"For God so loved the world..."

On my previous post about the nature of the Bible, Dana has left some thought-provoking comments, and the latest one deserves a new post all of its own so that I can write about the ideas she brings up, so here it is. Reference will also be made to the answers I gave in "(A)theist Meme"

The more theologically-minded readers will recognise that I chose as my heading the opening of John 3:16 (which is perhaps most famous these days for being seen on numerous placards in the crowds at sporting events). The reason for this choice shall become clearer as we go on.

as a child I toyed with the idea but it just seemed too ridiculous to me

Same here! I just decided that before I dismissed it out of hand, I should know what was actually in the book, and somehow the Lord convinced me to change my mind...

I did find that part of your previous post very interesting! For me, I love science/biology because it makes SENSE to me.

As an athiest, I am open to the idea I could be completely wrong (of course I can, there's so little to back any belief up that you might as allow for anything) but ultimately I strongly believe that there is no point to life, we are born, die and decay, that our conciousness dies with us. I've always imagined it to be like falling into deep sleep - none of these concepts are depressing to me and in fact I used to be somewhat suicidal in a passive way and I so longed for that ending and peace.

For me it just slots together so well, that idea that we are nothing more than biological and thoughts and emotions are but a consequence of evolution. That doesn't make thoughts, emotion or morals (in the sense of caring for others, that's pretty much all I ascribe to) any less important or meaningful to our existence.

To some extent, I agree with this point of view. It's just that I believe that evolution and the rest were designed by God. NOT in an "Intelligent Design" sense, however. If I were to make the "6 days and one to rest" story in any way a literal number, I would say that "day"="nanosecond". That is, in the very first moments of the universe, as the Big Bang took place, God set in place conditions such that He knew that some 12 billion years later, intelligent life with souls capable of a relation with Him, having conscience and emotions, would evolve. This is why I view "Intelligent Design" as feeble, because when you compare the ID notion of God taking a direct hand in evolution at every step of the way, it virtually reduces God to "human 2.0" status, making Him limited and lacking foresight. Far better to say that God is beyond space and time, and can know in the very instant of Creation that the manner of Creation, with the physical laws and the exact ratio of matter to antimatter, the energy, the "inflation" period and so on, would all pan out perfectly as He planned.

Your viewpoint on human reality seems to bear some similarity to the existential school of philosophy (I don't know how close that is to your own feelings). I have always had an admiration for that approach, and the brand of humanism that arises from it. As I say in my "(A)theist meme" post, I believe that atheists can still get to Heaven when they accept the central ethic of compassionate love that forms the "golden beam" I spoke of before. The Biblical basis for this is the "parable of the sheep and the goats" (Matthew 25:31-46), but mainly it is based on intuition. A loving God, I do not feel could hold the rejection of all theism against a person, if that person had a good heart and had accepted the spirit of the ethic, if not the faith. In olden times, it wasn't a choice of "God or no-God", it was a choice of the True, Living God, or a false (dead) God; so to turn away from the Lord was to turn to a more animistic and less loving alternative.

So equally I feel that most religion just seems so blatantly "I don't want to be alone! I don't want there to be no point! I don't want to cease to exist!" that it's like hitting an error message to contemplate it being REAL.

I think for some people there is at least an element of this, for sure. But for me, my faith is at least in part a response to the numinous and so rather than rejecting the idea that there is nothing there, my personal faith is the positive assertion that there is something there. Sometimes I doubt, but I think doubt is an important part of faith. Without it, faith is not faith but blind certainty.

I am curious about your experience with god and would love to hear about it but I don't want to ask you to share something really personal. I bring it up only because I don't want to act like I discount it, I just don't want to pry.

I don't think it is prying, but it is just hard to put into words, because it is not really rooted in the physical world the way language so often is, but at the same time it was a lot more than "just a feeling". I feel I have had experience of God in other ways since, that are easier to talk about, such as the small miracle of when I had no money except the price of a lottery scratchcard, and needed some to be able to feed and clothe myself for another week. I prayed to the Lord, and I feel He guided me to the right card, which won just enough (and no more) to get me through to the next payday. (I've tried it again, but God always comes back with, "Don't be a fool and waste your money like that", and I only ever win back the initial stake). There was the moment when I was lost and felt abandoned in a strange village and walked into the Church and found there the peace I needed. Lots of little things like that, from the physical to the numinous, add up to my experience of God in the living world.

Finally, I just had a wee revelation (hee, no pun intended)... Listening to Sinead O'Connor I realised that when she talks about God, when people like you talk about God, I hear love. When most people talk about God I hear either blind stubbornness and inability to cope with reality without an emotional crutch, or more often in the media (I know that's not fair!) I hear hate.

"For God so loved the World, that He gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have eternal life". John 3:16, the central tenet of Christian faith. The core of Christianity, it seems to me, is love; specifically the Greek term "agape", which translates to a passionate, compassionate, caring love for all others. Some Christians speak as though such love s the sole preserve of Christians and nobody else can feel that love, but I know that isn't true. Going back to my comment about atheists being able to get to Heaven, I also think of John 14:6-7, where Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." But what is this way and the truth and the life? It isn't just the person of Jesus, but the manner and spirit and truth (message) of His life, which is again summed up in that one word, "agape" (pronounced "a-ga-pay" and not, as I used to think, "ay-jayp"!), because "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son..."

If an atheist lives her/his life in the spirit of Word, even if they do not believe in the person of Christ or his divinity, then who can say that s/he is not following the way and the truth and the life? To my mind, such people know God even though they see him not, and that to me is a great miracle. In John, chapter 20, when Jesus reappears to the Apostles, at the first visit, Thomas was not present, and would not believe the other apostles when they said that Jesus had risen from the dead. Jesus visits a second time, and shows Thomas the truth of his wounds and that he yet lives, and only then does Thomas believe. In John 20:29, Jesus says, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed". To my mind, that an atheist follows that spiritual way and truth and life of agape, without believing or seeing, surely must be the most blessed of all?

I don't believe it's religion so much as organised religion, but if you look at how fucking scary the US is right now (in terms of limiting women's rights pretty much entirely due to fundamentalism) I think it makes sense to be fucking terrified of your average joe who likes the "family orientated" rhetoric *shudder*

For me, agape is the basis, the fundamental, of Christianity. It deeply offends me that such people as the Religious Right in the USA feel that they can lay claim to the term, in the same way that anti-abortion campaigners misappropriate the term "pro-life". Just as "anti-choice" is more appropriate for the anti-abortion lobby, so "literalist" (or even "blind literalist") is more appropriate for the attitude they express. The Religious Right so clearly do not have agape in their hearts, they have abandoned the fundamentals. They have become the pharisees against whom Christ preached, blindly observing the letter but forgetting and ignoring the Spirit.

Organised religion is certainly a problem, because it is in that form especially that it becomes a tool of the oppressor - for example, in the manner that Marx explained. I think the early Church suffered when Constantine converted and made it the state religion of Rome, because judging by the documentaries I've seen, Constantine did not change his character when he changed religion, and so the hate and the authoritarian attitude that he had, became imposed upon the young religion. This authoritarian attitude was in part what led Martin Luther to make his famous stand and bring about the Protestant revolution, although of course, the Protestant church also became a tool of the Bourgeoisie itself. (I have more to say about this history of the Church in a later post, possibly).

It is explicit in the Gospels that the message of Christ is a personal challenge to each of us, even as He makes it clear that in communion with one another we are better able to meet it (the centrality of the church grouping is given by Matthew 18:20, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am also"). It seems obvious to me that Christ's mission should have cut away the rigorous hierarchy of the established order, because it is by the Spirit that we find the right path. (Again, "I am the way and the truth and the life", sayeth our Lord Jesus Christ - so why should a church hierarchy seemingly try to be "the way"?)

To pick apart exactly why the Religious Right are so perverted in their interpretation of Christ's mission, I could talk or type for hours, pulling their positions to shreds based on my reading of the Gospels with every sentence, but I think I shall save all that for another post.

Suffice to say, I agree that they are fucking scary!