You see what I mean, you have already judged me. First you claimed I was an atheist, now I'm antichrist.
Jesus mission is that of spiritual liberation, yet you have no idea what he taught. You claim to know the Bible is the word of God, yet you fail to understand the reality. All the Bibles, every single one out there today require translation. Every single word you've read in the Bible is a translation. And every translation is an interpretation. And many are mistranslations & misinterpretations. Some could not have been avoided, but most were deliberate.
The original Christian understanding was very different before its appropriation and distortion by the Evil Empire (Rome). You say you are "a follower of the Way of Jesus Christ", but let me ask you something... what if Paul took Jesus's message of spiritual autonomy and reconstructed it as a message of spiritual submission? Jesus says “listen to my words”, Paul says “believe me of who Jesus is”. This change may seem small at first, but in reality it changes everything.
I haven't judged you, I'm trying to talk to you and I have a habit of taking things literal, when you say opposite I think 'anti', when you say Paul/Saul is a Jew I think 'but he isn't', I'm sorry that it put us on the wrong footing. I think you may be assuming some things about me here, I am a follower of the Way of Jesus Christ in it's original meaning and I understand well the spiritual side of that relationship and even the cultural.
Paul pointed to Christ, not himself as final authority. Perhaps you are reading it wrong? It has all been translated and retranslated but God protects His Truth and it is a living world that we need not read alone.
Hey Dot, we've had quite a few here who are leery of Paul and who prefer the gnostic corpus. There are also a few of us who follow Christ as he's revealed (including through the Bible) who have very similar and predictable takes, you might call us trads but every one of us is unique and none strike me as straitlaced here. The best way for these two groups to get to talk IMHO is to continue working out areas of agreement.
u/Thisisnotanexit isn't making accusations, she just really likes Paul and is seeking out what you do believe after your strong statements of not believing Paul. I repeated a question to you in a separate ping, that's a fine place to pick things up again. Or if you want to continue on this track, I can tell you TINAE and I are happy to learn about your positive experience of Jesus but somehow things started off on your negative experience of Paul instead. So it's good to know that you do have a system other than just "modern Christianity is distorted". I'm all for primitive, original Christianity, and can sound very gnostic, but there doesn't seem to be much there that isn't compatible with the stuff added on later. If you can indicate how we can know historical facts about folks like Paul and Jesus, so that we use the same objective methods and come to the same facts, then that helps us determine what to do with those facts.
i don't have a negative experience of Paul. But, I do have a lot of questions. And, IMO, there are many contradictions in the Bible when it comes to Paul... if you read carefully. To me Paul is nothing more than an intelligence asset working on behalf of Roman imperial interests to neutralize the most dangerous threat the empire had ever faced, Jewish fanaticism.
Let me give you an example, Paul decides to go to Damascus to destroy the Jesus movement there. But on the road to Damascus, something extraordinary happens. He sees a blinding light. He hears the voice of Jesus saying, "Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me and my people?" And at this moment, Paul has what we now call a Damascus moment, a sudden conversion, a complete reversal of belief. And Paul at this point becomes a fanatical follower of Jesus, even though he never met Jesus in life and never met any of Jesus's original disciples. This is extremely weird, but he becomes convinced that he understands Jesus's message better than anyone. And he decides he's going to spread this message to everyone throughout the Roman Empire. So what does Paul do? He starts going to synagogues around the empire telling Jews that Jesus is the Messiah. And he begins to build the structure and organization that will become Christianity. Now, at this point, they're not called Christians. They're still Jews. And the Jesus movement is considered a branch of Judaism. But Paul introduces several radical innovations. Everything I just described to you to me seems like taken right out of a CIA or Mossad manual. None of it makes any sense to me.
I'm all for primitive, original Christianity, and can sound very gnostic
I don't sound Gnostic to me, you sound like someone who has one foot in the OT and the other in the NT. Someone who believes Jesus was sent by Yahweh to save a world which doesn't want to be saved.
Why start there? Why not evangelize your message of how you hope to defeat the matrix and the rules of reincarnation?
Attacking a story because it sounds contradictory (though there may be a number of omitted factors, like the 14 years Paul was silent as per Gal. 2:1) is usually not a firm place to begin. It sounds confrontational.
I don't sound Gnostic to me
Jesus taught that everyone has the divine spark within them and through right action through cultivating that spark you achieve enlightenment, salvation, liberation.
What words did Jesus use that you think should be defined as "divine spark"? How about "right action"? How about "enlightenment" and "liberation"? How can we determine what Jesus taught if we paraphrase all his words? He said "Thy faith hath saved thee." He said to the thief on the cross "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Thanks for your understanding.
Here's the link again to where I asked you previously (and still would love to know), "Do you want to live forever this time, or cease to exist? Why or why not?":
Also the opposite of Christ is antiChrist
You see what I mean, you have already judged me. First you claimed I was an atheist, now I'm antichrist.
Jesus mission is that of spiritual liberation, yet you have no idea what he taught. You claim to know the Bible is the word of God, yet you fail to understand the reality. All the Bibles, every single one out there today require translation. Every single word you've read in the Bible is a translation. And every translation is an interpretation. And many are mistranslations & misinterpretations. Some could not have been avoided, but most were deliberate.
The original Christian understanding was very different before its appropriation and distortion by the Evil Empire (Rome). You say you are "a follower of the Way of Jesus Christ", but let me ask you something... what if Paul took Jesus's message of spiritual autonomy and reconstructed it as a message of spiritual submission? Jesus says “listen to my words”, Paul says “believe me of who Jesus is”. This change may seem small at first, but in reality it changes everything.
I haven't judged you, I'm trying to talk to you and I have a habit of taking things literal, when you say opposite I think 'anti', when you say Paul/Saul is a Jew I think 'but he isn't', I'm sorry that it put us on the wrong footing. I think you may be assuming some things about me here, I am a follower of the Way of Jesus Christ in it's original meaning and I understand well the spiritual side of that relationship and even the cultural.
Paul pointed to Christ, not himself as final authority. Perhaps you are reading it wrong? It has all been translated and retranslated but God protects His Truth and it is a living world that we need not read alone.
Funny how all these newcomers find you out for what you really are.
I hope they do, you included
Hey Dot, we've had quite a few here who are leery of Paul and who prefer the gnostic corpus. There are also a few of us who follow Christ as he's revealed (including through the Bible) who have very similar and predictable takes, you might call us trads but every one of us is unique and none strike me as straitlaced here. The best way for these two groups to get to talk IMHO is to continue working out areas of agreement.
u/Thisisnotanexit isn't making accusations, she just really likes Paul and is seeking out what you do believe after your strong statements of not believing Paul. I repeated a question to you in a separate ping, that's a fine place to pick things up again. Or if you want to continue on this track, I can tell you TINAE and I are happy to learn about your positive experience of Jesus but somehow things started off on your negative experience of Paul instead. So it's good to know that you do have a system other than just "modern Christianity is distorted". I'm all for primitive, original Christianity, and can sound very gnostic, but there doesn't seem to be much there that isn't compatible with the stuff added on later. If you can indicate how we can know historical facts about folks like Paul and Jesus, so that we use the same objective methods and come to the same facts, then that helps us determine what to do with those facts.
i don't have a negative experience of Paul. But, I do have a lot of questions. And, IMO, there are many contradictions in the Bible when it comes to Paul... if you read carefully. To me Paul is nothing more than an intelligence asset working on behalf of Roman imperial interests to neutralize the most dangerous threat the empire had ever faced, Jewish fanaticism.
Let me give you an example, Paul decides to go to Damascus to destroy the Jesus movement there. But on the road to Damascus, something extraordinary happens. He sees a blinding light. He hears the voice of Jesus saying, "Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me and my people?" And at this moment, Paul has what we now call a Damascus moment, a sudden conversion, a complete reversal of belief. And Paul at this point becomes a fanatical follower of Jesus, even though he never met Jesus in life and never met any of Jesus's original disciples. This is extremely weird, but he becomes convinced that he understands Jesus's message better than anyone. And he decides he's going to spread this message to everyone throughout the Roman Empire. So what does Paul do? He starts going to synagogues around the empire telling Jews that Jesus is the Messiah. And he begins to build the structure and organization that will become Christianity. Now, at this point, they're not called Christians. They're still Jews. And the Jesus movement is considered a branch of Judaism. But Paul introduces several radical innovations. Everything I just described to you to me seems like taken right out of a CIA or Mossad manual. None of it makes any sense to me.
I don't sound Gnostic to me, you sound like someone who has one foot in the OT and the other in the NT. Someone who believes Jesus was sent by Yahweh to save a world which doesn't want to be saved.
Why start there? Why not evangelize your message of how you hope to defeat the matrix and the rules of reincarnation?
Attacking a story because it sounds contradictory (though there may be a number of omitted factors, like the 14 years Paul was silent as per Gal. 2:1) is usually not a firm place to begin. It sounds confrontational.
What words did Jesus use that you think should be defined as "divine spark"? How about "right action"? How about "enlightenment" and "liberation"? How can we determine what Jesus taught if we paraphrase all his words? He said "Thy faith hath saved thee." He said to the thief on the cross "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Thanks for your understanding.
Here's the link again to where I asked you previously (and still would love to know), "Do you want to live forever this time, or cease to exist? Why or why not?":
https://scored.co/c/Conspiracies/p/1ARdD7M2eP/the-us-is-a-corporation-/c/4eXvadgBPWi