(July 5, 2014 at 7:50 am)naturestubbs1 Wrote: Sorry people...I think we need to take a step back and recognize that you are talking about a BOOK. The main chasm here isn't in the minutiae of the words its in the way one feels about the entire content. If one TRULY (and I mean straight-up individual intellectual honesty here) believes that this book is the "the way it happened" then the discussion can begin. If one person thinks that this book is just a bunch of bullshit then its an argument ad infinitum. I agree that the bible is full of egregious crap but it has been interpreted and reinterpreted so many times that it's almost impossible to pull out the nucleus of meaning. Even if meaning could be extracted from two thousand year-old verbage (which most definitely was bantered around as an oral tradition for decades prior to recording) then THAT would ALSO be up for interpretation. What is YOUR core belief? Forget the comic book.
You'll have to excuse me but I have the annoying habit of putting in my two cents worth even when a question is specifically addressed to a different member.
I share your attitude toward the bible when a fundamentalist starts quoting from it like a lawyer to 'prove' a point. However if someone wants to discuss it intelligently as a piece of literature I have no complaint. I get left behind in such discussions since I've never read much of it, but I won't tell others where they can or cannot find their wisdom since that tends to be the sort of thing one reads into a text, not out from it.
Purplundy has already explained that he believes a man named Jesus lived and that his example and words are very important to him. I think he believes the bible is an important source of information in that pursuit. Given that he believes the first the second seems reasonable enough to me .. so long as he doesn't treat it as divinely inspired marching orders the way fundamentalists do. He hasn't done that. In fact, I find him to take what the bible says with a generous dose of salt. I can respect that.
If you approach a story about Jesus the way you would a parable or a zen koan, rather than the way a lawyer/apologist would, then I'm going to be more interested in what you have to say.
Purplundy Wrote:"28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Applying that approach to the portion of the quote I bolded, I'd have to say that the God you are to love so strongly is within you as something more essentially yourself even than what you take yourself to be. He is urging people to mature/realize/assimilate that potentiality in themselves. It is like when he says elsewhere that he and 'his father' -a reference again to God- are one. At least, that is the most generous interpretation I could give it.
This raises another question for you, Purple&Burgundy. Does your theology require you to believe that 'God' -not Jesus- is an entity in its own right, apart from people? If one believed that Jesus' God was only within each person, would that get one evicted from the theist tent?
