Check out the Gospel of Mary.
Discussion
I don't think the bible speaks well of any type of intermediary. Esther, Mary (both of them), Sarah. Rebecca. Was Jude a woman, I forget.
Oh for sure, I was just recommending an example where ancient Christians recognized a woman's ability to grasp theology and where Jesus specifically praised her while rebuking Peter, who was upset that she was allowed to speak like a man. And the Christian groups who used that gospel allowed women to be priests. Esses. Priestesses. 🤔 That sounds like a totally different thing...
Oh for sure, I was just recommending an example where ancient Christians recognized a woman's ability to grasp theology and where Jesus specifically praised her while rebuking Peter, who was upset that she was allowed to speak like a man. And the Christian groups who used that gospel allowed women to be priests. Esses. Priestesses. 🤔 That sounds like a totally different thing...
Oh for sure, I was just recommending an example where ancient Christians recognized a woman's ability to grasp theology and where Jesus specifically praised her while rebuking Peter, who was upset that she was allowed to speak like a man. And the Christian groups who used that gospel allowed women to be priests. Esses. Priestesses. 🤔 That sounds like a totally different thing...
Rawr! Relay or internet issues! Multiple versions of this might appear...
I just think that overall, Jesus, indeed almost all prophets, were very much wary of orthodoxy, priests are distrusted and frequently evil. Pharisees. The priests allowing the money changers, and the corruption of the priesthood. And yet everyone just accepted the imposition of an arbitrary and obviously animist, pagan beliefs like trinity, the winter solstice, birth and resurrection of the Sun, spring and Halloween aka samhain.
Our judgement in on us, and us alone. You have to confess it to God. You have to acknowledge the gravity and make that pledge and renew and redouble. Works and grace are not contradictory but it starts with grace, which lets you move away from ignorance and complacence.
Everything else is sophistry and mediated. Only praying and expectant patience for receiving guidance are your obligation, to sincerely seek purification.
Only men condemn others. Saints know that all can be forgiven when one renounces one's past wrongs, and proving it in action and sacrifice. Only God can judge. All else can only guess, whether the person will truly reform, and while there is life, there is hope. But you do not comfort those who seem to do wrong, and lack humility. Pride should be shunned. It is the path to hell.
They probably had good intentions, when they invented the Trinity concept or syncretized with pagans. I actually think syncretism is great. Its the dogma that's the danger. Great intentions and deep understanding can be lost in a single generation if people don't understand what's being said, and specifically that God is beyond all concepts. The error of the Trinity is that it limits God by way of definition, but it might not have in its original conception. Hang on, gotta find a verse that just popped in my head...
Ah, it was from the Gospel of Thomas, not the Bible. Great book... Saying 77 :
"Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there."
That's truth, that. Idk if the whole book is truth - its very interesting, but idk - but that one is Truth, no doubt.
Ye shall know them by their fruit. I don't truck with this "seemed like a good idea." Abraham slayed idols. The very first holy act of the founder of Judaism. To excuse them of missing one of the first and most important rules of God club, is ridiculous. The whole east of Europe came down against the idolatry of catholicism. They had more subtle errors and for my opinion were closer to the mark. The Muslims, also. And both were two early insurrections against Rome.
IMO Babylon in the last book was the Catholic church and the slimebags that orchestrated this fraud, the beast.
There's no good options, church-wise. Wrong this way, or wrong this other way... Orthodox seem less wrong at first, but test them and see. Fruits, indeed. Bad fruit, IMO. But still, you can't love your neighbor as yourself if you wall them off for being wrong. Everyone is a brother in Christ, even non-Christians, and even the Christians who think its a team sport. Our job is to minister to them, despite being imperfect ourselves. Man... There's so much work to do... It's insane.
yeah, i don't wall them off but i don't hold back on scolding them on their credulity, either.
to me, all doctrines are red flags for cultish manipulation. none of them are entirely free of it. even the least prescriptive ones like variants of zen and taoism are polluted with dumb ideas, missing the point of the original texts.
actually, the Tao Te Ching was a truly amazing revelation for me. i felt like i was reading the best version of the laws of the universe i had ever seen. the book first landed in my lap by chance (though i'd read The Tao of Pooh years before, not the classic itself) as a book that junkie friends had swiped to resell, but nobody wanted. kinda portentious, i guess. that was 1999, NYE, in fact, literally it was the first day of the new millennium i it landed on me. it was beside the bed of a girl i had a one-night stand with in a drunken NYE party. i asked if i could take the book and she explained how it arrived there, and said to take it.
Dude that's an awesome way to find it. I love that book. There's so much cool shit in the world... Like, I look back on the stuff I've learned or found, like the Dao de Jing or Cryptography (cliche here, and I'm not claiming to be an expert - just really amazed) or the gnostic gospels, or Philip K Dick, and I try remembering how I thought about things before I found these things... And its crazy, cuz I can't imagine the hole where these things should be, like constantly blowing my mind. There was once a version of me that didn't even know each of these things existed... 🤔
Speaking of dumb ideas... And daoists...
yeah. i honor what has worth, and all these things are important to understand. the orthodoxy doesn't want you to understand these things because it takes you out of their controlled system of lies, designed to neuter your natural power to challenge their authority, and the passion, the holy spirit, that drives progress for our species.
It's the empire... The empire never ended.