Jesus Among Secular Gods

Do you know where that reference is from? Read Matthew 22:1-14. It's a parable about a *ahem* despotic king who slaughters the people who don't accept an invitation to his son's wedding; and it isn't about them choosing. It's about him choosing them. You should know where that reference is from by now - the dreaded Matthew 25. It's about the people who do desire to know Him, and claim they do know Him, but they don't.

If he has absolute power than he is by definition a despot.

I agree no one knows. It could be either one. However, if it is the God meme reaching into our lives then I’d suggest that is supernatural. Would you consider a God meme to be supernatural? I’d say that it is both. I go along with what John 1 says when he says the Word became flesh. (As an aside John says that the Word became flesh and not a book.) If we want to understand God’s nature we look to the life and teaching of Jesus. Fair enough. You are correct and that does go beyond secular humanism but that is not contradictory to deism. I would add a caveat to your judgment statement. There is that verse in the Gospels where Jesus says to whom much is given much is expected. I do believe in God’s perfect judgment and that for someone like myself who grew up in a loving affirming environment will not be judged on the same basis as someone who grew in an abusive home.I’d also add that I think judgment is based where our hearts are. I’d suggest that how we live our lives is a by-product of whether we love sacrificially or selfishly. I’m very much in line with Lewis in both The Great Divorce as well as The Last Battle.
Cheers

I would consider that Word Salad with no meaning or content. Again, not at all sure what that even means or what looking to the life and teaching of Jesus tells us about God's nature.

The way you read the Bible is no different than understanding when someone today says that it was raining cats and dogs, and understand it as saying that our pets had come hurtling out of the sky. The Bible is not to be read like a newspaper. However, I realize that you have had a long life time preaching that doctrine and it isn't about to change now. That response is just bizarre. How about these quotes form Jesus in Matthew 6 and this sort of thing is throughout the whole Bible. How about we read Paul in Romans 2

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13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

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Did you ever read the part about the law being written on their hearts or did you just bypass that as it didn't fit with what you wanted to believe? It is all about the heart and not about rules. No, I simply disagree with what you think it means to be born again.

I would consider that a cop-out. I'll try rephrasing it. Do you consider the God that you say you believe in to have any particular morality, and does God have empathy with people. I'm suggesting that as Christians we should be able to look at the morality and empathy of Jesus for the answer to the question.

The God I create? Yes. GOD? No idea. I'm not even sure that a concept of morality has any meaning outside our on construction. I can hope that is the case.I agree we can look at Jesus teaching and see morality and empathy but I not sure how that would tell us anything about GOD. It's clear that quite a few of the descriptions of God in the Bible describe either an immoral God or an amoral one.But I also see it as irrelevant beyond my personal beliefs. Regardless I believe the charge is the same; run the race, fight the Good fight ...

Do you believe that there is anything special about Jesus, other than that He was a good man?

Again, I strongly believe that whatever I believe is totally irrelevant.But personally I need to answer in terms of Jesus while alive and living on earth, a period of about 30 years. At that time I believe Jesus was totally human, not GOD, not divine, not supernatural.Before then and after his ascension is entirely different. Between his death, resurrection and before ascension I honestly have no idea. The stories are as is so often the case contradictory and very unreliable. There is the tales of him simply appearing to people but also the Thomas story where it is implied he was very much corporeal.Again though, I am very sure that if there is life after death I will learn that everything I believed was simply nonsense.

What we believe is absolutely relevant. Our beliefs and our non-beliefs form the basis of the people we are. They mold our relationships and they also have an impact and influence others, and particularly those close to us like our children. I agree with that. The only thing I would add is that. I would also agree that it is scriptural. For example here is a verse from Luke 2:

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52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

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I think that is the clearest statement of His humanity.The only thing that I would add is that I believe that by the time Jesus started His ministry at roughly age 30, that through His knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and through prayer and with an infilling of God's spirit He was able to perfectly image God's nature and love into the world. Yes, there are contradictions in the Gospel accounts, particularly when it comes to time and location. However, IMHO those differences actually lend credibility. If they all lined up perfectly it would smack of collusion . I just can't see a case to be made for their fabrication. They no doubt are told with the compilers personal thoughts and emphasis, and they no doubt did get certain things wrong, however they are all consistent on the fact that Jesus was physically resurrected. They certainly believed that the accounts were historical. They may have been mistaken, or gotten it all wrong.I have read a number of debates about whether the Gospel accounts of the resurrection are historical or not. I have read a number of theories of what might have happened but the basis for all of the arguments against Jesus' resurrection is based on the idea that it is scientifically impossible. However, if one is a theist, it only seems reasonable to me that we can accept that the resurrection would be small potatoes for a God who brought life into existence.Frankly, without the resurrection Jesus would have been considered nothing more than another failed messiah and nobody would have remembered Him more that 40 years later let alone 2000 years later. If there is no resurrection I cannot see any explanation for the rise of the Jewish sect that became Christianity. The Gospel accounts see Jesus as corporeal. The Gospel accounts however, indicate that it is a new form of bodily existence that seems able to exist in either Gods' heavenly dimension or our earthly one. Thomas is a very early form of Gnosticism where God's heaven does not co-exist with our Earthly existence, and where this Earth is evil and certainly not ultimately going to be renewed. I think that the best we can do to grasp the next life is to look at the ultimate resurrection of all things with Jesus being the first example we have of our resurrected bodies. After that I simply go on the faith that it will be a world of perfect justice, mercy, kindness and love, whatever that will look like.

Bart Ehrman was asked "What was the difference between the proto-orthodox from a geography and class standing, and the heretical groups?"Notice what he said about the Israel region.

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In the second century there were difference kinds of Christianity in different parts of the empire, so that in Alexandria, a majority of people were Gnostic--or in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey, the majority of churches were Marcionite. Or in lands around what today we call Israel, the majority of Christians were Ebionite. But in some of these places, there were also proto-Orthodox people. Proto-orthodox was clearly the majority in the city of Rome, and it may have been in the majority in the city of Antioch, in Syria, and in several other larger places.

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It was partly geographical, but you have different kinds of people in the same place--so for example in Rome, which was largely proto-orthodox, we know of Gnostics there, and we know that Marcionites started out there. It's like today: there are Mormons here in Chapel Hill, but if you go to Salt Lake City, there are a lot of Mormons.

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Read more at Interview with Bart Ehrman about Lost Christianities--the belief systems that didn't cut it. - Beliefnet

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Ebionites?Here was his description, earlier:(He was asked what Christianity would be like if Ebionites won out "Christianity)

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We would have a different New Testament to begin with. The Ebionites were opponents of the Apostle Paul. They thought he was a heretic. A lot of the New Testament had to do with the Apostle Paul and his writings. Those would have been excluded from the get-go. They would have kept what is now our Gospel of Matthew but maybe not any of the other Gospels. And it would mean that Christians would have to be Jewish, which means uncircumcised men would have to get circumcised and people would be keeping kosher food laws and would be keeping the Sabbath, worshiping on Saturday, keeping Jewish festivals. So Christianity would have been more recognizably a sect of Judaism.

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Read more at Interview with Bart Ehrman about Lost Christianities--the belief systems that didn't cut it. - Beliefnet

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Then later:

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We'll start with the Ebionites. The Ebionites were complete monotheists, so there's only one God, and nobody else could be God, so Jesus is not divine for them. Jesus is a full flesh-and-blood human being, who was more righteous than anybody else and so God chose him to be his son. In other words, He gave him a mission to die for the sins of the world. But he wasn't himself God, so the Ebionites maintained their Jewishness because they thought that Jesus was Messiah, predicted by this one God. They denied the deity of Jesus, they rejected the teachings of Paul, and their scriptures were mainly what we would call the Old Testament. So they didn't have an idea of the virgin birth or anything that would make Jesus anything other than human.

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Read more at Interview with Bart Ehrman about Lost Christianities--the belief systems that didn't cut it. - Beliefnet

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One might not see a very accurate representation of historical "Christian" thought itself, when the modern-day apologists (Ravi Zacharias and others) compare it to other religions.

Call Him what you want. The very fact that such a powerful Creator would even let you speak your mind indicates to me that though His power may be absolute, so too is His Mercy. The only definition of despot that fits Him is the all-powerful part. Only satan would even put such an independent thought in your mind. Assuming, however, for the sake of an argument that Satan was created foreknowingly by GOD, there logically is a purpose for the fallen deceiver. Perhaps we are foreknowingly meant to challenge and question GOD on a daily basis. I need to throw some of what I was taught away in order to explore these types of questions.

Sheesh Phat, read the Bible. Try it, you might even like it.Look at the descriptions of God in the Bible. They are filled with descriptions of a despot and quite often an immoral despot.Phat, it is not what I claim it is what is actually written in the Bible.Do you believe Jesus and God are one?

One in what way? As simple as changing costumes or pronouns? If so, why bother dividing up a monotheistic concept? Why not divide Allah into Allah Most Merciful, Junior, and the spook?

Well Phat, first Islam like Judaism says there there is no such thing as the Trinity; the Trinity is solely a Christian marketed product and only Trinitarian Christianity at that.But the issue is that the God character in the Bible is quite often an immoral or at best amoral critter.To claim Jesus is God needs qualifiers such as Jesus is God but not the God of Genesis 1 or the God of Genesis 2&3 or the God of the Exodus saga or ... (the list goes on).