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Post by beth on Oct 11, 2009 2:13:53 GMT
What does 'believe in' Jesus mean? I understand that the original Greek meant 'rely on' and 'trust', but what does 'believe in' mean? I think the rest of the thought is - "believing in Christ to forgive one's sins and provide an afterlife for the 'soul'. " I think it's something that seems easy enough to understand IF one is taught this from childhood, but less easy to accept for an adult.
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Post by Liberator on Oct 18, 2009 1:32:44 GMT
Something that is easy to understand if taught as a child but difficult for an adult suggests to me something that cannot pass the scrutiny of mature intelligence. I kind of gave my position in the question. That is, that I understand the original meaning to have been 'trust his teaching to be effective' - which you either do or do not.
The rest, as it is preached as 'believe', well no, I can't see how 'believing in' a person can also mean believing all that magical gobbledegook even without venturing to tie it down to what words like 'forgive' and 'sin' actually mean, and in what way Jesus might provide an 'afterlife for the soul' - in the way a good coach provides expertise for the body by training and exercise, or in the way a bad one does by the 'magical' shortcuts of steroids without making any effort oneself? I 'believe in' physics and evolution and most science, but I don't expect it to do anything for me except to give me the knowledge to do something for myself.
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Post by jean on Oct 26, 2009 10:32:10 GMT
What does 'believe in' Jesus mean? I understand that the original Greek meant 'rely on' and 'trust', but what does 'believe in' mean? Here, the Greek has pisteuein, which means believe, trust in, rely on: John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.With a following clause, it can also mean to believe that something is the case, but that's not the construction here. Presumably anyway the gospel writer did not even entertain the possibility that his readers would question Christ's having existed.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2009 11:11:18 GMT
This is fascinating, because "trust" surely opens the door to those of us who believe Jesus existed and respect his teachings. A belief that he was born of a virgin and resurrected is incidental, no?
That's why I'm in favour of re-writing the bible in modern language, provided this work is done by scholars from source and without political motives.
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Post by jean on Oct 26, 2009 11:45:28 GMT
But what makes church music "real"? Don't listen to him, skylark. Real Church music is plainsong and Renaissance polyphony with perhaps a little Bach. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the existence of these sublime forms of musical expression provides the best, if not the only, proof of the existence of God. (I'm a bit high on William Byrd at the moment as I have just come back from a week singing Cathedral services.)
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2009 15:56:26 GMT
Earlier this year, Jean, I attended evensong at my old parish church and was terribly impressed with Rutter.
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Post by jean on Oct 26, 2009 16:54:20 GMT
Rutter!!!
Now I know you're playing games, skylark!
You'll be telling me next how much you enjoyed something by Karl Jenkins.
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Post by trubble on Oct 26, 2009 17:31:49 GMT
I once enjoyed some Rutter immensely. It was in a cathedral and we had been waiting for several hours before the service started so I may have been delirious with the cold and hunger (brought on by sucking cough sweets).
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Post by trubble on Oct 26, 2009 17:44:46 GMT
Truer to say that you trust it, perhaps. Believing in it would no more give you any knowledge to do anything than believing in Jolly Old St Nicholas.
But having mentioned the bearded one in the coke ads...
...the belief that the child is given (that he exists) is the piece of magic that opens up their mind to the idea of him, allows them to experience the spirit of him, and lays the foundation for what he might represent and how they might emulate that spirit. That's the belief that Beth talks about being easier to teach to a child.
I can't think of anything spiritual that is easily understood through intellectual debate and analysis, maybe it really has to be experienced and understood at a deeper level to be examined.
And perhaps belief in Jesus is also a tool that gives you knowledge to do something for yourself.
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Post by jean on Oct 26, 2009 17:51:59 GMT
I once enjoyed some Rutter immensely. Rutter is very persuasive evidence for the non-existence of God. No wonder you're an atheist.
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Post by trubble on Oct 26, 2009 17:59:43 GMT
So is Rutter.
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Post by beth on Oct 26, 2009 19:38:45 GMT
The component most religions stress is "faith". Children are more open to believing through faith. Then, as adults, we need to intellectualize and ask questions - why, how, who, where, when - and once belief through faith falls victim to questions, it becomes more and more intangible. I have a friend - a smart, savvy attorney who is a deacon in his church and a fine person. His father died recently. We were sitting and talking at the funeral parlor and he let some tears fall and then said, "I'd give anything if I could believe as Dad believed because then I'd grieve less with an assurance he's not gone but only taken the next step - but I can't." I said, "I have trouble with that, too. Why do you think that is?" He came back with, "I think it can be traced back to the first time we opened a book that questioned and couldn't put it down. Kind of like Eve and the apple". That, to me is as good an explanation as any.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2009 19:56:06 GMT
I once enjoyed some Rutter immensely. Rutter is very persuasive evidence for the non-existence of God. No wonder you're an atheist. Ah. Come down to our little corner of south east England and hear our church choir sing Rutter. Then your faith will be restored.
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Post by jean on Oct 26, 2009 22:44:57 GMT
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Post by Liberator on Oct 27, 2009 1:11:54 GMT
There's two meanings of 'faith' though they overlap. There is 'faith' that a statement is historically and factually true and there is 'faith' that a given system works. Fundamentalist religion tends to the former, occultism to the latter.
The Biblical Greek 'Pistis' covers both meanings and an important document that did not make it into anyone's Bible (there's some pretty weird stuff made it into the Ethiopian Coptic!) is the Pistis Sophia, that is Faith-Wisdom. I admit to not having read much of it because it was heavy going even to its Greek readers and translation can make any part of it into a description I saw of an Arabic dictionary: what it says, the opposite. something to with a camel
If some disaster befell us resulting in a preservation of science within a mythological framework, there might be those whose 'faith' lay in conviction that the miracles attributed to Sir Isaac Albert Tesla did in fact occur and we shall worship him (and in consequence avoid further research that might modify His Sayings), others that perhaps no such person existed, though there may be some truth behind it, but 'his' pronouncements work well enough to put 'faith' in. In fact we actually have this with the stories of Newton's apple and Einstein's mathematical ineptitude. They could be taken as 'articles of faith' but neither has any relevance to 'faith' in their findings.
Likewise. I see no reason for 'faith' in the literal historicity of any scriptural story and great deal against it if it is to generate 'faith' in the mythic sense of a true story, the truer for never having happened. Adam & Eve and the Apple is a true story of the human dilemma in wanting to believe in some superior Creator while finding the 'Creation' far below their standards.
It leads to 'Job' who shows the tribal YHWH as a blustering bully like any despot of the day and this is no longer satisfactory to Jews coming under influence of Greek ethics, which in turn leads to a mythical need for the Deity to develop a conscience (Sophia - Wisdom, note Female) and actually experience what it is to be human (Jesus). It is almost a blasphemy, but yet lurking n Catholicism, that the 'divine incarnation' does not so much redeem 'Man' as redeem 'Jehovah' who now experiences what it is to live by his own laws. (Pretty ghastly!) Therefore though HE understands and commiserates with us. Or as the more radical followers of Valentinus put it "I redeem myself from this Aion {scheme of things} as IAO {Greek attempt at YHWH} redeemed himself in the Christ, the Living One".
Nobody ever reduced Sophia's tribulations to imagined history (for one thing they never agreed on them or whether there was one Sophia in two circumstances or a higher and lower Sophia and if so, how they related to Eve and the Serpent or to Eve and Lilith). They did reduce Christ's, whose 'career' apropos Satan mythically parallels Abel's against Cain's (according to Jung) to a once-off occurrence which one can believe happened or not but stuck in history, so of no mythic significance either way.
As a continuing symbol of the 'human condition' caught between the 'divine' attribute of imaginative intelligence and animal reaction, then it has eternal mythic significance. Sophia is always raped and prostituted whenever the divinity of creative intelligence is used for personal gain against others instead of for common advancement; Christ is always humiliated and crucified when ideals need shock value to get themselves noticed.
And nowhere more so than in a church!
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Post by Big Lin on Nov 10, 2009 18:00:36 GMT
Faith is something that we experience every day in ordinary life.
I like the example of a joke I heard from an American friend.
It's about a black preacher in a church who was trying to explain the difference between faith and knowledge to his congregation.
He pointed to a married couple and asked them to stand up with their new baby.
He said, 'take a look at that baby's mama. She KNOWS that's her child - that's knowledge.'
Then he pointed to the proud dad. 'Now he BELIEVES that's his child - that's faith!'
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Post by june on Nov 18, 2009 21:18:01 GMT
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Nov 18, 2009 23:43:43 GMT
My very sinful score wasn't in the computer results.. But this came out in the end! QUOTE: What God did... Think of it this way... Imagine you're in a courtroom again, you're guilty of many serious crimes. The judge says, "It's a fine of $500,000, or prison." You don't have anywhere near that amount of money, so the bailiff begins to walk you out of the courtroom when someone you don't even know appears. He runs up to the judge with a check and says, "I've paid the fine for you." Now that the fine has been paid, the law no longer has any hold on you. You're free -- because of the gift you were given. This is what God did for you by sending Jesus to die on the cross in your place. So that you wouldn't have to go to Hell, God sent his only Son, Jesus, to die on the cross -- suffering the punishment that justice demands. Then He rose from the grave, forever defeating death! The Bible tells us, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) If you will repent of your sins and put your trust in Jesus, God says he will forgive all your sins and grant you the gift of everlasting life. Just like the court case we just talked about, if you repent (that means to confess and forsake your sins) and put your trust in Jesus, then you will not have to suffer God's justice in Hell because the payment for your crimes was made by Jesus on the cross. If you're not sure what to pray, read Psalm 51, and make it a model for your prayer. The words are not "magical," what God cares about is the attitude of your heart. When you pray, it should sound something like this, "Dear God, I repent of all my sins, such as (name them). I put my trust in Jesus Christ as Lord (to say Jesus is your Lord means you are now making Jesus the master over your life) and Savior. Forgive me and grant me your gift of everlasting life. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen." Now read your Bible daily, and obey what you read. God will never let you down. What should you read? We suggest that you start in the book named "John," and then read the one named "Romans." Whatever you decide to read, make sure you read every day. We now suggest that you read "Save Yourself Some Pain" which contains 10 very important steps for new and growing Christians. Please also listen to Hell's Best Kept Secret which is a free online message that will give Biblical direction to your Christian life.
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