I understand what you're saying. I'm normally very reluctant to get into discussions like this, especially on Slashdot. But I felt that there were a lot of misunderstandings about Christianity being presented, and I was trying to address your questions from that paradigm. I'm sorry if I came across as wanting to convince you. As I've said, we're all free to choose which door we will take. And I won't deride you for picking a different door: but since people have asked about my door, I've been trying to explain what's inside.
Yes, there's a lot of thorny issues, especially in interpreting the actions of the Old Testament in the context of the New. I'm up through Acts and certainly have much more to learn, and I've tried to avoid mentoining the speck in another's eye for I certainly have a plank in my own. There's a lot of death and destruction in the Old Testament. In all honesty, I don't know how to address that yet. I know that the point of Christ in Christianity is to transmute the old and establish the New Israel. I apologize that I can't address all your examples, and they are good examples that I will pose to my priest.
We talked today about your question of eternal damnation. I asked him about a passage in Acts where a husband and wife who voluntariliy give their land to the early Church hold back some of the proceeds and through their lie experience death. I asked him, "If God is loving, why didn't they have a chance to repent?" He responded to me along these lines: The two made a great show of their donation, yet lied to the community and to God. They threatened the community and their actions had consequences. Yet how many might be saved through their deaths (it is said that all the people were afraid)? What if their death was their repentance? How can we know what conversation they have with Christ in the afterlife? We cannot know if they are condemned or saved, we can only be called to repentance. We always ask for great signs, and when we are given a great sign we complain because it necessarily is judgment or an unscientific miracle. Yet we don't feel the subtle signs, the manifestations of God in our daily lives, either. So what do we really expect from God? I admit, it's a tough call. But if we have been empowered to make a choice, we will have to face the consequences. If the only possibility in Christianity for eternal life means accepting God and thus allowing ourselves to be reconciled, reunited, and saved by God, we have to understand and trust in that. Just as if the only possibility in Buddhism is the cessation of suffering by the Four Noble Truths into the annihilation of Nirvana (in its oldest sense, as "extinction"), we have to understand and trust in that. Will you complain because your only choice is between experiencing eternal rebirths of suffering or of working towards cessation and annihilation? (and, if you interpret Samsara in the sense of the ups and downs of life, a life of happiness and suffering vs a life of dispassion and equanimity? -- Well who wouldn't want dispassion and equanimity? Well who wouldn't want eternal joy in Heaven?)
Yes, there's a lot of atrocities in Church history. And I will say this: you can look to Rome for its source. Rome sacked Constantinople during the Crusades. They turned against the rest of their Christian brethren and had many run-ins with worldliness, and certainly did not comprehend the point of free will in forcing people to convert. Of course, religion was used as a coverup for political and worldly motives. As the state fused with the Church (not something that is done in Orthodoxy) those who wanted to succeed in the state had to succeed in the Church. It ended up terribly and all of Western Christianity has suffered from it since then. Persecution had kept Christianity strong, and the acceptance of Christianity by Constantine ended up being both a blessing and a curse. That's why I'm fully for total seperation between Church and State. It threatens the proper functioning of each institution. There have been efforts made towar
Buddhism is about metaphysics, though, so I'm a little uncertain as to what you're actually saying.
My point is simply that in Christianity, Christ is a person, and the message is rooted in a person and the redemptive power of His acts. That's the point of Christianity, and probably what causes the most confusion among non-Christians looking to interpret Christian thought. Christ's manifestation in the world of matter and time sanctifies matter and time. It reunites God and man. In His humanity, Christ faces all that we face. But being true man, Christ overcomes all temptations. Christ not only shows us the way; He makes it possible for us through His tramping down death upon the cross. He shows us true humility in His being risen up upon the Cross, and true victory in His Resurrection and Ascention. God becomes man so that man might become more like God. This isn't a matter of showing us a way to live temporally. It's a matter of revealing to us the mystery of existence and reuniting us with Him after the Fall eternally.
I don't see how the parable of the Prodigal Son could be evolutionary beneficial, though. Forgiveness is dangerous because it opens us again to hurt. It requires hope in another person's repentance that might not have taken place. But I'm not familiar with survivial strategies in evolution, and I admit my ignorance here.
Saying "do just as much good" is the problem. Goodness is a quality, not a quantity. As Yannaras writes, "what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths." In the Christian paradigm, if a person chooses to sever their connection with God they cannot expect eternal life, for they have chosen not to want it.
Yes, the blind men and the elephant. An excellent parable by the Sufi Rumi, who wrote in an Islamic idiom and professed the validity of the Islamic message. I'm not qualified to interpret his poetry, for I am unfamiliar with his thought. I just know that my teacher who taught a comparative religion class on Orthodoxy and Yoga warned me against thinking that Rumi is advocating a simple, syncretist perspective. I'm sorry that I haven't had the time to get to him yet. This sort of syncretism is what John Hick attempts to do, saying that since all religions are equally salvifically efficacious in terms of producing good people (I have no idea how he deduces that) that they all point to (not prove) the existence of a meta-religion. Unfortunately, when one tries to merge the religions together in this manner they lose all their recognizable characteristics and you end up with Hickism instead.
As I've said, I can't prove anything for you, so I guess that you won't change. I'm surprised at the way that you characterize God, since you claimed to have been a Christian. We hate vengance but of couse demand justice. We hate jealosy but of course demand love. I'm not certain where spiteful and evil come in, and I don't see how God can be a dictator when He lets us choose freely our eternal fate. I know it can be difficult because we don't get to pick what Truth is and be fully God ourselves. And the Christian response, which I am certain will not satisfy you, is that God in His wisdom knows what is good for us. Do you say that we live under a dictator because we cannot kill and maim at will? And yet God teaches us how to live that we do not kill and maim ourselves and our neighbor. Maybe we really wanted that cake as a child, but you know, that bowl of vegetables is a lot better for us in the long run.
God reveals His name as "Father" and calls us His friends, not His servants. God forgives our transgressions and becomes man so that we might become like God; that in opening ourselves to Him we may be deified and share in His glory. He always runs out to meet us after we have abandoned Him and squandered our inheritance. He grants us eternal life if only we allow Him to give it, and He asks only that we change our character in accordance with His wisdom, not that we must do X or Y
God is immanent in every created thing. His Image is present in all of humanity, however obscured it may be. To love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind is to love one another as Christ has loved us.
I know that your issue here is with pain. It was also my issue against Christianity in my own life. But we live in a world of matter. Not all states of matter are desireable. Not all systems of matter last forever. That's the nature of the temporal world in which we have choice. In regards to the actions of people: they're the actions _of people_. Although it's primarly a comedic movie, the movie "Bruce Almighty" has a significant message: we must be careful what we attribute to God; we must recognize the consequences of our own actions and of others actions and see them as such.
Fairy tales usually entertain us, but Christianity doesn't. Christianity, as I've said, is understanding how we miss the mark, and in forcing us to understand how we must change ourselves for the better. It's promise is simply that we are not alone in our struggle and that we have guideposts along the way and a chance for redeption from a merciful God, although we are unprofitable servants who rarely love one another. Christianity isn't about living _for_ eternal life, it's about living _in_ eternal life: as such, our presence here, however brief a stop in our existence, is tremendously important, for its ramifications are eternal. To live for eternal life, to act in one way to receive something in return, is an economic mode of living. We're not bartering: we have nothing to offer the Creator of all! We are called to realize that we live eternally, right now. We are called to change ourselves significantly from our standard, selfish mode of thinking; to love one another and to forgive one another, that we may open ourselves to God's love and forgiveness. Christianity presents us with a tremendous responsibility, a lot to contemplate in our lives, and the hope that things will work out in the end. I don't know what could be more satisfying.
Ah, but Buddhism also requires faith. You must take the Buddha's word that there is enlightenment, that the enlightenment of him and the masters is authentic, that there is a cessation to suffering consisting of an undefined, language and logic-transcending concept known as Nibbana, and that there is nothing greater than the reality and solution he claims.
To choose Buddhism is also to judge. While we should not judge others, there is one huge judgment that we must make for ourselves: what path in life to take. To follow the Buddhist path is to attest to its truth. Of course Dogen doesn't speak for all of Buddhism. But the very nature of Buddhism is to deny the Brahmanic path, for it states that atman/Brahman is a nonexistant, delusional concept; and it is to deny all other religions, for it is not to adhere to their philosphies or worship their gods. There is nothing wrong with this, and we can still love our neighbor and not practice their religion or philosophy. We must all choose one path in life; we cannot live two at once. In a Christian conception, you might not be saved. In a Buddhist conception, I am deluded and destined to continue in the suffering cycle of Samsara. I can live with that opinion of me without feeling offended!
I don't know where I said that you path is not as meaningful or valuable as mine. I apologize if that was in my response somehow.
The scientific process, and that aspect of the process utilized in Buddhism (for Buddhism is also faith), only goes so far: it addresses material (a house burns down because it is wood), formal (a computer program failed because it had an error), and efficient (clouds are caused by evaporation and condensation) causes. It does not address teleology, that is motive, purpose, or goal. The Buddha taught the end to suffering. He would not answer questions about the existence of a soul or the origins of the universe or of our purpose in life, saying that they were not relevant to the cessation of suffering and that they were unknowable. While Nagarjuna's thought contains an argument against notions of a creator deity, it ends up affirming a universe with no beginning. I think that it is fair to say that such an understanding is as equally mysterious as what other religions have to say.
The issue at hand is that _God is not a part of the furniture of the universe_. To conceive of Him as such is to circumscribe God and make God into another human thing, something not-infinite, some not-God. God, by definition, exists outside of time and space, and in Christian thought God is that which sustains this existence and the properties of this universe. God is teleological, and because of free will cannot be approached through material, formal, or efficient causes, for those would be tantamount to proofs and would violate our ability to choose. Even if a watch might lead one to posit a watchmaker, that watch doesn't tell us much about the maker. That's why the God-based religions are based on revelation, which can be denied. We are called to trust the testimony and life of the prophets and Jesus and their varoius claims. That's another choice we all must make, and you have chosen to trust the testimony of the Buddha and the masters who claim enlightenment and knowledge of the cessation of suffering.
Claiming to know the mind of God is dangerous. It leads to prejudice and judgment, and makes God a piece of the furniture of the universe that we can place and rearrange as we see fit. That's why Eastern Orthodox Christianity utilizes negative theology; that's why we pray for "full knowledge of Your unapproachable glory" -- that is, to fully understand that our limited mind cannot grasp the infinite, to protect us from pride and claiming to know good and evil. In Orthodoxy, there is a distinction between the essence and energies of God; while we can feel His energies, His work in our universe, we cannot ever come to fully know God. Christ says that no one has seen the Father, but by virtue of being "in the bosom of the Father" He is in commun
I actually practiced Soto Zen Buddhism for a few years before converting to Orthodox Christianity. I don't know if other religions are false. God saves by whatever means He will -- it is not my right to restrict His power and Will. I arrived at an understanding of Christ through study and meditation, then eventually through prayer. I know this is true through my experience, and I never claimed to have cornered the market on truth. If that's how I came across, please forgive me. I'm not really sure what I did wrong. It was just my intent to explain the Christian perspective, and I'm not sure where my hubris is. I did not intend it to be an attack upon anyone.
I've studied Buddhism and Confucianism (B.A. in Religious Studies, concentrating on East Asia) and while there's of course much overlap in the moral teachings, there's a lot of difference, also. Saying that the truth of reality is a paradox of emptiness and co-dependent origination is a lot different than saying that we have the revealed Word of God as a Person in flesh! This is what makes pluralist hyphothesis such as John Hick's difficult: while most religions seek to cultivate a certain type of person, there's enough differences present that they do become exclusive. And most religions make exclusivist claims, too: there might be 10,000 paths to enlightenment, but Dogen claimed that Zen isn't a sect but is actually true Buddhism, and Shinran taught that the path of Other-Power is the only valid way in the decadent age of the Dharma, where self effort is futile and rooted in ego. For Confucius, the Rites are a mandatory part of experience, and the Bhagavad Gita says that Atman is Brahman (and Buddhism denies both!) So yes, which one do we choose when _they all make conflicting, exclusivist claims_?
Because of all this conflict I do not judge. It is not my place to judge. I will love my neighbor as Christ loved his apostles. I help people learn about Zen and Shin just as much as I help people understand Christianity. I can attest to the truth of my own individual experience but can give you nothing more.
I'm sorry that I provoked such a reaction in you, and if there's another way that I could go about informing people of the Christian experience and the understanding of the Christian paradigm without elaborating upon any of the truth claims in Christianity so as not to offend somebody, then perhaps that would be a better choice. But isn't that what this article is about: people judging and getting offended by a simple statement of what something is? As scientific fact is fact, and any feelings of being offended the problem of the perceiver, so religious experience, in any religion, is religious experience in the idiom of the experiencer. I can either express that experience in its idiom, or I can strip it void of anything controversial and thus sacrifice communicating to you an authentic meaning. Which would you rather have me do?
Well, I was giving a Christian explanation, and as such sought to represent Christian thought. I am sorry if I offened you.
We are all free to interpret Christ's life. There can be no indisputable proof of His Divinity because that would violate our free will. God does not desire a fradulent love gained through compulsion. Christ said that even in addition to all the miracles he did, if He was to rise from the dead that the establishment would still not believe, for their hearts were hardened.
God gives us the opportunity to deny so that we may grow, as a father lets his children make mistakes so that they may truly understand. Perhaps some will lose their way, but that was a necessary risk. I will not bore you with quotes and commentary, for I understand that they will not convince you. Indeed, I had long felt as you do now. But soften your heart that you may perceive the message without judging it beforehand. Study the Bible and pray in earnest; the Spirit will become manifest in your experience of life. That is all that I can attest to.
I'm not certain if this is an issue of intolerance. One doesn't choose to be tolerant or not of scientific fact. One can tolerate different lifestyles or religious choices, but truth is truth.
Christ did advocate social reform, but at the same time He did condemn. He condemned the Jewish establishment for raising the Law up into an idol, such as in refusing to heal on the Sabbath. He condemned obeying the letter of the law without understanding the spirit of the law. Christ, through His Divinity, was fit to judge. We, in our humanity, are not. As such, we encounter a dialectic in the Bible: the divine transcendence that allows Christ to be judge, and our own fallen nature that mandates that we "love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another" (John 13:34) and "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you" (Matthew 7:1,2). Was not the primal sin eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Do we have the pride to think that we can become gods and judge?
As I make note of in another post, "sin" means, literally, "missing the mark." The character of humanity in the context of the Fall is that we are always missing the mark! If we were perfect, then the Church would no longer be needed to guide us with its tools, and we would be deified. But that isn't the case. The matter is that we do constantly judge, we do constantly fail to love one another, we do constantly try to play god. A young monk was once asked, "What do you do all day in the monastery?" He replied, "We fall and rise, fall and rise." As Yannaras writes: "what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths." And we are called to love and forgive one another, as the father forgave his prodigal son, as we all continually miss the mark. This is not to excuse us from responsibility: we must also notch another arrow and fire again! And if our arrow should hit another, we must repent and ask for forgiveness. But yes, to look for a true Christian... you will find only sinners! That is the point of Christianity, indeed.
The Church gives us not a system, but a key; not a plan of God's City, but the means of entering it. Perhaps someone will lose his way because he has no plan. But all that he will see, he will see without a mediator, he will see it directly, it will be real for him; while he who has studied only the plan risks remaining outside and not really finding anything. - Fr Georges Florovsky
The Church provides us with tools to establish our own relationship with God. That relationship is characterized by our constant struggle to be better, chiefly characterized by this: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John, 13:34-35). The old formulation was that we should love one another as we love ourselves: that is, in a limited, human manner. But in Christian conception, God is infinite, and as such his qualities are inifinite. So we are all called to love one another beyond our actual capabilities. This is an intense struggle toward an impossible goal! This is not a religion which provides people with any level of comfort, with any placid acceptance of their condition or any simple way out. This is about constantly realizing that we make mistakes. The word "sin" literally means, "missing the mark." That is the character of our condition: we're an archer who not only doesn't hit the bullseye, but isn't even hitting the designated target area. Yet this does not mean that we live a life of guilt. God's grace, manifested both individually in us through prayer and the Holy Spirit, and communally through inspired Holy Tradition in the Church and the tools wrought from the experience of the Holy Fathers, gives us the strength and guidance we need to become deified, to become more like God, to actualize the Image present in us to "love one another as I have loved you."
Ideally, the goal of the Church is _not to be needed_. But we are always developing spiritually. During this period of Great Lent, we are called to fast. It is not fasting that makes us holy! It is the attitude that fasting cultivates that is important, as we come to realize that ribeye steaks and teriyaki salmon and fine cheeses aren't necessary for us, and as we develop a new appreciation for the blessing of these things in our lives after Holy Pascha. But to say that fasting is useless is just as much of a fallacy to say that fasting makes one Holy.
Likewise, of course going to Church doesn't make us Holy. But that's not to say that the Church offers us nothing! It offers us shared strength as we stumble and miss the mark over and over, as we partake in the wisdom of the Holy Fathers and are led by the their hard-won experience to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, that we may truly live out the New Commandment. The Church is a hospital trying to dress a wound that covers our entire body and soul. It's up to us to be careful and not to get ourselves injured again!
Note: I'm giving an Eastern Orthodox perspective on this, which may differ from the Latin Church and its descendants. But I must disagree with you that the Church is nothing but a whorehouse for simpletons. A whorehouse satisfies a need. But the Church _provides us with an understanding of our most pressing need_, that is repentance: a call to change.
The Church gives us not a system, but a key; not a plan of God's City, but the means of entering it. Perhaps someone will lose his way because he has no plan. But all that he will see, he will see without a mediator, he will see it directly, it will be real for him; while he who has studied only the plan risks remaining outside and not really finding anything. -Fr Georges Florovsky
You are a world within a world: look within yourself, and see there the whole creation. Do not look at exterior things but turn all your attention to that which lies within. Gather together your whole mind within the intellectual treasure-house of your soul, and make ready for the Lord a shrine free from images. -St Nilus of Aneyra
Anyone who tries to describe the ineffable Light in language is truly a liar -- not because he hates the truth, but because of the inadequacy of his description. -St. Gregory of Nyssa
Speech is the organ of this present world. Silence is a mystery of the world to come. -St Isaac the Syrian
One cannot grasp the infinite with the finite. To grasp is to constrict -- we do not close our eyes to see. The veil cannot be parted, despite the machinations of the intellect. For too long has the West sabotaged her own spiritual endeavors through searching for a God manufactured as another piece of the furniture of the universe. Religion perceives the depth of all reality, transcending our senses and penetrating deeply into our flesh, bones, and organs to the fine gray dust within. You must empty your cup before filling it. You must seek silence in order to hear.
In the first mission you mention, the nuclear warhead storage facility is being run by terrorists, and the player, as China, must destroy it.
There are 3 single player campaigns available, where you play the role of China, America, or the "Global Liberation Army" (terrorists).
It's actually quite interesting to see the game designers' predictions towards a future war. America's forces focus on technology, mobility and air superiority; China uses masses of units and nuclear technology; while the GLA uses junkyard vehicles, anthrax, and even suicide bombers. But, remember, one can play any side and thus use any strategy. It's not some "America conquers the world" game (at least, so far that I've played... you begin the game in the Chinese campaign, and end it with the GLA, and I of course haven't completed the first campaign yet).
When I sit and play any of the sides, I don't sit there and think, "Oh, hey, it would be cool if I was doing this in real life; launching nukes and scuds." It is a setting for a game of strategy, and the setting, a future which may not be so implausible, poses some interesting questions.
All of the sides can unleash terrible devestation. All of them believe in their cause. Which one is necessarily "right", if any? Destroy all enemy forces in Iraq? Isn't that what a certain nation is planning on doing?
Many books are written about real life events, from the perspectives of all people involved. Just because this is a game doesn't mean that it must be void of any sort of valuable philosophical content. While in a book one must simply accept the perspective given to them, here the player has a choice. I'll admit that diplomacy isn't an option -- but the genre of this game is the strategy of warfare, not the strategy of negotiations.
As I stated before, I haven't played through the whole game yet, simply because of time. I could see your point if the game only allowed a person to play as America; however, the fact is that you can play any of the sides, along with their appropriate predicted ideologies and goals.
You seem to have forgotten about the Second Noble Truth: suffering occurs because of ignorance; the ignorance that leads one to imbue things with a self and attach to those things which will someday dissolve, causing suffering -- it is craving that is the source of suffering, and it is the extinction of craving that is Nirvana. Parinirvana is not a nihilistic oblivion. Please refer to this essay of mine.
I think that Buddhist Nirvana sort of does; entities that become enlightened are never returned to the wheel of life, so there's a constant drain of energy "lost" by the world to nothingness.
What energy is lost? Are you referring to some sort of energy embodied in a soul? There is no persistent self, ego, or soul. Upon death the body, and thus mind, are dissolved. The matter comprising a person does not vanish anywhere. Consciousness is dissipated upon the cessation of stimuli, for such is how it arises.
What the Buddha Taught, by Walpola Rahula -- the earlier chapters; unfortunately, as I am currently at work, I cannot reference them.
The peace of Nirvana always seemed something like a perfectly uniform universe to me.
A key point regarding the conception of Nirvana lies in the following statement by the Buddhist logician Nagarjuna:
"There is nothing whatever which differentiates the existence-in-flux (samsara) from nirvana; And there is nothing whatever which differentiates nirvana from existence-in-flux." --Nagarjuna, "Fundamental of the Middle Way" (25.19)
Nagarjuna espouses the idea of sunyata, or emptiness. For a further explanation of sunyata, please consult an essay that I have written: Emptiness, Nihilism, and the Middle Way. While this essay deals with sunyata in a different context, I believe that it comprises an adaquete introduction towards the concept. (I am not a monk, but at the very least my professor had no qualms with it)
Slashdot Mirror
I understand what you're saying. I'm normally very reluctant to get into discussions like this, especially on Slashdot. But I felt that there were a lot of misunderstandings about Christianity being presented, and I was trying to address your questions from that paradigm. I'm sorry if I came across as wanting to convince you. As I've said, we're all free to choose which door we will take. And I won't deride you for picking a different door: but since people have asked about my door, I've been trying to explain what's inside.
Yes, there's a lot of thorny issues, especially in interpreting the actions of the Old Testament in the context of the New. I'm up through Acts and certainly have much more to learn, and I've tried to avoid mentoining the speck in another's eye for I certainly have a plank in my own. There's a lot of death and destruction in the Old Testament. In all honesty, I don't know how to address that yet. I know that the point of Christ in Christianity is to transmute the old and establish the New Israel. I apologize that I can't address all your examples, and they are good examples that I will pose to my priest.
We talked today about your question of eternal damnation. I asked him about a passage in Acts where a husband and wife who voluntariliy give their land to the early Church hold back some of the proceeds and through their lie experience death. I asked him, "If God is loving, why didn't they have a chance to repent?" He responded to me along these lines: The two made a great show of their donation, yet lied to the community and to God. They threatened the community and their actions had consequences. Yet how many might be saved through their deaths (it is said that all the people were afraid)? What if their death was their repentance? How can we know what conversation they have with Christ in the afterlife? We cannot know if they are condemned or saved, we can only be called to repentance. We always ask for great signs, and when we are given a great sign we complain because it necessarily is judgment or an unscientific miracle. Yet we don't feel the subtle signs, the manifestations of God in our daily lives, either. So what do we really expect from God? I admit, it's a tough call. But if we have been empowered to make a choice, we will have to face the consequences. If the only possibility in Christianity for eternal life means accepting God and thus allowing ourselves to be reconciled, reunited, and saved by God, we have to understand and trust in that. Just as if the only possibility in Buddhism is the cessation of suffering by the Four Noble Truths into the annihilation of Nirvana (in its oldest sense, as "extinction"), we have to understand and trust in that. Will you complain because your only choice is between experiencing eternal rebirths of suffering or of working towards cessation and annihilation? (and, if you interpret Samsara in the sense of the ups and downs of life, a life of happiness and suffering vs a life of dispassion and equanimity? -- Well who wouldn't want dispassion and equanimity? Well who wouldn't want eternal joy in Heaven?)
Yes, there's a lot of atrocities in Church history. And I will say this: you can look to Rome for its source. Rome sacked Constantinople during the Crusades. They turned against the rest of their Christian brethren and had many run-ins with worldliness, and certainly did not comprehend the point of free will in forcing people to convert. Of course, religion was used as a coverup for political and worldly motives. As the state fused with the Church (not something that is done in Orthodoxy) those who wanted to succeed in the state had to succeed in the Church. It ended up terribly and all of Western Christianity has suffered from it since then. Persecution had kept Christianity strong, and the acceptance of Christianity by Constantine ended up being both a blessing and a curse. That's why I'm fully for total seperation between Church and State. It threatens the proper functioning of each institution. There have been efforts made towar
Buddhism is about metaphysics, though, so I'm a little uncertain as to what you're actually saying.
My point is simply that in Christianity, Christ is a person, and the message is rooted in a person and the redemptive power of His acts. That's the point of Christianity, and probably what causes the most confusion among non-Christians looking to interpret Christian thought. Christ's manifestation in the world of matter and time sanctifies matter and time. It reunites God and man. In His humanity, Christ faces all that we face. But being true man, Christ overcomes all temptations. Christ not only shows us the way; He makes it possible for us through His tramping down death upon the cross. He shows us true humility in His being risen up upon the Cross, and true victory in His Resurrection and Ascention. God becomes man so that man might become more like God. This isn't a matter of showing us a way to live temporally. It's a matter of revealing to us the mystery of existence and reuniting us with Him after the Fall eternally.
I don't see how the parable of the Prodigal Son could be evolutionary beneficial, though. Forgiveness is dangerous because it opens us again to hurt. It requires hope in another person's repentance that might not have taken place. But I'm not familiar with survivial strategies in evolution, and I admit my ignorance here.
Saying "do just as much good" is the problem. Goodness is a quality, not a quantity. As Yannaras writes, "what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths." In the Christian paradigm, if a person chooses to sever their connection with God they cannot expect eternal life, for they have chosen not to want it.
Yes, the blind men and the elephant. An excellent parable by the Sufi Rumi, who wrote in an Islamic idiom and professed the validity of the Islamic message. I'm not qualified to interpret his poetry, for I am unfamiliar with his thought. I just know that my teacher who taught a comparative religion class on Orthodoxy and Yoga warned me against thinking that Rumi is advocating a simple, syncretist perspective. I'm sorry that I haven't had the time to get to him yet. This sort of syncretism is what John Hick attempts to do, saying that since all religions are equally salvifically efficacious in terms of producing good people (I have no idea how he deduces that) that they all point to (not prove) the existence of a meta-religion. Unfortunately, when one tries to merge the religions together in this manner they lose all their recognizable characteristics and you end up with Hickism instead.
As I've said, I can't prove anything for you, so I guess that you won't change. I'm surprised at the way that you characterize God, since you claimed to have been a Christian. We hate vengance but of couse demand justice. We hate jealosy but of course demand love. I'm not certain where spiteful and evil come in, and I don't see how God can be a dictator when He lets us choose freely our eternal fate. I know it can be difficult because we don't get to pick what Truth is and be fully God ourselves. And the Christian response, which I am certain will not satisfy you, is that God in His wisdom knows what is good for us. Do you say that we live under a dictator because we cannot kill and maim at will? And yet God teaches us how to live that we do not kill and maim ourselves and our neighbor. Maybe we really wanted that cake as a child, but you know, that bowl of vegetables is a lot better for us in the long run.
God reveals His name as "Father" and calls us His friends, not His servants. God forgives our transgressions and becomes man so that we might become like God; that in opening ourselves to Him we may be deified and share in His glory. He always runs out to meet us after we have abandoned Him and squandered our inheritance. He grants us eternal life if only we allow Him to give it, and He asks only that we change our character in accordance with His wisdom, not that we must do X or Y
God is immanent in every created thing. His Image is present in all of humanity, however obscured it may be. To love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind is to love one another as Christ has loved us.
I know that your issue here is with pain. It was also my issue against Christianity in my own life. But we live in a world of matter. Not all states of matter are desireable. Not all systems of matter last forever. That's the nature of the temporal world in which we have choice. In regards to the actions of people: they're the actions _of people_. Although it's primarly a comedic movie, the movie "Bruce Almighty" has a significant message: we must be careful what we attribute to God; we must recognize the consequences of our own actions and of others actions and see them as such.
Fairy tales usually entertain us, but Christianity doesn't. Christianity, as I've said, is understanding how we miss the mark, and in forcing us to understand how we must change ourselves for the better. It's promise is simply that we are not alone in our struggle and that we have guideposts along the way and a chance for redeption from a merciful God, although we are unprofitable servants who rarely love one another. Christianity isn't about living _for_ eternal life, it's about living _in_ eternal life: as such, our presence here, however brief a stop in our existence, is tremendously important, for its ramifications are eternal. To live for eternal life, to act in one way to receive something in return, is an economic mode of living. We're not bartering: we have nothing to offer the Creator of all! We are called to realize that we live eternally, right now. We are called to change ourselves significantly from our standard, selfish mode of thinking; to love one another and to forgive one another, that we may open ourselves to God's love and forgiveness. Christianity presents us with a tremendous responsibility, a lot to contemplate in our lives, and the hope that things will work out in the end. I don't know what could be more satisfying.
Ah, but Buddhism also requires faith. You must take the Buddha's word that there is enlightenment, that the enlightenment of him and the masters is authentic, that there is a cessation to suffering consisting of an undefined, language and logic-transcending concept known as Nibbana, and that there is nothing greater than the reality and solution he claims.
To choose Buddhism is also to judge. While we should not judge others, there is one huge judgment that we must make for ourselves: what path in life to take. To follow the Buddhist path is to attest to its truth. Of course Dogen doesn't speak for all of Buddhism. But the very nature of Buddhism is to deny the Brahmanic path, for it states that atman/Brahman is a nonexistant, delusional concept; and it is to deny all other religions, for it is not to adhere to their philosphies or worship their gods. There is nothing wrong with this, and we can still love our neighbor and not practice their religion or philosophy. We must all choose one path in life; we cannot live two at once. In a Christian conception, you might not be saved. In a Buddhist conception, I am deluded and destined to continue in the suffering cycle of Samsara. I can live with that opinion of me without feeling offended!
I don't know where I said that you path is not as meaningful or valuable as mine. I apologize if that was in my response somehow.
The scientific process, and that aspect of the process utilized in Buddhism (for Buddhism is also faith), only goes so far: it addresses material (a house burns down because it is wood), formal (a computer program failed because it had an error), and efficient (clouds are caused by evaporation and condensation) causes. It does not address teleology, that is motive, purpose, or goal. The Buddha taught the end to suffering. He would not answer questions about the existence of a soul or the origins of the universe or of our purpose in life, saying that they were not relevant to the cessation of suffering and that they were unknowable. While Nagarjuna's thought contains an argument against notions of a creator deity, it ends up affirming a universe with no beginning. I think that it is fair to say that such an understanding is as equally mysterious as what other religions have to say.
The issue at hand is that _God is not a part of the furniture of the universe_. To conceive of Him as such is to circumscribe God and make God into another human thing, something not-infinite, some not-God. God, by definition, exists outside of time and space, and in Christian thought God is that which sustains this existence and the properties of this universe. God is teleological, and because of free will cannot be approached through material, formal, or efficient causes, for those would be tantamount to proofs and would violate our ability to choose. Even if a watch might lead one to posit a watchmaker, that watch doesn't tell us much about the maker. That's why the God-based religions are based on revelation, which can be denied. We are called to trust the testimony and life of the prophets and Jesus and their varoius claims. That's another choice we all must make, and you have chosen to trust the testimony of the Buddha and the masters who claim enlightenment and knowledge of the cessation of suffering.
Claiming to know the mind of God is dangerous. It leads to prejudice and judgment, and makes God a piece of the furniture of the universe that we can place and rearrange as we see fit. That's why Eastern Orthodox Christianity utilizes negative theology; that's why we pray for "full knowledge of Your unapproachable glory" -- that is, to fully understand that our limited mind cannot grasp the infinite, to protect us from pride and claiming to know good and evil. In Orthodoxy, there is a distinction between the essence and energies of God; while we can feel His energies, His work in our universe, we cannot ever come to fully know God. Christ says that no one has seen the Father, but by virtue of being "in the bosom of the Father" He is in commun
I actually practiced Soto Zen Buddhism for a few years before converting to Orthodox Christianity. I don't know if other religions are false. God saves by whatever means He will -- it is not my right to restrict His power and Will. I arrived at an understanding of Christ through study and meditation, then eventually through prayer. I know this is true through my experience, and I never claimed to have cornered the market on truth. If that's how I came across, please forgive me. I'm not really sure what I did wrong. It was just my intent to explain the Christian perspective, and I'm not sure where my hubris is. I did not intend it to be an attack upon anyone.
I've studied Buddhism and Confucianism (B.A. in Religious Studies, concentrating on East Asia) and while there's of course much overlap in the moral teachings, there's a lot of difference, also. Saying that the truth of reality is a paradox of emptiness and co-dependent origination is a lot different than saying that we have the revealed Word of God as a Person in flesh! This is what makes pluralist hyphothesis such as John Hick's difficult: while most religions seek to cultivate a certain type of person, there's enough differences present that they do become exclusive. And most religions make exclusivist claims, too: there might be 10,000 paths to enlightenment, but Dogen claimed that Zen isn't a sect but is actually true Buddhism, and Shinran taught that the path of Other-Power is the only valid way in the decadent age of the Dharma, where self effort is futile and rooted in ego. For Confucius, the Rites are a mandatory part of experience, and the Bhagavad Gita says that Atman is Brahman (and Buddhism denies both!) So yes, which one do we choose when _they all make conflicting, exclusivist claims_?
Because of all this conflict I do not judge. It is not my place to judge. I will love my neighbor as Christ loved his apostles. I help people learn about Zen and Shin just as much as I help people understand Christianity. I can attest to the truth of my own individual experience but can give you nothing more.
I'm sorry that I provoked such a reaction in you, and if there's another way that I could go about informing people of the Christian experience and the understanding of the Christian paradigm without elaborating upon any of the truth claims in Christianity so as not to offend somebody, then perhaps that would be a better choice. But isn't that what this article is about: people judging and getting offended by a simple statement of what something is? As scientific fact is fact, and any feelings of being offended the problem of the perceiver, so religious experience, in any religion, is religious experience in the idiom of the experiencer. I can either express that experience in its idiom, or I can strip it void of anything controversial and thus sacrifice communicating to you an authentic meaning. Which would you rather have me do?
Well, I was giving a Christian explanation, and as such sought to represent Christian thought. I am sorry if I offened you.
We are all free to interpret Christ's life. There can be no indisputable proof of His Divinity because that would violate our free will. God does not desire a fradulent love gained through compulsion. Christ said that even in addition to all the miracles he did, if He was to rise from the dead that the establishment would still not believe, for their hearts were hardened.
God gives us the opportunity to deny so that we may grow, as a father lets his children make mistakes so that they may truly understand. Perhaps some will lose their way, but that was a necessary risk. I will not bore you with quotes and commentary, for I understand that they will not convince you. Indeed, I had long felt as you do now. But soften your heart that you may perceive the message without judging it beforehand. Study the Bible and pray in earnest; the Spirit will become manifest in your experience of life. That is all that I can attest to.
I'm not certain if this is an issue of intolerance. One doesn't choose to be tolerant or not of scientific fact. One can tolerate different lifestyles or religious choices, but truth is truth.
Christ did advocate social reform, but at the same time He did condemn. He condemned the Jewish establishment for raising the Law up into an idol, such as in refusing to heal on the Sabbath. He condemned obeying the letter of the law without understanding the spirit of the law. Christ, through His Divinity, was fit to judge. We, in our humanity, are not. As such, we encounter a dialectic in the Bible: the divine transcendence that allows Christ to be judge, and our own fallen nature that mandates that we "love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another" (John 13:34) and "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you" (Matthew 7:1,2). Was not the primal sin eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Do we have the pride to think that we can become gods and judge?
As I make note of in another post, "sin" means, literally, "missing the mark." The character of humanity in the context of the Fall is that we are always missing the mark! If we were perfect, then the Church would no longer be needed to guide us with its tools, and we would be deified. But that isn't the case. The matter is that we do constantly judge, we do constantly fail to love one another, we do constantly try to play god. A young monk was once asked, "What do you do all day in the monastery?" He replied, "We fall and rise, fall and rise." As Yannaras writes: "what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths." And we are called to love and forgive one another, as the father forgave his prodigal son, as we all continually miss the mark. This is not to excuse us from responsibility: we must also notch another arrow and fire again! And if our arrow should hit another, we must repent and ask for forgiveness. But yes, to look for a true Christian... you will find only sinners! That is the point of Christianity, indeed.
The Church gives us not a system, but a key; not a plan of God's City, but the means of entering it. Perhaps someone will lose his way because he has no plan. But all that he will see, he will see without a mediator, he will see it directly, it will be real for him; while he who has studied only the plan risks remaining outside and not really finding anything. - Fr Georges Florovsky
The Church provides us with tools to establish our own relationship with God. That relationship is characterized by our constant struggle to be better, chiefly characterized by this: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John, 13:34-35). The old formulation was that we should love one another as we love ourselves: that is, in a limited, human manner. But in Christian conception, God is infinite, and as such his qualities are inifinite. So we are all called to love one another beyond our actual capabilities. This is an intense struggle toward an impossible goal! This is not a religion which provides people with any level of comfort, with any placid acceptance of their condition or any simple way out. This is about constantly realizing that we make mistakes. The word "sin" literally means, "missing the mark." That is the character of our condition: we're an archer who not only doesn't hit the bullseye, but isn't even hitting the designated target area. Yet this does not mean that we live a life of guilt. God's grace, manifested both individually in us through prayer and the Holy Spirit, and communally through inspired Holy Tradition in the Church and the tools wrought from the experience of the Holy Fathers, gives us the strength and guidance we need to become deified, to become more like God, to actualize the Image present in us to "love one another as I have loved you."
Ideally, the goal of the Church is _not to be needed_. But we are always developing spiritually. During this period of Great Lent, we are called to fast. It is not fasting that makes us holy! It is the attitude that fasting cultivates that is important, as we come to realize that ribeye steaks and teriyaki salmon and fine cheeses aren't necessary for us, and as we develop a new appreciation for the blessing of these things in our lives after Holy Pascha. But to say that fasting is useless is just as much of a fallacy to say that fasting makes one Holy.
Likewise, of course going to Church doesn't make us Holy. But that's not to say that the Church offers us nothing! It offers us shared strength as we stumble and miss the mark over and over, as we partake in the wisdom of the Holy Fathers and are led by the their hard-won experience to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, that we may truly live out the New Commandment. The Church is a hospital trying to dress a wound that covers our entire body and soul. It's up to us to be careful and not to get ourselves injured again!
Note: I'm giving an Eastern Orthodox perspective on this, which may differ from the Latin Church and its descendants. But I must disagree with you that the Church is nothing but a whorehouse for simpletons. A whorehouse satisfies a need. But the Church _provides us with an understanding of our most pressing need_, that is repentance: a call to change.
The Church gives us not a system, but a key; not a plan of God's City, but the means of entering it. Perhaps someone will lose his way because he has no plan. But all that he will see, he will see without a mediator, he will see it directly, it will be real for him; while he who has studied only the plan risks remaining outside and not really finding anything.
-Fr Georges Florovsky
You are a world within a world: look within yourself, and see there the whole creation. Do not look at exterior things but turn all your attention to that which lies within. Gather together your whole mind within the intellectual treasure-house of your soul, and make ready for the Lord a shrine free from images.
-St Nilus of Aneyra
Anyone who tries to describe the ineffable Light in language is truly a liar -- not because he hates the truth, but because of the inadequacy of his description.
-St. Gregory of Nyssa
Speech is the organ of this present world. Silence is a mystery of the world to come.
-St Isaac the Syrian
One cannot grasp the infinite with the finite. To grasp is to constrict -- we do not close our eyes to see. The veil cannot be parted, despite the machinations of the intellect. For too long has the West sabotaged her own spiritual endeavors through searching for a God manufactured as another piece of the furniture of the universe. Religion perceives the depth of all reality, transcending our senses and penetrating deeply into our flesh, bones, and organs to the fine gray dust within. You must empty your cup before filling it. You must seek silence in order to hear.
In the first mission you mention, the nuclear warhead storage facility is being run by terrorists, and the player, as China, must destroy it. There are 3 single player campaigns available, where you play the role of China, America, or the "Global Liberation Army" (terrorists). It's actually quite interesting to see the game designers' predictions towards a future war. America's forces focus on technology, mobility and air superiority; China uses masses of units and nuclear technology; while the GLA uses junkyard vehicles, anthrax, and even suicide bombers. But, remember, one can play any side and thus use any strategy. It's not some "America conquers the world" game (at least, so far that I've played... you begin the game in the Chinese campaign, and end it with the GLA, and I of course haven't completed the first campaign yet). When I sit and play any of the sides, I don't sit there and think, "Oh, hey, it would be cool if I was doing this in real life; launching nukes and scuds." It is a setting for a game of strategy, and the setting, a future which may not be so implausible, poses some interesting questions. All of the sides can unleash terrible devestation. All of them believe in their cause. Which one is necessarily "right", if any? Destroy all enemy forces in Iraq? Isn't that what a certain nation is planning on doing? Many books are written about real life events, from the perspectives of all people involved. Just because this is a game doesn't mean that it must be void of any sort of valuable philosophical content. While in a book one must simply accept the perspective given to them, here the player has a choice. I'll admit that diplomacy isn't an option -- but the genre of this game is the strategy of warfare, not the strategy of negotiations. As I stated before, I haven't played through the whole game yet, simply because of time. I could see your point if the game only allowed a person to play as America; however, the fact is that you can play any of the sides, along with their appropriate predicted ideologies and goals.
You seem to have forgotten about the Second Noble Truth: suffering occurs because of ignorance; the ignorance that leads one to imbue things with a self and attach to those things which will someday dissolve, causing suffering -- it is craving that is the source of suffering, and it is the extinction of craving that is Nirvana. Parinirvana is not a nihilistic oblivion. Please refer to this essay of mine.
I think that Buddhist Nirvana sort of does; entities that become enlightened are never returned to the wheel of life, so there's a constant drain of energy "lost" by the world to nothingness.
What energy is lost? Are you referring to some sort of energy embodied in a soul? There is no persistent self, ego, or soul. Upon death the body, and thus mind, are dissolved. The matter comprising a person does not vanish anywhere. Consciousness is dissipated upon the cessation of stimuli, for such is how it arises.
Please refer to the following:
The Gospel of Buddha, by Paul Carus -- specifically "The Bodhisattva's Search"
What the Buddha Taught, by Walpola Rahula -- the earlier chapters; unfortunately, as I am currently at work, I cannot reference them.
The peace of Nirvana always seemed something like a perfectly uniform universe to me.
A key point regarding the conception of Nirvana lies in the following statement by the Buddhist logician Nagarjuna:
"There is nothing whatever which differentiates the existence-in-flux (samsara) from nirvana;
And there is nothing whatever which differentiates nirvana from existence-in-flux."
--Nagarjuna, "Fundamental of the Middle Way" (25.19)
Nagarjuna espouses the idea of sunyata, or emptiness. For a further explanation of sunyata, please consult an essay that I have written:
Emptiness, Nihilism, and the Middle Way. While this essay deals with sunyata in a different context, I believe that it comprises an adaquete introduction towards the concept. (I am not a monk, but at the very least my professor had no qualms with it)