Breadcrumbs to God – Saving Souls

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Sort of a union of both, I think.

I can sometimes only risk short but complete responses for the sake of the thread. Better than to waste space replying in the wrong direction and getting at nothing.

>God saves a people who are living in this world now to do good works.
>True inspiration in this life however is the only way to know of a surety.
That this can be experienced.

I think I understand your position better now
If I understand correctly, the claim is not that truth is settled solely by public argument, but that certainty comes through a lived experience you're calling true inspiration, with fruits functioning as a kind of external cross-check after the fact
What's still unclear to me is how true inspiration is distinguished from other compelling internal experiences. People across very different traditions tell about having experiences that feel equally certain, transformative, and fruit-bearing to them, yet they point in incompatible directions
By what criteria do you tell that an experience is genuinely reflective of truth, rather than sincere self-deception, confirmation bias, or a powerful but misdirected psychological state? And related to that, how would someone discover that they were mistaken, from the inside, if they were? Like, what are internal or practical markers that make true inspiration more than "whatever feels compelling", especially given the fact that incompatible claims can feel equally certain to the people who hold them

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

We are basically the English Puritans & all of you gentiles are Amorites, Amalekites, etc... You will all be washed away in the flood of American hubris as this continent is cleansed for the righteous to inhabit it once again...

The Mormons have absorbed a little too much global culture to escape what's coming. Fertility rate collapse is hitting them too. Their women are mistreated enough (or at least believe themselves to be) that they're all divorcing and dyking out, and their own internal culture makes them incapable of the internal reflection that they'd need to change any of that. Likely, we're looking at another Israel-type situation, where the most extreme fundamentalists will grow ever more powerful as their numbers swell while the least objectionable mormons dwindle and puss out for fear of alienating the few grandchildren they do end up having. Except with more inbreeding due to the unrestricted polygamy. Hell, they even all live in one big desert shithole, just like the jews.

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

What's still unclear to me is how true inspiration is distinguished from other compelling internal experiences. People across very different traditions tell about having experiences that feel equally certain, transformative, and fruit-bearing to them, yet they point in incompatible directions
By what criteria do you tell that an experience is genuinely reflective of truth, rather than sincere self-deception, confirmation bias, or a powerful but misdirected psychological state? And related to that, how would someone discover that they were mistaken, from the inside, if they were? Like, what are internal or practical markers that make true inspiration more than "whatever feels compelling", especially given the fact that incompatible claims can feel equally certain to the people who hold them

Part of the work is in harmonizing the witnesses. Greater wisdom -> greater comprehension -> greater capacity for witness harmonization. This is especially true when judging personal experience; scriptural corroboration is key.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Part of the work is in harmonizing the witnesses. Greater wisdom -> greater comprehension -> greater capacity for witness harmonization. This is especially true when judging personal experience; scriptural corroboration is key.

What would count as evidence that a sincerely harmonizing, scripture-correlated experience was nevertheless mistaken?

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

What would count as evidence that a sincerely harmonizing, scripture-correlated experience was nevertheless mistaken?

There wouldn't be a point in acknowledging it unless it bore good fruits, so, if it bore illness instead.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

There wouldn't be a point in acknowledging it unless it bore good fruits, so, if it bore illness instead.

Hmn
That means there is no way to identify a belief or experience as mistaken prior to negative outcomes. And even then, only if those outcomes are judged to be bad enough to outweigh the perceived fruits
In that case, truth is treated as provisional so long as it remains beneficial. That makes "objectivity" descriptive of God's order, but not an epistemic constraint on belief (since false but fruit-bearing beliefs would be indistinguishable from true beliefs until they fail)
That means disagreement can't be resolved at the level of truth, only at the level of outcomes

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

disagreement can't be resolved at the level of truth, only at the level of outcomes

We are experiencing reality after all.

 

[Fek]

This may not be an easy read for some.

There are some very simple and True instructions which have survived a litany of distortions within the texts upheld by any given flavor of Christendom. Those instructions have been warped and made to be something that has to be done by seeking on the outside, but it all happens within, friends. One of the single greatest teachers ever known in this physical experience laid it out quite plainly if one would only follow his guidance and leave out all the rest.

He didn't tell you to go find it somewhere on the outside
or divide into sects splitting hairs over the follies of humanity
or follow the words/orders/proclamations of men in silly hats
or to be made to feel guilty or shameful of something you never did
or that you are unworthy of something you already have within you
or to worship him as greater than yourselves
or that he was somehow special and that you couldn't do all he can and more

The only breadcrumbs anyone needs to start, I would suggest, are as follows:
Seek first the kingdom. Do you remember where it is? He told you that, too.
The kingdom is within you. It's not in a church. It's not in a pope. It's not in this iteration of distorted teachings over that distorted version. It's not in guilt or shame. You.

I'll have more to say as time permits, though I suspect it may become progressively more challenging for some to read as it continues. Just know that I say all in love for you, dear reader, and only wish for your remembrance of who you truly are.

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

Seek first the kingdom.

This is good coverage, as it is easy for one (myself in this case) to forget the things one had glossed over in their own experience.

 

[Slap47]

If something is true, then it can be demonstrated.

Pretty much every Christian in the world has a different moral framework because morality comes from cultural/societal values.
Pretty much every Christian in the world has a different understanding of what God is because God is a social construct.
Pretty much every Christian in the world has a different understanding of the Bible because the Bible is unclear and inconsistent, and every person in the world filters it through their lived experience and culture.

Who goes to heaven? It seems like being vaguely a good enough person by most peoples cultural understanding of what is good is enough.

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

God is a social construct.

Do you deny the personhood of God? Or of whatever governs the universe?

National Council of Churches

Not only does the second-largest Mormon denomination have membership, but the main one is noted as a "church" in a Christian context.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

What is your point?

Lots of Christians in the thread, but you explicitly invoke objectivity, so it should be fair game for non-Christians on epistemic grounds

Both of you have hard-to-read names.

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted [prepared] a plan to create the world and people it. When we begin to learn this way, we begin to learn the only true God, and what kind of a being we have got to worship. Having a knowledge of God, we begin to know how to approach Him, and how to ask so as to receive an answer.

When we understand the character of God, and know how to come to Him, he begins to unfold the heavens to us, and to tell us all about it. When we are ready to come to him, he is ready to come to us.

 

[Harm]

OP asked me to give some thoughts, and I will, but I am prefacing this by saying I am a lowly retard when it comes to theology and am the wrong person to comment on anything other than my own relationship with God. Be that as it may, here's my ramblings...

I'm generally not a fan of the concept of "salvation" because it's predicated upon distorted interpretations of the "fall of man." This belief that we, God's creations, are born flawed? That he made us so that, by default, we are separated from some "reward" and that only through repenting for something which was done unto us, not something we ourselves have done, that we can restore this lost reward. It necessitates parasite logic wherein we have to wonder "does a newborn baby who passes suddenly then go to eternal damnation?" and respond to them with these copes of "no way, because God is actually also loving and knows better than to abide by... His own rules of creation?" Well, it makes more sense that Original Sin is bullshit, there is no special "salvation" of eternal lap dances beyond the Pearly Gates, we have no human consciousness when we die, and whatever does occur in the afterlife is so far beyond most human comprehension that it'd sound schizophrenic to the layman.

Ultimately, God doesn't punish all of us because of 1 man ages ago. Genesis isn't even intended for us to have any accounts of creation because it is useless to us as humans to know the material situations by which this world came to be. It's even hotly debated whether when God looked at creation and decided "this is VERY good" if that was before or after the "fall of man." Christians need it to be BEFORE because to them, how could it be "VERY good" that God created a world in which man is capable of falling? Because, as a novice Jew, my understanding is that God already had perfect beings, the angels, and the role of man is not to be obligated/forced to succeed, but to succeed despite our capacity to fall and fail.

I mean, I'm not righteous. I'm obsessed with following strangers online so I can revel in their misfortunes because of mostly insignificant characteristics that don't matter. I lie, I cheat, I steal, I sin, and I still look at it all and know it's not because of Adam. It's me. I did it all. I do it everyday. However, when I look at the opportunity to do something wicked, as according to God's design, and I stop myself of my own free will and choose to do the righteous thing instead, it's never going to be rewarded and I need it to be that way for it to matter. I'll never go to heaven, there is no heaven. I'll never be spared from Hell, there is no Hell. The various possible afterlife scenarios before me couldn't even begin to matter to me because I'll never comprehend it. And I'm not supposed to. I'm not doing this for salvation and I'm not doing it for righteous purposes if I were to do so. I do it because I believe in my heart, in my heart of hearts, in the deepest crevice of my soul where my darkest desires burn the strongest, that God is real, He loves me, and I love Him more than anything else.

"You will know them by their fruits," but then what of Job? What was someone to make of him there, having lost everything, having suffered greater than you or I ever could? His fruits in that moment, to us sickly materialist animals that we are, were rotten. He was surely one you could take that translated witticism and use to justify condemning him. "He must have done something we don't know!" No! That's not at all why we struggle. Our devotion to God in those moments IS the fruit. It's not "look at my nice house and loving family and my luxurious hobbies!" because it's very well clearly delineated in scripture that we may have it all ripped from us in a way that feels unfair, that feels wicked, that feels cruel, and even without any promise of salvation or threat of Hell, Job still dropped down and prayed with love for God in his heart. He could have cut the shoots of the orchard and forsaken God, unrecognizable by his lack of material "fruits," but that's not our calling. We're here to suffer and love God anyways. We're here to gain nothing from it besides the fulfillment of our duty.

So no, I'll never receive "salvation" in the Christian sense of having "redeemed" my soul tainted by "original sin," and God knows better than to make it that way. I don't need breadcrumbs to God because the entire universe already exists within me by the grace of God, and I'm never without Him. I'm also not proofreading or re-reading any of this back before posting, just gonna flow of consciousness this out there. God doesn't want you to love Him because of promises of gifts or fear of retribution. I don't want to have a reason to love God anyways.

 

[[VΩiD] SoKAftH]

OP asked me to give some thoughts

Ask for a bump and you shall receive, I guess.

On the point about Job; here:

People who are at large are often and do often confuse themselves for winners though, so it is not enough to say that a wealthy or powerful person is just for it. Just as it is false to say to one afflicted, that their afflictions are from their own fault: as much as there is fault, there is affliction, but there is also affliction in the lives of the innocent, who God preserves. What God does love is real humanity overcoming hateful thoughtlessness. He is no "respecter of persons", rather, he does respect all people who do good.