 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > General Chat > The Non-Meph Speaketh | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
Mephi2K
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713
| Posted 8/30/2001 4:01 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hello, good saintly people. This is the Non-Meph. I am Mephi's mental construct. The identity that he uses to work through things in his head. He doesn't know about me. I think that if he did, he'd probably call over some of his Charismanic "praying saint" friends from church and try to have me exorcised...the buffon! Little does he know how much he needs me. I am his Devil's advocate/disassociated personality/critic/best friend/worst enemy...all in one. At any rate, I feel that I've been in the background far too long. He's not at smart as you people think. He knows next to nothing about anything and he's actually a frightened little punk of a person who doesn't have the common sense to come in out of the rain when it's blasting him in the face. Some of his aquaintences have told him so in so many words, but the fool, not truly hearing their innuendos, took them as compliments. You have no idea how much I pity this ignoramous that I'm stuck with.
However, it's my time to shine now. I've decided to take over his faculties for a while...and dim his oh-so-theocentric, "may God be glorified" banter and come with my OWN ideas for a change. Don't hold him responsible. It's not him. Really. Ever seen "Fight Club"? Just go with the flow and call me Tyler Durden.
***********************************************
Let me toss out some thoughts. Just bear with it, now.
What if theology is really just a very imaginative, creative, but very human way to make meaning out of life? What if what we are really after is nothing more than a creative way to ontologically center "love" in our world? Could it be conceivable that we don't want a God more than we want our LIVES to have ultimate meaning and significance? Could it be thinkable that we also want an ontological ground for the achievement of aesthetic fulfillment...some ultimate reason to individually and corporately pursue the good, true, and the beautiful? I wonder if the deity hypothesis started out as an explanatory tool to explain the unexplained...and then really got steam for it's MOTIVATIONAL power.
Someone once said that it's not knowledge that is power. It's BELIEF that is truly power. (Personally, I would qualify this by saying that only by knowledge can one truly use the power of belief to their advantage.) One can motivate rank idiots to do the unthinkable. Beliefs make martyrs and saints...as well as zealots and monsters. And in many cases, belief is able to overrule commonsense and rationality. Do we even need to make a list? Jonestown. Waco. Heaven's Gate. Branhamites. People that actually believe that Elvis and Tupac Shakur are STILL alive?!? However, this power, if harnessed correctly, can take mere rational reciprocity and turn it into IRRATIONAL amounts of grace and love. Perhaps thinkers today are seeing this. Perhaps this is what the theological enterprise is, unknowingly, turning towards. Harnessing the power of belief in the Sacred to give people more fulfilled, actualized lives...and to build a better cosmos.
Sure the goading carrot of immortality and eternal life is needed for some...but it seems that everyone want to have a better life here and now. (Especially the nice thinking people who clammor for equality, justice, and so forth) And promoting these life-affriming views are the best way to do that. See, we monkeys have gotten a lot smarter since the Dark Ages. We're a lot more critical of what we once held as bedrock truth. And as such, secretly, SOME believers of all types are more and more opening to the possibility that they have been under a delusion of massive proportions. They inwardly have a suspicion that their piety, meaning, and mission in life...as well as the veneration of certain "authorities" within their respective systems...may be built upon nothing more the dreams, visions, and psychotic episodes. They know damn well that their theologies amount to nothing more than speculations that may be no more true that the earth being flat. Ah...but look at the RESULTS! Yes. Look at the transformative POWER that is seen in some of these beliefs. Look there. An ex-prostitute who once sold sex for crack is now doing hospital visitations, just to be there, sometimes praying to the Goddess (via Wicca) for patients. Look there. An ex-sexual molester who was a former pedophile is now a street evangelist and model citizen and community helper. Why? Because he found the way of Allah. One more. Look here. A person who was a veritable whore who cared about nothing but sex and money, drank often to get drunk, angry as hell at the world, and outright using people to his own ends is now a person trying to be a minister...actually trying to make a positive difference in the world, showing the love of a certain Galilean named Jesus. No doubt, there is definite transforming power in beliefs. Surely, THIS is a good reason to hold them. Yes, yes...they diverge in certain places like heaven, hell, sin, anthropology, cosmology, etc...but a vast majority of them promote life-affirming paradigms!
It should be nothing to boil these down to the least common denominators and come up with a wonderful ground for human dignity and the CENTRALITY of love. And it's really isn't that hard. Plus, it's better than the alternative, right? I mean, if there is no God to which we can attribute the PRIMACY of love and the AUTHORITY of promoting right relationships, the whole endeavor may be seen as utterly subjective and meaningless. Would their be Martin Luther Kings, Mother Teresas, and Mohandas Ghandis...WITHOUT some center of love and right relationships like what "God" provides. Probably not. Only the facile "hope" in the overcoming of evil given by this God could sustain these people in such unimaginably dismal situations in which they found themselves. So, perhaps the idea of the all-good, wonderous, loving Real is pramatically necessary. The "noble lie", as it were.
So, just think, patrons. Put it in the back of your mind. Could theology be a scholastic exercise in wishful thinking ultimately? A testament to the human ingenuity and creativity to be certain, but in the end, nothing more than a bunch of speculation to make life coherent and make it better. I think there is a good chance. But you know what? I say use it to the hilt! Proceed with the divinization/secularization/harmonization of the divine with the non-divine. Sooner or later, we will get to the point where we will be completely honest with ourselves and admit what we are doing. But by then, hopefully, we will have gotten all of this God nonsense out of our systems.
Remember now. I'm just thinking out loud.
Next, about heaven. What if (just what if, now) we have got this whole thing ALL wrong? Surely some of you have thought of this. What if, as much as we want to believe it, there is no PERSONAL identity in the afterlife, if it exists? What if you truly become one with the Divine such that your individuality is essentially obliterated? Would you still long for immortality and the afterlife? Hmmm... If it were not guaranteed that we could experience bliss and peace AS PERSONS...if we weren't thought to see our loved ones in the "bye-and-bye", we would really find any heaven so lovely. It would almost be the same as oblivion. Consider that maybe all the we are doing is positing something that we intuitively know that we will NEVER reach in this life. The unfinished masterpiece that will never see completion. The perfect bliss. Oh, I know, I know. "But Jesus TOLD us so. He TOLD us that in His Father's House, there are many mansions. Therefore we KNOW that there is an afterlife and heaven." Hey, that's cool. But let's just think about the UNTHINKABLE, ok? Just this once. Perhaps Jesse Duplantis DIDN'T really see the "Great God Jehovah" when he felt that He had been taken up to Heaven. Maybe he saw what he wanted to see...just like John the Revelator. Maybe the concept of divine union is pretty much EQUAL to oblivion, for all intents and purposes. Would many Christians have problems with this. I think so.
(chuckles) It's funny. I remember one time Meph was talking to this friend of his and the friend speculated that perhaps the DRIVING force behind Christianity was the hope of Paradise. A place composed of the antithesis of the hell the we saw on earth. A place composed of the supreme exaltation of all we know to be good in the world. A place where each INDIVIDUAL Christian would be able to enjoy that state with his/her own faculties. Covenantal love didn't have much to do with it as much as ENJOYMENT of this blissful state, including BEING and giving love. My creator thought about it as an interesting proposal, and soon tossed it aside. I, however, did not let the idea slip so fast. I held onto it, secretly pondering it for the longest time up until now. Perhaps the believe in this heaven really WAS one of the most selfish acts in history. It's clear that for the most part heaven wasn't seen to be primarily a place of SERVICE, but of enjoyment. Would Paul's preaching have gone over so well without the idea of the resurrection into new, eternal life? Would Christianity have been so appealing to so many low-brow gullible people living as the dregs of society that they would willingly throw themselves to lions, bare their necks to the sword, and almost RUSH to die...if there were no idea of the eternal reward awaiting them. I take the thought as I read the slanted crap dispensor called the magazine medium where a Muslim fundamentalist, imagining his act to place him in heavenly grasp, decided to strap explosives to himself and blow a pizzeria (including 7 small children to bits) for the sake of Allah. Yes, heavenly visions are big carrots looming in front of burdened a$$es, indeed.
But anyway, what if one were to say, Screw the afterlife. Let's just be good "for goodness sake" What would Christians say? Would Christians be like Paul who essentially said that if the resurrection wasn't true, that the faith was in vain? That we may as well "eat and be merry, for tomorrow we die"? Like doing good would not matter anything JUST to be doing good...hmmm... Anyway, just ask yourself. Do you really want God...or do you really want PARADISE. Rephrased. If you could CHOOSE between definitely having God (however God may be) and having the Paradisal/utopian view that heaven is seen to be what would you choose? Be honest, you pious people, you...
Having fun now, eh? Meph will die when he sees this on the board...
Here's something else. Just another what if. What if we really thought about what it means that God, the creator of the universe, would care about human affairs. What if we thought about how utterly anthrocentric the idea of the Imago Dei truly is. Are we foolish enough idiots to actually think that God is rational in his fawning "love" for us? Let me give you an example of how simply manic this truly is. Imagine yourself truly giving a rat's butt about whether a lone bacterium moved right or left...in a puddle of water...in a field...in Antarctica. Imagine yourself really caring about whether that bacterium got its daily intake of food or not. Now mind you you have much more grandiose things that you are doing...yet you take time to look in on (via whatever means) to the needs of this one bacterium. Irrational would be at least one of the things I would call you. Now, let's look at the Creator. BILLIONS upon BILLONS of clusters...in which are BILLIONS and BILLIONS of galaxies...in which are BILLIONS and BILLIONS of star-systems...in which are BILLIONS and BILLIONS of planetaries systems...in which there are inumerable types of planets. (Perhaps I've got a Carl Sagan complex...heh)
Out of all of his creation, the Creator chooses one little speck of insignificant dust we call earth and after millions or millenia, homo sapiens emerge from the "ashes of dead stars", as Polkinghorne has said. And we are told that he cares infinitely for each meaningless, microbe of a being on this planet. He cares so MUCH, in fact, that it is HERE with humans that he chooses to pivot the history of the COSMOS in the shape of "redemptive history" with Christ. He LOVES us so much that He generally wishes that each of us have the most happiness and well being we can possess. Does anyone see how IRRATIONAL this divine being would be? How this being borders on psychosis?? Surely, this could be seen as silly, stupid, yet WONDEROUS lavishing of love on pathetic human beings. But here's the kicker. Many foolish cretins actually feel like the love their God pours upon them is OWED them in some way. Can you imagine anything more purely puerile in conception? That this irrational God figure who would miss almost NOTHING if the human race were never to exist is, in some sense, obligated to honor these microbes? How simply egocentric! There could be countless civilizations on countless worlds that human beings don't know exist...and some of these peasants have the gall to assume that the entire weight of "good and evil" in the ENTIRE COSMOS is hinged on the historical activity of human beings? Would this not make the Creator even MORE irrational? Go back to the analogy. This would be like me subjecting the surroundings in my city to certain consequences depending on my beloved bateria in Antarctica. Simply incredible.
Has anyone ever stopped to ask themselves what type of a God they are serving? Has anyone ever stopped to check the nature of their beliefs? Perhaps they are too blinded by their transformed lives or great hopes of Paradise to notice the blatent absurdity in the claims themselves. We are less than nothing to God...but God is MANDATED to weep and fawn over a lone sick child. It's enough to melt your heart...or turn your stomach. Oh, well...
*****************
Well, I guess I've caused this pedantic nuisance I'm stuck with more trouble than I should have. After all, you never know who's reading these things. He'll probably want to deny any of this. But I know him way too well. He can deny it all he wants, I'm just saying what he wants to say, but is too much of a lapdog to say. Call me the raw expression of his tormented mind. I don't care. But I've had immense fun. And I know you have too. Oh, one last thing, just so you know. Meph's struggles with faith are getting a bit easier nowadays. Certain things that seemed so serious to him before are begin to look quite absurd...and ultimately frivolous. He thinks it's because his faith is deepening and growing stronger as a result of all his praying, seeking, and reading. (He must have gotten that from reading too much James Fowler and his "Stages of Faith") But I know better. And I'm just waiting for the inevitable. See you in the funny papers, "saints"
With Extreme Delight and Freedom,
The ~
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him." --Arthur C. Clarke | | Back to Top | | |
 |
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/24/2007 7:56 PM (GMT -6) | | |
I saw this and just sat here...amazed.
I don't even recognize this person anymore.
He is deceased and rotting in his proverbial grave.
This person was in so much internal pain when this was written.
He had a love/hate relationship with God and others.
He just plain hated himself.
Such deep despair...even in the midst of trying to follow God.
The venom would seep out however it could.
Praise God for transformation.
Thanks for being the God of "Another Chance", Jesus.
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
Post Edited (One) : 4/24/2007 7:59:00 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/29/2007 8:36 PM (GMT -6) | | I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/30/2007 2:38 AM (GMT -6) | | | Hell is seeing the total, hard truth about yourself...with no way of denying or avoiding it.
Hell is when the judgment mechanism of the mind goes into "self-destruct" mode...
Satan's insanity, pride, and defiance all emerge from the deceitful heart in the time of divine purging.
God removes the heart of stone by divine truth telling...and gives a heart of flesh by the same thing.
Yeah...
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be One, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be One as we are One— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete Unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
Post Edited (ONE) : 4/30/2007 3:50:27 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 6:28 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|