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Post by snow on Jul 15, 2014 19:46:11 GMT -5
That's an interesting thought dmg. I have often wondered about that too. People talk about revelations and give credit to a superior being. I wonder if that is because 1. there is so much we don't know that we feel inadequate and 2. we've been told that we are sinners and that we can never be good enough? Does this make us believe that we can't come up with answers all by our self? Do we attribute everything good that we do to the guidance of a being better than us because we can't believe we could be good all on our own? Certainly many religions do teach this kind of thing. They give credit to this superior being when something wonderful happens, but when something tragic happens, it's our fault? Or we can't be smart enough to understand why God is doing this to us? Things just happen, good and bad and there doesn't have to be a reason for them that we always understand. This doesn't mean there is a being out there somewhere that does understand. I wonder how much of the mentality that we could never be good enough, smart enough etc has come from our distant past when we didn't understand a 1/4 of what we do now. We thought a more powerful being or beings were punishing us for something when things when tragically wrong. But we also thought these same beings rewarded us when we did things right and pleased them. But the Gods have always been fickle. This would leave humanity off balance and always questioning themselves and how they measured up with these beings. Now we know that lightening isn't coming off the end of a God's fork or spear, but a natural phenomenon. But we have been made to think for so long that when bad things happen we are being punished, it's hard to let go of that mentality. If we could just make a better sacrifice to these beings maybe they would give us rain. If we weren't so bad we wouldn't have been punished with that tornado. And on and on. We see it still when people are blaming gays for bad weather as happened where I live lately. Or Pat Robertson telling a lady her son is sick because of an ancient relative that was an evil witch. www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/14/pat-robertson-tells-mother-your-sons-stomach-pains-are-caused-by-a-witch-ancestor/
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Post by What Hat on Jul 17, 2014 18:12:00 GMT -5
Sometimes you may think of something that happened to you in the past, a positive or negative experience, and thinking about that experience rekindles an emotion in your mind. That emotion is like the emotion when you originally went through the experience, and yet, the emotion and the memory of the experience are all inside your mind, even though the original source was something that happened in the past. As humans we have this ability to relive, or to experience vicariously, things that happened to us a long time ago, or even things that have never happened, that we just imagine. Thus the "conversation with God" is all inside your mind, and yet it's not, because God is a construction of something you believe is outside your mind, out there somewhere. Does that make any sense? As to the content of the conversation ... problems, feelings, thoughts. It's a genuine conversation. Singing a hymn is a conversation; so is communal prayer. WhatHat, again you haven't really answered the question but what you say about your conversation with God certainly does make sense. I have come to the conclusion that conversations with God take place within the individual rather than with some external entity. It is a dialogue between the individual and the ‘mind of God’ .... where the ‘mind of God’ is an entity which exists within the individual having been created as a result of the individual gaining an understanding of God (or what they believe to be God) through external experiences. It’s an internal dialogue. Most people on this Board’s understanding of God (or what they recognise as God) was formed through their experience of what is written in the Bible and reinforced (and strongly influenced) through hymn singing, prayer, meditation and further reading of the bible through their association with the 2x2 church. This understanding is the basis on which the individual forms his/her own version of God (or mind of God) within his/her own mind. Those who believe in God often refer to how real God is to them and how certain they are of His existence; this is consistent with a God which exists within rather than without, and perhaps also helps explain why those who do not believe in such a God struggle so much to accept the existence and reality of such a God. So yes, it makes sense. Very much. Matt10 God has never spoken to me through thunder as he did to Job, or in a burning bush as to Moses, or in a or in explicit dreams as he did to Joseph, or in handwriting on the wall as to Belshazzar. There are events in my life that seem like more than co-incidence to me, but the best Biblical analogy I've found for the voice of God is a "still, small voice". But roughly I would equate the "voice of God" with "conscience". Remember the cartoon with the little angel sitting on one shoulder and little devil on the other. That's probably not far off either. But basically, I believe "the kingdom of God" is within you, so I think your description is accurate. My advice to anyone who wishes to follow or serve God is to just do it. Read the Bible, pray and worship. It becomes quite real before too long. Some people, I know, turn to God in a moment of deep crisis; so it can take a spark like that also. But there's nothing supernatural about my relationship with God, and perhaps that's why I tend to not take the supernatural events of the Bible literally. I take the supernatural events of the Bible as the God of the gaps, mistaken attributions of the unexplained to a deity. God has never filled any knowledge gaps, or "the unexplained", for me, so God is more of a commonplace for me.
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