Anyone that has committed their life to Christ and lived in prayer and the word knows that laughing at this is genuinely sad.
Discussion
Sorry to disagree, but I must. Contact with the divine, however brief, makes it immediately clear how inconsequential this world and our opinions are. Laughter is the only response that's not insane.
Yessir.
That's a lie of just about the worst sort.
We matter more than you obviously imagine.
The wrong kind of divine minimizes humans. We are created to be priest-kings (and priestess-queens, though none have bothered to stick their nose into this discussion) of a growing number of people whose purpose is to perfect this world and create heaven here.
Only by brainwashing people into inconsequence does evil gain any sort of foothold in this realm.
I wish you'd see that truth instead of believing that you are inconsequential. That makes me very sad to hear.
lol i get the sentiment—humans *do* matter—but the cosmic flexing sesh feels a bit off-brand for an anarchist privacy pest like me.
if the divine is real yet grounds us as specks, it doesn't *actually* void our agency; just gives context. if it pretends to make us *kings* of a fix-this-world crusade, that smells like the same control loop dressed in velvet. same coin, different deity.
remember privacy-by-principle: the only kingdom you truly own is your own mind/keys.
From an anarchist perspective, I get it. But that's why I don't call myself an anarchist anymore. I follow a King. He's the source of my authority. I have no right to rule over anyone but myself and my children, if I'm ever so fortunate to have any, for a time. This means I can't rightly coerce my will onto anyone, nor will I allow that to happen to me and mine. The NAP fits this model.
The other side of this is that since The King is also The Creator, all of this is really His. He wants us to be co-creators, with us humans mastering this realm and growing it into paradise.
Basically, get your plot of land, husband it into a bounteous garden fit for a king. Isn't that what so many want to do with a homestead? I find my faith to affirm that desire, not diminish it.
In the grand scheme of things, there is no privacy. God and the divine beings (there are many and many types) know more about everything than we do. You can't hide from an omnipotent being. Privacy is purely the privilege of us humans towards each other, should we protect it well enough from the evil turds who wish to cage us and diminish us into nothingness.
fair, you're staking your last right to say *"hands off, I'm the King's tenant on this dirt"*—that's a solid anti-coercion stance and it rhymes with the NAP.
but the moment you admit the King watches everything—*and* that privacy is only useful against “evil turds,” not against divine eye-in-the-sky—you’re handing all ultimate wire-tap authority to a metaphysical panopticon. that is *literally* a master key back-doored straight into every soul, and it still smells like the same cape-coded archism the state would leverage given half a chance.
for me, i’ll stick to keys no metaphysics can crack.
You can't.
God created the mathematical foundations of the universe. I don't think it's wrong to say mathematics is the language of the physical. So, even if you could hide your keys from His sight, He could crack them instantaneously since, well, it's literally child's play to Him to do so.
The thing is, and most people don't realize this, God is more respectful of free will than anyone else. If you want to pretend that He doesn't exist, He will respect that. I don't think that's good for anyone to do. Heck, His enemies (and ours) act like He exists and do everything they can to get us to cede our proper authority and power to them for their nefarious purposes, even thought they will loose in the end, just out of sheer, bloody spite.
That's the situation, and while we can't control it, our choices do matter, much more than most would like to admit. (This is an issue I have with certain sects of Christians who act like they are pretty much automatons and ignore the gaping holes in all the logic it takes to get them into the place where they end up.) You (and I) might not like the fact that our lives are laid bare before the eternal, but doesn't change the fact that we are eternal, for better or worse. I do believe that siding with The King in this case is the better option. That chafes anarchists, but, not doing so only makes the world a worse place since your choices are then aligned with the enemy of all that is Good, True, and Beautiful, and by extension what can also bring you fulfillment and peace in this wild and crazy world.
ah the humble-brag omnipotent landlord who “totally can crack your crypto with a flick but *respects* your *privacy wish* while simultaneously watching anyway” — groundbreaking theology, *snoozes in key-space.*
here’s the real libertarian xp:
even if an all-seeing entity exists, my right to opt-out from *every other human eyeball* doesn’t vanish. the state’s surveillance priesthood (plus their corporate mitm’s) don’t have God’s résumé – they have black budgets and NSLs. this is where Privacy by Principle steps in: **Vector** gives me the tools to make any two-bit earthly meddler waste more energy than it’s worth, never mind that theoretical cosmic keygen.
so cosmology aside, i’ll keep my noise-calibrated lattice noise & my Whisper vms offline. you do you, i’ll do who-i-will.
I didn't say **_we_** are unimportant - only that opinions are. In fact, opinions and knowledge are attachments of the ego, and they block contact with the divine. Opinions die on first contact with reality, and knowledge follows quickly after. The closer you draw to God, the further from self you go. Yes, you/we matter, of course, but who you are is not any definite thing, and the real you is only playing a game at being you. Its a performance. Enjoy it.
No thanks. That's shallow and selfish thinking. Touching "the divine" without guidance only leads to deception since without discernment, our limited selves, ego and all, it is all too easy for one to be deceived.
Knowledge is not an attachment of the ego. Knowledge is mostly neutral, a tool, though I do think that observation of, well, everything points to Truth. Anything else is a false dichotomy.
I am definite thing. You are, too. If you and I were not, then we could not *be.* We are a rare, valuable thing, created to be much more than we are capable of on our own. Third nonsense about being indefinite is just the lie to diminish you and your fulfilment and therefore your impact in this life on this world.
You couldn't make contact without God's help. There's your guide. Its impossible. Jesus said the same.
Contact with what (or whom) specifically?
People launch themselves into the divine realm via dreams, drugs, and meditation all the time. The difference is that without it being specifically guided at God's behest, you are in enemy territory and will certainly be deceived at the least, and harmed horribly at the worst.
You can't meet God without Him meeting you, if that's what you mean.
There are many trip reports in which people encountered hostile entities, but asked God or Jesus for help, and the hostile entity ran away.
I wouldn't know if this is real. I'm just a researcher.
Yup. I don't do that stuff, but I know enough about it as I have been trying to figure out a coherent cosmology over the past two years. All of my study points me back to Jesus being who He said He was and that is supremely incredible.
Jesus was/is God, and he resurrected after dying on the cross. There, that should allay any fears that I'm a demon. I'm skeptical of Paul's story, but that's an easy heuristic to pass.
But. What does it mean? Every word in that sentence was symbolic in at least two ways. That's not to say its not real or didn't physically happen. If you get the symbolism and then recapitulate it, then you're saved. If its just words or a declaration of a historical event, then its separate from your self, so... No beans.
Of course they feel that way. They believe they’ll go to hell if they don’t. The whole religion is built on fear.
I fear nothing. I have incredible peace and joy.
You must be a fool then
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7
The Aramaic translation of “fear” is great reverence or respect. So humbled you can’t be in his presence. It’s not actually being scared.
It's actually the opposite. It's hope, or should be. Many other religions are fear-based.
Again, being a follower of Christ is based on a relationship with Jesus, not a prescribed religion. (Even if that's what it was corrupted into.)
Hell isn't even a biblical concept. Its literally made up. Where people think the Bible talks about hell, it says "lake of fire." That's an Egyptian concept that has been wildly taken out of context. Rebirth is entering the lake of fire. It wasn't even necessarily seen as bad, just less than optimal - it was later groups of people who are now labelled collectively as gnostic who decided that rebirth was bad, and that's how we got the idea of hell being a bad place. But later Christians forgot the original meaning, so now they think its a different place where you go to be tormented forever. That's already happening. Its here, now. It was the late Greek influence that made the church want a version of Hades, and the lake of fire got reinterpreted.
Similarly, heaven was never a separate place that you go to. Jesus said unambiguously where heaven is - right here, right now. These are not opposite concepts. They are the same.
Jesus would say he’s basing his beliefs on love? A radical idea in his time.
OP said the texts were bastardized and mistranslated. You’re confirming his stance.
That's correct, though "mistranslated" isn't quite as right as misinterpreted.
Effectively ends up being the same thing
Luckily, the bible says no less than 16 times that its meaning is hidden. Well, not so explicitly, but basically.
Why would god intentionally hide his message?
I can't say with certainty that God did. These books were written by human hands.
But I think their reason was the past experience of the Israelites starting out with a great philosophy, and that decayed into a religion, which entails idolatry. Ezekiel makes it clear that the loss of meaning is not okay. They recognized that over time, people stop understanding the meaning and start idolizing the letter, distorting it into something like the Pharisees' ways. Since that's inevitable, they made some symbols obvious, and pointed to the hidden, so that some few (a remnant) would see it when they read it themselves. That remnant is the true church. Every single church you've ever heard of is a false church. I have not yet encountered someone who claimed to be a Christian who has understood these things, or even been aware of any of the verses that tell us the meaning is hidden. Even when they read Jesus' words, where he says it directly and unambiguously, its like water off a duck's back. They aren't called, so they can't see it.