What is Christian Morality

God would have levitated her and not died uselessly.

Your theology says that Jesus returned so to say he died is a lie. Dead people do not return and when they do it means they never really died.

Go back and listen to that Bishop as I do not have the patience to deal with a person who is willfully staying stupid and who wished to follow a satanic God and his immoral creed.

Regards
DL

 

While you ignore these that say all you need do is repent.

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

1 Timothy 2:4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

Come back after you read your own bible and understand the true goodness in it instead of holding fast to the evil.

You say it is not your place to Question God when scriptures say it is but as I said, you obviously have not read them.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.

Strange that you think God gave you a moral sense while stupidly thinking you are not supposed to use it.

Pardon the tone. It gets worse the more obtuse and stupid I think you are and get.

Regards
DL

 

I love to see a thinking mind instead of a dull dogmatic one. I might have had more patience with our friend above if I would have read you first.

True for the most part but you might not know of the Karaite branch of Judaism that agrees with much of what you put above on the spark of God and heaven within us.
They, like Gnostic Christians put man above God because when Jesus asked, --- Have ye forgotten that ye are Gods, Karaites, Like Gnostic Christians, yell out, --- no.

While the brain dead sheeple say, --- huh.

I agree fully.

Regards
DL

 

Not quite.

Gnostic Christianity, if it can survive and thrive while Christianity shrinks will have people know the actual good news still in the scriptures. People will just have to learn to not read myths literally as that hides the real message the sages wanted to pass up to us.

That we are the only Gods we can ever know threw Gnosis.

Regards
DL

 

Interesting video, but you have to completely build you're own Bible to even accept it as a philosophy. There is no way to take this philosophy to represent a factual god and religion.

 

Ah and thus you true character emerges. I knew it.

Your not here to learn about chrisian morality and have an intelligent discussion you are here to attack the faith and tell me my belief in a supernatural God and Jesus is stupid and get me to turn on my faith and get an emotional angry reaction out of me. I could see your arguments getting weaker and weaker and becoming devoid of substance. Knew it wouldn't be long till you came up with a statement like this.

I will give you the final word so go ahead and get your final childish insult in about my character or my intelligence but I am out.

 

To answer the OP, what is Christian morality, in case I did not specifically answer it yet is rather simple and unlike what others have posted is not the stuff of fairy tales, myth, and legend. In fact as in many cases the truth of an answer will ring true in some people and the simplicity involved tends to make the right answer, self evident. So with that said, what is Christian morality?

Christian morality is no different from any other morality, in that it is only achieved, not by self will, straining at the bonds, the harness of sin, but by no effort exerted at all, to exercise right action. Christian morality, as well as the morality of Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, is what happens naturally when the ego is transcended, where it loses all of its power to dictate the actions in relationship with others. The transcendence of the ego is the figurative death of the "self". For when this self is transcended, and it no longer is the driver of behavior and thinking, perfect morality can manifest. For all of sin is the response of a deeply self centered, selfish, gratification driven ego. And most of us consider this ego to be the real "you" and nothing exists within consciousness but this self image, constructed of memory. We are in effect our memories, which we say then is the individual. We then seek self gratification of this image created by memories, and not only physical gratification but the more subtle psychological gratification. So, whenever these gratifications hurt other human beings, we call these actions sin. So, we kill from gratification, or gain, which is also gratification, we steal, we screw our friend's wives, if she is agreeable, and do all sorts of crimes, out of the pursuit of pleasure. But these sins have a negative effect upon society, in that they create more sin, like getting even, seeking vengeance, which is gratifying to the victim, and these pursuits of gratification creates disorder and negative things instead of positive things.

Christ said something once that has been very confusing to the believers in fairy tales. He told the people listening to his teachings, to be perfect, even as the father in heaven is perfect. Or, to be sinless, yet given Christian doctrine and dogma, how can this be? And he told the whore to go and sin no more. Yet Christians believe no human can be sinless and only the son of god can be sinless. So, we must wheedle god incessantly in order that our sin be forgiven. And yet Christ still told us to be sinless, perfect. This can only be worked out by understanding sin and its origin, and understanding that all reborn humans are sons of god, and therefore capable of transcending the self, thereby stopping all sin, without even the effort of a feather. In fact, if effort is needed to stop a sin, you are lost, and do not understand at all. For if there is will power being exhibited, the self, the ego has not been transcended and you are playing a brain game, thinking the ego can fool itself.

This jewish tradition of blood sacrifice was carried forth into Christianity, while the corrupters of Christianity by men like Paul, brought forward this idea of magic blood having something to with addressing sin. Yet if you understand what creates sin, this idea of magic blood is utter nonsense and incoherent with the teachings of Christ. Of course you can use the idea of magic blood, relieving sin, saving humanity, if you use it as allegory or some other literary device, to intimate the death of Christ and his blood, as symbolizing the death, the transcendence of the ego, which is the only thing that would stop the sinning in an individual. And yet Christianity does not take it as allegory, but literally. And this is where the nonsense begins and people are sent off on a path that is meaningless and will never address sin, or being sinless. How can otherwise rational people believe in magic blood? LOL And to believe in it, they must ignore the prophets in the OT who told the jews that god said he never wanted their animal sacrifices!! So, if he never wanted them, why in the hell did the jews say he told them to do them? Well, apparently once again the jews said god said something he never said, and said the opposite. And this is why the god of Christ looks nothing like the monster god of the jews. The god of the jews and muslims is one helluva egocentric satanic monster while the god of Christ is a perfect Father, loving his children, and even his prodigal sons. But the people who are against Christianity, confuse the god of the jews with the god of another jew, Christ. And they even would call Christ evil. But this is only done when their contrived understanding of Christ is as unsophisticated and infantile as our faux liberal ideology which is devoid of any common sense.

 

No argument my friend. All religions are myth based. That does not mean we cannot analyse the myth for the messages the writers were trying to convey or apply moral thinking to them.

For instance, I cannot fathom how any Christian can adore a genocidal God who kills when he could just as easily cure.

The story never happened yet to adore even a mythical satanic God seems immoral to me.

Regards
DL

 

You have me pegged but not the way you think.

True that I think you are following a genocidal son murdering prick, and that your faith is only for fools, but I would rather you channel your idol worship to seeking God the way Jesus preached that we should.

I will be posting this later but it fits here well so I will let you preview it.

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Jesus is the way and that way is the Gnostic Christian way. Not Christianity’s way.

Isaiah 56:11) "They are shepherds who have no understanding; They have all turned to their own way, each on to his unjust gain, to the last one" But do not despair, for the day of judgment is at hand, for the day of judgment and the day of the LORD occupy the same time frame. All the dross will be burned away. (Zech 13:9) & (Malachi 3:3). In that day, "you will distinguish between the righteous and the wicked" (Malachi 3:1

Luke 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

Mark 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

The Luke and Mark quotes are referring to the following.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

For an extended view of that from my favorite philosopher. ----



You will note that the bible teaches Jesus’ way and Gnostic Christianity follows that good way, yet the church never teaches Jesus’ true way.

Why is Christianity ignoring and even hiding the only worthy Jesus and the teachings of his way?

Regards
DL

 

When I say ego, I am just defining it as it is perceived, in actuality. Or in the actuality revealed by perception. I perceive the ego to be anything but benign, and rather negative, given that I have never committed immoral acts without this ego or sense of self, manifesting itself in its pursuit of physical or psychological gratification. What the bible refers to as sin always involved hurting the other person, in this blind pursuit of gratifying either the physical senses, or the psychological self, which I refer to as the ego. So when I observe the ego, in action, I see nothing more than a life's stored memories, memories of things learned, memories of either positive interaction or negative interaction with other people, and experiences, good and bad, pleasant, unpleasant. And with this accumulation of memory, this entity is what interacts with the world, with other people. Memories are necessarily always of the past, and with the past, which is dead, I meet the world, I meet people, bringing with me this burden, which affects the present. And most times this burden turns the present into the past, turns the present in interaction into a corpse. So, if I had met you once, and you said or acted in a particular negative manner, this became memory, and the next time I meet you, there is a chance you could be quite a lovely person, with this meeting, but because of what I bring with me, the judgment that you are a bastard, you have little chance of correcting my feelings, my judgment of you. Surely most of us, if attentive, have personally experienced such a thing? So what is meeting, interacting with you today, is this ego, this bundle of memories. One would have to be extremely self aware of this movement I call the ego, in order for this not to happen automatically, and sadly enough, so few are that attentive and watchful when it comes to our egos and how they make the past the present, no nothing new can happen. How can goodness, morality come from this entity that deeply in always in the self gratification mode? It is like the guy who tells himself that he will not look at a particular female in a sexual manner, but then upon meeting her cannot help but notice her body, in a sexual manner because she is braless, with perky nipples straining against her thin t shirt. The ego immediately more likely than not is flooded with sexual gra

I find no goodness at all in this perception of my ego. The only goodness I have ever perceived, personally, has come about when the ego was no consideration at all, in fact, the absence of an ego affecting actions allows goodness, unselfish actions to present themselves to existence.

The ego, by its very nature is divisive. Where division exists conflict is a given.

I like Alan Watts, and attended some of his talks long ago. As you know he was ordained an Episcopal priest but then left the church and went out on his own. He was teaching, if that is the right word, basically what Aldous Huxley called the Perennial Philosophy, which is found in the canonical gospels and what is called in Gnosticism, the Gospel of Thomas. Of course who knows how many books were left out of what we call the NT? The gospel of Thomas should have been included, but what became the RCC would have had a problem in what became their doctrine if these so call gnostic books had been included. So it is very understandable why they were left out. For if they had been included, Christianity would have been different, for it would have been grounded upon the teaching of Christ, in regards to the inner kingdom, and the importance of individuals personally seeking that kingdom, instead of relying upon this absurd idea of magic blood, and the reliance upon Christian authority as found in the RCC, with its pope, bishops and priests. Not only would there be no need for these religious authorities, but such authority negates what Christ taught, in regards to seeking inwardly the kingdom of god.

It is my opinion that the gospel of Thomas, what it promotes, which is what Christ promoted is the genuine Christianity. Gnosis is fundamental, not magic blood of a jewish traditional sacrifice. The magic blood ideas destroyed what Christ taught, and instead of a religion being based on what God, via the instrument of the man, Christ, tried to tell humanity, this Christ was turned into another jewish sacrifice, which became the corner stone of what would become organized Christianity, the RCC. And we can see by looking at the history of the RCC, what this yielded, and it was just horrible and so alien to the teachings that came through Christ. And so instead of having a religion based upon the teachings of Christ, we got a religion about Christ, as he was turned into another idol to worship. Turned into a traditional blood sacrifice as if his physical death, a blood death, somehow magically saves humanity. The absurdity of it is astounding. And it put an end to the individual seeking the kingdom, which involves a transcending of the ego, from which all sin originates. A religion based upon this individual spiritual path would be totally different than a religion based upon a belief in magic blood and thus no individual seeking at all on the part of each person. This emphasis on magic blood effectively changed what should have been the foundation of Christianity. But what the wrong foundation gave us was religious authority, men in positions of worldly power, between man and the Creator. These authorities are against the teachings, contrary to the teachings but very good for man, who ruled over by an ego, wallowed in the position, ,power and authority which the magic blood yielded.

 

IMO, you are ignoring that humans are born with genes and instincts. While we possess the ability to sacrifice/compassion for others, this does not mean we are not wired to self-preservation, naturally.

 

Negative if you ignore that it is also the source of all you do that is good.

Do you do more good or more evil. If more evil, then yes curse your ego, bit if more good, give it the praise it deserves.

Eh, no.

Like sex between consenting adults who are not hurting another by cheating.

Masturbation, to many religious, is also a sin, yet no one is complaining about being hurt by it.

The bible, and Christians, venerate a genocidal son murdering and baby torturing God so if you are looking for a decent moral sense, you will not find it in Christianity.

That is our selfish gene at work and it defaults to cooperation when it can as that is the best survival setting and survival is our first priority and if you can see cooperation as good, as it does not create a victim, then you will see competition as evil as it does create victims.

You have overthought this issue from a wrong start by ignoring how good your ego is and thinking it to be evil. Get back to your instinctive roots and you might see things as I do my friend.

Insightful and on the mark. I did not quote the longer part above this but you are seeing 20/20 on the church of today not being what it is if Gnostic Christian thinking, a better way of thinking would have been included. There is still enough in there for the insightful to find though.

True. The last thing religions and governments want are people who can think for themselves and recognize the corruption in both governments and in religions.

Regards
DL

 

I agree.

The way I see things, we love war and having hate in our hearts, as they are the epitome of drama and we are a drama loving and seeking species.

That war love though, is motivated by our deeper feelings of love which are our default setting as it is a better survival strategy than hate and war.

We war, motivated by the love of doing the loving thing and war against those who we think are not doing the loving thing.

God is love, but not the way people missus that phrase. God better said, is war, motivated by love.

Regards
DL

 

And how do you get there?

A Mind Like Sky Jack Kornfield

"Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. In meditation we do this simply by acknowledging the moment-to-moment changing conditions—the pleasure and pain, the praise and blame, the litany of ideas and expectations that arise. Without identifying with them, we can rest in the awareness itself, beyond conditions, and experience what my teacher Ajahn Chah called jai pongsai, our natural lightness of heart. Developing this capacity to rest in awareness nourishes samadhi (concentration), which stabilizes and clarifies the mind, and prajna (wisdom), that sees things as they are.

We can employ this awareness or wise attention from the very start. When we first sit down to meditate, the best strategy is to simply notice whatever state of our body and mind is present. To establish the foundation of mindfulness, the Buddha instructs his followers “to observe whether the body and mind are distracted or steady, angry or peaceful, excited or worried, contracted or released, bound or free.” Observing what is so, we can take a few deep breaths and relax, making space for whatever situation we find."

https://jackkornfield.com/a-mind-like-sky/

 

I think you hit the nail on the head in your first paragraph. The God of Jesus was not the God of Abraham.

 

And this is why fundamentalism is such hypocritical nonsense.

 

Your post does not really address the inherent contradiction put forward in my post. Does the Catholic Seminary teach that the God of Jesus is not the God of Abraham ? (not) - how then do we reconcile the two contrasting characterizations of God ?

 

Holy moly what a bunch of apologetic nonsense. Aside from the fact that "new covenant theology" is barely 100 years old ... the majority of Christianity does not accept NCT.

You completely failed to address the main points of my post with anything rational. You can make analogies all you like about rooting weeds out of a field but, this does not change the fact that God gave the Jews a rule "Children are not to be killed for the sins of their parents" and then turned around and commanded the Israelites to kill children and babies for the sins of their parents.

What is a joke is for you to then try and justify God's actions on the basis of the sin's of their parents.

You can make up all the nonsensical justifications you like (the caananites were sinners and so on). This does not change the fact that God law to the Israelite's stated that children were not to be killed for the sins of their parents.

Then there is the obvious fact that God has not been very active in rooting out the weeks throughout human history. Your claim that God actually bothers with any such weeding out of evil is contradicted by the evidence.

 

What is your point - other than to emphasize the point that I made in relation to the NT being vastly different from the OT.

Your claim that the OT is not part of Christianity is abject nonsense. None of the main Christian denominations teach that the God of Abraham was not the God of Jesus (which was the point of the post).

Christianity does not claim "the God of Jesus is our God". Christianity claims that the "God of Abraham is our God" and Jesus was the God of Abraham.

Why then did Jesus (God of Abraham) contradict himself so many times ?

 

The reason the Old Testament was included in the Christian "Holy Bible" was to establish Jesus as the Messiah foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament. Jesus' teachings were in diametric contrast to standard Jewish interpretations of God, which is one great reason Jesus was crucified. Unfortunately, fundamentalist and evangelical Christians tend to concentrate on the more harsh teachings of the Jewish Old Testament rather than those of Jesus from the New Testament. The focus is dramatically different. The whole relationship between God and Man is completely different between the two. In terms of spiritual teachings, the Old and New Testaments are highly incompatible, and Christians who focus mostly on the Old Testament are missing the thrust of Jesus' teachings.

 

Yeshua thought that the stars would fall to the Earth. He may not be the best character to teach anyone anything.

 

I agree that the OT and NT are "highly" incompatible - this was the point of my previous post.

The early Pauline Christian Church (which was most of what remained of the Christian Church by the turn of the first century as the Chuch of the Judeo founders of Christianity - original disciples/Church of Jerusalem- was well on its way to being marginalized out of existence) did not think much of the OT.

http://www.torahresource.com/EnglishArticles/Fiscus Judaicus.pdf

The beliefs of the early Christians are highly incompatible with the beliefs of today's modern Christians - just as with the OT vs NT.

If you dig further one finds that the Pauline epistles are often incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. This is the reason why Christianity has at least two contradictory salvation formulations. "Faith alone/Sola Fide" and "Works + Faith". I would argue that Jesus preached a "works alone" formulation but this is, while related, a separate issue.

 

All ancient cultures searched for god, since the our logic does not always hold in life. Man went through agonizing searching process by trial and error.

It seems like the scattered half answers did not come together to form a cohesive set of concepts, addressing the workings of mind correctly, until after the communities got knitted closely due to wide spread use of iron and the advent of written language. Thus we see wise men (which, later, we called the founders of religions) coming up with the correct concept after about 650 BC. What went on before was the process of forming theories, and then modifying/discarding them. This process is very evident in Hinduism too (Hinduism goes back to before 1700 BC).

The Old Testament is the history of man's search for truth, not the conclusion. Jesus came up with the right answers. It is amazing that Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism say the same things as Jesus. Even Confucius and Zoroaster say nothing that contradicts Jesus. That gives me a pretty positive proof that this is the truth of life. All we have to do is to apply these rules in our life, to the best of our ability, and judge from the results. An angry person creates an angry world around him, and a loving person creates life that cares for him. Is this not enough proof that the golden rule: 'Do unto others, as you would have done unto you' works? Of course, most people do not have patience to try this for long enough time. Not every one gets quick results. But the fruits do come.

 

Congrats on knowing the rock on which Jesus based his ministry - The Golden Rule - Do unto others/treat others as you would be treated.

You are correct Buddha, Confucius et. al also stated this rule. In fact this rule dates at least as far back as Hammurabi's law code (~1800 BC).

Jesus however did not come up with the idea that this rule (as written in the NT... Matt 7:12 "the rule that sums up the law and the prophets") was the most important on his own. There was a famous Rabbi just before Jesus that preached this.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rabbi-hillel-quotes-on-judaism-and-israel

The world would be a better place if humans would follow this rule.

 

Too bad you weren't around to set Jesus of Nazareth straight on that point.

No they didn't. That's why they were mostly despotic.

That's funny. When I read the OT, what I see is hordes of people (save for a select few) running like Hell from the truth.