Tolerance vs Godliness
- Thread starter Nineveh
- Start date
Nineveh
Merely Christian
I'd be more inclined to listen to someone who actually *thought* they knew instead of someone who was "absolutely" sure he could never know anything.
LOL
I asked you to clarify understanding for me and you find it "insulting"? Maybe you see it that way because you are such a moral vacuum and any attempt to clarify only makes you look worse.
Chileice
New member
Purex asks penetrating questions formulated in a way that people can absorb them, consider them and respond to them. He is only irrelevant if you make him so. His questions and comments are every bit as relevant as yours because they come from his own experience and learning.
Purex and I often have contrasting beliefs (not so much on this topic. I quite agree with almost all of his great post on page 2) but I still find him engaging, even when I think he is out to lunch. But the difference between you and me is that I not only talk... I listen. I am willing to have my ideas interacted with. That is a necessary part of tolerance that leads to love and understanding. I MUST admit that I could be wrong if I am ever going to have any meaningful exchange with anyone.
Obviously, I don't think I am wrong or I would have changed my mind. But I have sometimes been convinced I was wrong and have had my thinking reshaped by others and by my further reflexion on God, His Word, the words of others and the experience of life. The more you try to build an impenetrable wall around your beliefs, the greater will be the destruction if someone pierces your armor. Your whole wall will fall. Whereas if you maintain an open mind you will be able to reshape portions of the wall in a way that better fits reality as you come to know it. Learning to listen will make you uncomfortable... but you will like yourself better for doing it.
Nineveh
Merely Christian
And then what? Not know?
And to what end? Not knowing?
Instead of wading through the next two paragraphs defending impurex, why not inform me of your views. You ingore my attempt to understand where you are coming from in favor of explaining what someone else will never ever know. I don't care what impurex doesn't know, he doesn't know so why should I waste my time? It would be much more fruitful to understand what you do know. Would you please be as so kind?
Chileice
New member
I do not subscribe to Purex's idea that all things are unknowable. I trust myself enough to believe they are knowable. Yet, I have to admit that a thinking person could beg to differ. It is possible to doubt everything. However I feel such an existence limits man's ability to move forward as well as his ability to experience to the fullest the experience he senses.
If you are asking whether I can PROVE to Purex that everything I know is true... I cannot. By the very nature of doubt and to the very nature of the truly relativistic mind it is impossible to prove anything unless the person trusts his/her first hand experience. I cannot prove that man has been to the moon to him nor can I prove that Jesus went to the cross for him unless he is willing to suspend doubt enough to trust the evidence he sees, feels or hears about.
However, for you to say that Purex is invalid or irrelevant makes you as much a doubter as he. You cannot believe that he believes what he says any more than he believes what you say. Therefore you both must suspend doubt enough to believe the other doubter may have something valid to say. That is the beginning of tolerance, which is the beginning of understanding which could actually lead to love between you and Purez or you and others in this world with whom you now feel yourself at odds. You do not have to ACCEPT his philosophical stand in order to try to understand it. Maybe you never will. Maybe I never will. But we have to at least admit that his perception of the world is indeed his perception of the world and that we must take that as a given if we are going to try to influene that perception, even so slightly.
Do you hear what I am saying? I am neither against you nor against him. I am just trying to show how I think tolerance interacts with love in a positive way without being the sum total of love itself.:thumb:
PureX
Well-known member
Not to quibble, but I don't subscribe to this, either. We can know all kinds of things, be we can only know them in a relative way. Which means that we can only prove them in a relative way. I've never said that we can't know anything, only that we can't be certain that what we think we know is actually true. We can establish the truthfulness of some fact or assertion relative to some momentary standard, but we can't establish truthfulness absolutely. This was always my only assertion - not that we "can't know anything".
Even then, all we can prove is momentary truthfulness, relative to our capacity for experience.
Chileice
New member
First, you are right. Excuse me for mis-stating your position. Although, defacto, for a black/white thinker like Nineveh, the net result is the same. The two of you are about as polar opposite as two people can be in your world-views and your understanding of truth and the perception of it. Frankly, I wouldn't want to live in eaither one of your world's of perception. First I evjoy the shades of gray I see in this world and Two, I lkie knowing what I believe even if that knowledge is imperfect and growing. It's kind of fun being in between (even though you risk being runover from both sides!)
firechyld
New member
As I said, I'm surprised to see them in this context... that being an Episcopalian church. In that context, they certainly are radical ideas. But there's nothing new or radical in the ideas themselves. The individuals in question are aiming for the syncretism of two quite old belief structures, not technically inventing anything purely "new".
Nineveh
Merely Christian
No one said anything about paganism being "new". I find it hard to see even the idea of paganism creeping into the church buildings as "new". Although this might be a first openly blatant attempt in a while.
Paganism + Christianity = Paganism
There is no way around that, not blatently or incrementally.
servent101
New member
The only thing that is not Christian is the literalist dogma that declares that all other structures of belief systems are invalid - God did reveal Himself to the Abraham's offspring as a jealous God - for them to have no other God's - but the meaning, the similarity in the more weightier matters of the law - mercy, compassion, charity, kindness - these are all so similar in pagan religion that one is left to surmise that the source is the same ONE GOD. The culture changes and the message stays the same in all Truth - there are slight variations - but the message is the same, and Pagans that know the truth - if they can get passed the literalist dogma of people like Nineveh - accept Jesus as Lord, and improve their lives with the Revelation of God in the culture Jesus lived in - and strive to live a life worthy of the calling of the Lord. There is no separation - just advancement to purity and true knowledge of God.
With Christ's Love
Servent101
With Christ's Love
Servent101
the Sibbie
New member
How many other "structures of belief systems" declare "Jesus as Lord" ? Would you mind naming a few?
I think serpent101/!!!!Last missed some of the information that stated that the names of goddesses were used in these rituals, in what is supposed to be a Christian house of worship.