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chelydra
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These are all good points, notably including Lizzi's clafication of the circumstances of the letter to Timothy. I actually quite like Paul, and the odds that Christianity in any form would have survived the Roman's assaults on the Jews if Paul hadn't revised the doctrine, organized the church, compromised with the empire, and put a lot more distance between Christians and Jews, are probably nil. But personally, I was quite intersted in my one encounter with modern-day Jewish Christians or Christian Jews. Not sure whether they were "Jews for Jesus" or not - they said they were part of an unbroken tradition going back to the beginning (although if so they must have kept a very low profile for many centuries), which would mean, I suppose, they were descended from James' Jerusalem congregation, which stayed true to its roots. It would also mean that Jewish (non-Pauline) Christianity had, like Judaism itself, managed to survive the Holocaust-like devastation wrought by Rome on Israel. My impressions, in so far as I have any recollection of one evening many years ago, were that the Jewish Christians or Christian Jews were much less interested in elaborate theological doctines and supernatural stuff in general than other Christians, but were also free of the kind of tribalism or nationalism I find quite ugly and primitive in most Judaism (and in some Hinduism and neo-Norse beliefs too). The gathering seemed, in a word, humble. Some of the people were ethnically Jews, some were not. It didn't seem to matter one way or the other. We had a traditional Jewish supper, following semi-orthodox rules that did not seem at all "dead" to me that night. It felt good, like a sort of homecoming.
Would I convert to whatever they called themselves (which I can't recall), if they had meeting nearby? Probably not — I find religion okay to visit but I wouldn't want to live in it, and whatever it is I "believe in" I prefer not to call "God" because "God" makes no sense to me — even if some of what I believe might sound a whole lot like how many people descibe their "God" if I tried to put it all into words.
I guess my core belief, if anyone cares to know, is that the spritual realm and the material realm are exactly the same place, although of course there are some things and events (and people) that seem to belong more to one than the other. The separation of spirit and matter is the source of much (maybe most or all) evil. At one extreme pole we have money and finance, said to be "materialist" but in fact it's abstracted matter, so far abstracted that it exists outside of physical reality. Inside reality, it's just empty numbers, counting non-things called dollars or euros or whatever that are themselves made of nothing but empty numbers, despite some vestigial links with gold reserves. At the other extreme, as I see it, is God — pure spirit so thoroughly abstracted that he (or it) also exists outside of physical reality. What is outside of physical reality is outside of what is commonly known as "existence". By definition, such "things" or "beings" do not exist, they are non-things that cannot be in any meaningful sense of the verb "to be". On the other hand, I'm damned if I know where or what or who this universe came from, so I do recognize the boundaries beyond which dogmatic atheists are as lost as anyone else. I rather like Hegel's idea of a Creator who grows and develops along with Creation, and can't be regarded as an entirely separate entity from Creation.
Before I go, let me just complete that thought about abstracted matter and abstracted spirit — when people's behaviour and decisions are governed by abstractions, and when those behaviours and decisions have the effect of tearing apart Creation (at least this quite special, local part of it we call earth, and including earth's component humans) in a way that is sinful on a cosmic scale... doesn't that tell us something? We cruciify "God''s only begotten Creation, including everything that gives meaning to those empty numbers we call money, as if reality itself is not something we can believe in. Why even bother discussing theories of a Creator when Creation (which presumably is the Creator's only purpose for living) is treated as meaningles and unreal, and we're letting it happen? Is this not blasphemy in its most murderous form, worse than the murder of God, infinitely worse that the killing of his one son, who after all went along with it and got resurrected right away as if his death, painful as it was, was basically a drama staged for our benefit — this is Uncreating of Creation itself rendering the Creator's existence or meaning moot. And for those of us who aren't that interested in the notion of the Creator as a separate entity, it's the murder of everything we love and hold sacred — for us, this is what IS, there ain't no get-out clause, no second chance, no rapture, no nothin', just this material-spirutal ream right here - well, okay, the night sky is just as real as the surface of this earth, but its whales and bears are imaginary patterns, not the flesh and blood kind. This is IT.
And my version of what most people call "environmentalism" (a word I hate) is a holy war against the unbelievers, defending everything I hold sacred against those who don't believe reality exists in any meaningful sense. (That is, it exists because God thinks it's pretty but he gave us permission to f--- it up as much as we want, and/or it exists for the purpose of being turned into money).
Way back, when no sane person regarded god, man and nature as separate entities, there was no spirit unconnected to matter, nor any matter without a spiritual dimension. A dim memory of what that "primitive" condition felt like is preserved in Genesis. It's called Eden. There were two very important trees in Eden. No one seems to remember the that there were two. But the Fall was about the gates of Eden closing because we were no longer allowed to freely eat of the fruit of the tree of LIFE. We were no longer an intrinsic part of Nature, but separated from, alienated from, locked in a permanent war with nature. That was the origin of human history, commonly known as "the world". That all in the first two or three pages of the Bible. Skip to the end, and lo and behold, what awaits the faithful after the end of this long sad crazy time of trying to manage the planet as if we owned it? The New Earth. What's that? As noted in the preceding attempt at a poem, I think it's best understood in the sense that a born-again Christian is said to be "a new man" (or woman). A "new man" is the same bloke as before, maybe brushing his teeth a little more conscientiously or speaking in more dulcet tones, but otherwise the exact same guy, immediately recognizable as himself to all who know him in his previous incarnation, because in fact it's the same meat as before (that's what carne is, meat) and he hasn't been reincarnated at all. His born-again experience was not about any literal nonsense of miraculous shrinking back up inside his now-elderly or deceased mother's pelvis and popping back out again. All that's new is his attitude, his idea of who he is and of what life's all about. Maybe he appreciates the sacredness of being alive, and of life in general, and recognizes that death needn't be feared because life goes on in some other form as his meat rots away. (His own individual life goes on in Christian theology, but isn't is really more "Christian" to recognize how OTHER lives, and life in general, go on?) Transfer THAT to the notion of "a new earth" and whaddaya get? This earth, but with a new attitude. And which component part of this earth is it that needs a new attitude, where is the bad attitude located that requires a kind of rebirthing, a newness? So when that long strange awful journey out of eden finally reaches its destination, a new earth, what does that really mean? What can it possibly mean, once you set aside the silliness and kid stuff of raptures and such, and look at it like a sensible grown-up? Well, here's a clue: guess what tree, mentioned in passing only once or twice is all the page since the beginning of Genesis, is growing all over the place, in several varieties, offering a dozen flavours now, all free for the taking? You guessed it. The Tree of Life. The same symbol of Nature and unmolested Nature's abundance that got locked away when our species got kicked out of Nature/Eden (the Fall and the alienation from that tree are one and the same event in Genesis).
Is it stretching the story beyond what's written to say this means that when (if) things get sorted out on this planet, we will once again realize that God, Man and Nature are not separate entities existing in different dimensions, and that everything phsyical is spritual and everything spiritual is physical? Of course. it's stretching the story beyond what's written. A little. Does it matter if it is? Not to me.
But you know what? I have never met, or heard on the radio, a single supposedly Bible-believing Christian (sorry I think there was one, once) who has even noticed that the Tree of Life is the Alpha and the Omega of that Bible — the key to understanding Eden and the Fall (saying that is not stretching what's written by a single millimetre), AND the main feature (along with the River of Life) in the landscape of the New Earth at the end of the journey. So what's the point of saying you believe in the Bible if you don't even acknowledge what's staring you in the face, and don't even notice how that book's supposedly divinely inspired authors and editors chose to open it and close it, with an image they left out of all the pages in between (because it has no place in this madmade world, because it was locked away in Eden)?
I used to be involved with a "disorganization" called Earth First! (The exclamation mark was part of its name.) Its newspaper was dated by Nordic pagan holidays, and the pages were full of denunciations of Christianity and the Bible. But the Bible is undoubtedly the most heartfelt, haunting, and hopeful Earth First! manifesto that was ever composed, or will ever be composed — Earth First! and Earth Last! It begins by telling how and why we fell out of nature, and ends by saying how we might get back in. And before you say, no no no, it's about losing and regaining our relationship with God, the answer is right there in black and white - that's just another way of saying the same thing. It would seem, from what the Bible tells us, that Nature is where God lives. Not in some other dimension or in no dimension.
I could take that a step or two further and establish my credentials not as a heretic but as an outright unapologetic unbeliever. But poor old Radbook, bless his troubled soul, bequeathed us a forum called "Let's Talk Chistianity" and I wouldn't want him (no doubt lurking and reading all this) to feel I was disrespecting his legacy.
All I have to add on this subject is that every death is a crucifixion, and every man and woman (and why not every organism?) is equally God's only begotten son or daughter if we take seriously the mathematical principles Jesus taught in the parable of the lost sheep. Every meal is a Eucharist, a commemoration of an ultimate sacrifice made that we may live (an idea I got from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, incidentally). Death and love appear together in the evolution of life on earth; before sexual reproduction came on the scene, death was not the inevitable and unversal fact of nature that we experience. Every generation is sacrificed for its progeny to take over. Way back when, our ancestors used to just divide in half and each would go on its merry way. So all the stuff Paul attributed to Jesus (including plenty that Jesus did not attribute to Jesus) is going on all around us all the time. A love so great that it took him to the cross that we might live? Your great-grandparents went the same route, and very likely all your gransparent and both your parents did too. So does every bird and beast. Its the natural order of things. Which is not to say it isn't a big deal. It's a very, very big deal, obviously, every time it happens and even more so when you add up all the times it happens. To say it only happened once, and that it was some kind of supernatural drama we can barely imagine, seems to me blasphemous.
Here endeth all i have to offer on this subject. Sorry to hog so much space, but if I tried to edit it down I'd be working at for a week.
And since I'm posting without proofreading, apologizes for my usual typos in every line.
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pollyesther
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Chelydra, it is good to get another perspective on the Bible and the Tree of Life.
The fascinating thing about the Bible is that it has truth packed in layers and mirrors and on many different levels and as Lolla said different things will come to light as it speaks to you.
Here is an interesting parable from Ezekiel 17: 2 “Son of man, pose a riddle, and speak a parable to the house of Israel, 3 and say, ‘Thus says the Lord God:
“A great eagle with large wings and long pinions,
Full of feathers of various colors,
Came to Lebanon
And took from the cedar the highest branch.
4 He cropped off its topmost young twig
And carried it to a land of trade;
He set it in a city of merchants.
5 Then he took some of the seed of the land
And planted it in a fertile field;
He placed it by abundant waters
And set it like a willow tree.
6 And it grew and became a spreading vine of low stature;
Its branches turned toward him,
But its roots were under it.
So it became a vine,
Brought forth branches,
And put forth shoots.
7 “But there was another[a] great eagle with large wings and many feathers;
And behold, this vine bent its roots toward him,
And stretched its branches toward him,
From the garden terrace where it had been planted,
That he might water it.
8 It was planted in good soil by many waters,
To bring forth branches, bear fruit,
And become a majestic vine.â€â€™
9 “Say, ‘Thus says the Lord God:
“Will it thrive?
Will he not pull up its roots,
Cut off its fruit,
And leave it to wither?
All of its spring leaves will wither,
And no great power or many people
Will be needed to pluck it up by its roots.
10 Behold, it is planted,
Will it thrive?
Will it not utterly wither when the east wind touches it?
It will wither in the garden terrace where it grew.â€â€™â€
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