Oakspear

Good summary T&O, kind of what I've been trying to say, but with evidence!

I'd be dead by now... ...if I had been born in 1848...

Why would it be meaningless? Those of us who don't view the bible as "authoritative" still have opinions about it. While I no longer have a "belief", or "faith" about Jesus and his nature, I certainly have an opinion about what the bible says and how much sense Wierwille made in understanding it. You're right about the verses that you quoted not making sense when you substitute Jesus for God, but that's not what Trinitarians believe. I'll leave it to one of the Trinitarians to explain it in depth. Just as the verses you quoted make no sense when viewed from a unitarian POV, verses that talk about all things being created by Jesus, or refer to him as God, or having attributes of God also make no sense if Jesus is not God. Trinitarians dismiss and explain away some verses, unitarians other verses.

Except when it "became flesh"

How did we get on pantheism? Not that I would avoid a discussion with you about it, but I didn't see where it fit in. If I understand it correctly, karma, if that is what we're talking about, isn't limited to one lifetime, "bad" karma in one lifetime results in a "lower" status in the next life (remember, we're talking about a culture with an extremely rigid caste structure) and bad stuff happening to you to "balance" the bad stuff that you did. There are various ways that believers in karma explain the mechanism by which it works, some attribute it to a property of the universe itself, some say one or another deity controls it. Yeah, I agree, but no harder than putting faith in the biblical god who seems to me just as fickle and just as unjust. My opinion (at least the one I hold right this minute) is that cosmic justice is a human conception invented to make sense of a world that doesn't seem very just. Bad things happen, seemingly without rhyme or reason and our minds flail about trying to make sense of it, or at least trying to make ourselves feel better about getting screwed out of that job, or getting cancer, or getting hit with an earthquake or a tsunami. We just can't cope with the randomness of it all.

I don't watch Fox News either, Mrs. Oakspear happened to catch it one morning and I saw a few commentaries on it. Until Brit Hume brought it up I had never heard anyone bring up Woods' faith or lack of the same, even by Woods himself. Brit Hume brought it up during a segment of Fox News where he and several others were making predictions about the coming year. Short version, he suggested that Woods would better be able to fully recover and become great again if he turned to Christianity due to Christianity's superiority in terms of forgiveness and redemption as opposed to Buddhism, which Hume said was Woods' religion. An article that I read in response to this incident by one who agreed with Hume contained quotes from a Buddhist scholar who talked about karma and how Woods' actions had consequences and could not be erased by a forgiving deity. The connection that I made with your statements is that you are presenting a god who is at once loving and willing to exact justice, wrathful and merciful, not at all the god of free passes for sin that some folks imagine their god to be. As far as your other remarks, I'm personally not a believer in karma as taught by eastern religions and that by extension has permeated the neo-pagan movement, too much has to be taken on faith.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/pat-robertson-haiti-i-tho_b_422590.html

...WITH LIPSTICK!

Over the past weeks I have seen some folks, in & out of TWI, say that our information here on GS is out of date and does not apply to the current TWI. Heck, we have heard for years that TWI has become kinder and gentler, all the "bad leaders" are gone and the "wrong doctrine" changed. If this is so, then I personally would like to see a public from admission of this from official TWI sources. There are many people who were kicked out of TWI or driven out for reasons that may not be valid, including questioning doctrine that TWI no longer holds to or confronting leaders who have in turn been thrown out. It's not as if I have any plans to return to TWI, but they would gain a measure of my respect for coming clean, admitting their problems and apologizing to those who they hurt.

Well, whatever the Word is, it was with God and was God from the beginning...but we don't know from reading verse 1 who or what "The Word" is...until verse 14...where we are told it was made flesh...and it's pretty clear who that flesh was. I'm making no preconceived assumptions about who or what The Word is in John 1. I don't believe that Jesus is God; I'm not even sure he wasn't a fictional character!

Geisha: You're more articulate than you give yourself credit for, you just sometimes get ....ed off at us heathens! I appreciate your efforts to explain the "apparent" contradictions in the bible; I'm not personally convinced, but your arguments are reasonable and rational once you accept certain premises. Some of what you're saying is interesting to me in light of Brit Hume's opinion about what he thinks Tiger Wood's religion is. Eastern religion is often about justice and balance, not imposed necessarily by a deity, but by the universe balancing itself out.

I disagree that one has to start with that assumption: verse 14:"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." I don't have to assume too much, just read what's there.

Well said...

It seems to me that the doctrine of the Trinity was as much an attempt by early Christians to make the bible "fit together like a hand in a glove" as Wierwille's later attempts were. They were faced with the same "apparent contradictions" and had to reconcile somehow sections like John 1:1, which taken by itself sure seems to say that Jesus is God, and others that plainly indicate that Jesus is different and distinct from God. A lot of theological man-hours went into coming up with a theology that would harmonize seemingly contradictory passages. If you're going to maintain that the bible is inerrant, than you have to do something to tie it together. Giving it a label: "The Trinity" makes it look like these guys just pulled a concept out of the paganism of the day when in my opinion they were working overtime to try to make sense out of conflicting verses and viewpoints.

At the time the gospels were written, this was not a bizarre or even unusual concept at all. Gods manifesting themselves as humans and dying as sacrifices was pretty ordinary back then! It's a figure of speech...Jesus is clearly called the lamb of God in the bible. Oh, and to answer the original question, I am no longer a bible believer, but I do believe that there was an historical person on whom the biblical Jesus was based and that he wasn't divine. Although I think that there is truth in the bible it isn't TRUTH and that the various writers had different views and opinions of who Jesus was, what his role was and emphasized different things in their writings. Some presented him as a man, some as the avatar of the Old Testament God, some attributing pagan sacrificed god aspects to him. My opinion is that they couldn't agree and the disagreements got canonized as scripture which folks try to make fit. I think some parts of the bible clearly identify Jesus as God, some just as clearly paint him as a man and nothing more. Theologies have been constructed to reconcile the inconsistencies and contradictions and harmonize them, I resolve them by not attributing infallibility and internal consistancy to the bible

T-Bone: Thanks for the look-up. I am pretty doubtful that Greek prepositions had the precision of meaning that not only Wierwille, but just about any theologian who tackles their usage, attaches to them. Language, no matter how hard the grammarians among us try, is an imprecise tool for rendering our thoughts and feelings into forms that can be understood by others.

Huh? There's a non-TWI source that includes "...but distinctly independent of" to the definition of pros? To conclude from the whole context of John chapter 1 that Jesus = God makes sense. A plain reading from beginning to end leads to the logical conclusion that the author of John is saying that Jesus is God in the flesh. I understand the contradictions, apparent, actual or otherwise in other parts of the bible, but Wierwille's biblical gymnastics make little sense and are facile attempts to make this section "fit". My favorite "he pulled it out of his @$$" explanation is where he defines "name" as "namesake" where John talks about salvation being for those who call on his name. There's no evidence for the word for "name" to be translated "namesake"...oh wait! there must be a text...there must be, or the whole bible would just fall to pieces.

How about the idiots who were convinced that God was telling them the location of police "speed traps" so that they could flout the posted speed limits...as if obeying the law wasn't godly

God has that reverb/echo thing goin' on...Jesus speaks in an Aramaic accent...see? Easy!

I'm a big planner, I'm an organizer; sometimes that's a good thing, but taken to an extreme, it's a bad thing, it just gets in the way of living life. Any of you who hosted me back in 2002 when I drove across the central and northeaster United States (& southern Ontario) might have seen my red 3-ring binder that included maps, addresses, phone numbers, estimated travel times etc that I used to plan my trip. I had 12 days to visit 10 or 12 sets of family members, GSers, and miscellaneous friends spread out across as many cities and had to be back at work on time. So I had a highly detailed PLAN. Now normally my day isn't so highly structured. I use the calendar that is included in Microsoft Office to block out work, appointments and events that I want to attend, and pretty much just wing the rest. As long as my wife and I communicate on our schedules, everything is fine. TWI didn't recognize that different people organize their time in different ways. Some people actually thrive using that 15-minute-increment schedule, others just have a to-do list that they work through. Even at work, my method of organization changed when my job changed. As a sales rep for a newspaper circulation department, I was on the road a lot and had to plan travel time into my day, so at the time I blocked my day out in half-hour segments. Now, working in a grocery store I get interrupted a lot and have to adjust my time based on what the customers are doing, so I have a list of things to do and deadlines & priorities, and just plug away at it all day. For me it would have been impossible to stay on top of things using my current method at my old job and vice versa.

I can't think of any TWI programs that worked as promoted! In my observation, those who were effective leaders before going in, were also effective leaders coming out, (although some of those were corrupted while in) and those who weren't were just as ineffective upon graduation, only know they thought they were leaders. For the most part, the problem wasn't the people in the program, it was the whole idea that "leaders" were even needed.

Another thing to consider is what constitutes a "true" Christian. (I think cman asked this very question early on)And once we have this definition, is there a difference in vulnerability between "true" Christians and in-name-only Christians. I think, my own personal opinion aside, that biblically speaking, there is such a thing as possession. The point that it makes little sense for an evil spirit to have dominance over God dwelling within a person is a good one and seems to fit within the overall biblical framework, however, that same position seems to suggest that holy spirit is a magical amulet against anything bad happening to that person. Bad things do happen to good people. Back we come to the question of what are what are the prerequisites for possession? And what are the biblical justifications (not just "logical" reasoning) for supposing that Christians are immune?

A quick search of "possessed" and "spirits" through blueletterbible.com doesn't make the point unequivocally one way or the other in my estimation. Some of the people who had spirits cast out could have been Christians, but it doesn't say unambiguously one way or the other. So we are left logical thought processes to figure it out. One thing that I am struck with is that the process of getting possessed doesn't seem to be clearly spelled out. We are just presented with these examples of people who are possessed (or "demonized" if you will) or who "have spirits". Again, we are left to our own logical thought processes to figure out how it happens. Within TWI it was supposed to happen due to uncontrolled thoughts and ungodly habit patterns. What does "mainstream" Christianity teach about it?

I got to spend two whole days, uninterrupted, with my wife, since we were snowed in and couldn't go anywhere. My Navy son called me to wish me a happy Christmas, as did my younger brother in New York. I got to wish my mother a happy birthday and to talk to my dad as well.

Thanks Pen, I love the Onion!Evolution Going Great, Reports Trilobite http://www.theonion.com/content/news/evolution_going_great_reports