Christianity

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Dontaskme
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dontaskme »

Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:08 pm

Explain the relevance of your pig sty statement to Christianity now that I've corrected you, and told you that Jesus was born in a stable.
Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:08 pmWere you raised in a barn with the pigs?
I think you need to explain that to yourself.

I simply said none of us were born in a pigsty. Nor were we raised in a barn full of pigs. Not that I know of anyway, I mean I could be wrong, some women could have given birth in a pigsty surrounded by pigs...but I cannot be certain about that, not until I'd witnessed such a thing happening with my own eyes.
Last edited by Dontaskme on Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Walker
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Re: Christianity

Post by Walker »

Harry Baird wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:15 pm
Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 1:49 pm It's their meat. It's what they respond to.
Maybe, if that's your analysis, you should stop throwing meat to them? I mean, I'm new enough here that I don't know my DAM from my VT, but doesn't it seem that they're gorging on the feast you're providing?
Of course they're gorging, they love it. In the world as in here, pigs who shit on Christianity don't respond to appeasement. So, feed them until they bust a gut.
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Re: Christianity

Post by Walker »

Dontaskme wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:19 pmblah blah blah
Not even worth answering.
Harry Baird
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Alright, folks. Everybody. Listen up. It's intermittent fasting time. No more gorging, feasting, or self-pleasuring. And silence. Peace 'n quiet. Let's stick to it for a day or two. Alright. We'll talk again in forty-eight hours.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Harry Baird wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:00 amThis is to me really interesting and worthy of discussion in a thread titled "Christianity": how, according to Biblically faithful Christianity, is a person saved through Christ? What exactly does it take? Is merely mouthing doctrinal words of acceptance of salvation (through Christ) adequate? Or does one in addition have to feel and believe the words? If the latter, what if the person seeking salvation theoretically wants to accept salvation but can't muster up the adequate feeling and belief? When they utter the words, are they saved anyway, or not? Is salvation-by-utterance, under whatever conditions are required, irrevocable, or can it be revoked on the basis that, according to later events, the utterance was determined to be non-genuine?

If we allow that - as is obvious - Biblical Christianity is absurd, but that it must have had its seeds in something that is/was very real and not at all absurd - the historical personage of Jesus Christ - then who exactly is he, what did he do, what are the possibilities of relationship with him (assuming his immortality), how are they realistically entered into, and how can they be of help to the average person who doesn't want to buy into a load of bull (with hat tip to atto)?
Before addressing the questions here I'd recommend starting from a somewhat different point. I think that what we need to examine is the absurdity of the positions we find ourselves in. Take the various people, and the conflicting positions, of everyone participating in this (odd) thread on this (also odd) forum. Not only is their no agreement in any fundamental sense, there is a sort of barking lunacy. When the fundamental agreements break down, the very structure upon which the personality sits and anchors itself, becomes unstable. And it seems to me that the thing we need to focus on and think through is that instability.

One of the lasting helpful concept I got from our friends on the forum we participated in for years was the idea of 'causation'. For this reason I often refer to us as 'outcomes' of processes about which we are ignorant or, at best, only darkly aware. In my way of seeing things, and understanding our present, what most stands out for me is what I call *unmooring*. True, I am speaking about it in relation to having a foundation within a Christian praxis, a Christian community, and within a Christian culture, but the issue of *unmooring* is evident everywhere. Thus my reference to Waldo Frank (a forgotten philosopher and novelist from the 20s and 30s) who noticed that the general, corporate body of Europe was in a state of inanition connected to processes of moribundity. What he said stuck with me (as an image): in a dying body all the cells light up. The death of a body produces a light-show as the system breaks down. The relationships in a holistic sense between the various cells and parts is sundered and each cell lights up in its separate, atomized, subjective death throes.

The question I have often asked (in relation to Immanuel Can's productions and rehearsals) is What is salvation? The question becomes relevant when (and if) we accept that the structures that uphold the person and the personality are coming undone. What is a person whose 'unity' is fracturing to do? We are aware of therapeutic means to help the disintegrating person to hold themselves together. We are aware that the state of disunity results in an unstable person who is then inclined to bolster the self in one way or another. To seek a rock or a structure upon which to anchor himself. We are also aware that some people succumb to the disintegration process and die -- a metaphorical reference to falling into the stream of dis-unification, of lostness and perdition.

But what, in any *ultimate* sense is salvation? The term only has relevance in relation to the system of understanding of which it is an expression. And in Christian terms, as I have said, the 'picture' of the world has to be described and understood in order, then, to define 'salvation'. So when we reduce it to a simplified statement we can, perhaps, see what it is. It seems to me that it is a *ticket out of this world*. A sort of "paz y salvo" (paid in full) which entitles one to leave behind the binding 'mortal coil' [to "shuffle off this mortal coil" is to die]:
"Coil" has an unusual etymological history. It was coined repeatedly; at various times people have used it as a verb to mean "to cull", "to thrash", "to lie in rings or spirals", "to turn", "to mound hay" and "to stir". As a noun it has meant "a selection", "a spiral", "the breech of a gun", "a mound of hay", "a pen for hens", and "noisy disturbance, fuss, ado". It is in this last sense, which became popular in the 16th century, that Shakespeare used the word.
When examined closely it is a very strange concept. The Redeemer has 'paid the debt' and one is 'free to go' -- to go on from here to another sort of existence in a realm beyond this realm. The idea can be seen as a symptom of sickness (too tired, too worn out, too frustrated, too pained to go on) and so by resolving to give up on manifest life one simultaneously resolves to give up on building or setting down foundations in this world. But there is also another level which has to do realignment of the self within life-lived and performing in such a way that one is, at least in some degree, contributing to positive evolutionary currents. This latter element, it seems to me, is obviously opposed to the "I desire to escape" motivation. It should be obvious that for activist Christians that the source-book for ethical activity, indeed for all activity, is found in prophetic values.

See for example Abraham Joshua Herschel:
The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man: no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of this world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophets’ words.
What distinguishes the Christian value-system from that of other religious value-systems is the root within prophetic values and these are inseparable from the Hebrew context.

Herschel wrote:
It is common to characterize the prophet as a messenger of God, thus to differentiate him from the tellers of fortune, givers of oracles, seers, and ecstatics. Such a characterization expresses only one aspect of his consciousness. The prophet claims to be far more than a messenger. He is a person who stands in the presence of God (Jer. 15:19), who stands "in the council of the Lord" (Jer. 23:18), who is a participant, as it were, in the council of God, not a bearer of dispatches whose function is limited to being sent on errands. He is a counselor as well as a messenger.

The words the prophet utters are not offered as souvenirs. His speech to the people is not a reminiscence, a report, hearsay. The prophet not only conveys; he reveals. He almost does unto others what God does unto him. In speaking, the prophet reveals God. This is the marvel of a prophet's work: in his words, the invisible God becomes audible. He does not prove or argue. The thought he has to convey is more than language can contain. Divine power bursts in the words. The authority of the prophet is in the Presence his words reveal.
I have only partially *answered* the question you are asking. It seems to me that in order to understand the Christian revelation one has to understand what distinguishes it from other revelations (I am most familiar with the Vedic revelation which is substantially and notably different). One also has to try to *see it* from some distance above it, outside of it, in order to better appreciate it and also defend it. It is, after all, what has most informed us.

Now let us turn back to our *real situation*: extraordinary & profound (possibly irreconcilable) differences that to all appearances do not look as though they can be, or will be, bridged.

There are two distinct lines of activity it seems to me. One is the personal and the strictly subjective: how we *orient ourself* within the existential problem? What do I say to myself about where I am and what I am? What do I say to 'god'? How do I become reconciled to the fact of my real existence here, in a temporal condition, with death and utter breakdown just over the next hump in the road? (An essential grasp of the reality of our situation). What shall I do? Pray to be relieved of the burden? Pray for crafty intelligence ('cunning intelligence' -- Metis [Ancient Greek: Μῆτις, romanized: Mêtis, lit. 'wisdom', 'skill', or 'craft'] -- is an important Greek idea and indeed a method for getting through life) in order to, to put it directly, better connive my way through the material entanglement? This involves being smarter than the average person or 'the next guy'. It implies seeing life and life's struggles as a game and thus brings out the notion of gaming; of good use of investments; or careful and strategic planning; of being ahead of the curve.
Mêtis as an intelligent ability comes into play on a widely varying levels but in all of them the emphasis is always laid on practical effectiveness, on the pursuit of success in a particular sphere of activity: it may involve multiple skills useful in life, the mastery of the artisan in his craft, magic tricks, the use of philtres and herbs, the cunning stratagems of war, frauds, deceits, resourcefulness of every king.
The other side of the equation is in What is my relation to other people and what are my obligations? Where will I place my allegiance? To whom will I (or must I) offer my service? This is not an easy issue to answer because I will have to answer a range of other questions first and these, also, have all sorts of metaphysical implications.

So here I have at least opened up the issue to examination and further discussion.
Last edited by Alexis Jacobi on Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dontaskme
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Re: Christianity

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Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:25 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:19 pmblah blah blah
Not even worth answering.
But you'll answer anyway...Walker I know I'm just too irresisitable to ignore.

There are no answers only questions.

If there were answers, philosophy would stop popping aware.

Image



Also now wondering what the BLA BLA BLA was referring to...was it the pigsty comment, or the how do you know if I used a dildo last night comment?
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Dontaskme
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dontaskme »

Harry Baird wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:27 pm Alright, folks. Everybody. Listen up. It's intermittent fasting time. No more gorging, feasting, or self-pleasuring. And silence. Peace 'n quiet. Let's stick to it for a day or two. Alright. We'll talk again in forty-eight hours.
Talking with Walker is like having sex with a 400Ib gorilla, it's only over when it's over.
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Harbal
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harbal »

Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:20 pm In the world as in here, pigs who shit on Christianity don't respond to appeasement. So, feed them until they bust a gut.
What has been said here about Christianity that is any worse than things you have said about "Democrats", or "the Left"?

Are derogatory comments only allowed about things that Walker disapproves of? :roll:
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Re: Christianity

Post by Walker »

Harry Baird wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:27 pm Alright, folks. Everybody. Listen up. It's intermittent fasting time. No more gorging, feasting, or self-pleasuring. And silence. Peace 'n quiet. Let's stick to it for a day or two. Alright. We'll talk again in forty-eight hours.
There's your answer to appeasement and detante, Harry. You'll learn.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Harry Baird wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 8:47 amGiven our communications over the years, I note with interest that you seem to be more amenable to the reality that indigenous lands were stolen by Europeans than you ever have been in the past, just as I note with interest that you seem to be more amenable to the reality that Zionism embodies a similar injustice than you ever have been in the past.
There is a possibility that you mis-perceived my former statements or my *position*. I have always recognized theft and what I call 'straight power-principles' in all dimensions of life. To understand this we need, first, to examine the biological and the ecological world. There, you (a living being) only get what you are capable of taking. If you are incapable of defense, you will be taken from. There is no 'moral' dimension. The moral perspective in relation to The World will get you nowhere.

In our human world, which is a world that is constructed within the Natural World I just described, we have introduced moral concepts. These moral concepts are antithetical
an·ti·thet·i·cal (ăn′tĭ-thĕt′ĭ-kəl) also an·ti·thet·ic (-ĭk)
adj.
1. Being in diametrical opposition: a viewpoint that was antithetical to conventional wisdom. See Synonyms at opposite.
2. Of, relating to, or marked by antithesis.
[From Medieval Latin antitheticus, from Greek antithetikos, from antitithenai, to oppose; see antithesis.]
to the way things actually work!

They are ideas that 'act against' or in opposition to the way things are. They are *impositions* from a world beyond. Thus we can see, in our system of division that we live in, that there is *god on high* who is outside of the fray; and there is Satan below who oversees and rules the manifest world and, in the Christian conception, has been given free rein.

However, god interjected himself into the world through Incarnation and emblemized the ethical set which is antithetical to The World.

So, over the course of time (that you and I have been conversing) you have noticed that I have a core and persistent problem and it is one that I do not think there is a solution for. All construction in this world involves various levels of 'harm done'. To grow a field of crops involves, definitely, the destruction of a living ecosystem (the prairie, etc.)

To claim something, to build something, always involves displacement. You have to push someone or something aside in order to create something. Creation always involves duality. On one hand you create an entire circumstance that redounds to your and many other people's benefit (such as establishing a colonial outpost and funneling resources back to *your people*. On the other side of the funnel, however, there is loss, taking away, deprivation and displacement.
And that is the reality. The claims of misguided ideologues like Immanuel Can that the people from whom the land was stolen were fighting amongst themselves anyway are of course bogus: even if a people are warring amongst themselves, that doesn't justify an outsider from stealing their land, and we all know that that's how it went down. Even Immanuel Can does. It just doesn't serve his purposes to acknowledge that injustice.
I would say that Immanuel Can has not ever really thought things through. His political idea are childlike. He sees through black & white binaries. He has a 'partisan' position which blinds him to the reality of *complicity*. He can't see the forest for the trees.
I wish that you would go further. Land theft is not merely a "functioning narrative": it is the literal reality for millions of indigenous people. Back yourself up better, dude. The likes of Immanuel Can don't deserve coddling here.
Certainly I have no disagreement with what you are seeing and describing. But what you would do well to understand is that my perspectives are more philosophical and less activist than yours seems to be. All that I can do is to see the way things are.
You are 100% right in your later comments, and they are why you should repudiate rather than coddle Immanuel Can. Christ would absolutely condemn the land theft perpetrated by so-called Christians. Christ was, in these terms, a progressive, and, taking the Christian critique to the limit, Christ would absolutely condemn the basis on which the USA (and so many other colonies) was founded.
Christ in the sense you use the notion of Christ (authority of god) must be seen in the sense that I have described it: as the sense of an imposed moral imperative that acts, directly, against the way things are.

Taken to the extreme point (this has to be said and understood) the activity of Christ is in self-annihilation. I am not saying this for dramatic purposes. I am saying it because the idea of Christ, expressed in this way, results in impossible absurdity.

So what I would like for you to do -- a supreme act of Christian charity! -- is to provide for me a way to get out of the existential conflict that I have outlined. Guide me to the Promised Land! If I am a discordant note, resolve me!
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Re: Christianity

Post by Walker »

Harbal wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:54 pm
Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:20 pm In the world as in here, pigs who shit on Christianity don't respond to appeasement. So, feed them until they bust a gut.
What has been said here about Christianity that is any worse than things you have said about "Democrats", or "the Left"?

Are derogatory comments only allowed about things that Walker disapproves of? :roll:
The question man. Figure it out, because as you've said, you don't understand what I write, unless it's thug talk. Then, you're all in.
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Re: Christianity

Post by henry quirk »

Harry,
how can they be of help to the average person who doesn't want to buy into a load of bull?
I'm not trying to change the world. I'm trying to stop the world from changing me.

*

Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don't need them, and the bad people don't obey them.

*

The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.

*

An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to make him behave.

*

We really can’t change the world. We really can’t change other people! The best we can do is to start a few thinking here and there. The best way to do this, if we are sincere, is to change ourselves!

*

Too many of us dissipate our energy by being 'for all good causes,' attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions — all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves… We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power.

*

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage and wisdom moves the world.

*

An anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to make him behave. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation with the right of secession. The individual or the family or the small group as a unit instead of the State.

*

Despite the popular idea of anarchists as violent men, Anarchism is the one non-violent social philosophy.… The function of the Anarchist is two-fold. By daily courage in non-cooperation with the tyrannical forces of the State and the Church, he helps to tear down present society; the Anarchist by daily cooperation with his fellows in overcoming evil with good-will and solidarity builds toward the anarchistic commonwealth which is formed by voluntary action with the right of secession.

*

A Christian Anarchist does not depend on bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused and dying world.

*

A Christian anarchist has no business belonging to such a reactionary organization [the Catholic Church]. I do not believe in original sin, indulgences, the infallibility of the pope, or obedience to any church official if it is against my conscience. I am not interested in earning "merit" or in being saved by priestly incantation.

*

I wasn't disturbing the peace, I was disturbing the war.

*

I am writing this preliminary statement of my reasons for not paying taxes ahead of time, as I was recently informed by your office that I would be imprisoned for my constant refusal to pay taxes. Upon my arrest I will give you the correct report of my earnings to date in 1948. My belief in the iniquity of government, which exists primarily to wage war, has been stated this last six years in my statement to your department when I refused to pay any tax, and also in articles in the Catholic Worker.

*

When I was working a man asked me "Why does a fellow like you, with an education, and who has been all over the country, end up in this out-of-the-way place working for very little on a farm?" I explained that all people who had good jobs in factories, etc. had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who worked on farms had no tax taken from their pay. I told him that I refused to pay taxes. He was a returned soldier and said that he did not like war either, but what could a fellow do about it? I replied that we each did what we really wanted to.

*

At times those who do not want to have their inconsistencies pointed out say in a super-sweet voice to me "Judge not, lest ye be judged." I reply "O. K., judge me, then."


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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: Christianity

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Note: I have decided to go into the circus business. I figure on starting with tours of the South American circuit but that only as a staging ground for an entertainment conquest of the North. I already have two trained bears. I have some penguins. I will need the funds for a caravan. And now I am looking for circus crew! If you are deformed, if you sing incomprehensibly, if you make no sense at all but chirp whinny and banter; if you look really weird but have a really charming charismatic side -- please PM me! Good times ahead!
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harry Baird »

Gentle people, I recognise the enthusiasm with which you part ways with our forty-eight hour period of quiet fasting and repentance, given the exciting unfolding of the conversation. Unfortunately, I am rather committed to a brief period of quietude, so I will have to leave you for now so as to maintain that commitment. I hope to return very soon with good tidings. Peace be with you until then.
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Re: Christianity

Post by Harbal »

Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 3:13 pm
Harbal wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:54 pm
Walker wrote: Sun Nov 27, 2022 2:20 pm In the world as in here, pigs who shit on Christianity don't respond to appeasement. So, feed them until they bust a gut.
What has been said here about Christianity that is any worse than things you have said about "Democrats", or "the Left"?

Are derogatory comments only allowed about things that Walker disapproves of? :roll:
The question man. Figure it out, because as you've said, you don't understand what I write, unless it's thug talk. Then, you're all in.
If you can't answer the question, just say so. :roll:
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