Seeking Jesus

by Leolaia 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Leolaia

  The bizarre turn this thread has taken notwithstanding, here are some of my comments:

  Mouthy: I focused on the search, the seeking, because that is such a constant theme in Jesus' teaching. Seek and you shall find. He that seeks shall not rest until he finds. If you ask, what you seek will be given to you. etc. etc. What actually got me thinking about this was the resurrection appearance in GJohn where Mary Magdalene was asked, "Whom do you seek?" John emphasizes the seeking of the person Jesus -- as salvation lies alone in him. The other gospels emphasize the seeking of the Kingdom of God; salvation is guaranteed by finding the Kingdom. So are the two the same thing? Is finding Jesus finding the Kingdom? Or if we find the Kingdom do we also find Jesus? For John, faith alone in Jesus, believing in Jesus guarantees salvation. But that faith is not mere "taking in knowledge" as the New World Translation would have it, or even a heartfelt faith in who Jesus is. Otherwise, how could the praxis of the Kingdom (the godly acts that bring us into God's presence) manifest itself?

  Gumby: You say that the N.T. message is that "Christ ... not his kingdom or anything else ... brings life." Well, that's actually John's message, except John doesn't say anything about the Kingdom. John's Jesus indeed declares that He himself is what brings life. That can be worked into the Pauline redemption kerygma, as the Christian church has historically done. But if we look back to the synoptic Jesus of Mark, Luke, and Matthew, which most probably reflects what Jesus actually said than what John wrote (who was reacting against what the Gnostics claimed, that mere knowledge of the secret meanings in Jesus' words brings everlasting life), we see that the whole focus of Jesus' preaching was THE KINGDOM OF GOD. And he explains through his parables what the kingdom is and how to find it.

  So are these different versions of the good news as they appear to be on the surface? Or is finding Jesus the same as finding the Kingdom. I just wonder because there are plenny Christians who claim to have been saved but do not reveal the same works Jesus talked about when he preached about the Kingdom. My personal belief is that Jesus is to be found in seeking the Kingdom and following his commandments, because even in GJohn, Jesus says that "whoever follows my words will have everlasting life."

  Leolaia
• 

  Double Edge

  Some Christians argue over faith vs. works. I've always liked these three verses in James 2:

  17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
  18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. 19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

  I believe the Kingdom is found by following Christ's example and going beyond mere belief.... in other words putting your money (actions) where your mouth (professed belief) is.
• 

  bebu

  Some of my favorite quotes from "The Pursuit of God" by AW Tozer:

  To have found God adn still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart...Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better: Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy ways, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in they sight."..David's life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad cry of the finder... We have been snared int he coils of spurious logic which insists that if we have found HIm we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bibl-taught Christian ever believed otherwise... I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate... Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

  I really enjoy your comments, Leolaia!

  bebu
• 

  Leolaia

  bebu....what a beautiful quote! I also think about when Jesus said that one must become like children to enter the Kingdom. What do children do but always seek, always wanting to learn, improve themselves, wanting to discover all the things that adults have already become jaded of.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  I'm at a stop for seeking Jesus stage, I do think all ancient wrtings have something to teach us about ourselves, what type of cultures we came from, but when we allow a religion to dictate to us what these ancient documents mean and how they are to be understood we are not seeking and can not understand very much.

  I think our researchers in these areas offer a lot, but still are not able be absolute, but indeed have a much better understanding.

  Our prejudices will always block much of our abilities to really understand, we all form pet ideas that we hate to let go of, we are unable to break free of every prejudices in our search because what motivates the search also motivates its own particular form of prejudice, such as the wanting to know, the wanting to find the good and not the bad, the wanting of the story to be a certain way, all cloud the picture in each and everyone who does the search.

  If one could do a search with no motives, then maybe they could find out. But once motives come into play the hope of finding the true picture is fractured in a million pieces, unless of course (and this is highly unlikeley) the true picture happens to be by some freak accident the same as one's pejudice would lead them to beleive. Certainly if someone is looking for only the good or is heavy on the good or bad then that will effect what one finds, it sets our mental scanners towards certain things to notice and examine.

  Of course many will say I'm able to get rid of all prejudice, to which I say, "have you been able to get rid of your prejudice that predisposes you to think you can get rid of your prejudice"?
• 

  zen nudist

  the first thing I thought after leaving JWs was if not them, then who?

  so back to the library to the origins of the bible itself to see who might fit as the true followers....

  then I discovered what no believer told me, the other side of the story.... those who actually questioned

  whether Jesus was ever a real person at all or just a religious myth.....

  the more I studied the evidence the more I concluded that the Jesus story was like a lie told so often and so far and wide

  that hardly anyone thinks to question it.... but now I am pretty much satisfied that all the evidence availible points to

  him being a religious myth rather than a real person www.jesusneverexisted.com
• 

  frankiespeakin

  The reason why this thread apealed to me was that I have been reading a lot of J. Krishnamurti on the "Awakening of Intelligence" Ch.7 "Thought, Intelligence, and the Immeasurable"

  In that chapt. he discusses in a audience participation form, they ask a question about this subject and he takes them on a "thought journey" to see how the mind thinks and wether or not they can use the mind to see or understand what thoughts are capable of imagining or incapable of imagining, he gets a little argumentative at times with his questioners, but it seem neccasarry. This is the guy, scientist David Bohm would befriend and converse with which helped DB to formulate some very interesting thoughts about the universe bieng a hologram and what we view as the "explicate order" that comes from deep inside the "Impilcate order". Falling in line with the "everything is one" which Quantum theory is telling us..(Non Local".
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Zen,

  that hardly anyone thinks to question it.... but now I am pretty much satisfied that all the evidence availible points to him being a religious myth rather than a real person.

  I think you are putting the horse before the cart. There are lots of possiblities, and when you settle on one, you become prejudice to anything that favors your already drawn conclusion.
• 

  Leolaia

  LOL....what a blast from the past.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Only less than 2 years ago.