by Silverleaf 47 Replies latest jw friends
Dearest DWilt... peace to you!
Did it say that my Lord died only for 'earthling man'? Or did it say 'for the WHOLE world'? The 'lion and bull'... the small boy and cobra'... are they not ALL on the 'holy the mountain'... ZION... the mount on which sits the 'city having REAL foundations', New Jerusalem, the kingdom of my Lord?
Peace to you!
Your servant and a slave of Christ,
SJ
Dearest 'Conflicted'... may you have peace!
You said:
"you have to have faith that the bible is truely the Word of God before you can quote it..."
To the CONTRARY, dear one, you MUST have faith that the Bible is NOT... the Word of God... in order to know, 'hear' and 'see'... he that IS the Word of God.
Revelation 19:13
John 1:1
John 1:14
Believing... or 'having faith'... that the BIBLE is the 'word' of God is what keeps you and many others from 'hearing'... and getting the SENSE of the words of my Lord when he said (now, please... read slowly... and carefully):
"You are searching the SCRIPTURES...
because you THINK...
that by means of THEM...
you will have 'everlasting life'...
and THESE (the scriptures)...
are the VERY ones...
that bear witness...
ABOUT ME.
And YET...
YOU DO NOT WANT TO COME...
TO ME...
that you may have LIFE."
John 5:39, 40
Indeed, THAT is why my Lord SAID... "Come... TO ME... all you who are toiling and loaded down... and... I... WILL refresh you"...
as WELL as...
"NO ONE... comes to the Father... EXCEPT THROUGH ME."
The Bible, dear Conflicted... cannot save you. It can only TELL you about the One that can. It is still HIM... to whom you must GO... and to HIM... that you must LISTEN.
Hear, O Israel... and all who go with Israel... AND GET THE SENSE OF IT.
Again, I bid you peace, and I am... to time indefinite...
YOUR servant, and a slave of Christ,
SJ
Faith is belief. It is pretty obvious to most people that a belief needs a justification. But finding a justification, and especially a half logical one, for most religious ideas has proven very cumbersome for believers.
The reference to "faith" is in many ways the last line of defence for the true believer. These defence lines goes through many stages from the cocksure assertions that their religious beliefs is proven beyond doubt, so common among JWs and other fundamentalists, all the way down to saying "we gotta have faith."
Rhetorically, a reference to "faith" finds resonnance with most believers. But what, exactly, is "faith"? In Greek, and indeed many modern languages, there is no distinction between "belief" and "faith." English has retained this archaic word for belief, and today it is reserved for religious beliefs. So, in effect saying that "you need faith" is equivalent to saying "you need to believe." This begs the question: why, pray tell, do people need belief? What makes faith a credible or desirable quality? Does this mean that anything and everything should be believed, or is this limited to some ideas only?
I think most people, even the most ardently religious, will agree that there are forms of belief that are not desirable. Christians will say that faith in Allah or Vishnu, or ancient deities like Zevs, Odin or Ba'al, is not only undesirable but outright evil. And in the same way, believers in Allah may argue that faith in the Christian God is highly undesirable. And most people today will agree that belief in the tenets of certain totalitarian philosophies, like Nazism, is extremely undesirable and evil.
So what makes faith in God, or even the particular God of Christianity, a positive quality? By answering "you need to have faith" or along such lines, you simply assert that the belief is correct, without any supporting arguments whatsoever. You could just as well support belief in Ba'al, Nazism or invisible green unicorns, using the same slogan.
Why does the word "faith" have such a good sound in the western hemisphere? Obviously, because through centuries of Christian propaganda, this word has been reverred as the highest of virtues.
When Christianity was new, this new religion met with opposition and skepticism. Claiming that an executed criminal had been resurrected and was indeed Divine, was obviously beyond what many would accept. While we should not exeggarate the skepitcal climate of the day, it is not a stretch to assume that many people asked the Christians for some evidence supporting this extraordinary claim. Christians had no such things. So, as part of their preaching, they argued that being skeptical, being a doubter, was inheritently sinfull, and that faith -- indeed, blind faith -- was the noblest of virtues.
So, what happened was that a religion made gullability the highest of virtues. And this continues to this day. Only, this obvious fact is hidden behind the word "faith."
One amazing example of how doubt was villified, we find in the story about Thomas the doubter. Apparently alone among the disciplies, Thomas proclaimed that he needed more than the claims of more or less hysterical believers to accept this extraordinary claim. He would, he proclaimed, believe if he received evidence. Would not any sane person have reacted in the same way? And indeed, in this story, Jesus accepts the challenge, and proves to Thomas's satisfaction that he is the resurrected Christ. Alas, here we find Jesus (John 20:29) ruining the whole story by making an outragously stupid conclusion: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
In other words, the Jesus of John blessed blind superstitious faith and repudiated sound skepticism.
No doubt this literary product was created as an attempt to answer those who did not accept these supernatural claims, and especially to discourage any form of critical thinking among Christians.
And indeed, this rejection of rational thinking has been a hallmark of Christianity ever since. Luckily, or we would certainly not have anything resembling civilization today, the stranglehold of faith over reason has been fought back and greatly reduced.
Yet, we still hear people assert that "we must have faith."
- Jan
--
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]
Hey, JanH... great post... and may you have peace!
May I interject, though, that faith is NOT belief... for indeed the demons 'believe'... yet, such ones do NOT possess 'faith'. Indeed, faith is not even a possession... of all 'earthling' men.
Peace to you!
A slave of Christ,
SJ
Silverleaf,
If you are asking about religious faith, I believe that faith is belief and trust in God. But one improtant thing was said by joelbear when he said:
As with all things, with faith there is a balance.
I believe him because I've seen Christians that have faith in God have NO balance and their views were so out of touch with reality that I thought they were using God as a crutch. Just for an example, I knew a woman years ago who charged all her credit cards to the max and then when she realized she could not keep up with the payments, she said that the Lord would take care of all of it and would get her out of debt somehow because the Lord never gives people a burden heavier than they can carry. She had no balance whatsoever and my telling her that the Lord didn't put that burden on her, she put it on herself did no good.
Faith has more than one meaning.
peace,
somebody
Dearest Silverleaf... please excuse the delay... and may you, too, have peace!
You asked/stated:
I cannot understand why God would speak to a certain person or group of people and then expect them to incite faith in others to whom He had not spoken.
In this, dear one, you are in error. May I refer you:
Matthew 13:13
If you notice here, it says those 'hearing'... hear... 'in vain'. What does that mean? It means they HEAR... but cannot get the SENSE of it. In fact, dear one... ALL hear. May I direct you to the parable of the sower and the seed? If you will condescend to read that, you will see that the seeds represent those that 'heard'... ALL of them; however, the outcomes were quite different.
I really don’t mean to be irreverent, but you’re saying that the reason my dog rolls in crap sometimes is because the Lord told him to? Or did he do it purposely to disobey God?
Did you really get that out of what I was permitted to share? REALLY? Your dog 'rolls in the crap', SLeaf... be he/she's... A DOG. Now, if your dog got lost, say 3,500 miles from home, but somehow made it back... I would not hesitate to say... he asked... and was 'guided' and that perhaps that's why some DON'T make it back. I have not asked my Lord on this matter, so in truth, I do not know.
And how exactly can a plant disobey?
As I said to DWilt, "Do you recall the fig tree that refused to produce food for the Son of God? Producing food was the very purpose of that tree's existence; yet, when called upon to do so... it did not. And so, was 'cursed'."
Oh, you’re not saying that man is to animal as man is to woman are you? Please tell me that’s not what you’re saying because I’ll have to hurl if you are.
Now why would that make you 'hurl'. No, man is not 'to animal', as man is 'to woman'. Of COURSE not. The point I believe my Father was MAKING is that just as woman is supposedly 'in subjection' to man, man is not SUPERIOR to woman, and indeed must HONOR woman. In the same way, man is superior to ANIMALS... and so because they (animals) are a form of LIFE, they too are deserving of 'honor'.
I do agree with the general theme of your post, though, that our faith, whatever it may be, should not have to be proven to others, only to ourselves and if we choose to have faith in something, it is just that, only a choice.
I am most glad you 'see' it that way.
Peace to you, Silverleaf... and may JAH bless!
Your servant and a slave of Christ,
SJ
AGuest, peace to you as well.
I do understand what you are saying - The scriptures are merely words, when God says (supposedly) "Come to me." He doesn't mean read the bible, but to put your life into His hands.
My point wasn't that the bible is the end-all be-all answer to any questions of faith. Quite the contrary in fact. When someone's faith is shaken to the point that belief in any god at all is questionable, why look to the bible for answers, or the koran, or the book of mormon or any other writings of man. Faith is, in the end, between you and God. If I don't believe God exists, no quote from the bible is going to change my mind.
For the bible to have merit you have to believe that it was written by God through men. (At least that is what I was always taught.) If I am having a question of faith, (ei "does God exist?"), looking to the bible is pointless.
You have faith in God and the bible, so when you read:
[QUOTE]"You are searching the SCRIPTURES...
because you THINK...
that by means of THEM...
you will have 'everlasting life'...
and THESE (the scriptures)...
are the VERY ones...
that bear witness...
ABOUT ME.
And YET...
YOU DO NOT WANT TO COME...
TO ME...
that you may have LIFE."
John 5:39, 40[QUOTE]
You 'understand' that God inspired John to write this for our benefit.
I have a question regarding my faith, so I 'understand'
some dude named John scratched ramblings 2000 years ago because he had nothing better to do.
So you see, you have to have faith that the scriptures are the 'word' of God, or it's meaningless.
FAITH gives you the oppurtunity to believe in more than just this world.
Some people NEED faith.
Chris
I'm proud of this one, sorry!!
If God talked to me like he did Abraham, it would not be a matter of faith. It would be a matter of knowledge. If God said to me in a strong, clear voice to go do something, I would say, "OK big guy, what ever you say."
If God said to me in a strong, clear voice to go do something, I would say, "I need to see a doctor."
Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)
Richard
If you look at the people who had FAITH according to the Bible you will find that they all experienced miracles and sometimes even angelic visitations. If I could have lunch with an Angel it would do wonders for my faith.
