A commenter on this blog expressed curiosity of how I could reconcile being "Christ-oriented" with being a Phenominological Panthiest. It's actually easy for me to answer that. I believe in Christ as a philosophy, rather than as a religion, taking "religion" in the modern sense of organization and control. It is the teachings of Christ about the nature of the Spirit and mankind's relationship to God, that constitute my conviction, rather than the system of mandates and opinion set forth by "religion."
If you remove all the scriptures that make the foundation of Lucrecius of Antioch's church, and leave the scriptures that contain the teachings and the history of Jesus Christ (And why not? Lucrecius himself edited out many Gospels he felt weren't pertinent to his vision of the church), as Thomas Jefferson did for his own use, you have a concise record of Christ's answers to questions of the nature and relationship of God and Man, one that would cross reference well with the Tao tse Ching, and the teachings of the Buddha.
Jesus Christ teaches us that we simultaneously exist in three major realms, The Soul (The Father), the Holy Ghost (The Spirit), and the Son (The Material Body). He teaches us that what we do in one realm effects the other realms. He teaches us that we are capable of the same miracles that he performed, if we had Faith "but the size of a mustard seed."
And, He demonstrated "Salvation" by being crucified and returning to the material realm. It is with His Wisdom and Knowledge that we are made aware of our own immortality and of our true nature; that is, as Children of God, and as being in the Image of God.
In my personal reality, I believe that each individual exists in his or her own reality. If one believes in the tenets of modern religion or the edicts and dogma of a church, that is the real world in which that person exists. If a person believes that the Earth is only 5,000 years old, that is the reality of that person's world. If a person believes that God and Science are one and the same, that is yet another reality.
I hope I have satisfied your curiousity.
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6 comments:
You might be interested in reading tielhard de Chardin and Frederick Turner, esp. the latter's "Natural Religion"
I kinda get what you're trying to say, Rev Jim, but "pantheism" means everything is God, and Jesus didn't teach that. So I'm confused as to how you can be "Christ-centered" while believing things He didn't teach. Just wondering.
seane-anna, I don't believe I said "Christ-centered," but "Christ-oriented," which to me means that I apply the teachings of Christ, along with the teachings of Buddhism and Taoism, along with other philosophies to the beliefs I came into this world with, before I ever went to Sunday School or learned about the Bible.
It must be remembered that Jesus taught according to the beliefs of those whom he was teaching, and those were of the Judaic faith, which, aside from the Kaballic practices, deals with the material world. Thus he refered to himself as "The Son of Man." In the Lucrecian Bible as we know it, there is no record of his teaching per se that everything is part of God, nor is there any record of his talking about pre- existance, yet modern regligions, including Christianity and Judaism, profess belief in the immortality of the soul. So, in my personal belief, which I do not try to impress on anybody, nor use it to disparage the personal beliefs of others, the implied word is as important to me as the written
Actually, if you take seriously John 1:1 and understand that "logos" means "information" in its fullest meaning and sense, and if you understand that information is the foundation of all things and constitutes the world, then you can even be Christ-centered and a pantheist.
Dr. T, you're stretching it, dude.
Every one has his own views.Everyone loves his religion but one thing should be kept in mind that nobody should be religion fundamentalist.
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