i've been thinking about God/dess(es)
specifically, in my quest to join the Bible to my personal, pagan beliefs - after all, until some censor came in and scratched her out, the OT talked about Goddess as well as God [Asherah, who has many other names in other cultures, which is only fair, since Yaweh/Jehova started off as a Babylonian God, and was only one of many] and then there's a post on a forum i frequent [called "Commandments of Men"] where the topic was "Urban Legends in [U.S. fundamentalist] Christian Churches - like the UNTRUE Urban Legand that Sodom was destroyed for the "sin" of homosexuality - it was NOT. it was destroyed for the sins of xenophbia, excess. gluttony. Becoming proud, fat, and lazy in their excess and gluttony. Uncharitable. to quote:
Ezekial 16:49 Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
and all of this was interesting. then it turned to sin-in-general [and "is being gay a sin? or is it just having gay sex? or is THAT not a sin any more than any other sex, i.e. it's okay to have gay sex in marriage but not outside? or ok to have gay sex if there's love, but not without?" most of these people - aside from the few trolls, ALL of these people - are recovering fundies, so it was a good discussion for THEM, the consensus being "it's my job to love them, it's GOD'S job to judge them. it's between them and God and so long as no one's getting hurt i won't care", but i stayed out of that part *completely*. because it's hard to be polite even when you KNOW the people aren't trying to be assholes, when they're being assholes.]
from sin-in-general, a debate as to whether or not we are born with a "sin nature". erm...
Not Christian. not sure what a "sin nature" is - being human?
THEN someone brought up Genisis and the creation story, and, well... it made me really, really think about what i think about Genisis.
first, i DO NOT think it's literal in anyway. i firmly believe that the word "day" used in the OT is a mistranslation of the Hebrew - it's a word that can mean "day" or it can mean "eon: an unknowable/ununderstandable [to a human] length of time", and i believe the latter meaning.
but this is what i think in the context of the myth - and i think the myth *IS* one of the myths about humanity's childhood, not the only one of course. i believe God/dess(es) created the world and caused it to evolve - eventually, she had homo sapiens sapiens - something that could LEARN and GROW without losing the ability to LOVE. and then, there was the choice - live forever as children, or eat, learn, change. change is always difficult, even if - maybe especially if - it's a good change.
here's what i wrote over there:
like many non-Christians, I've studied the Bible a lot, and like many pagans, have struggled to fit the Bible into my belief system.
God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. yes? could such a being NOT KNOW what he was creating and what would happen?
this is just *MY* take, granted - but this: God created the world. for whatever reason - and, as a side note, how MANY worlds has He created? we were created in His image; how MANY images does he have? i think that we'll find people who are trilateral who were made in It's image [as I'm hoping in a trisexual race, the Neuters would be the "top" sex...] - he created Man, then Woman [joke: God created Adam, then created Eve as the upgrade :D ]. he set them down WITH the Trees - and you don't think THAT was deliberate? a SNAKE - a thing that has no Will, as a human does [i.e. Free Will] tempts Eve with the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. think THAT'S an "accident"?
no - i think it was, is, in a metaphorical sense, a CHOICE that God offered, knowing the penalty either way. had they eaten of the Tree of Life first, sure, they'd be immortal - and ALONE. no children.
they - as vaguely as they understood anything - were given a choice: literal immortality, or figurative immortality but also the ability to REASON. i can't believe that beings without the ability to know Good from Evil made the choice to KNOW blindly - that God, whatever name we call Her, ALLOWED that choice to be made blindly. i believe the snake was the instrument She used to lead her children into being PEOPLE.
knowledge is NEVER free. THAT is the REAL moral of the Creation story - knowledge is the most precious gem in universe, and God, awesome [in the true sense of the word] as He is, knew that knowledge without price is the truest folly - and so He allowed his children to choose knowledge, and extracted the necessary payment.
it's the creation story that leads to the idea of "Original Sin" - i.e. that we are ALL born with the "sin" of eating of the Fruit, since [according to the story] we are all BORN because of that "sin". without the "sin", Adam and Eve would still be alive, hanging in the Garden, "happy" as only a pet can be.
God/dess doesn't want PETS! S/He wants children who will one day grow up enough to give Him/Her real conversations, help in His/Her work.
that's my take. some of that is, obviously, from my own life - my parents are [now] my friends as much as they are my parents [and I'm as much their friend as i am their daughter. hell, on some things, *I* am the only person they can talk to. which is honestly the coolest thing ever, it's one of the few things in my life right now that I'm really proud of] because to a LARGE extent, one tends to model God after their parents. granted, that's the childish view of God that we all [in theory] eventually outgrow - but it starts there. [i remember looking at my mom one day, when i was 12 or so, and thinking "No wonder i always expect Her to heal me - that's what my mom does all the time, heals people." it shook my world a lot, to realize so much of what i THOUGHT Goddess was, was the stuff about my mom that i most respected. not WRONG to think that, but it made me feel very... unstudied? uneducated? anyway]
we grow through adversity - ask any high school coach :) but that's a cliché for a reason, because it's true. we are all given adversity, however big or small, because the POINT of life is to GROW, to grow up mostly, but also to learn and to love - to become people that are worthy, in a particular sense, of God. not "worthy" in the sense of "sinless" - we CAN'T be sinless, it's not possible, not because we're inherently sinful, but because A) the world isn't that way but really B) without sin, there is no adversity [whether the sin is ours or someone else's, to cause the adversity, doesn't matter - we all sin, to create adversity] and without adversity, we aren't tested and we don't GROW - and if we don't grow, what use could we be?
i think God, though She has billions of faces [at least one for every person, ever] must be very, *very* lonely sometimes. or was, once, before She gave birth to us and all the other people, and let us grow up. WE, humanity, hasn't grown up [though SOME of us were OBVIOUSLY in accelerated learning while here!] but i think, over all, we're slowly getting closer. on my best days, i see the evil and hate happening now as something akin to "teen angst and rebellion" - so we ARE getting closer.
of course, some people don't want to grow up at ALL *coughFUNDIEScough*. God may have to drag THEM kicking and screaming into adulthood...
Ezekial 16:49 Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
and all of this was interesting. then it turned to sin-in-general [and "is being gay a sin? or is it just having gay sex? or is THAT not a sin any more than any other sex, i.e. it's okay to have gay sex in marriage but not outside? or ok to have gay sex if there's love, but not without?" most of these people - aside from the few trolls, ALL of these people - are recovering fundies, so it was a good discussion for THEM, the consensus being "it's my job to love them, it's GOD'S job to judge them. it's between them and God and so long as no one's getting hurt i won't care", but i stayed out of that part *completely*. because it's hard to be polite even when you KNOW the people aren't trying to be assholes, when they're being assholes.]
from sin-in-general, a debate as to whether or not we are born with a "sin nature". erm...
Not Christian. not sure what a "sin nature" is - being human?
THEN someone brought up Genisis and the creation story, and, well... it made me really, really think about what i think about Genisis.
first, i DO NOT think it's literal in anyway. i firmly believe that the word "day" used in the OT is a mistranslation of the Hebrew - it's a word that can mean "day" or it can mean "eon: an unknowable/ununderstandable [to a human] length of time", and i believe the latter meaning.
but this is what i think in the context of the myth - and i think the myth *IS* one of the myths about humanity's childhood, not the only one of course. i believe God/dess(es) created the world and caused it to evolve - eventually, she had homo sapiens sapiens - something that could LEARN and GROW without losing the ability to LOVE. and then, there was the choice - live forever as children, or eat, learn, change. change is always difficult, even if - maybe especially if - it's a good change.
here's what i wrote over there:
like many non-Christians, I've studied the Bible a lot, and like many pagans, have struggled to fit the Bible into my belief system.
God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. yes? could such a being NOT KNOW what he was creating and what would happen?
this is just *MY* take, granted - but this: God created the world. for whatever reason - and, as a side note, how MANY worlds has He created? we were created in His image; how MANY images does he have? i think that we'll find people who are trilateral who were made in It's image [as I'm hoping in a trisexual race, the Neuters would be the "top" sex...] - he created Man, then Woman [joke: God created Adam, then created Eve as the upgrade :D ]. he set them down WITH the Trees - and you don't think THAT was deliberate? a SNAKE - a thing that has no Will, as a human does [i.e. Free Will] tempts Eve with the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. think THAT'S an "accident"?
no - i think it was, is, in a metaphorical sense, a CHOICE that God offered, knowing the penalty either way. had they eaten of the Tree of Life first, sure, they'd be immortal - and ALONE. no children.
they - as vaguely as they understood anything - were given a choice: literal immortality, or figurative immortality but also the ability to REASON. i can't believe that beings without the ability to know Good from Evil made the choice to KNOW blindly - that God, whatever name we call Her, ALLOWED that choice to be made blindly. i believe the snake was the instrument She used to lead her children into being PEOPLE.
knowledge is NEVER free. THAT is the REAL moral of the Creation story - knowledge is the most precious gem in universe, and God, awesome [in the true sense of the word] as He is, knew that knowledge without price is the truest folly - and so He allowed his children to choose knowledge, and extracted the necessary payment.
it's the creation story that leads to the idea of "Original Sin" - i.e. that we are ALL born with the "sin" of eating of the Fruit, since [according to the story] we are all BORN because of that "sin". without the "sin", Adam and Eve would still be alive, hanging in the Garden, "happy" as only a pet can be.
God/dess doesn't want PETS! S/He wants children who will one day grow up enough to give Him/Her real conversations, help in His/Her work.
that's my take. some of that is, obviously, from my own life - my parents are [now] my friends as much as they are my parents [and I'm as much their friend as i am their daughter. hell, on some things, *I* am the only person they can talk to. which is honestly the coolest thing ever, it's one of the few things in my life right now that I'm really proud of] because to a LARGE extent, one tends to model God after their parents. granted, that's the childish view of God that we all [in theory] eventually outgrow - but it starts there. [i remember looking at my mom one day, when i was 12 or so, and thinking "No wonder i always expect Her to heal me - that's what my mom does all the time, heals people." it shook my world a lot, to realize so much of what i THOUGHT Goddess was, was the stuff about my mom that i most respected. not WRONG to think that, but it made me feel very... unstudied? uneducated? anyway]
we grow through adversity - ask any high school coach :) but that's a cliché for a reason, because it's true. we are all given adversity, however big or small, because the POINT of life is to GROW, to grow up mostly, but also to learn and to love - to become people that are worthy, in a particular sense, of God. not "worthy" in the sense of "sinless" - we CAN'T be sinless, it's not possible, not because we're inherently sinful, but because A) the world isn't that way but really B) without sin, there is no adversity [whether the sin is ours or someone else's, to cause the adversity, doesn't matter - we all sin, to create adversity] and without adversity, we aren't tested and we don't GROW - and if we don't grow, what use could we be?
i think God, though She has billions of faces [at least one for every person, ever] must be very, *very* lonely sometimes. or was, once, before She gave birth to us and all the other people, and let us grow up. WE, humanity, hasn't grown up [though SOME of us were OBVIOUSLY in accelerated learning while here!] but i think, over all, we're slowly getting closer. on my best days, i see the evil and hate happening now as something akin to "teen angst and rebellion" - so we ARE getting closer.
of course, some people don't want to grow up at ALL *coughFUNDIEScough*. God may have to drag THEM kicking and screaming into adulthood...