIGHT.

I feel as if my entire self is consumed all of the time with passion and zeal and hunger that every piece of me that is tainted by this world and everything in it this way and that way will be replaced and every crooked motive and stair and proud look and unkind word and every blemish and lie and crooked thing inside of me, it will all be replaced with the LIGHT of the world.

It shines inside of me and I am united to it, like a women with her husband, I am knit together and married to Light, it shines inside of me and I see myself as a dead person perceiving everything around me, hungering for God to take away every last hindrance to the absolute realization of my divine nature.

The first thing to do is to appreciate the beauty of God. Holy, holy, holy, Beautiful world, I can see the world as beautiful, and not my perceptions as beautiful. My eyes awakened and opened to the brightness of once considered "old fashioned" ideas, a metaphysical world filled with things that have real natures, MATERIALISM THE UGLY UGLY UGLY LIE HAS BEEN CONQUERED, WE ARE FREE.

So free, you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free. What does it mean to be free? It is like REALIZING WHO YOU ARE. Woah. The old person died, a new person is born. I am not who I was, something else lives inside of me.

Now all of my desires are replaced, it is like the only thing that exists inside of me is to let the light of the glory of the holy, wisdom and personality of God flow through me. It is like I am knit into God out of the complex world of dialectical chaos and contradiction, I see a simpler world so clear and so easy to appreciate, it is like I have been living out of touch with my body and who I am, that I am a man, not a spirit inside of random cage, a specific thing, a telos among telos's.

What do I see, inside my spirit and body, my physical, psychological frame, before I had no reason to exist, nothing to care about, nothing to do, but exist for pleasure, now I am free, I am free to open my eyes and look around me, I am free, I am free.

I love God so much and I would do anything for YHVH. The law reveals God, in Gods light you see everything you ever wanted become so insigificant and God's holiness radiates and the depths of Gods understand. It is really an erotic thing to behold the mind of God and appreciate YHVH's nature, it is like I am struck with beauty and longing that the only thing that would happen inside of me is that I would be ripped apart of myself, receive a new name, have a new pride, I am defeated, I am lost, I am dead, I have nothing left, nothing to prove, I just exist like a spirit existing only for my spirit friend.

It is like, wanting to be crushed and see the inner spiritual perfection emerge after the spirit has broken you, your identity is lost and you become a part of God, still myself, but when I am myself, it almost like I am "wearing myself" as if to show I am not arrogant or superspiritual, but in my heart my desire is for holiness.

It feels like you have pain all the time, because you care so much about everyone else, knowing their depravity, knowing that they are far from what you have seen, feeling uncomfortable about being elevated over others but knowing that you have something, so deep.

I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST IT IS NO LONGER I WHO LIVE BUT CHRIST WHO LIVES IN ME


I would not trade anything for what I have in God, the treasure, I feel like I know the answer to so many things, I feel like I can see for miles and miles and miles, I never doubt God, I never have any question whether what I have seen was real, I am certain that it is, I swear that I am not exaggerating. I would talk about this for hours and hours if I could perhaps to lead someone to have what I have, I would give up so much if I could just open peoples eyes to seek God, God is real.

When I was a new Christian I doubted a lot and struggled with teachings that were hard to give up. I feel like now almost all my desires have been replaced by other things, when I listen to secular music it is like a chore to remember who I used to be so I can feel as if I can create a bridge with people who might have something in common, when I talk about everyday things it seems like nothing really interests me except God, no matter what happens, I have had a hard life. A lot of bad things.

I have not told a lie in 6 or 7 years, I promise you that. I would tell you if you want. I can tell you by phone if you'd like my number is [phone number removed]. I could talk for hours and hours and hours about God.

It is real.
It is real.
It is real.
It is real.
It is real.
It is real.

IT IS REAL. IT IS REAL. IT IS REAL.

[Something completely different]

I can tell you by phone if you'd like my number is (your number). I could talk for hours and hours and hours about God.

I advise you to edit this out of your post.

I dont think you are breaking any rules, but you should keep your data safe.

Not only mambers have access to this page, and some who may look at this may not have good intentions with what to do with such info.

[jstrodel]

I will remove it if a moderator asks me to.

[Something completely different]

I am not threatening you or something like that, I am simply giving some friendly advice.

I dont think that you are breaking any rules, so I dont think a moderator can tell you to remove your number.

Yet, I can share my concern here since it is without doubt a fact that you are giving up a piece of privat information which some might abuse.

[Rayaan]

Do you have any idea what your god wants for you? Does He wish you to do the good you perceive and to grow in your capacity to perceive what is important and what is best? Or does He wish for you to follow His rules? Will those of you who believe in a judgment day be judged like Job and Abraham on your willingness to sacrifice all else to follow orders and do his bidding? Or do you think God really wants you to eventually stand up to him and stand up for what you think is right?

He wants me to remember Him, love Him, praise Him, and submit to His commandments. And he doesn't need any of those things, but he is deserving of them.

I cannot and never could imagine a God who wants only sycophantic rule followers. Of what possible value would that be to such a one? If God really were anyone you should want to spend eternity with, He should first of all be someone you can respect. Can anyone of any religion explain this to me?

Rules are everywhere; Science shows that almost everything in nature are subject to certain laws and limitations - the clouds, trees, animals, evolution, DNA replication, the orbiting of the planets, the beating of your heart, etc. - are all following rules or laws that they have been programmed with from the beginning of their existence. These things have a set of instructions which are intended to manage, command, and regulate the behavior of each of these physical systems in different ways.

My point is that if you can at least imagine (or assume) that a god created this universe as well all these different laws and instructions for each and every thing, then it shouldn't be significantly harder to imagine that He would do the same thing for humans as well.