"Please.. call me 2020."
Satan - "I just don't want this year to end."
OT: Remembering 2020
OT: Remembering 2020
Dillon Wildcats 08’ 09’ 12’ 13’ 14’ 15’ 17’ State Champions
-
CITYSLICKER
- Berkeley Stags - 680 games and counting
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- Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2013 9:19 pm
Re: OT: Remembering 2020
680 - STAGS GAMES AND COUNTING
Re: OT: Remembering 2020
“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re: OT: Remembering 2020
“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re: OT: Remembering 2020
“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re: OT: Remembering 2020
“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re: OT: Remembering 2020
Manipulate science, education and politics for his own ends
There's always a price to pay
Powerful message
There's always a price to pay
Powerful message
Dillon Wildcats 08’ 09’ 12’ 13’ 14’ 15’ 17’ State Champions
Re: OT: Remembering 2020
I like it. Very powerful indeed. Fits well with my burgeoning assessment that the world is suffering, misery, and chaos and we're here to navigate it and bring some amount of order to it and reduce suffering as much as within our power, or at least our will.
I feel a lot people have this thing totally backwards, though I may be completely wrong. I just have an uneasy feeling that people treat Christ's crucifixion almost as a fortune cookie or golden ticket in life. Maybe an eternal get out of jail free card. It seems like some just keep it in their wallet or back pocket, go to church once a week and punch their ticket assured that their soul is assured ascension.
Was chatting with a preacher a few weeks ago. I pointed out that in the Old Testament, The Father was interacting with man. Then in the New Testament, the son was the intermediary and that it stands to reason that the third act will be the Holy Spirit. He told me that was exactly right. I have no idea if it is. I suppose I should look into it.
But rumors are about that a new awakening could come upon us when worshipping isn't the prosperity preachers, or the crowds that gather in their best clothes once a week to sing songs and recite passages. It's hard for me to grasp but something to the effect of...Christ is the son of God. And we are the children of God. Which some interpret to mean that Christ is our brother and that we are like him in more ways than we know. Or at least that there might be no limit to how much we could be like him without actually being the near perfect man he was.
I've been preached to that Christ WAS perfect but there's a powerful interpretation of Christs last hours on the Cross when he asks, "Father why have you forsaken me?" Being that Christ IS the father, it's a few people's interpretation that even God for a moment lost faith in himself and questioned the goodness of man.
It really makes a lot of sense to me that Christ was brought to earth basically to say, "No, no, this is how you should be doing it." And that his sacrifice was ultimately to endure the evil of the world and the evil of man so that at least we would have a model, a guide...a hero to show us the way. But it seems like for 2,000 years there's been people who followed the story of Christ's life and thought he lived the life that he did so that we wouldn't have to. It's like I know an awful lot of people for whom their spirituality seems nothing more than tossing a pinch of salt over their shoulder.
Sent an 11 minute video to a friend a while back and asked her to watch it and give me her thoughts. She said she didn't have time to watch it and replied with a tweet sized message that was more or less, "It's simple just blah blah blah and you're saved." And I thought, "Why would there be two great books and more than 2,000 years devoted to studying it if it could be condensed to the size of a matchbook. For something so deep and important people seem awfully confident that they have it all figured out. I keep coming back to the thought, "What is the limit of the good we could do? What is the limit of the good one man can do? And then multiply that times billions.
I just get the impression some people think they are licensed to navigate through the suffering with the idea in the back of their minds that one day they'll ascend and there'll be no more sin or suffering and it's then they'll live a Christ like life. A lot of people say they believe in God but boy howdy you watch them and they don't act like they feel the Almighty watching them. In some Facebook groups I was in recently people would exclaim Jesus' name and talk about how a politician was brought by God to save them and in the same comment would then exclaim with glee about dragging their political opponents out of their houses (presumably in front of their families) hand hanging them from a tree.
I've referenced the quote below before. It's kind of the Christian side of the video about the Devil. How people think the Devil is just evil incarnate or some manipulator who sits on a throne in a fiery Hell plotting against us. I think our souls are in much more jeopardy than most Christians realize like we're going to arrive at the big show and come up to the doorman and say, "It's ok...I'm with him." People at Christmas always say, "Remember the reason for the season." You rarely hear that sentiment during any other season but aren't all seasons for that reason?
"Who would have the audacity to claim that they believed in God, if they examined the way they lived. Who would dare say that? To believe, you think, to believe in a Christian sense — this is why Nietzsche said there was only ever one Christian, and that was Christ. To have the audacity to claim that, means that you live it out fully and that’s an unbearable task in some sense."
".....about Christ’s moment of crisis on the cross, when he cried out to God that he had been forsaken, and what that meant was that the conditions of human existence are so tragic that even God himself in human form lost faith for a moment in the goodness of being. A remarkable observation, because, well, if God himself would lose faith under such conditions, what would you expect from normal human beings confronted with what we’re confronted by?
To be able to accept the structure of existence, the suffering that goes along with it, and the disappointment, and the betrayal, and to nonetheless act properly, right, to aim at the good with all your heart, right, to dispense with the malevolence and your desire for destruction and revenge and all of that and to face things courageously and to tell the truth, to speak the truth and to act it out. That’s what it means to believe.
That’s what it means!
It doesn’t mean to state it! It means to act it out, and unless you act it out, you should be very careful about claiming it. And so I’ve never been comfortable saying anything other than I try to act as if God exists because God only knows what you’d be if you truly believed.
I mean, if you think about it in some sense, that’s the central idea in Christianity is that if you were capable of believing, it would be a transfiguring event, a truly transfiguring event. And I know people experience that to one degree or another, but we have no idea what the limit of that is. So we have no idea what the possibility is within each person if they lived a life that was maximally courageous and maximally truthful. You know, because maybe you’re running at 60% or 70% or 20%, and at cross-purposes to yourself. God only knows what you’d be, if you believed. And so, well, I try to act like I believe, but I’d never claim that I manage it, because it’s a lot to manage properly, and you have to be careful about claiming to manage things that you can’t manage, and so that’s part of the answer to that question."
Alright. I'm done mumbling. I just popped in to post a Spin Doctor's song.
I feel a lot people have this thing totally backwards, though I may be completely wrong. I just have an uneasy feeling that people treat Christ's crucifixion almost as a fortune cookie or golden ticket in life. Maybe an eternal get out of jail free card. It seems like some just keep it in their wallet or back pocket, go to church once a week and punch their ticket assured that their soul is assured ascension.
Was chatting with a preacher a few weeks ago. I pointed out that in the Old Testament, The Father was interacting with man. Then in the New Testament, the son was the intermediary and that it stands to reason that the third act will be the Holy Spirit. He told me that was exactly right. I have no idea if it is. I suppose I should look into it.
But rumors are about that a new awakening could come upon us when worshipping isn't the prosperity preachers, or the crowds that gather in their best clothes once a week to sing songs and recite passages. It's hard for me to grasp but something to the effect of...Christ is the son of God. And we are the children of God. Which some interpret to mean that Christ is our brother and that we are like him in more ways than we know. Or at least that there might be no limit to how much we could be like him without actually being the near perfect man he was.
I've been preached to that Christ WAS perfect but there's a powerful interpretation of Christs last hours on the Cross when he asks, "Father why have you forsaken me?" Being that Christ IS the father, it's a few people's interpretation that even God for a moment lost faith in himself and questioned the goodness of man.
It really makes a lot of sense to me that Christ was brought to earth basically to say, "No, no, this is how you should be doing it." And that his sacrifice was ultimately to endure the evil of the world and the evil of man so that at least we would have a model, a guide...a hero to show us the way. But it seems like for 2,000 years there's been people who followed the story of Christ's life and thought he lived the life that he did so that we wouldn't have to. It's like I know an awful lot of people for whom their spirituality seems nothing more than tossing a pinch of salt over their shoulder.
Sent an 11 minute video to a friend a while back and asked her to watch it and give me her thoughts. She said she didn't have time to watch it and replied with a tweet sized message that was more or less, "It's simple just blah blah blah and you're saved." And I thought, "Why would there be two great books and more than 2,000 years devoted to studying it if it could be condensed to the size of a matchbook. For something so deep and important people seem awfully confident that they have it all figured out. I keep coming back to the thought, "What is the limit of the good we could do? What is the limit of the good one man can do? And then multiply that times billions.
I just get the impression some people think they are licensed to navigate through the suffering with the idea in the back of their minds that one day they'll ascend and there'll be no more sin or suffering and it's then they'll live a Christ like life. A lot of people say they believe in God but boy howdy you watch them and they don't act like they feel the Almighty watching them. In some Facebook groups I was in recently people would exclaim Jesus' name and talk about how a politician was brought by God to save them and in the same comment would then exclaim with glee about dragging their political opponents out of their houses (presumably in front of their families) hand hanging them from a tree.
I've referenced the quote below before. It's kind of the Christian side of the video about the Devil. How people think the Devil is just evil incarnate or some manipulator who sits on a throne in a fiery Hell plotting against us. I think our souls are in much more jeopardy than most Christians realize like we're going to arrive at the big show and come up to the doorman and say, "It's ok...I'm with him." People at Christmas always say, "Remember the reason for the season." You rarely hear that sentiment during any other season but aren't all seasons for that reason?
"Who would have the audacity to claim that they believed in God, if they examined the way they lived. Who would dare say that? To believe, you think, to believe in a Christian sense — this is why Nietzsche said there was only ever one Christian, and that was Christ. To have the audacity to claim that, means that you live it out fully and that’s an unbearable task in some sense."
".....about Christ’s moment of crisis on the cross, when he cried out to God that he had been forsaken, and what that meant was that the conditions of human existence are so tragic that even God himself in human form lost faith for a moment in the goodness of being. A remarkable observation, because, well, if God himself would lose faith under such conditions, what would you expect from normal human beings confronted with what we’re confronted by?
To be able to accept the structure of existence, the suffering that goes along with it, and the disappointment, and the betrayal, and to nonetheless act properly, right, to aim at the good with all your heart, right, to dispense with the malevolence and your desire for destruction and revenge and all of that and to face things courageously and to tell the truth, to speak the truth and to act it out. That’s what it means to believe.
That’s what it means!
It doesn’t mean to state it! It means to act it out, and unless you act it out, you should be very careful about claiming it. And so I’ve never been comfortable saying anything other than I try to act as if God exists because God only knows what you’d be if you truly believed.
I mean, if you think about it in some sense, that’s the central idea in Christianity is that if you were capable of believing, it would be a transfiguring event, a truly transfiguring event. And I know people experience that to one degree or another, but we have no idea what the limit of that is. So we have no idea what the possibility is within each person if they lived a life that was maximally courageous and maximally truthful. You know, because maybe you’re running at 60% or 70% or 20%, and at cross-purposes to yourself. God only knows what you’d be, if you believed. And so, well, I try to act like I believe, but I’d never claim that I manage it, because it’s a lot to manage properly, and you have to be careful about claiming to manage things that you can’t manage, and so that’s part of the answer to that question."
Alright. I'm done mumbling. I just popped in to post a Spin Doctor's song.
“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson