It's a relationship!

[AntiChrist]

I have been mulling over posting a particular topic for a few days now, wasn't sure how to even start the topic. It's all coherent in my thinking, but my mind has personalised it in such a way that communicating the weight of it might get mixed up. So I think I might just write it in it's rawest form. (Direct from my brain to you)

 

When Christian's think they are members of a spiritual family (Them being the bride's/Jesus being the groom)

Each member accepts they are married to Jesus (In a spiritual way) Will all live as one big family in heaven for all eternity.

 

How is this not polygamy?

 

Disregard the "sexual" element.

 

It's still the same.

 

But they live in monogamous relationships, while at the same time denying the true relationship that awaits them at the end.

[TABA]

I think there is something to this.  Not all Christians for sure, but for the more fundamentalist types, yes.  When I was a Christian on the other hand, I was always a bit leery of Jesus, and the idea of having a personal relationship with him.  I felt fortunate to have the Creator of the Universe watching over me, but God was a vague benevolent being in my mind, not an actual human male.  My male friends have always been for drinking beer with, or going fishing, or helping lift heavy stuff, or flying Army helicopters.  Or watching football.  Deep down I didn’t feel a relationship with this Jewish rabbi dude who never did any of those things.  I think all that made it easier for me to deconvert in the end.

[MOHO]

I have been present when conversations of this type have taken place between the sheeple and pastor ass-hat.

 

His response is that this passage/concept is taken too literally and the term "marriage" is used conceptually. I'm not sure what concept he meant.

 

The concept of being the bride of Jesus or any other deity - real or imagined - is one of many creepy, illogical, irrational things that set me to thinking...

[◊ Weezer ◊]

I always took the concept as a figure of speech.  Committing yourself to a way of life.  I always thought the personal relationship stuff was a stretch.

[florduh]

"He walks with me and he talks with me, I'm schizophrenic and so is he..."

[AntiChrist]

20 hours ago, TABA said:

I think there is something to this.  Not all Christians for sure, but for the more fundamentalist types, yes.  When I was a Christian on the other hand, I was always a bit leery of Jesus, and the idea of having a personal relationship with him.  I felt fortunate to have the Creator of the Universe watching over me, but God was a vague benevolent being in my mind, not an actual human male.  My male friends have always been for drinking beer with, or going fishing, or helping lift heavy stuff, or flying Army helicopters.  Or watching football.  Deep down I didn’t feel a relationship with this Jewish rabbi dude who never did any of those things.  I think all that made it easier for me to deconvert in the end.

Exactly! How can you have a relationship without any sense perception?

[whatever]

There are two elements to what you say in the original post:

1. the marriage part

2. the relationship part

 

The marriage is between the bride of Christ which is the whole church together, not us as individuals. This marriage is a vague spiritual concept, and others can explain it better than I can.

 

But the relationship part is actually very important. I would say that at the time I had a relationship of sorts with Christ. On occasion I would talk with him and get some sort of answers back in my head. Most of the time it was just one way traffic though, and he was more of a policeman reprimanding me for wrong thoughts. I would explain the conversations now as being between two parts of my own self. I'm not surprised this happened seeing as how I was so disconnected from my true self and reality.

 

But coming back to the term 'relationship', Christians will tell me that this is what matters to them. If I raise any criticism in terms of apologetics, they retort, 'it's about the relationship with Jesus.' Hard to argue with that. I do think that this is what most Christians find important: having a friend, however imaginary, is a comfort, and ultimately I think this is what people are seeking from God - comfort.

[AntiChrist]

15 hours ago, MOHO said:

I have been present when conversations of this type have taken place between the sheeple and pastor ass-hat.

 

His response is that this passage/concept is taken too literally and the term "marriage" is used conceptually. I'm not sure what concept he meant.

 

The concept of being the bride of Jesus or any other deity - real or imagined - is one of many creepy, illogical, irrational things that set me to thinking...

You are right, it was the relationship that I was offered that put me off.

[AntiChrist]

11 hours ago, Weezer said:

I always took the concept as a figure of speech.  Committing yourself to a way of life.  I always thought the personal relationship stuff was a stretch.

You heretic!

[AntiChrist]

11 hours ago, florduh said:

"He walks with me and he talks with me, I'm schizophrenic and so is he..."

You know billions of people believe god is with them. (That's alot of delusional individuals)

[TheRedneckProfessor]

On 6/5/2020 at 4:23 PM, florduh said:

"He walks with me and he talks with me, I'm schizophrenic and so is he..."

I heard that if you talk to god, it's religion; but if god talks to you, it's schizophrenia.  Which, I suppose, doesn't necessarily imply that god is not also schizophrenic. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I never liked the marriage analogy on account of god's Plan For My Life.  So, out of the billions of people on the planet, god had just One Special Girl picked out, just for me, my soulmate.  We would be perfect for each other; because our relationship was supposed to mirror the relationship christ wanted with the church.  I would love her and honor her and she would be my world.

 

But then I'd have to spend all of eternity in heaven, where "everyone is like the angels" and there is "neither marriage nor giving in marriage"; and she would be no more special to me than the cashier at Wal-Mart was.  How cruel is that?  Christ all-fucking-mighty!

[Geezer]

On 6/5/2020 at 4:41 AM, AntiChrist said:

I have been mulling over posting a particular topic for a few days now, wasn't sure how to even start the topic. It's all coherent in my thinking, but my mind has personalised it in such a way that communicating the weight of it might get mixed up. So I think I might just write it in it's rawest form. (Direct from my brain to you)

 

When Christian's think they are members of a spiritual family (Them being the bride's/Jesus being the groom)

Each member accepts they are married to Jesus (In a spiritual way) Will all live as one big family in heaven for all eternity.

 

How is this not polygamy?

 

Disregard the "sexual" element.

 

It's still the same.

 

But they live in monogamous relationships, while at the same time denying the true relationship that awaits them at the end.

Believers are not deep thinkers. Critical thinking is linked with sin for obvious reasons. Nothing concerns fundamentalist more than members that ask questions because the answers to those questions often leads to apostasy.......and that leads to fewer members and, heaven forbid, less money in the coffers! 

[Joshpantera]

It's more the case of a relationship with a childhood imaginary friend. 

 

Except worlds more creepy than that. A relationship with an imaginary friend, where you envision that all male and female's are married to this imaginary friend. Sort of like a perverted eastern guru type who fucks anything, male or female, that moves. Or like a creepy cult leader, who not only takes everyone's wives as their own, but all of the husbands as well. The analogy of the church being the bride of christ is creepy on many levels. The analogy seem to follow from all of the other bizarre narcissistic content and behaviors of the time and place. 

 

And it's not hard to see how contemporary cult leaders, and cult leaders throughout history, have been able to utilize this framework of scripture as the psychological soil from which they can then pluck out adherents and do as they please with them. The whole this is mapped out well in the bible. Those demented enough to take it and use it to their advantage, tend to do so......

[SilentVoice]

On 6/7/2020 at 2:00 AM, Joshpantera said:

It's more the case of a relationship with a childhood imaginary friend. 

 

Except worlds more creepy than that. A relationship with an imaginary friend, where you envision that all male and female's are married to this imaginary friend. Sort of like a perverted eastern guru type who fucks anything, male or female, that moves. Or like a creepy cult leader, who not only takes everyone's wives as their own, but all of the husbands as well. The analogy of the church being the bride of christ is creepy on many levels. The analogy seem to follow from all of the other bizarre narcissistic content and behaviors of the time and place. 

 

And it's not hard to see how contemporary cult leaders, and cult leaders throughout history, have been able to utilize this framework of scripture as the psychological soil from which they can then pluck out adherents and do as they please with them. The whole this is mapped out well in the bible. Those demented enough to take it and use it to their advantage, tend to do so......

Why would you make a username to blaspheme against someone you believe to be a childhood imaginary friend? You're a dog to be honest.

[SilentVoice]

On 6/7/2020 at 12:26 AM, Geezer said:

Believers are not deep thinkers. Critical thinking is linked with sin for obvious reasons. Nothing concerns fundamentalist more than members that ask questions because the answers to those questions often leads to apostasy.......and that leads to fewer members and, heaven forbid, less money in the coffers! 

Believers are deep thinkers. You mistake thinking about God as shallow thinking where as you believe that thinking about other religions, studying other gods, criticizing Christians and trying to pick apart scripture to find inconsistencies are deep thinking.

 

'I asked my pastor a stupid question and he didn't know the answer so now I'm atheist'. Good job.

 

Who cares about fewer members? You were told 2000~ years ago that there would be a falling away and there would be many anti-christs. 'Just coincidence'.

 

By money in the coffers, you are probably talking about tithing which you aren't required to do. I'd rather give my money to the poor than to a pastor because it goes directly to where it needs to go.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Yeah, it's deep, all right.  I'll be needing my hip waders in here before long.

[midniterider]

9 hours ago, SilentVoice said:

You mistake thinking about God as shallow thinking where as you believe that thinking about other religions, studying other gods, criticizing Christians and trying to pick apart scripture to find inconsistencies are deep thinking.

 

 

Actually I think it's entertainment.   

[AntiChrist]

13 hours ago, SilentVoice said:

Believers are deep thinkers. You mistake thinking about God as shallow thinking where as you believe that thinking about other religions, studying other gods, criticizing Christians and trying to pick apart scripture to find inconsistencies are deep thinking.

 

'I asked my pastor a stupid question and he didn't know the answer so now I'm atheist'. Good job.

 

Who cares about fewer members? You were told 2000~ years ago that there would be a falling away and there would be many anti-christs. 'Just coincidence'.

 

By money in the coffers, you are probably talking about tithing which you aren't required to do. I'd rather give my money to the poor than to a pastor because it goes directly to where it needs to go.

I wasn't told anything two thousand year's ago, because I wasn't around two thousand year's ago.

[Joshpantera]

14 hours ago, SilentVoice said:

Why would you make a username to blaspheme against someone you believe to be a childhood imaginary friend? You're a dog to be honest.

Yeshua Ben Pandira, or Ben Pantera. 
 

One of the many stories used to graft together the mythical Jesus tale. Born around 100 years before the gospel setting. I was a mod for author DM Murdock before joining here. And have been friends online with Robert Price and others from the mythicist community. 
 

You’re actually one of the few people to pick up on the reference. 

[TABA]

I thought “JoshPantera” was a reference to the theory that the real father of Jesus/Yeshua was a Roman soldier named Pantera. 

[Joshpantera]

1 hour ago, TABA said:

I thought “JoshPantera” was a reference to the theory that the real father of Jesus/Yeshua was a Roman soldier named Pantera. 

 

That is the direction they took in "The Life of Brian." Gerald Massey lectured about the earlier story: https://cdn.website-editor.net/e4d6563c50794969b714ab70457d9761/files/uploaded/HistoricalJesusMythicalChrist_GMassey.pdf

 

But his source material was from the Talmud. All in all, what we get in the gospel stories is a mix match of different "Yeshua's." A little bit of some of the Yeshua's mentioned in Josephus (there were around 20 mentioned), and some of the Talmud stories as well. It's a collage of various stories of things that happened to different people with the name Yeshua all rolled into one, as if it were one fixed historical personage. That's why there's so much trouble trying to hammer down an historical Jesus. An amalgamation of various characters amounts to no one character in particular. 

[freshstart]

19 hours ago, SilentVoice said:

Why would you make a username to blaspheme against someone you believe to be a childhood imaginary friend? You're a dog to be honest.

That is adorable. He called you a "dog."

It must be exhausting for SV,  always trying to carefully control thoughts and words in order to please an imaginary friend.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

On 6/27/2020 at 4:13 AM, SilentVoice said:

You're a dog to be honest.

It ocCURs to me, that there is CURrently an underCURrent of obsCUR CURsing from an inseCURe, sCURvy-ridden mongrel.