Over my years of studying the Bible and interacting with reality I have arrived at the perspectives listed in the thread title. I am interested in discussing these perspectives with others who have some familiarity with them.
Any takers ?
Open theism sounds appealing enough.
There is most certainly a supreme God, and He most certainly doesn’t meddle in human affairs.
Philosophically and logically I’ve tend towards a general theistic worldview. How much that fits into the categories above, I don’t know?
Hi, SixFoot. Open theists hold that God does medfle in human affairs. Where did you hear that it says that he doesn’t? Have you read or listened yo much open theist msterial ?
Hi, Eagle-Keeolper. General theists could be open theists, noncompatibilists or presemtisrs, i’m guessing.
But i wouldnt’t think they would go for crucicentrism, social trinitarianism or kenoticism7
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I didn’t. “Open Theist” just sounded snazzier than it apparently is.
But anywho, if God meddled in human affairs, He wouldn’t be perfect, and He’d be in serious need of a slapping for all the horrors going on right this minute as we comfortably and casually discuss how the suffering we’ve never begun to experience is somehow part of a divine plan.
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Open theism regards all evil in the world as the result of free will endowed creatures choosing not to behave in the way God imtends. We do not consideral all the events of history as the unrolling of events God intended for the world. God works to limit the amount of evil free-will beings can do, so, things get nowhere near as bad as the evil would like to make them.
He limits His “meddliing” to blessing both the good and the wicked to encourage them to heed and choose His ways, putting up circumstantial roadblocks to stop many evil plans from getting ofc the ground or failing on the way, and loosing wicked factions onto other wicked factions to neutralise them when they insist on taking an evil trajectory
. Unfortumately, innocents also do get wounded and killed by wicked actors, but that’s not God’s doing. He will dispense justice in time.
None of this is verifiable at all. Not one single human being on this Earth can make these statements anything but personal beliefs/opinions, either.
I’m just going off what God reveals about Himself thrrough scripture and my experience. That is where crucicentric open theists derive their worldview from.
You are correct that this is not possible for me to verify to you. However, I can verify it for myself. I can confirm through study of the Received Text of scripture that these ideas about God can be seen there, and I can verify by experience that these ideas fit reality.
Who told you that God revealed Himself through scripture? Another human?
Jesus appeared to me in a vision and told me that He created everything snd ot sll belongs to Him. . I asked for a dpecific subsequent sign, that He is who thd Bible says He is and all I need to folliw is Him and the Bible, which siig He brought to pasd.
Just the one? That’s an interesting dream. Was it sleep-induced or psychedelic-induced? Some of my personal favorite spiritual moments also happened while I was under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide and/or 4-hydroxy-DMT.
The most vivid and intense vision I had was when I got killed in Afghanistan. Jesus walked with me through hell, showing me how we all go through there in our transition back to the Father. I experienced it all. The loss, the separation, the reunion, the celebration.
As it turns out, everyone you’ve ever sinned against has already forgiven you, whether they realize yet it or not. Conversely, you’ve already forgiven everyone who has ever sinned against you, whether you realize it yet or not.
Hell is nothing more than us finally forgiving ourselves before we get Home. Some folks will be there “longer” than others. No one will stay there forever. Everything is an eternity when there is no time.
It’s a sin to miss the narrow way, the Middle Path. Here is where “simultaneous causation,” is actually understood deep in the bones, past present and future. The answer in words only, is always, “neither-nor” but those word based people, are like Zen people who think there is no need to practice because, they “already know.”
Jesus said, I want to teach you to be “fishers of Men.”
Practice in this world is always to plant the seed, spread True religion and face persecution and even death in the time when evil people run amok.
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No drugs. Not asleep. I was inyo eastern lphilosophies at the time, looking to decude on a gutru and ashram to commit to, and was meditating by centring my attention on “Who am I?”
As a presentist I don’t believe that the future or the past have any real exustence in this present, so if we aren’t forgiven or being forgiven by people now or in asome past now, we haven’t already been forgiven
The concept of eternity mskes no logical sense to me and is an unnecessary abstraction.
I do believe God has demonstrsted that He has forgiven us all through the self-sacrifice of the Son on the cross. But we still need to accept His chosen King to dwell in His Kingdom.
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This is the big turnoff. Not only is it a purely hypothetical belief with no possibility of verification, but billions of humans lived before Jesus and billions have died since while having no concept of His existence. Billions are alive now with no concept of Him. None of them are hell-bound for eternity. None.
The idea that everyone has to perform a ritual at a church or believe in a specific way in order to get to heaven crumbles under the most elementary of questions.
As we can plainly see, each person experiences God (or doesn’t) in different ways. This life was never meant to be a cookie cutter experience, and your (or my) preferred scripture was never meant to be the end-all, be-all of spiritual growth.
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My purpose in this thread is not polemical. We can just agree to disagree. I am interested in finding others sympathetic to the perspectives listed in the thread title, to discuss them in more deprh.
I am verifying them for myself by study and experience. I cannot verify them for you. That would require your own study and experience.
And the same applies to your unverified worlview. Where would you suggest I stsrt to verify your views expressed here?
I don’t. You see, any so-called experts are either self-proclaimed, or fan-proclaimed, but none are truly experts. My experience was divine, just like it was for billions of others, but it was mine.
I only suggest that people grow, and never stop. If you had a vision during a meditation session, do it a million more times, have a million more experiences. What ever drugs you can legally get a hold of to have more (and differing) spiritual experiences, do that too.
The worst thing anyone could ever do is decide that they have the right answers and that there is nothing left to learn.
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When it’s theoretical it always appears that way, but you don’t have to look hard to see people in hell all around you. That’s verifiable.
When I was 17, I too was meditating/praying and long time fasting on that same question. I also asked the question, “who is this voice of my"self” inside my head?" the answer came suddenly. It was enough to knock the wind out of me. A booming voice from above me came down and said, "THE VOICE OF GOD" in a Cecil B. De Mille Moses type vortex. It stopped my breathing.
…and it was either “God” or as I rationalized years later the CIA experimenting with “voice to brain” technology in Laurel Canyon from their secret base on Lookout Mountain. Afterall, it was CIA from where I got the “acid.” (Legal in those years)
For two weeks as I wrestled with this “impossible” startling surprise idea, that “I” was god, I continued fasting and then took another 1000mcg of LSD sitting in prayer. Suddenly I was the mind of the real Milky Way which was rotating in my forehead. I had a very firm resolve to not be swayed by any occurrence and to maintain the nonjudgemental, single-pointed mind I had learned from the hard to obtain “Chi-kuan for beginners” manual from the 6th century, Chinese priest Tien-tai. “stop the mind and observe it.”
Nevertheless, a doubting thought crept into my mind. "this couldn’t be the actual Milky Way galaxy–it’s just the LSD…If this is the real Milky Way—then which of these stars is the SUN??
At that instant the cosmos began to revolve, the stars fell downward and my consciousness centered on and focused on a tiny star amidst the galaxy, that drew my mind towards it. As this star approached, waves of sensual pleasures and physical bliss, grew and overcame me…then as my anticipation grew–suddenly the curtain of space opened like the unzipping of a vast zipper, and a giant reptilian arm and clawed hand, reached out at me and there it was, subjectively 600 foot tall, Satan/Mara beast towered over my insignificant consciousness, grabbed me around the throat and tossed me like a sailing piece of filth into an opening tunnel entrance. Above the entrance, it read, “YE who enter here, abandon all hope.”. It knocked the wind out of me. My stomach was like the worst guilt. I descended into hell as I struggled to come to my senses. I was there for the proverbial 3 days subjectively, in this mechanical, biblical nightmare. My guilt was overpowering, but I traveled through this pit unscathed and something in me, had defeated Satan and I saw how pitiful doubt worked.
As I reconstituted, I remembered that I had seen all of this before, over and over. I had seen these opposites of God and the Devil and remembered again to take the MIDDLE PATH and not be swayed by doubt.
Previously, months before, I had already had a vision of walking with Jesus, on the water, who had plainly told me to seek Buddhism and the Supreme Law.
The various distinctions you bring up, using words in the terms in your post title, were also debated ad-Infinitum in Buddhism.
Buddhism can confound people when the questions about “self”, “soul” Atman vs Anatman when the Middle Way is discussed. “I” or “mine” is refuted as only conventional speech but is really emptiness and transient realities-- that contain all potential causes and effects, mutually interpenetrating according to the workings of the Supreme Law of cause and effect. In words, it is “neither this nor that.”. I am that I am.
My later experiences were always based in the complete teaching of the Lotus Sutra of Mahayana of which Jesus Christ played a role.
