i understand the perception of Jesus as literal, a literal person, but Christ is Spirit, so said to “come down from heaven,” and i think we have many clues that suggest Jesus is better understood as mythology,
For me personally, I got all the way into an evangelical form of Christianity as a teenager. So, I kind of needed to get all the way out.
Most people just don’t take religion that seriously, and I kind of admire them. They kind of know, don’t go there, keep a light touch, it’s inspiring stories as long as you don’t look at them too closely.
And anywhere a person lands on this “serious-ness” spectrum is perfectly okay with me.
A lot of people early on gravitate to the position that, A lot different churches teach a lot of different things. And even more broadly, Mosques, Synagogues, Temples. With religion, we have even a broader class of different things being taught.
“Most people are not religious, but some are.”
And this is a relaxed position has taken me years to wind my way to.
off topic,
Then the end will come, when He hands the kingdom over to the Father, after He has destroyed all rulers, powers, and authority
We organize around a competitive trinity, government religion science, and its interesting to me how these have progressed in my lifetime; all three could reasonably be said to be in shambles now, whereas i was born (62) at basically the apex, of science at least.
on topic
Hope deferred makes the heart sick
Is surely not an accidental inclusion, and i derive from basically the same tree you mention above. While i now more or less live and let live, maybe since what remains of my nuclear family is still pretty religious—waiting for rapture, etc—i detected a sickness quite early on, among these religious ppl who def have a hope, that are tbh earnest, good hearted ppl, better hearted than me even.
So, we get along well enough, mostly bc i refuse to meaningfully engage when they try to re-evangelize, but i can tell it is a sore spot with them, esp since they otherwise kind of respect some aspect of my intelligence, i guess? Now, ive never done to them what i did with Scooter, or ill say maybe only very lightly, but they were never much into digging pits for others to fall into, either.
But they are nonetheless meat eaters, so to speak—which i was too, for a long time, forty years or so—and i guess im writing this to point out the commonalities between meat eaters of any stripe, whether they be religious, political, or scientific. Ive learned to function around them, mostly by playing dumb and freezing my face, but women (my fam) are naturally more attuned, and that doesnt work so well with them; they can read my silences, iow
I say all this bc Paul and Jesus make many couched statements about the religious, that as near i can tell the religious do not understand or misinterpret, like the “absent from the body” passage or the making of the eating the fruit of knowledge into an apparent compliment, at Paul’s milk/meat passage,
And imo its pretty easy to even relate believers (again, of whatever stripe) to goats rather than sheep (a*gnostics), just based upon what they say they know. So, while im busy doing basically the exact opposite lol, i would give a warning here about religious ppl, esp if their mouths are open graves. Choose life, imo.
Waiting for Jesus is a death sentence, and not supported by the Bible any kind of way. There is a reason that the enlightened were advised against mixing with other tribes in the OT, and what is sweet to the mouth is bitter to the stomach, and vice versa.
www.biblegateway.com
