Christianity: Religion vs socio-political movement

Plus, the transfiguration and depending on your interpretation (literal or parable) the rich and poor man.

 

Paul also said that "whoever is joined with the Lord is one Spirit with Him" (1 Cor 6:17). Jesus also said "It's better for you that I leave, because I'm sending you my Spirit which is the same as Me being there" (John 14). Jesus also said "I'm always with you" (Matthew 28).

So whatever Paul and Jesus meant with those other statements you quoted, cannot contradict their other statements I just quoted. Maybe it's a different sort of "being present" than we're able to experience here. Which I don't think should diminish what we are able to experience here.

To me it's not a matter of trying to get to where Jesus is but to live joined with Him here and now, because Christ is already here by His Spirit even though we also await His return. Immanuel is God with us, already here and not elsewhere. So Jesus is already here while also not being here yet, which is one of those God-mysteries that hurt my brain if I think about it too much. The Spirit of Christ is a full member of the Trinity (also a God-mystery that hurts my brain if I think about it too much). The Spirit of God is fully God and therefore not a "lesser Jesus" or "lesser God" because in fact the same Spirit who is here with us now, also raised Christ from the dead.

So instead of trying to analyze what may or may not happen after I die, I instead try to focus on trying to live out of that union with Christ I've already been given and need not wait or strive for.

I'm happy for you. Unfortunately I've spent a number of years in certain churchy circles, and a number of more years extricating myself from the same. Those experiences still color my views and drive a lot of the thinking behind my responses (which probably cause you to scratch your head at times, but I can't help it).

I'm currently without a church and still deciding on where to hang my hat. I will probably stick with a local Catholic church for a while and then decide from there. It seems to be the healthiest option for the time being.

 

I don't think we discover truth. I think truth is just there, and we either see it or we don't. We either pay attention to it or we don't.

Do you think truth is something to be discovered?

 

Right.

Experience. How else would you know?

 

Then after 10 years on Bible fora my "experience" is that there is no way. Maybe we can agree on that!

 

Except for some Christian core issues we can't. One would be:

Ps 14:1 - The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. [100% atheists are fools]
Rom 3:28 - for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. [ It's not hard to admit ]
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

 

Yep, except for some Christian core issues.

In the past on BF on 2 occasions I suggested to form a praying group with a focus to receive the truth from the Lord on a specific controversial (or any) issue and that He would reveal to each member the same. First try, no reaction at all. Second try, only one guy who gave it value. I am not eager to participate in such a group myself although I would do it out of duty as the informer. So maybe we are to blame ourselves?

 

That's how disciples are made historically, though. If the first disciples hadn't shared in the experience of Christ's resurrection, they wouldn't be able to testify to its truth.

Paul wasn't even there. So he remained a skeptic until Christ knocked him off his horse and confronted Paul with Himself. And Paul was a Pharisee, mind you. Very learned in Scripture. Didn't make a difference. Until Paul's own experience.

Now it's 2000 years later. How do we know there was a Jesus and that a resurrection happened? We weren't there. There has to be another way to corroborate the truth of Christ's resurrection. And the only answer to that, as far as I can tell, is the Spirit of God. He is the only one alive today who was there (and caused it, even). There has to be something outside of human witness/experience/perception to corroborate the veracity of Christ's resurrection event. Because we are subjective, jaded and biased, and always will be. I don't consider this a flaw but a necessary and good part of our existence. It means we can each have a unique relationship with our Creator, and if that's pleasing to Him, who am I to disagree? We are all part of a whole, and never the whole ourselves. I don't think there's one person who is 100% correct in their beliefs. I don't think we need to be.

I affirm the Apostles' Creed. We don't have to agree on all.the.things. I know we do agree on the core beliefs already. Apparently, disagreement has been present for more than 1600 years, so the Apostles and Nicene Creeds were formulated. What we're doing here is nothing new (except maybe back then they did it in Greek or Latin, and mostly verbally).

 

No idea, they were in similar threads like these, the one who reacted positively was "cuban", booted in 2013, the first post years before.

 

I remember VerticalReality was really pushing the issue it should be possible to find consensus under the lead of the Holy Spirit.