an answer for Gauge

[Steven]

A few days ago Gague you asked me quite simply: why?

that was one of the better questions I've been asked, as usually I'm asked thigns more akin to "how could you accept this or that or yeild to this or that or whatever....." you get it.

its also the toughest question I've gotten - because I cant sell you the answer, and I dont want to get into the convincing game, I'm not a salesman.

So I'm going to try to answer your question with some short (and not so short?) and blunt responses, with a few key prefaces.....

The Prefaces:

A) these answers are mine, as they apply to my life, my experience, my worldview. I cannot therefore bother arguing the validity of an experience that is just my own.

B) I do not, nor have I ever - used my beleifs or stated my beleifs to any of you as a self illuminating or self elevating device. I do what I do, as do you all, I think we've been pretty dang accepting of one another along the way, and I do not NEED to be right in your eyes or NEED to try to gain converts.....I really don't. This has simply been and always shall be an exchange of ideas.

C) I have seen and done many things in my almost 40 years on this planet. I have lived many places, known many people, been many people, good bad and in between. I know the life of a rich person, and a dirt poor person, an addict, and a sober person, a divorcee and a happily married person, a spiritual person and a self contained person, a broken person, and a healed person, a mentoree, and a mentor, a military person, and a civilian, a regular Joe, and a public servant.

None of this means that I think I know more than any of you. But it DOES say in effect, "hey -I'm not green".

D) and finally, let me say that many of you have constantly impressed me with not only your intellect but also your vision. I myself am not an educated person. I do however, study what I do and beleive, very hard, constantly, in many ways, search the end results, look for constancy, look for evidence of merit in the approach as it may or not manifest, and decide from there. I do not and have not ever - simply went along blindly or fearfully as I was told. Its not the way I'm wired. That being said - as you get to know me and my beleifs you'll see that although I am a Christian - a cookie cutter variey I am not. That has brought me MUCH heat over the years from my fellow Christians. But it has also brought me security and trust in what i do know, because I have tested it out.

the things I'll post now come in no specific order of importance, they just come off the top of my head.....

WHY I BELEIVE WHAT I BELEIVE.

1) I beleive we are born with a fatal flaw called Sin. The word "Sin" does not transalte into "BAD" or "EVIL" or "FLAWED" or any of the like. SIN translates don to an archery term. It means quite literally "to miss the mark". What your aiming for, you miss.

I beleive we are fatally flawed because: every world empire has crumbled for the same reasons. All progressions of power eventually self corrupt. We by nature, divide and segregate and need to place blame. every generation has laudible ideals yet they never come to fruition on a large enough scale to actually change things in a global sense. Our free love communal hippies of the 60's are now stockbrokers and bankers, sucking the life out of their brothers and sisters. Their children are frustrated bi-products of the 80's when beamers and Izods and standards were the enlightened path. ANd their children are angry, disassociated, pharmecutically addicted, cast offs. We have the power and technology to feed the world, yet half the world starves. Peace is unatainable and always has been - we have never had world peace. We canoot nurture and maintian the family structure so instead we choose to re-name it and re-classify it so that a failure is now an open minded and wonderful non-absolute that we have the audaciity to celebrate and yet the tragedies of the family unit and the despair goes on and on and on while each genration has less and less coping skills and more and more blaming skills and more and more prescriptions.....Radical divisions and sects are at an all time high. Planetary moans and groans under the weight of the mechanized world is presenting itself in caticlysmic porportions in the stangest of places. And men are not men. men now want to be women, or little girls, or without connection, or without responsibility, or without accountability, we do not stand up, stand against, cause rebuke, for fear of public judgement and chastizement.

Every day I look around and see that we need help, as a people, as a planet, were not getting it done. For me - to see that - and then to want to call ourselves GODS...... I cant get behind that. I see no God-like results in this world of ours.

And so I beleive that yes, we need help. And we always have.

2) I am captivated by the stand alone record of the Bible. I have said this before and been ridiculed for it, yet I stand on teh beleifs that: The Bible is the most persecuted book globally and the number one best seller globally in the history of mankind. To me, truth divides. To me - this absolute power struggle over the sanctity or the coruuption of the biblical text is intriguing to say the least. And I am always drawn back to the simplest of questions, which is "that if the bible is just a dusty, corrupted and tired old book with no true relavance to society today then why does it not simply just go away"??????? how could somethign so allegedly inherintly flawed.....continue to self sustain? A comperable example on teh same scale would be what?

3) I beleive that the last two generations specifically - have learned to attack Christianity because it has never been appropriately and reverantly presented to them. What has been presented is simply religion, empty orthodoxy, dogma, and hopelessness. Seldom do you see a real working model. Often you see more than enough to turn your stomach. And because so much crap has been presented - nobody bothers anymore to really search it and unpeel the layers of this beleif system that supposedly centers on the life of a man named Yeshuah. Because WE CHRISTIANS have done such a shitty job with what we were handed, because we have pollutted truth and taken the easy route and manipulated and perverted the life and words of Christ in how we live our own lives, we no longer have a clue as to what is really biblically sound. We dont even know this CHRIST we claim to worship, we cant back up what we state we beleive in a calm and matter fo fact and non judgmental manner because we dont have the courage of our convictions.

And this was also foretold biblically - by Christ himself.

I personally, am fighting for something that is often overlooked, mostly mis-interpreted, yet has never gone away.

4) The model of Christ himself - how he moved, the questions he asked at teh opportune time, the division he caused, the exposure of teh religeous hypocrisy of his time, the risks he took constantly, the strength of his conviction, the understandable fear at the time of his crucifixtion, are amzing concepts to me. You simply never see men like that today. I am constantly chasing that ideal for my own life. i am constaly amazed at the depth of who Christ was and what he accomplished in 3 years from the background of being a nobody, a blue collar man, an un-educated man, a man of no privelidge whatsoever, a man who's words and ideals are stil hotly debated thousands of years later. Just 3 years in a very small region. That also to me, is a record that stands alone. What can you or I pull off in 3 years in Wayne county that will continue to be a hotbed thousands of years later? and a comperable example to Christ's would be.....?

5) The dynamics surrounding the early chruch and the early church forefathers after the death of Christ also intrigue me. Again I look for sustainable evidence of lives changed. Why did so many people die for their faith so early on? All but one of the original 12 died a martyrs death. Why would a man like Peter who had once cowardly denied Christ to save his own skin now risk everything to the point of crucifixtion himself to help build the church when it was outlawed? Why would an educated Jew named Saul - who never met Christ personally - and who killed numerous Christians himself with Roman authority - suddenly convert, write a majority of the New Testament, and endure imprisonment, disease, several shipwrecks, being hunted, and finnaly death for this new faith? Why would he have the courage and ability to set straight someone who DID know Christ personally in the person of Peter? What fire lit this man named Saul who later became such a pillar? What was goin on?

6) The bible itself has some incredible constancies. People argue that it cannot be the same text and meaning that it once was. Yet from just a couple of hundred years after the church began - to today - the message, god, and convictions remain the same. Multiple translations tell the same story, reveal the same gospel, lead to the same path. That whole "telephone" theory simply does not hold up - there is a tremndous amount of evidence to the contarary, but nobody likes to consider that while they tell me about science and hard fact. Well....here's some hard fact - go check it out. In modern times charlatans have had to create their own bibles - such as Joseph Smith of the Mormons with his "additions" that change evrything, and the Jehovah's witnesses who re-wrote the bible because their doctrine could not be sustained unless they changed the word itself. But do the research: BOTH of thsoe organizations have criminal backgrounds in their leadership, both are modern day mechanisms, and both have radically differeing doctrines. Their roots and history do not stand the test of time and do not go back to the texts dug up and discovered by archeologists. Charlatans have always been here. But so has truth. You will find - exactly what you are looking for.

SO let's use some logic here. If there really is a God, who can create the cosmos, and he decides he wants to use a written text to force a decision in his would be followers - is it beyond his grasp to protect his word?

7) Prophesy - amazing constancies again. All the world empires in the book of Daniel. The over 200 prophesies concernign the Messiah himself and how this person Jesus fulfilled thm all, including in his manner of death and how he wast treated and what amount of money he was sold for and what happened to that money. That to me again.....is somethign worth looking at. And again in a book that fails to go away - in a book that has such a stubborn and staunch track record - I consider the source - the possible source.

8) Throw all that shit away now. I go with personal experience. I once was a certain type of person. I now am something else. To change people, is not that simple, that answers are not trite, the process is not always clear, or within our grasp or means or is not always somethign that sustains itself. I can swap stories with the best of them, I have been thru my shit, seen my stuff, been what I've been. My background is not typical nor ideal. i have my hangups just like anybody. But my life today - as a vehicle for that which I beleive - continues to stand the test and continues to grow and bear fruit. I am not saying that I am an accomplished man. I CAN say however - that I do not waiver and I do not fear. I am simply saying - that this lifestyle - for me - works very well - teaches me - nurtures me - provides healty accountability for me - creates community for me - gives me identity - gives me purpose - gives me strength - gives me constancy - gives me freedom - gives me joy - gives me TOOLS, to live with, to be a good man, a good leader, a good friend, a good husband, a good resource, a good steward, a good listener, and the ability to process. All of this comes from - studying this man Jesus - searching for evidence of him in both the old and new testaments.

9) The history of the Jews as a people, as an offshoot from a vagabond pagan Arab named Abram....is incredible. Are they God's chosen people? I'll tell you this much - no other nation on earth has a history such as theirs. To me its no coincidence that their god YHWH is likewise, unique, strange, fiery, difficult to grasp at, yet constant.

10) the existence of Divine Evil. I have seen it up close and personal, to a depth that I know most people have not despite all of their fucking hee bee gee bee stories. That is all I will say on this subject.

11) Miraculous Events (here come the white coats with the shinby buckles). No I have not seen the dead raised. I have however - had the same dreams in detail that others have had after praying for somethign specific. I have had people walk up to me or sit next to me on teh bus that I did not know and never met, call me by name and tell me things that nobody - i mean NOBODY knew about me. I've had things spoken over me that came true. I've had needs met mysteriously. those sorts of things that you can never defend and are so easily dismissable by skeptics, I've had these thigns happen over and over again for many years.

12) the fact that I am alive. Sounds wonderfully romantic and self serving I know, but its also true. there are thigns for me to do. that also sounds trite, but its not, and I do not lack purpose. And I'm thankful for that.

13) my favorite attack phrase: intuition. The non-provable. So I wont try. I am wired a certain way. i am not linear. I am instinctive. this is always how I have processed and learned in every facet of my life and career. I do not dismiss it therefore - in terms of spirituality, because that would be like shutting myself off because of the subject matter.

14) because I am still myself. People who beleive or try to assert that true Christianity is about rules truly have no concept of what is biblical and what was expressed by Christ. They argue the rules, with the rules of the argument, which is ridiculous Get out of your head, get our of your prejudice, think for a minute - dont use your emotion - there is so much more to it than stupid rules. I am a beleiver in Christ. He is a beleiver in me. He has equipped me to do certain things, in the way that only I can do, as I have lived the life that only I have lived. There is freedom in that. I go where I want, say what i want, do what I want, interact with whoever I want in whatever way that I want. And what I want - is to be smart about things. What I want - is to connect and not create distance. What I want, is a chance to learn and share.

................................................................................

.................................

Well......there ya go Gague.....there's a handful of what and why I beleive.

I know it wont change your life, its not supposed to.

But I do hope that it helps you understand a little bit more, where I come from and why.

Steve

[Gauge]

Wow, all very interesting and quite unique. This struck me in a good way tho. . .

I am a beleiver in Christ.   

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That right there is one of the things i dont think most christians think about, and that is why i think they are, imo, rediculous. Its a rare occurance that a christian sais i am a believer in christ, or i follow the way of christ, and even more rare is when they can say what they believe in past. . .the bible. I think more christians should think along your lines, just believing in christ and living how they feel he would want them to. Thats really cool.

[Fierce Critter]

Steven:

And what I want - is to be smart about things. What I want - is to connect and not create distance. What I want, is a chance to learn and share.

And we love you for it, Steven. Thanks.

[Gauge]

Look at the figure of Christ himself… he’s a Jew from the middle east who we changed into a guy whiter than Michael Jackson!  He changes to reflect us.  We don’t change to reflect him.

Imagine… one… out of over two hundred episodes… happened to be on THAT DAY, at THAT TIME.  I think this invariably proves that Ralph Wiggum is god.

I can only say that if I believed that this bowl of macaroni and cheese in front of me is god, it carries just about as much weight as anyone else’s beliefs because faith is unquestionable.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Of course the image of christ has changed, its changed almost as much as scripture itself. I dont think tho that you should be looking at how he changed for us because we were the ones that changed him. He didnt tell the different countrys and races to depict him differently, that was done so that the individual groups could have a closer feeling towards the one that they worship.

As far as the simpsons thing. . .that happens every day, and its not because ralph is god its because tv studios run popular shows 2 or 3 times a day. Somehow i fail to see how something you know will happen on a regular basis is on the same level as a stranger telling you unknown shit about your past.

Finaly, if you want to believe that a bowl of mac and cheese is god then for you it can be. Dietys, gods, and beliefs are all fuled by beliefe, and if you believe in something you give it power. I dont have to believe in your cheesy noodly god but that doesnt mean that your wrong. and faith is quite questionable.

just beeing friendly, open, and curious =)

[Steven]

Well, if this is a friendly, open discussion I guess I have a few things concerning your points that just don't reach me.

Concerning point 1, I’m a little confused.  You claim that we are born with a “flaw” called “sin”, but in the very next sentence claim that we are not “flawed”.  Certainly the depictions of violence and stupidity that you go onto explain are examples of people being “evil”.  The churches of Christ have been around for about two thousand years now.  It has seen the very pinnacle of power and relative obscurity; neither of which have had any affect on world suffering as a whole.  This though, may be since Christ himself rejected This World’s kingdoms when he was tempted by Satan before his crucifixion.  So, the power of a Church with state authority is really doomed for the start. So, barring that, people retreat to claim things such as “Christ is inside us, it starts on an individual level and etc.”  I don’t think that even this attitude makes sense because without the existence of violence, evil and stupidity in the world, the soul would not have any temptations and the gate to heaven would be packed with untrained hearts and minds of… well, you’d be left with grown-up children really.  If faith is not tested when it is hardest, it will break when it’s easiest.  So why abolish the test?  Suffering gives you something to overcome.

Concerning point 2, I’m reminded of the “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” paradox, I suppose.  What I mean is, “is the Bible famous and popular because of its message or does its fame and popularity give it a message?”  I’m not going to waste any time trying to argue whether Christ actually lived or not because it is unproven either way.  Take most of the things in the Bible literally and you are faced with a lot of scientifically impossible nonsense.  However, if you take it as having emotional and spiritual value then it is simple relegated to rank of any other novel.  An inspirational novel? Maybe.  But how do we know it was god's Word? Because is was dictated by God?  How do we know it was dicated by God?  Because it is God's Word?  It's all circular.

Concerning point 3, I really do agree with you here.  I think both testaments have had a disastrous misinterpretation over their entire history.  However, since it is clearly stated that nobody can really know God it seems impossible that a correct interpretation will ever be possible and the only hope is to fail in the least.

Everything you say in point 4 could be applied equally to Julius Caesar or any other major historical figure that pre-dates Christ.  There are even some Jewish figures such as Abraham and Moses that have even more impact on the lives of the faithful than that of Jesus (I mean Jews of course.)  Do you think that Jesus means that much to the Muslims?  I know that they regard him as a sage and admirable prophet, but he certainly does not compare to Muhammad in their hearts.  What you are saying here overdoes it a little and is really depends on a point of view.  One that is not universally shared.  Also, bear in mind that these figures have the luxury of living in a superstitious age where history was not documented as painstakingly as it is today.

Point 5- Thousands of people died for Hitler too, but that does not make his a righteous cause, does it?  Japanese Kamikaze pilots destroyed themselves by crashing their planes into ships because they thought that their emperor was a god.  Does their sacrifice make him one?  Virtue is not measured in blood and devotion is a point of view not monopolized by primal Christians before, during, or since their time.

Point 6, here too, I disagree.  I think that you are over-simplifying the myriad of reactions people have had to the Christian faith over the years.  Without getting into any schisms, Mormonism etc… ALL faiths, Abrahamic or otherwise have gone through evolutions to fit the times.  In the middle ages, Christ was a warrior, in the age of exploration he was a cultural savior to “other races”, in the age of enlightenment he was merely a romantic figure, and now in the present day and age, we do not see him a monarchial lord… rather as a personal savior for our individual soul.  (This however, is only to reflect our currently idealistic and individualized world.)  Look at the figure of Christ himself… he’s a Jew from the middle east who we changed into a guy whiter than Michael Jackson!  He changes to reflect us.  We don’t change to reflect him.

Point 7… see I’m skeptical here because Jesus seems to fit in the prophecy almost too well.  Almost like someone wrote it… hmmm

Point 8.  You say that you’ve been through shit.  Well, I’m not going to say anything about that since it is not my place.  I will only say that we all have.  We’re all stuck in shit, even those that don’t know it.  Some people use the Bible, some go to monster truck rallies, some read the Koran, some cut their hair off, some read Anna Karenina.  There is no true answer to solve these problems.  And besides, wouldn’t life be a bit dull without problems to grapple with?

Point 9.  Yes, the Jews have had it pretty bad.

Point 10.  Okay….

Point 11.  Once I remembered a line from Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons.  He said “I’m not allowed to go into the deep end of the sandbox!” Lo and behold, I turned on the TV later that day and that very same episode was on!!  Imagine… one… out of over two hundred episodes… happened to be on THAT DAY, at THAT TIME.  I think this invariably proves that Ralph Wiggum is god.

I can’t really go any further than this because I would be repeating myself, but I believe that you get the gist of it.  Also, since your last points are based mostly on yourself, there is not much that I can say.  I can’t refute your feelings.  I can only say that if I believed that this bowl of macaroni and cheese in front of me is god, it carries just about as much weight as anyone else’s beliefs because faith is unquestionable.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

that was a pretty long post in response to what i had prefaced as my own experience.

Fair enough. not going to address your addresses of my original post, no point in it.

I did like your call on my conflicted use of the word flaw. but you missed my point in your "Aha!!"

[torn asunder]

i learned a long time ago (and subsequently forget on occasion ) that, unless someone is actively searching, or questioning their own beliefs, there is really no point in discussing what i believe in detail, as it isn't going to change anyone's mind who's already firm, and it just gives them reasons to berate/argue with me because i don't believe as they do, and i haven't the time nor the inclination to debate it... :erm