God

[bluemonday]

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[Beat]

[bluemonday]

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[Eileen]

Originally Posted by Brendan

Now I'm intrigued. Do tell

Well, I'm not going to give you an entire course in gender and Christianity; I don't have time for that. But in early Christianity, there was a good bit of gender-bending--some from men, but more from women (because hegemony being what it is, women had more of a challenge). There is an interesting presence on "eunuchs" in the New Testament, and it wasn't because men were running around castrating themselves. A weird element of the early church is that somehow, people should be "de-sexed." For a woman in the early church, this is quite empowering, but for men, it would tend to be the opposite.

Where women TEND to be subjugated in the New Testament, Paul is doing it (with some help from Peter, but not Jesus, which is very relevant to me). Jesus talks to women and includes them in his life and ministry in ways that some found offensive. Jesus regularly talked to the people who others wouldn't. Women were among those.

There are some bizarre (to us) places in the New Testament where Paul (or whoever... Paul didn't write all the Pauline epistles, for sure) puts some kind of restriction on women (cover your head) while also revealing an authoritative presence (cover your head... while you are prophesying and teaching). It makes the "women shouldn't teach" passages in the Timothies kind of confounding.

It's not simple, and obviously it's not perfect, and clearly there are places within modern Christendom where there is still not the ideal unity between Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female... but it's also not a categoric waste of a religion with regard to those things.

[ThatGirl]

God

yes?

[Oleander]

God is "Love", and the original is better translated "Compassion". Does the OT Jehovah sound a bit different? That's OK, St.Paul had a good rant about "Whatsoever in Scripture is of Agapeh (The Greek translated as Love or Compassion) is of The God (God is not a personal name, it is avoidance of personality) ... and ... whatsoever is not is of Man" That is, of 'Man' like the mad King Saul raving genocidal "Because God told me to do it" like suicide bombers and abortionist murderers today.

The True 'God' is Compassion. For some backward people that can mean imagining a 'Super-person' who orders or does Compassion, but the fact is that true human beings should understand abstracts enough to elevate Compassion for all living beings to the position that moralistic gods hold for primitives.

[Orangey]

Originally Posted by Oleander

God is "Love", and the original is better translated "Compassion". Does the OT Jehovah sound a bit different? That's OK, St.Paul had a good rant about "Whatsoever in Scripture is of Agapeh (The Greek translated as Love or Compassion) is of The God (God is not a personal name, it is avoidance of personality) ... and ... whatsoever is not is of Man" That is, of 'Man' like the mad King Saul raving genocidal "Because God told me to do it" like suicide bombers and abortionist murderers today.

The True 'God' is Compassion. For some backward people that can mean imagining a 'Super-person' who orders or does Compassion, but the fact is that true human beings should understand abstracts enough to elevate Compassion for all living beings to the position that moralistic gods hold for primitives.

[insert wrongheaded misinterpretation of words in above post]

[ajblaise]

Originally Posted by Orangey

I think you may be getting into troublesome territory with the bolded comment. Not least because 'abortionists' don't perform abortion because God told them to do it, heh. That would be quite an odd proposition indeed. And also because I don't think many people who support abortion will be pleased with being equated at the moral level with terrorists (which is to say that it's kind of uncalled for, since death is the only thing that they share with each other. And if that's the only criteria for qualifying as morally equal to terrorism, then so is capital punishment, war, old age, etc...).

I thought Oleander was talking about people who kill "abortionists" or bomb abortion clinics, not the actual abortion practitioners.... at least I think.

[Orangey]

Originally Posted by ajblaise

I thought Oleander was talking about people who kill "abortionists" or bomb abortion clinics, not the actual abortion practitioners.... at least I think.

Ah, abortionist murderers. I thought that the murderers bit was an added description of the abortionists, not the murderers of abortionists. Well then, I'll go ahead and get off my high horse. Oleander...disregard my last post!

Lol.

[Victor]

Originally Posted by Beat

His being present for us is supposed to be a promise. If we call to him, he will answer. In a way he has bound himself to us, therefore, can I not hold him accountable in his absence?

Her presence is only concealed by Her absence.

And naturally we imitate Her here.

So our presence is only concealed by our absence.

If we post, we are present. And if we don't post, we are absent.

And the foreground of our presence can only be seen against the background of our absence.

And interestingly, our absence is only foregrounded against the background of our presence.

But we must post first before our absence can be noted.

So presence takes precedence.