Morality and Subjectivity

I think what he meant to say is that if morals are in FACT subjective, if that's all they are, we just make them up as we go, and all humanity always has, then the concept of sin is meaningless. Which is true because sin is an absolute concept, given by God and can't be anything else. You and I know that there is an absolute moral law but this is what RR isn't convinced of yet.I appreciate your point that although we know there is an absolute moral law that doesn't mean any of us recognize much of it in ourselves. That's why it had to be revealed, and that's how you and I know there is this law, because we believe the revelation of it.

Nevertheless it IS certainty and I have it too. So does Buz, and Randman and ever so many myriads.

Not if God personally made Himself known to some people who wrote down his words, and when we believed those words He made Himself known to us too. That's how we are certain He exists.

You changed the subject. I'm claiming simply that I have the certainty that it was said one could not have, that God exists. Beyond that we can discuss how different my certainty is from someone else's, on another thread.

What you are saying here is numbingly obvious and taken into account. I have certainty in a way you know not of.Edited by Faith, : added quote

Jesus calls for dying to self. The greatest Christian teachers relentlessly advise learning to subordinate yourself to others, not to fight against whatever God sends into your life because it is intended to mortify your self, your flesh, your sins, and so on. This is not an "ego based view." You are simply wrong that there are many paths to truth. Christ is the way, He said so. You simply have today's soothing syncretistic relativistic point of view. You are welcome to it, it's a free country and all that, but our position is that you are factually objectively wrong. Of course you are critical of this. There's nothing that soothes the ego more than thinking you can choose your own personal path to God and don't have to find yourself at fault, and don't have to bow to God's requirements. Certainly. The fallen egocentric flesh hates God and His demanding judgmental Law. Of course you hate it. Your brand of dogma and mine are mutually contradictory. Both cannot be true.

Well I've always been attracted to the mystics myself, and I think that the guarantee of heaven is just the starting point of a lot of hard work conforming oneself to the image of Christ which involves a lot of battering to the ego. But you must start with that security or you won't have the energy to build. Not that I've lived it personally beyond some fits and starts, or even held to the security of salvation consistently at times, I'm simply saying that Christianity contains the instructions for a genuine self-transcendance, and it's the only one that will save anybody too. I disagree totally. It is straight from God's revelation to the Jews. I don't have that view and in fact I don't know anybody who does. We wouldn't be trying so hard to take you with us if we were so pridefully smug. Happy yes, overjoyed at times, certainly. But I can get tied up in knots on behalf of people in my life who aren't saved, that I can only pray for because of their stubborn refusal to listen.But semantically speaking these are different meanings of "soothing" I think. Soothing in the sense of ego-stroking in the first case, in the sense of comfort and security in the second. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'd have to reread it to be sure what he means myself, and I've never much liked the idea either, but I think there's more to it than that. If I remember correctly, he weighs the consequences of believing versus not believing given various claims of Christianity, and shows that your chances are far and away better if you believe.

Well, Jesus said "Seek and you shall find." If you really want to know if it's true, and sincerely seek in the most likely places and by the most likely means to find out if it is true, Jesus promises success.God reads the innermost thoughts of your heart and mind all the time whether you want Him to or not. Prayer is directing them to Him in the spirit of addressing a good and powerful King, petitioning for His favor in your cause. Anyone can do that. Ask and ask and ask in the privacy of your own mind, as if to a God who might possibly exist, to show you that He is there, so that you can believe. It helps if you are sincerely willing to do what He says.Knowing the cause of suffering, and having the answer to all sorts of such questions, doesn't really happen until AFTER you believe.Yes if you really come to believe, drastic is the word for the change you will experience.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Good post, iano. Just believing and accepting the terms of faith in Christ is a breaking of ego, very true. When you get to the point of saying I don't care what You put me through in order to get it, I want everything You are offering, I'll play any kind of fool You like, I'll take any kind of guff, then you're on your way to the Kingdom. Of course the ego dies hard and has a lot to learn about how willing to be a fool and take guff you really are, but the desire for it goes a long way.

But of course a Christian must object that this is no illusion, that God IS an object of the self, separate from the self, truly our Creator and our Judge, as well as Lover and Friend to those who are His. One loves or is friend to another, not the self. One is judged by another, taught by another, not the self. This merging stuff that so much Eastern religion comes up with, the identity of self with Self or the dissolution of the self in the All, or however that is to be understood, eliminates the I and Thou of relationship, mutual love, all that good stuff, that is the core of Christianity. From this point of view the Eastern formulations seem sterile and lonely and boring.Edited by Faith, : added "this is no illusion"

What if natural language is in fact a pretty accurate reflection of actual reality and your attempt to escape it is the illusion? What if the experience of Nirvana or no-Self is the illusory experience? Is that a possibility? What if the reality is the I and Thou of God as Creator of man in His own image? What if the love that passes between the I and the Thou, as distinctly different objects -- or subjects -- contemplating one another, is the release from suffering?Yes I understand the moebius strip model. It appears sterile and lonely and boring too. I like the I and Thou model.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

My reading of Bernadette Roberts was that she was never saved, never understood the teachings of Christ and therefore was never truly a Christian dualist. She had this out-of-the-blue experience of what she called "No-self" and became an active syncretist. I'm curious about this Merrell-Wolfe though.And again, what if YOU are wrong, and all these people wrong, and dualism IS the reality and the no-self experiences the illusion?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.