RE: Religion: Spiritual Or Psychopathic...??
I like this Jesus pic :) That's a Jesus you'd play basket ball with. I thought you joked but then saw the comments ... well ... sigh ...
Surely you are familiar with symbolism. And of course, modern man does not believe in a God figure in a literal sense. And of course, you know this is meant symbolically.
You know I am not goofy, that's why I answer on this and must not be afraid of being marked as "Christian" in a negative way ... think about it ...
This sentence from Jesus had been taken as a Sacrament.
"The Lord Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, "Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you. Do this in my memory. Likewise after the meal he took the cup and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this as often as you drink, in my memory! For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you shall proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again."
The peculiarity and uniqueness of the Lord's Supper is sufficiently explained by the person and work of Christ. When Apostle Paul says: "So eat ye this bread, and drink ye this cup, and proclaim the death of the Lord", the innermost relationship of the Lord's Supper to the death of Christ is expressed in these words for everyone. The meaning of the Lord's Supper is tied to the meaning of the death of Jesus.
The sacrament is just a symbolic act of remembering.
Same as modern rituals like singing a hymn before a play takes place.
But actually, modern man has lost almost all rituals of meaning. To be welcomed into manhood and womanhood, for example.
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and judged like a child. When I became a man, I discarded what a child was in me."
(1 Cor 13:11)
One reason is the rejection of religion and to discredit everything connected with it. This denies what else can be spiritually associated with religion. Which is a pity and leads people to no longer use the word religion freely and to regard it as a dirty word. It undermines what an interesting store of knowledge a religion can open up for you.
Just when you start reading religion on Wikipedia, you will find interesting writings and personalities.
Pedophilia really has nothing to do with religion. After all, they are people who are paedophile. Do you also want to discredit any organization associated with heinous acts? Then you have a lot to do. If you want to write something about pedophilia, why don't you?
There exists a significant discrepancy between your ideal of “modern man” and millions of religious extremists that still do exist on this planet today, whether as fundamentalist Christians in America or Muslims elsewhere.
Well, there’s certainly seems an abundance of leaks coming out that the sickness has been running rampant throughout the institutions. My “wants” are irrelevant - with the sheer amount of such disgusting corruption in these organizations coming to the surface, they are discrediting themselves.
If you want to spend your time and energy defending your belief systems and corrupt institutions, please do it elsewhere without contextually-manipulative questions insuinuating what I personally do and don’t want to write about.
I was not talking about extremists. I would say that you are not believing in a God figure in the same way many others don't, including me, who would say that they arrived in modern times. That is not an ideal, that is simply reality.
Ah, well, I let myself being carried away as I observe that the baby is all too often spilled out with the bathwater. "Religion", and what is related to it, became a curse word. That I appeared to you to defend church: that is because I defended religion. Yes, I let my annoyance come through about all this talk about the evils of others.
Indeed, the church is discrediting itself. I have no doubt about it.
You are speculating - you seem to know little about me when you are so quickly willing to throw me into the same pott in which you judge the institutions. I talked about the symbolic ritual and about what religion can be as a research topic. I just found your post a little cheap as if you flirt with that cannibalism comparison but quite know that it's just a metaphor. During the day I actually was thinking about the funniness of it.
I am surprised ... Your reaction is much exaggerated and maybe I was not welcomed with my recent comments to you?
My question was nothing unserious, I asked you why you do not write about the topic as you named it an "unfathomable evil".
Check your reactions.
Check your self-righteousness, with this demonstration of coming into my space and telling me what to do, uninvited.
I never asked for a psychoanalytic session. Nor do I appreciate you trying to frame it as though there’s any problem with my reaction, versus owning up to the fact that there was something about your approach that fully justified why it rubbed me the wrong way.
?
That is how you see blogging?
wait a minute! This is not about you - I just said that I defended religion. I have my reasons in doing so.
100% Correct.
Hence, the point: you are out of fucking line telling me to check my reactions when I, too, have my reasons for them and have not asked to be psychoanalyzed.
And to answer your original question: If I was interested in writing about pedophila, I would.
Had your self-confessed annoyances had not spilt into this, perhaps you might have seen where your “question” came off completely differently than the “innocent” inquiry you tried passing it off as in the context of the rest of the paragraph and defensive, annoyance-infused comment as a whole - or that the whole “it was just an innocent question” stance was complete bullshit to begin with.
It wasn't an innocent question at all on my part, and you are imagining that I had the intention of making it sound like one.
I made clear that I was annoyed that you were playing the general game of finding culprits for evil (here the institution of the church). In fact, I took your post as hypocritical, and that's exactly how you got it. I didn't analyze, I criticized. I have interpreted your post as short-sighted and superficial.
That I ask you to check your reaction refers to the ignorance of the content of my answer. I have talked about the ritual and that religion has become a dirty word. You returned to immediately make me a defender of the institution church.
My main concern is to keep religion and acts of the members of church separate, and I am frustrated that it happens that in a secular environment it does not seem possible to use the term religion. I perceive a rigidity against using religious terminology. This throws a theological richness out of the window and you may only talk to philosophers about why you think it is worth preserving a religious heritage because the game has reversed. For me the sacrament has a personal meaning, it symbolizes the death of a person who stands for something.
What provoked me particularly, I think now, was that you took a serious subject and combined it with a flappish attitude of the sacrament (which at first looks like a rather creative thing and would indeed be quite funny if it wasn't related to pedophilia). What bothered me was that you link pathology and madness to religion, while the madness is not being religious, hence, not showing ethical maturation. You can equate being religious with spirituality and people are looking for it. You are yourself and use the symbolism of the Asian culture. I do not make much difference in the ideal figures of Jesus or Buddha.
All religions have in common that they offer ethical principles. I would like to emphasize this greatest of all similarities.
We all care when people violate human dignity and act as representatives of a religion they have betrayed. However, it is not religion that is bad, but the very act of an individual who has hurt another human.
It's possible that everyone knows this already. If that is so, I have merely fallen for a game and contributed to the fact that the failures of church members do not want to be perceived separately from religion. Apart from that, one could now start investigating every organization for its misdemeanors and would always find what is looking for. I ask where this leads and I suspect it leads to nothing.
When I think about it further, it occurs to me that no news about an evil deed is really new. We all know that people behave in an unethical way. I don't need to be horrified about it, but at the same time I can empathize with everyone involved. I say: It is wrong to do sexual violence to children. This is where I see our unity.
However, it seems to me a great contradiction when I hear all the accusations and identify guilty parties, then I inevitably ask myself: What do those who do this want? Shouldn't the accused lead an ethically correct life (including everyone else)? Where do we actually get this ethics from? Have we not a rich fund, thousands of years old, taken up by intelligent and compassionate people, which unites in the word "religion"?
A more differentiated choice of terms in your headline and tagging would in my eyes be more fair towards religion.
Proposing a question whether role-playing as vampires & cannibals is “spiritual” or psychopathic seems like a perfectly fair question to me.
had I censored it to tip-toe around the sensitivities of those who’d take offence to a reasonable observation of out political correctness, it wouldn’t have been honest.
And reading as much of my content as you have, you should have known that one of the key points I repeatedly emphasize is that “truth” is rarely black-or-white, instead lying in the middle of opposing viewpoints defining the boundaries of a full-spectrum.
If it was “extreme” or “over exaggerated,” my readers have enough intelligence to sort that out for themselves and discern the subtexts of symbols elements without needing to be lectured. If not, they failed an intelligence test by choosing only one or two options presented rather than thinking for themselves. 😈
(I never quite posted with all those intentions. But it’s seem, having extracted that out now, that you passed. )
alright. Shit happens.
I rewinded. Thought twice. I tried to read this with other eyes I read it before.
Still cannot make out a real question in your post ... but I do read the comments now differently.
As I was annoyed and provoked my mind was aroused as well.
This struggling with you made me asking why I was annoyed and provoked.
... I imagine to drive a car. There is a lot of traffic. I get into a traffic jam. You are sitting in another car. I hear you saying: Damn traffic jam! WTF?
I immediately think: you are not stuck in it you are the traffic jam. I see other drivers condemning the traffic jam as well. Many of them of which you are not seeing.
I shout over to you: don't make others responsible for the traffic jam! We all know traffic happens! Why are you even call it insane? There is no insanity in driving!
... However, I overlook the fact that I criticise a driver who criticises other drivers whom I can't see here. Although I don't think much of blaming anyone for the traffic jam, I tell the driver to stop pointing at the wrong drivers. Nevertheless I don't do it better, because I also point at him and participate instead of just waiting in peace until the traffic jam has cleared and we can all drive on.
Yes. I do count on the sanity of people in general.