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Hello, religion thread friends. I have been turning something over in my mind for a few months now, and while doing my periodic catch-up reading I realized I would be perfectly within my bounds to ask for some thoughts and input here! My faith is exceptionally important to me, and while I do not typically bring my personal beliefs up without direct inquiry I also usually do not have an issue with answering questions asked of me. One day last year my boss inquired what it was about this specific faith system that had kept it so central to my life for 20+ years. I answered with the short version: my religion is centered on truth, balance, order, honor, and righteous action, as a singular concept, and the ways in which it is demonstrated and expected of its followers is a manner that aligns directly with my heart and what is important to me. Both in my personal conduct and in how I conduct myself with others and influence the world around me. This is fairly oversimplified, but this oversimplification -- order, balance, etc -- was the answer I gave and it felt truthful and appropriate. I should clarify that my boss and I have a good relationship, but she is very much a Woman Of Science who can rarely rise above her kneejerk instinct to treat everything like debate club  She countered my explanation of my faith by saying, "Well isn't that every religion?"Setting aside whether or not that statement is factually true -- I truly just had very little idea what to do with this reaction! I chuckled and said, "Sure, maybe, but this one fits with me"; and conversation moved on. Religious debate just really isn't my forte, due partly to being in a place of ignorance with most faiths but mostly just because I don't feel it's my (personal) place to argue over the minutiae of beliefs that bring other people comfort. What on earth might I have said to politely defang that comment? That level of reductionism just struck such a wrong chord with me that -- obviously! -- it still comes to mind months later. I didn't like it all that much in relation to my personal faith, but I'm used to that being misunderstood/misinterpreted. Throwing "every" religion into a great big stinky heap together was what really needled me, and just saying "not EVERY religion!" is both a poor defense in general and also leaves the distasteful implication that she was correct to a degree. I try to learn from social gaffes and stumbles for any hypothetical "next time", but somehow I consistently draw a blank on this one. Should I have just said "Well that's hideously reductive" or... what? Is there anything I might have said that was persuasive and insightful? Maybe not to her, specifically, since I know her well enough to know dropping it was my most prudent recourse; but what might one of you have said in response to that kind of take?
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Apr 23, 2022 18:14
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 22:57 |
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 boundaries have never been her especial strong suit.
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Apr 23, 2022 18:31
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That is great 
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May 3, 2022 14:16
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Josef bugman posted:In answer to the fired up part, I don't like it when people say that "humanity is to blame" mainly because it feels unfair? I mean if you build galaxies, start the very process of life and can do anything within the universe it feels churlish to go "this is your fault" to people who cannot do that. A_Bluenoser posted:The breach seems to have something to do with humans having consciousness and the knowledge of good and evil without necessarily having the power to do good and avoid doing evil - basically having some of the knowledge of God but not actually being God and therefore not able to actually use that knowledge well. Keromaru5 posted:Also, the Word of God through whom all things were made. His divinity--and his death and resurrection--lend his teachings their authority. I wonder if a non-Christian perspective on this discussion might offer another lens with which to examine it, Josef? I have been exploring my own beliefs lately in a way that has had me doing a lot of reading and studying of concepts of divine jurisdiction -- something more relevant in polytheism than monotheism, since the latter tends to equate divinity with omnipotence much more freely than the former. If a Christian needs a favor in any given domain, they have but one guy to ask. Some other folks need to sort through and identify a divinity that has power in that field, will exercise power in that field, and might be reasonably assumed willing to exert that power for the person petitioning. Different religions, different understandings of "the rules" and different jurisdictional divisions. I would argue, however, that from either direction -- polytheism, where different Gods have different specialties, or monotheism, where one God does it all -- the human world, realm, reality is one where Divinity does not have natural jurisdiction. By its very nature, our existence is separate from a God's. For polytheism, separations of domains and influences is part of the design; but for monotheism (specifically, of course, we discuss Christianity) the God relinquished direct divine authority over humanity's realm when he allowed for free will. However, one can give up authority and then later regain it by establishing and exercising a valid claim. God(s) enjoy an ability of their station to exert influence (to varying degrees of efficacy) anywhere they can validate as their own. In polytheism, for example, the Egyptian pharaohs were considered at once human and also the incarnation of (usually) Heru, the rightful heir to Divine power, on earth. Thereby, at that place and during that time, the Divine had established and could exert influence in the human realm, through that station of clearly recognized shared authority. The Christian God incarnating within a mortal man, conceived, birthed, and then eventually experiencing a version of death, follows those rules of divine jurisdiction. The monotheistic God had relinquished direct influence over the human daily life, and then discovered maybe a little interference or direction was not only warranted, but to his followers' betterment: living mortals need roadmaps, sometimes, at the very least, because we have a thousand weaknesses and short sightednesses that most divine beings forget about or don't need to worry about working around -- especially if they are a monotheistic God and thereby understood as omnipotent. Jesus as Man and God was (is), literally, his God setting his foot back in our world and re-establishing authority that he had previously surrendered, in order to help correct the course we had begun taking. But, on account of him utilizing a piece of polytheistic logic to do so, the influence is much more diluted than it once was. The importance of Jesus as man -- as understood by a polytheist, but again, perhaps my logic chains are ones that you can follow as well, Josef -- is it makes that God, whom Jesus also is, "one of us", and so dwells within the human reality and may influence and exert authority over it, but imperfectly and still forced to try and make a balance with our chaotic manifestations of individual will. LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jun 15, 2023 |
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Jun 15, 2023 16:06
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Prurient Squid posted:I like the idea that mythology is reflection of the questions being asked in a certain period.  btw, thank you for that post Bill!
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Jun 16, 2023 18:04
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Josef bugman posted:Thank you for the perspective, and I do appreciate everyone's thoughts but I want to poke at some bits of this. As a matter of full disclosure, I do not believe a, or the, monotheistic God is actually omnipotent. I agree with you that while Gods as we believe in them are extraordinary, omnipotence is a different concept altogether. The Christian God being omnipotent is, however, a central tenet of that faith system, so to engage in good faith (pun intended) I feel as though I must accept the quality of omnipotence, at least, as understood as fact. In the language of his religion, he is constrained by a gentleman's agreement in the name of free will; I tend to personally understand this as the manifest (mythological, if you will, with thanks to Bongo Bill) explanation behind why he cannot interfere, rather than the actual reason e.g. simply that, without people actively believing and enacting his prophet's teachings to give him the doorway through which to enter and be present: he can't. He is powerful but not omnipotent, and he has rules to follow just like all of the other manifestations of Divinity, but he has spent a long time obfuscating them as much as possible while being and staying Top
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Jun 17, 2023 19:53
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Bar Ran Dun posted:It doesn’t have to be at all. Look at it a different way, omnipotence is an idea, a symbol we came up with to point at a reality. Our constructed symbol isn’t the central tenet of the religion. The revelation of the religion was Jesus. Everything that isn’t the event of Jesus is our talk about Jesus. So that turns the question into participation in particular denominations that use particular symbols (omnipotence) to talk about God and how literally the symbol is interpreted in the denominations that use it. That is a really interesting point, thank you! I was raised in a conservative Baptist family, and my pre-high school years were spent in a very small Baptist school, so my impression of Christian lore is shaped strongly by the faith and belief expressions I encountered within that denomination. They were very literal, and doubt or skepticism was tantamount to heretical disbelief. I very much wanted to believe the things they did but I never could convincingly enough. When I finally (I say finally, but I was ten... maybe twelve? it had felt like a very long time.) finally did recognize real Belief in myself it was for a different God in a different faith system altogether. Whoops.  Josef bugman posted:That's a fair old perspective. Not one I share, but I can see where you are coming from. Thank you! Thank you for responding! Recently I have been trying to sort my understanding of belief, faith, religion into something I can really understand within myself and articulate, and so I appreciated the exercise. I had never considered myself "religious" because "religious" has always been synonymous to me with "Christian", but it's been made exceptionally clear to me of late I need to start thinking of religion, and being religious, in vastly different terms. Like I mentioned to BRD above, I sort of stumbled into an unshakable sense of "belief" well before I actually understood what belief and religion even are. So now I am doing some remedial work
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Jun 17, 2023 21:11
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Nessus posted:My own, wholly personal take is that God or an entity which corresponds to the Christian idea of God exists, and may have astounding power over things on a planetary scale, but that this Person is not necessarily the creator of the universe and all things within it. But as with a lot of religious things, you run into some problems in between "unthinkably high but finite" and "infinite". This is much of how I see it too, thank you for putting it all to words! I think as well that a lot of the gulf between "unthinkably high but finite" and "infinite" exists in accordance with human perspective. There are things that we might call miracles or answered prayers or acts of God, and we recognize them by their efficacy and improbability, but we don't really know where any of the things we consider magical or miraculous actually rank on the potent Divine ability scale -- nor what that scale's bounds might be. Perspective is tricky. My pigeon was really impressed the first couple times I used a light switch. LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jun 17, 2023 |
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Jun 17, 2023 22:38
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Josef bugman posted:Ahhh see that's super cool, I've never had that feeling myself, but I am still glad to hear it! The Christians I grew up around spoke intensely of the love and safety they felt from God, but also of a sense of terrifying awe that made it clear it was not the kind of love I had ever yet experienced, being an actual child. But they were equally intense in their disapproval of me not experiencing the "right" emotions for God, in a way that made me extremely conscious of the fact I loved God wrong, or just not enough maybe. I felt the absence of feeling the kind of Belief all the adults and seemingly other children around me felt too. Eventually, something began happening in my life that necessitated my prayers and praying to my family's God continued to leave me feeling alone and wrong. I prayed instead to a God from an ancient history book I had read and I felt it -- that love and safety and then immediately behind that a little bit of terror that I had felt so heard. Religion was from then on a very confusing thing for me, but I have always been able to center back on Belief, because I felt it when I needed it and knew it by its name. Prurient Squid posted:Spinoza's interpretartion of omnipotence isn't that God can do anything and could choose to do things differently. It's God is cranking it up to 11 and blasting out 100% of his omnipotence all the time and what we get is all there is. This is extremely interesting, thank you! I suspect this is one of those posts that will float back to mind at an opportune time -- this thread is very good for that, I appreciate everyone who shares their thoughts here.
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Jun 18, 2023 16:56
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I really appreciate that, sinnesloeschen. Thank you. 
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Jun 19, 2023 01:47
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Personally I think our relationship with the truth and the real has that character, it’s dynamic rather than fixed and unchanging. Edit: but some folks find that threatening if they aren’t prepared for it when they encounter it. Could I impose upon you to expand on this? Much of why I have been redoubling my inquiries into faith and religion is that it feels as though things -- ~mystical things~ -- the world itself is changing and evolving in a way that settles itself very neatly in harmony with my personal beliefs but is antithetical to the world that I was told about growing up. Magic, for example. I never believed in magic or miracles until pretty recently, and admitting that I believe in it now, even if I staple six pages of addendums and footnotes and explanations to that belief, still feels hideously old-school or new-age in exactly the way I have always explicitly tried to avoid. But regardless of my caveats and pussyfooting, the statement stands: today, I believe in magic. Five years ago, I did not. But as you say, life is dynamic, so it makes sense that reality might be too. What your post makes me wonder is -- is this thing that I believe in now new to all of us, and not just me? Have enough people been exploring reality and ability and pushing enough boundaries over the last few years that something fundamental is different now? It's not like a huge shared event rocked the entire world three years ago or anything like that, I guess. Obviously my personal questions about magic and Gods' earthly influences are not the ones I am asking you to answer, here, but they have been hammering at my door for the last couple years and why I am keen to understand your thoughts. edit: Tias: if you have anything you would like to share on this topic I would love to hear it. LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jun 19, 2023 |
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Jun 19, 2023 20:26
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Thank you, I will!
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Jun 19, 2023 23:44
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two fish posted:Hey, thank you for those very detailed replies, I'm enjoying Something Awful so far. Oh!! I didn't even notice that you are new to the site! Welcome, new friend
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Jun 20, 2023 01:02
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Azathoth posted:I definitely need to read Tillich. I bought a Kindle copy of Dynamics of Faith after BRD's recommendation Monday. I am reading it a bit slowly but thus far I would highly recommend it. The going is only slow because it is requiring me to rearrange a lot of the pieces I have been holding in the wrong ways for a long time. His definition of idolatrous concerns is the version of Christianity I grew up with to a lower case t (sans serif). Their ultimate concern was the worship of God. Not the understanding and enacting of his teachings and living the way that God instructed, but the actual act of performing unconditional love and worship. Conversely, my relationship with my faith is such that my ultimate concern -- one that I acknowledged to myself as such a year ago, the first time this thread introduced the term to me -- is ma'at, cosmic truth, balance, harmony, justice, what-is-right, and working in service of that, and appropriate worship of my Gods is guided by that concern but worshipping them is not the concern itself. I have gotten a lot of poo poo for my faith over the years, especially early in life -- told it wasn't real and encouraged to feel shame about what I believe in. But the first few sections of this work are setting parameters that say of the two of them, that sect of conservative Christianity and the ancient religion they considered a modern joke, I had a true faith the entire time. Brings one to tears a little if one isn't careful. Thanks Bar.
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Jun 22, 2023 21:02
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Doing a specific thing that he wants you to do, or anything that he wants you to do? I hope it is a meaningful experience for you in either case.
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Jun 25, 2023 22:13
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Prurient Squid posted:Maybe all God wants me to do is heal. I believe any God worth our worship should want us to be able to feel healthy and whole. If there is something you want to invest time in healing in yourself and you're ready to do so, that sounds like an appropriately Godly task to set before you. Rarely an easy one though, so if I am understanding you correctly, allow me to offer you some human encouragement.
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Jun 27, 2023 02:15
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Prurient Squid posted:I just noticed a similarity between Spinoza and Taoism While I am not overfamiliar with either of the named schools of thought I would personally say Yes. An essential omnipresent essence that thousands of faiths know by thousands of names and understand as best they can through their individual lenses of the world has always been part of how I have interpreted what we call religious belief. Incidentally, I am halfway through this Tillich book and every single section is expanding the understanding of faith and Divinity that I have fought to put together for myself over my lifetime in the most incredible way. My boyfriend expressed surprise several months ago that I did not consider myself religious -- "You're the most religious person I know!" he, a former theology major, said -- and I am realizing that... yeah, he weren't wrong.
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Jun 28, 2023 13:52
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Yeah, I was one of the people who saw "religious" as a dirty word for a very long time. 
LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 14:24
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Nessus posted:I mean, a high-ranking Satanist rebelling and striking out on his own with his legions is the least surprising thing in the world. 
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Jun 29, 2023 03:39
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Spacegrass posted:At ages 18 to 22 I considered myself a Laveyian Satanist (a different kind of atheist) I'm not saying It's a super bad religion. (And/or philosophy), but it can make some people wild. I smoked weed, drank, smoked, and got into hard drugs for about 6 months. I and my friends in chat rooms would harass Christians, Which I feel bad about; since I've found Jesus and read any spiritual book I could get my hands on when I went to prison for basically; being a retarded grown kid. I still don't understand religion 100%, but I'm a dedicated Christian now and my head and sanity are clear. Thanks for sharing this, Spacegrass. Most of the outspoken Christians I have known have been the kind that, as Cyrano said, leave a painful lasting impression. I really appreciate hearing from people for whom it has done powerfully good things. I don't know who I'd be today without my own faith, but I know I would be much worse off -- and it sounds like regardless of the names of the faiths in play, you and I have that experience of religious grace in common. I think that's nice. killer crane posted:Dynamics of Faith That's the one!
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Jun 29, 2023 15:46
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Mad Hamish posted:In that case I'd suggest Weird is Welcome, imo. The more diversity of faiths willing to engage and understand one another the better. e: ha, I just peeked at your post history in here. Mad Hamish posted:Look, I'm just saying, we didn't have all these problems we see in today's world back when we were still burning incense unto the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink-offerings to Her.  to Her.
LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 19:03
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for a copy of the Azoetia and if you can stomach it then go wild.
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Prurient Squid posted:I told the clerk about this today and he knew exactly what I meant. About a feeling of certainty without needing to make it into an opinion. It's how he feels about Quakers. Squid, your post about that feeling of certainty reinforced by seeing a literal sign was really interesting to me; signs, auspices, omens were an important aspect of my religion when it was a modern religion, as they were for many of the religions that were its contemporaries. But nowadays -- in my experience -- seeing signs and omens is a quick way to get called crazy or, even worse, start perceiving yourself as crazy. My willingness to accept an unusual or timely sighting as a "sign" has increased over the last year and a half, but I still fight my rationality and fear of being perceived poorly for my beliefs. Tillich has been helping me address and find a peace with this: again and again in his discussion of symbols, of mysticism, of faith vs reason I am accepting that seeing, understanding, and responding to signs and symbols is part of the language of faith and how we experience it. This book has a number of sections that have aided in my untangling of my own prejudices, but here's one I got to just last night: Dynamics of Faith posted:[T]he estrangement of faith and of reason in themselves and in their mutual relationship must be overcome and their true nature and relation must be established within actual life. The experience in which this happens is a revelatory experience. The term “revelation” has been misused so much that it is difficult to use it at all, even more so than the term “reason.” Revelation is popularly understood as a divine information about divine matters, given to prophets and apostles and dictated by the divine Spirit to the writers of the Bible, or the Koran, or other sacred books. Acceptance of such divine informations, however absurd and irrational they may be, is then called faith. Every word of the present discussion contradicts this distortion of the meaning of revelation. Revelation is first of all the experience in which an ultimate concern grasps the human mind and creates a community in which this concern expresses itself in symbols of action, imagination and thought. Wherever such a revelatory experience occurs, both faith and reason are renewed. Their internal and mutual conflicts are conquered, and estrangement is replaced by reconciliation. This is what revelation means, or should mean. I quote that section to help me say that if you had that feeling of revelatory certainty, followed immediately by a sign that confirmed what you were feeling, and furthermore a community member with whom you spoke understood your interpretation of the experience as a sign -- it is my turn to speak with certainty -- you were given that knowledge with purpose. It will help guide you. One of my favorite quotes to come from my own faith is that ma'at, cosmic balance and harmony, "lies as a path in front even of he who knows nothing." Knowing that following ma'at will guide me safely forward reassures me every day. Whatever your name is for the energy that I know as ma'at, it is laying out your path for you to follow if you so choose. Dynamics of Faith also posted:Theologians sometimes have contrasted faith and mystical experience. They say the distance between faith and the ultimate can never be bridged. Mysticism tries to merge the mind with the content of its unconditional concern, with the ground of being and meaning. But this contrast has only limited validity. The mystic is aware of the infinite distance between the infinite and the finite, and accepts a life of preliminary stages of union with the infinite, interrupted only rarely, and perhaps never, in this life by the final ecstasy. And the faithful can have faith only if he is grasped by the content of his ultimate concern. Like sacramentalism, mysticism is a type of faith; and there is a mystical as well as a sacramental element in every type of faith. For me, the auspice that really hit me over the head was in April. Just about as soon as the calendar year ticked over I started getting a particular deity with Whom I had never had a relationship pointed out to me, like, a lot. A whole bunch of signs I was grudging about accepting as signs started popping up wherever She was concerned, but I was kind of holding out for lack of a better term. I managed to rationalize away every individual occurrence, even though it was getting pretty difficult to dismiss everything as a whole. Then on Earth Day I straight up got sent a white dove, Her sacred bird, a few hours after I had held a conversation with my coworker about doves in mythology, a particular God for Whom they were a symbol, and how (heretofore unrelated) I had always wanted a pet pigeon.  Check my post history for pigeon/dove pictures if you like, I wrote about him in the Bird Crazies thread a few days ago. Okay. Very well. Signs are real. I am listening.
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Jul 2, 2023 16:13
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Cyrano4747 posted:It was a post genesis 7th day joke Also I got/laughed at your joke, fear not 
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Jul 2, 2023 17:04
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I am really glad that post was helpful, Squid -- I hope that the books you bought are too. and Nessus, your post is in turn helpful for me; thank you. That was actually exactly the problem I was having with this God showing up in my life, Hamish -- point of origin. The Egyptian pantheon has embodied the only Divine relationship I have ever experienced in my life and I have never wanted or needed more. But I had been having similar experiences to what you describe with Aset, centered for me around Inanna/Ishtar of Mesopotamia. I don't know anything about Mesopotamian religion! Or didn't, anyway. I did learn She was syncretized with Aset at a couple points, actually, up to and including being addressed as a Queen of Heaven. So maybe showing up unexpectedly is just how the Queens roll. Once I had even decided if it was okay for me to work Ishtar into my personal religious practices I then had to figure out how, exactly, to honor Her without straying too far from the forms of worship I am used to providing. What helped me wasn't actually the Aset connection, but realizing Ishtar also had connections to Astarte -- I remembered that name, Astarte was in The Contendings as a foreign Goddess given to Set as a bride/consolation prize when Heru is declared rightful king of Egypt. I have always felt some sympathy for that Goddess, who did not seem to have much of a choice in the matter and Set seems like a jerk to me, personally. The deity I have been encountering remained most strongly identified as Ishtar, though, not Astarte, so this forced me to do a lot of thinking about syncretism in ways I had never really had to summon a personal understanding of before. How it happened, why it happened, what it really means in terms of Divine identity. Previously I have always just been able to go "oh those guys? They don't matter, They're other people's Gods." I have recently had to approach a lot of things I have held as the Truth as, perhaps, just a Truth instead. Here's a neat paper on polytheism someone sent me a little while back -- there is a part that talks about "if we believe Gods are beings with will and agency They can absolutely choose to recruit worshippers outside Their usual pool if They want" that provided a very helpful perspective for me. It sounds like you have already figured out your relationship with Aset but you may enjoy reading it anyway! https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/700490695886241922/1104923732805439628/amrita-university-talk.pdf Also, at us having loosely parallel old pantheon experiences.
LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jul 4, 2023 |
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Jul 2, 2023 20:21
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Nessus posted:"Oh, Lord, when I drowned, why did you not send me rescue?" This comes to mind a lot.
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Jul 2, 2023 20:22
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That bit of Exodus is interesting to me. I recall it only faintly, and upon trying to Google the passage just now my work Internet filter seems to block a lot of the sites with direct Bible quotations lol, but I recall wondering about some of the implications of the confrontation. Both the Egyptian and Israelite Gods were working magic through the priests/Moses and Aaron. Even though Aaron's snake swallows the other snakes, that's still strong implication that not only were/are the Egyptian Gods real and capable of working extraordinary magic, followers of the Hebrew God were also capable of working magic through Him -- something always seen to be demonic or pagan in origin today. Speaking of snakes, an article about how their symbolism got warped as they passed between competing religions -- bonus includes another prominent Queen of Heaven figure. https://mythologymatters.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/yahwehs-divorce-from-the-goddess-asherah-in-the-garden-of-eden/ LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 12:21
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Snap, that is a really interesting piece for my "serpents in religious symbolism" puzzle. Thank you! It dovetails (pun intended!) neatly with:that article posted:Serpents were also considered wise and sources of knowledge, and thus were used in divination. (The Hebrew noun for serpent (nāḥāš) connotes divination; the verb nāḥaš means to practice divination, and observe omens/signs.) The negative aspects of snakes/serpents seem to dominate the positive ones in today's cultural awareness, and I have been interested in how that developed. Jesus emphasizing the positive aspect of the serpent is great, thank you. LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 12:36
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Squizzle posted:you have created an appealing opening for me to ramble about a thing i enjoy and by golly im turbo-high enough to steer my posting-barque thru aforesaid opening 
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Jul 4, 2023 12:19
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Prurient Squid posted:The quote about prioritising the inner over the outer really resonated with me and got me thinking. I highly recommend practicing the sort of internal contemplation you are alluding to here, for what it's worth. Being aware of and able to recognize your internal feelings and motivations is an incredibly powerful tool. It's something I started consciously doing when I became a moderator back in 20...13? It was important to me that whenever I took (or didn't take) action I could explain why I made my choice if I was confronted about it. I found that I liked the person I was when trying to be so conscious of all my emotional reactions and choices more than the person I was when I didn't. Like a lot of us, I have a share of trauma and baggage that can make me more reactive than I would like to be; but being reactive, either online or off, tends to lead to worse or at least more tempestuous outcomes than examining the situation and how I feel about it and why I feel about it and understanding all that before I allow it to influence my interactions with the world. I spent time learning to apply the same self-examination I used online, to daily interactions in situations in the rest of my life. Searching for my own most truthful understanding of a situation helps me find balance, and it is wildly effective for me. All that said, I agree strongly with Bar that there are plenty of factors in the world that are rooted in strong external reality, which examining and understanding yourself won't allow you to alter or escape; you have to interact with or work around them. But having that ability to seek understanding of yourself can also be applied in ways that will help you there too.
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Jul 16, 2023 17:25
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I am not of the religions you specifically inquired after but I absolutely know that feeling you are talking about. I don't think you're nuts. My love for the Divine as I know it brings me joy, fulfillment, and purpose. When I am honoring my faith through my actions I feel like I am experiencing true union with that love and it feels like it heals me. To your question, I have been finding study of the structures and concept of faith incredibly helpful in my personal understanding of how to really express my relationship with belief in the Divine to myself, even. It might not be necessary for you to really explore and find structure for your own relationship with Divinity/the Creator, but I doubt you would regret having done so.
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Jul 18, 2023 19:07
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A Bad King posted:I wanted to ask about the sensation of a personal and deeply intimate relationship with the Creator, and whether you feel closer to that being through Mass or just through Christianity and the sacraments in general, and how it might help me put a peg on my own thoughts. Allow me to focus on this segment, then -- I think there is a lot of dialogue available to be had with the posts you've made and so I should narrow down my own response to the part I mean to engage with directly. The book I have been reading that thread regular Bar Ran Dun recommended me is Dynamics of Faith, by Paul Tillich, and once again I will quote it to support my own personal thoughts here: quote:The immediate expression of love is action. Theologians have discussed the question of how faith can result in action. The answer is: because it implies love and because the expression of love is action. The expression of love is action. For me, religiously, that is perceiving and acting in accordance to ma'at, my faith's central understanding of the universal Divine as balance, truth, and harmony. I express my love for my Divine by studying and performing ma'at. Any time I make the conscious choice to uphold the cosmic order of what-is-right in a way that is to my personal disadvantage, I am demonstrating that love and I feel closer to its originating source. The Creator, the Divine, as you understand it, loves you on a personal level; you may not feel it needs* you, but that is irrespective of the fact that if you choose to take action on its behalf (and, yes, opening a discussion of it and how you might evolve your relationship with and understanding of it is absolutely action) you are demonstrating clearly your own love within that reciprocal equation. Joining a church or established religion might help you find your path closer to that love; it might not. But beginning to investigate the ways you understand and reciprocate love from your Creator are great first steps upon it. *whether or not Divinity needs us is a whole nother thing, to my mind, fwiw LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jul 18, 2023 |
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Jul 18, 2023 19:56
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I am happy I was able to phrase things in a way that clicked for you. Do take the time you need to absorb and organize new knowledge before jumping to new active action, imo; processing is an action too. Waiting and thinking are actions.A Bad King posted:Could you elaborate [on the Divine needing us]? I am extremely curious. A Bad King posted:The golden rule be worship. I know this divine wants us to behave toward one another with the love it has for us, toward one another. It teaches this obvious truth through its own action toward its creation. We fail all the time, but the goal is to be an independently acting force of love in this place, or we're just going to suffer needlessly without knowing love. We're beloved children who are asked to put the poo in the potty and resist the ape brain urge to hit the cat. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah You have provided your own answer here! For me, acting with ma'at is worship. Behaving towards others with love is worship. I understand the Divine as needing us because it, by definition, cannot love others for us. It needs us to demonstrate ma'at, love, forgiveness, what-have-you, as individuals, toward other individuals, independently, and foster all those things in others as it does for us. We are in a relationship with the Divine while we honor it, and relationships require more than one attending party to exist. LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jul 18, 2023 |
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Jul 18, 2023 20:44
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A Bad King posted:Okay so why the drat ape brain?! This is probably a terribly contentious question for a lot of people, and while I think there are enough commonalities in most people's ideas of Divinity that Divinity can be discussed generally, it is a bit more complicated to inquire after the generalities of its opposite. I can tell you the specifics of it in relation to my faith, but I'm not sure how helpful it will be. From what I have observed over my lifetime, your question is one that seven religions would answer seven different ways, and every member of each of those seven faiths would have a different degree of acceptance of their own religion's answer. In my case, I understand the reason for all those negative forces in reality as isfet, the opposite of ma'at. Ma'at is itself defined (in part) by the idea of Balance; and for Balance to exist, it must of course be balanced against something. Isfet is wickedness, disorder, injustice, and violence, in contrast to ma'at as truth, order, justice, harmony. If everything was in harmony at all times of its own accord, harmony would not exist as a concept at all. It would simply "be." Ma'at cannot exist without isfet; the inverse is true as well. One is the inherent counter to the other. As a result of this, you might see how within the framework of my specific faith, the Divine has a mutual, reciprocal relationship with us that does involve the word "need". Isfet is not seen as a natural, primordial force; rather it is caused through action (or inaction) taken that is not in line with universal balance. It is countered by action, or inaction, that is in line with balance, with ma'at. Without humans actively working in pursuit of truth and justice, the easy, selfish low road of isfet will create chaos and entropy and society (and beyond, if left unchecked) will slide into violence, selfishness, and disrepair. Creating isfet through unjust actions creates further isfet. Imagine a person cutting another person off in traffic and causing a collision. Chaos! Many people are affected! Following ma'at via harmonious action, in this same example, is much harder to see -- being a little patient, waiting for the appropriate time to change lanes, not causing a collision, everyone nearby continues their commute without stress and harm. One of these is objectively the better choice for the entire sphere of reality around you; you and others all benefit from making the harmonious choice. But making the chaotic choice is easy, and if a person is not mindful of the differences, they will create the hate, the strife, the harm, you ask after above; and it will multiply. Your username is pretty on-point for me to have gone on for a bit about ma'at and isfet, actually. One of an Egyptian king's primary duties -- the most primary, in fact -- was upholding and propagating ma'at, to honor the Gods, secure peace for the people, and hold isfet at bay.
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Jul 18, 2023 22:58
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Valiantman posted:Oh, by the way, your long posts are very informative, Bird! It's curious how much in common there is with what you desbribe and Christian ethics. Oh, thank you so much for saying that, Valiant! As I’ve mentioned a few times previously, my beliefs are ones I was fortunate enough to find an outlet for very early in life. They were formative and they have remained central for me since. But — since they happen to be beliefs rooted in something with a very “pop culture” understanding that cannot be ignored in modern day, I have always been very reluctant to discuss them openly with — anyone, really. I am very appreciative of ABK’s questions allowing me to practice frank discussion of something so important to me with the language I have been learning here and elsewhere, and I am additionally appreciative of people taking the time to provide a little input or feedback on it. Further impacting my confidence/ability is the fact that, especially recently, there are a lot of people who have been finding a sense of identity within Egyptian contexts, who might easily see my relationship with the religion as something it’s not if I do not grow comfortable discussing it with care and honesty. So yes, thank you!Nessus posted:I think a lot of basic truths aren’t that different even if your ultimate theories are. I believe this is a lot of how the RCC ingests so much of the Greek philosophy they do. And to your second point, I think Nessus has much of the right of it here. As I was reading discussion of the Holy Spirit I was thinking about how it being presented as “the Divine being a part of/moving through you” maps to my understanding ma’at as the universal energy of the Divine, with which we can participate and by which we can feel moved, and the figure of God Himself (I mean no disrespect by the immediately following comparison) maps to my understanding of all my individual polytheistic Gods/figures of divinity as being made of, but separate from, that energy. Jesus is of course his own thing, he is all you guys.  But I think a lot of different faiths rooted in a search for truth have arrived at the same wellspring from which to drink, we all simply have different implements and came in from different angles with different levels of thirst and willingness to share.
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Jul 20, 2023 17:09
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Gaius Marius posted:Reading this kind of thing just makes me shake my head. What exactly is it that people feel the need to denigrate works they so clearly lack understanding on. Is modern culture misunderstanding Dante’s Hell as the Christian Hell, the Christian version of modern culture misunderstanding Egyptian funerary texts as being the body of the religion? Because I don’t think Hamish meant their comment as harshly as you may have perceived it, but man have I felt what you seem to be feeling here, within a different context
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Jul 20, 2023 17:11
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A Bad King posted:A few people use that all-encompassing love we experience beyond our periphery and in this world, and take the words that attempt to put a peg of human understanding on something so vast, and hurt others with it. Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes using it to establish conformity or hierarchies where they sit in power over others. Maybe even intentionally, in order to do good. Not that you need a stranger’s approval here, but I think this is a fantastic takeaway from the current rhetoric and a great to-do list. Thank you for coming in and prompting so much discussion!
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Jul 20, 2023 17:31
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A Bad King posted:I feel like a lot of these religions in the west, especially the ones I've been exposed to, have cross-pollinated ideas and precepts to explain something we all feel. I once overheard “People aren’t always right. But right is always right.” I think if we search for it we can all sense that ineffable Truth there, just beyond our senses, but not always beyond our reach. We are all doing our best to grasp it. That’s where Faith comes in: helping you try to sense what is right, so you can make that jump. A Bad King posted:WHO DID THIS TO THEIR MEMORY? Was it the British?! I understand the Victorians in particular as having had a lot to do with it.
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Jul 20, 2023 18:13
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May I just say, having parsed a connection between ma’at and the Holy Spirit last page is casting the thread title in a whole new light for me and it is giving me a smile, thank you friends.
LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 18:36
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Mad Hamish posted:And the French, and the Germans. From a sheer burden of proof perspective too, far more enormous funerary monuments have survived the test of 5000 years than physical religious or ethical texts for the daily life of the people. Maybe irony, maybe because the funerary monuments were built to physically last, but either way; the funerary monuments tended to survive and tended to have a lot of funerary prayers and spells within them. For contextual reasons.
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Jul 20, 2023 19:08
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Nessus posted:Christs ascendant is more important anyway. oh I didn't know this. Ascendant huh? I am Libra ascendant, I wonder what this says about  yeah that tracks.
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Jul 21, 2023 00:14
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