Yesterday SenseChange opened a vigorous debate about the role of religion in the world. At one point he invited me to add more thoughts to the discussion, which I did. BUt with the passionate and fast paced comments, the ideas I injected got overlooked. Maybe that means they were not relevant to the discussion, but I am too egotistical to accept that, so I brought them back for more consideration today.
Here are the first comments I made, from which Sense requested more input.
It is amazing that many followers of the Prince of Peace
are advocates of war. It seems like they would preach and practice conciliation of all mankind. I cannot disagree with that part of your premise. If you want to read a good thought on this notion, read believin's comment on skouba's blog called when kids fight. She is brilliant there, again.
Sense, I forced myself to go read some other posts before I replied to this one, and decided to read it again before replying so I would not do knee jerk reactions to insults that don't matter in the overall disucssion.
If you read all the discussions of end times on PJR's blog you will realize that I do not concur with his position or projections. I categorically deny that Jesus will ever rule over the earth from Jerusalem for a thousand years, nor even fifteen minutes.
I believe each of us should do our best to make our world a better place to live. But there is where I have to part company with your ideas, because they are all about the physical realm and thus are not that different than those of PJR. You just put your confidence in Mayan predictions instead of Christian ones.
All physical things are deteriorating. There is not a thing man can do to change that. What matters, in the long term--eternal--is the spiritual man. It is in the spiritual realm that Jesus rules now and will forevermore.
You rail against man's inhumanity to other humans and call for a sense change. I hope you accomplish a sense change for everyone, beginning with you.
SenseChange, I will try to expound a bit more, but I doubt you will be satisfied with my views. It is all tied to the concepts you & I addressed a few weeks ago. I do not believe I, nor you for that matter, am an evloved species. I believe I am created and that the Creator made mankind in his image, meaning with an eternal soul, not that we "look" like him. I believe in this existence we are being prepared for a life that is the exact thing I believe you are begging us to see and strive for. No war, no sorrow, no lies, no distractions.
I do not believe God ordained war, it is an expression of evil and a creation of mankind. I believe there will be wars as long as the world exixsts and that God has the wisdom and ability to overcome evil by turning it on itself, and use it in the furtherance of his purpose, which is eternal and not physical.
So when Jesus said "render to Caesar", he was just saying money does not matter and won't last. His call in that passage was for folks to come to a sense change and give themselves to the one whose image they bear.
I despise fear mongering, no matter who uses it to manipulate people. It is one of the elements of the premilinnialist teachings that are so wrong. And I despise profane name calling and attacks that do not change anyone's mind, in fact they quit thinking and start reacting in detrimental ways, to the detraction of us all.
Enough for the moment, I will check back later to see if we will still go at it, as we have in the past.
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