The Bible and slavery

[Nick_A]

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

Those second two quotes you posted may be referring to spiritual slavery, but if the one above is, then why does it say to obey your earthly masters?

Also, these are the verses preceeding this one.

6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.
6:2 Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;
6:3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
6:4 And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

It goes from telling children to obey to telling slaves to obey. Nowhere is there any indication that these verses mean anything except commanding people to be subservient to those the bible believes you should obey. You are trying to shoehorn this verse into the same context as the other ones, but this one is clearly not talking about 'inner slavery.' It is giving guidelines for how certain people should behave, not spiritual guidance.

Remember that Paul is speaking to people and families that are united in the common purpose of awakening. They have experieinced something the world doesn't offer. In order to build upon it, a Christian cannot be guided by blind earthly egotism but rather by attempts to further consciousness. You are applying Christian principles to earthly circumstances which cannot be done,

[Faith No More]

Remember that Paul is speaking to people and families that are united in the common purpose of awakening. They have experieinced something the world doesn't offer. In order to build upon it, a Christian cannot be guided by blind earthly egotism but rather by attempts to further consciousness.

I'm not sure why it would matter who he is talking to. The verses are clearly meant to be interpreted literally.

You are applying Christian principles to earthly circumstances which cannot be done,

This sentence makes no sense to me, because if this is true, then what is Christianity doing on Earth?

[Minimalist]

I know myself just fine, son. It's fucking jesus that you can blow out your ass.

What do you have against Jesus

Fictional shit but the adherents of that faith have done a lot of damage throughout history. As have plenty of others.

Your religion is not "special" in any way. They all pretty much suck and they all serve pretty much the same purpose.

Controlling primitive people.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not entirely sure what you think I asked you for Nick.....even after reading your interpretation (and it is your interpretation) of that verse..I still fail to see how obeying your earthly master (apparently, to you, the material world) would be the thing to do? We shouldn't fight the shadows in the cave, even though these shadows are the manifest reality of the spiritual bonds holding us?

[reverendjeremiah]

Remember that Paul is speaking to people and families that are united in the common purpose of awakening. They have experieinced something the world doesn't offer. In order to build upon it, a Christian cannot be guided by blind earthly egotism but rather by attempts to further consciousness. You are applying Christian principles to earthly circumstances which cannot be done,

I puked in my mouth a bit when I read this one...seeing that Christianity was written by the blind egotism (pre-science) of early christians. In other words, they made the shit up..using their ego's and imagination as inspiration. This is merely nothing more than special pleading "our made up bullshit is not of this earth, so to question it with your earthly/fleshly brain is egotistical.

Sorry bud, but the bible is the epitome of "earthly egotism"

[Nick_A]

Remember that Paul is speaking to people and families that are united in the common purpose of awakening. They have experieinced something the world doesn't offer. In order to build upon it, a Christian cannot be guided by blind earthly egotism but rather by attempts to further consciousness.

I'm not sure why it would matter who he is talking to. The verses are clearly meant to be interpreted literally.

You are applying Christian principles to earthly circumstances which cannot be done,

This sentence makes no sense to me, because if this is true, then what is Christianity doing on Earth?

I consider Christianity to be a perennial tradition which means its purpose for Man always was. Christianiy is on earth to help man be free of inner slavery to the earth so as to realize man's conscious potential: to become himself.

To conclude, the great Christian theologian, Saint Augustine in his Retractiones, wrote “The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients also, nor was it wanting from the inception of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, at which point the true religion, which was already in existence, began to be called Christian.”

Christianity like all the great traditions initiating with a conscious source begins at the transcendent level of and gradually devolves down into the exoteric level which is called the "World" or Plato's Cave.

I know this seems surprising but consider the diagram Thomas McFarlane, a trained scientist, uses to illustrate the theme of Frithjof_Schuon's book: "The Transcendent Unity of Religions. They are the same at the transcendent level but devolve onto the exoteric level, losing their conscious origin, and become diversified. These two levels of are connected by the inner esoteric direction.

http://integralscience.wordpress.com/199...religions/

All the silliness occurs on the exoteric level. A person having experienced the truth of this seeks the esoteric direction leading to the conscious source of a tradition.

[Epimethean]

Christianity IS the cave, Nick. Come out into the light and see that it is so.

[Cinjin]

Jesus' description of the "world" is the same as Plato's Cave. This is a condition of inner slavery through psychological blindness. For a person beginning to become aware of the human condition as it exists within them and the world, the question becomes more how to awaken to reality rather than fight shadows on the wall in Plato's cave.

Christianity is the reliigion of slaves. Its devolution into Christrendom or what you define as Christianity in society has devolved it into a religion of power. A Christian has come to experience that they are the wretched man and would rather awaken than fight shadows. A Christian knows they are either a slave to what pins them to the world, or higher influences they cannot understand but can provide the inner light tht leads to conscious inner freecom.

This is similar to the Eastern concept of "attachment." Acquiring a higher, conscious perspective requires help from above. In Christianity this help is called grace

Hey look you pretty much proved the point Rhythm made in Post 5. You're going to see whatever the hell you want to see and you're going to interpolate and extract the scriptures as you see fit.

What makes this so painfully ironic is the number of Christians themselves that will completely disagree with you on so many levels. In my opinion, the fact that none of you can see eye to eye on nearly ANYTHING completely nullifies the entire stupid book. You go around screaming how somehow YOU know what god meant to say and yet your own brothers-in-christ think you're a mislead blowhard and that THEY know what god REALLY meant.

It begs the question: Which of the sheep should we choose to believe? YOU?!
Add to all this that I have even less respect for you since you don't even have the balls to admit you're a christian outright, and try to come off as some kind of intellectual who just happens to believe in the bible!
Don't kid yourself pal, you're just as bad as the rest, and right about now, I'm asking myself why did I even bother writing this? I could've saved myself a lot of time and just posted this one little pic:

(hmm, I think Min's startin to wear off on me)

[Faith No More]

I consider Christianity to be a perennial tradition which means its purpose for Man always was. Christianiy is on earth to help man be free of inner slavery to the earth so as to realize man's conscious potential: to become himself.

But how can this be true when you just said you cannot apply Christian principles to earthly circumstances?

To conclude, the great Christian theologian, Saint Augustine in his Retractiones, wrote “The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients also, nor was it wanting from the inception of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, at which point the true religion, which was already in existence, began to be called Christian.”

I'm sorry, but this is just an example of Christians trying to label Christianity as some sort of generalization of the nature of humanity's search for purpose. If this sentence was true, Christians would in general be more tolerant of people who can live good and decent lives without declaring themselves to be followers of Christ. It wouldn't be necessary to be a Christian, but almost all Christians claim it is.

Christianity like all the great traditions initiating with a conscious source begins at the transcendent level of and gradually devolves down into the exoteric level which is called the "World" or Plato's Cave.

Christianity is wholly unnecessary for this search when Buddhism had already done this and done it better.

[Epimethean]

Sheep in wolfskin is tres gauche around here.