The Christ legend

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Its partly why I have a hard time grasping the concept of something powerful enough to do that acting like a bratty teenager let alone having a temperament that even resembles that of any Abrahamic variation. To say that I think its possible for there to be a God and one God, yes, it seems like that's more about simply positing things at one source. To say we have a heck of a long way to go before we're anything close to the essence of all things - its a gulf nearly beyond comprehension.


It just means that this 'thing' is not bound to the same laws that we are, just like our sense of time - it can actually look at the entirety of it (in relevant terms at least) as if looking from one end of a table to the other; simply because, in another time and place, this four dimensional object we inhabit may look like a rather gnarly piece of sculpture, I don't want to be as crude as to say a book - its the general idea - an object that, when looking upon it, is three dimensional but, as being part of its fabric (like a character in a novel) is a four dimensional experience.


I somewhat wish you would have quoted the first post I wrote - I thought it was much more eloquent and direct to what we're really talking about.

A being outside of time - would not be Carl Jung's God in Answers to Job. That God is interacting with people out of need in *real time*, ie. a slave to space-time and predestiny himself, another character in the book or another thread or molecule in that gnarled and contorted piece of ivory that we know as our collective existence. To be outside and be the sculptor of that piece means that ultimately, we don't know you, can't know you, only know what you may have deliberately interjected.

This world and this universe works on fixed laws, science works on fixed laws, to keep those laws in place without regularly violating them takes some rather well-planted events, events that have ripple effects that go far beyond what anyone could conceive as their intended meaning, ripples meant to stir things both great and terrible at such a distance that we could never guess it - to me *that's* omniscience and omnipotence in its most elegant display.

Sand wrote:
A being that exists outside of time and space and does not think and experience as we do in the progression of time is totally incomprehensible.

Although a book exists independent of time it is only by immersing the book in time that it becomes comprehensible. To take all the pages of a novel and display them on a wall the way one views a picture would not make the novel comprehensible since we must, even then, use time to examine it. A creature outside of time is totally incomprehensible and most probably not capable of doing the abysmally stupid things attributed to God in religious literature. Our minds are totally immersed in time and it is indispensable to our conceptions.

Couldn't agree more. That's why I doubt its literal reading, and in most cases I'll observation of the world, of history, and use that as a litmus test to see if something fits, in that sense while I'm interested in the ideas of more abstract notions driving scripture, not exactly hung up on the particulars.


I don't think its as hard of an issue as you think. As in for a while, giving it a human crutch, picture a world similar to ours just that its a world so advanced, with either many or several advanced beings, who can pull a four dimensional object together as such.

I think you remember Heron and his mechanical plays? While a book is a bit of a short analogy, it would more realistically be a Heron play large enough to encompass the growth of microbes and regulate the birth of stars. I'd perhaps liken it to a book in that, it is a universe unto its participants, and something visually strange like a strangely shaped and ridged piece of ivory because you try to imagine the mechanics and inner workings of something like this, it would be so intricate and have so many working parts that, if you zoomed out far enough to see it, it would quite likely look like something very shiny and smooth, taking strange globular leaps here and there or stabbing outward in a few twisted spires.

It's not about whether I admire it or not. It's this:

Sand, put the answer to Job on your reading list.

You have certainty. I have doubt. Certainty fixes one in concept, attitude, action. Doubt leaves one free to search, discover and innovate. Certainty is death. Doubt is life.

You have doubt?? Hm. You seem awfully certain to me. As for me, I am certainly not fixed in concept, attitude, or action. I became an adult without faith, and then I became willing to believe -- to search and discover, and then I found. Now I know, with certainty. What I know is a "person", God, a relationship, a living, loving relationship that affects me every day. I had reached a pretty low bottom before becoming willing to believe ... I was deeply depressed and self-destructive ... I doubt I'd be alive today if I had not had that transformation, or rather begun it and continue it today. It is a transforming relationship, and I wouldn't trade my years of depression or anything else for it.

And you know what? I don't give a rat's ass whether you believe it or not. You cannot even imagine what you're missing -- but I don't even feel sorry for you, because I cannot presume to judge your path. Really. God has never given me a hint of His will for anyone but myself. You didn't have my path leading up to this moment, why should I think it would be right for you to jump onto my path now? You have your own way, and if God wants to get your attention He's got His ways to do so. He may not give a rat's ass whether you believe or not, either, for all I know. Meanwhile, your unbelief, your disdain, your certainty in dismissing experiences you have not had, does absolutely nothing to touch my faith, because my faith is deeply rooted in lived experience. Ongoing, living, loving experience.

He who has ears to hear, will hear. Done -- I'm no longer following this thread. I am pm-able if you just need to get the last word in.

We each live our own individual lives and what appears to be certainties to some are mere delusions to others. I can hardly be upset by your lack of concern about my attitudes but it does say something interesting to me about about yours. I am not trying to convince you of anything, merely displaying my outlook.

Way to go giving religious people a bad name. Thank you...

I am a strong believer in having a faith that needs to question things. This may seem like I have weak faith to some, but if I question something and then find an answer that satisfies me, then I feel like what I believe is more real to me. Sand has asked some very good questions here. If you think about it Abraham, Gideon, Habbakuk, to name a few biblical examples, asked some seemly impertinent questions of God. Questioning isn't bad. We are allowed to ask questions. If one has doubt, then one can ask a question and grow in their understanding. However, none of us will reach the same conclusions. And we all have to accept that.

I liked the question about why did God not just pardon Adam and Eve, and in turn the whole human race? There would have been no need for the Jews to keep offering animal sacrifices throughout time to reconcile themselves to God and then in turn the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus. I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days. It would be easier in the long run to just say, ok you're forgiven.

But would it really have been justice? If there is a "real standard" of what is right and wrong. What if it was really right for God to say, "That's it, you have now estranged yourselves from me." Off the top of my head I can't explain the ransom sacrifice right now (I have a headache and I will end up writing something even longer and more of a ramble than this. Believe me, that wouldn't be good.)

What if we as a human race have lost the concept of real justice? After all we have chosen for ourselves what is right and wrong now. What if we think we are right and we are not right at all? I read the Last Cronicles of Thomas Covenant recently and the people of the Land had forgotten what the Land was really meant to be like because their minds had been blinded over time. What if that is true of us in the real world?

That then raises the question, how are we supposed to know then? How are we supposed to grasp the concept of "God's view" if we are so far removed from what we were meant to be in the first place? I think it takes alot of humility to submit to whatever a person's perception of "God's view" is because I personally like to work things out for myself. And if the whole world is going one way and the "God's view" is flowing another way. How do we ever grasp it without looking foolish? So I suppose we just need to look foolish to some and just live with that and not snap at them and tell them we don't give a rat's ass if they do disagree.

I'm going to stop rambling now. When I get on a mad train of thought like this an idea can go round and round my head for hours. I don't know whether it is a curse or a blessing to have a mind like this. I am aware that alot of what I think or say is quite mad. I like how clear and easy to read Sand's points are. I wish I could just get my thoughts into a coherent logical post, but I'm not very good at that.

I just finished 'Answers to Job' by Carl Jung, my verdict on the book in broader terms - I think its a great read if you want to see what someone's come up with who spent his lifetime studying what he considered 'psychic truths', between unconscious and conscious as well as the symbols and archetypes that have continually popped up throughout the ages. While I don't know how I'd really engage the contents, Carl Jung wrote this after years of being a psychologist, years of studying the occult, suffice to say he was far more the expert at 76 than I at 30, I get the impression that this outlines something more of an internal narrative to the human psyche.

As for Sand's criticism that its ludicrous that an unconscious God (who's conscious abilites barely rivaled ours at the time of Job) could create the whole array of the universe in its splendor - I take that as a very valid point. I think the answer for that one falls one of two ways (theistically speaking) which are either that a) God does exist outside of time or b) God's tiny conscious that he spoke through, rather amorally, had a truely gargantuan subconscious, much like we could never hope to fully automate our own limbs through conscious process (the brainstem does the math for us), its quite possible if God's ratio were far higher in that regard that he could just say poof - this exists, without even having to admire, let alone engineer, the science and physics behind his own creation.

In general though Carl Jung talks about a God who's as bound to space time as we are and, barely conscious, grew with us in tandem in terms of ego. Certain lynch pins in that case such as the humility and moral superiority of Job made him reflect upon himself, bringing forth the need for the birth of Christ, and in Christs doubt of his father's moral consistency, the holy spirit.

Even though its a deluge of information that seems to fit at least certain angles and circumstances like a glove, I still feel like it doesn't get into the full picture - which one book rarely has the capacity to, especially in 108 pages. I'm also curious on how this image Jung has of the conscious, unconscious, and the relationship of God to that, changes if - lets say - I take my belief that the conscious mind is purely mechanical. He said that both archetypes and the conscious mind were autonomous and that you couldn't necessarily prove both, even though he kept laying down inklings to how even Christ spoke of predestiny, the idea I think simply seemed distasteful to him. So, if the paradigm shifted then to 'we know that the conscious is mechanical and that its the archetypes that are real', IMO that expands out - in the struggle between the conscious and unconscious - to also suggest that the conscious is just as bound in time or matter.

So the question comes up at this point; if the possibility of God existing outside of time, essentially writing a book or making a Heron play of sorts, and interjecting something to affect the characters to bring the story to a desired outcome without having to glitch the details, how much does this story change? It would change in that the world religions and the story of Yahweh and Sophia would be something of one of the core rods in defining the human consciousness, much like other religions, with archetypes being projections of that core. As for Spinoza et. al, only part of the deliberate contradiction - ie. we can't have physical laws that are consistent, have desires to move forward in knowledge, and not gain that knowledge in debate. That's part of why I don't think it can matter, who's right or wrong in this, in an eternal sense - that's at least true from the atheistic outlook and I have my urges to say that it make more sense from the theistic as well. The God C.G. Jung proposes, I hate to say it, is extremely cavalier with the bulk of existence, Jung keeps saying that he simply refused to consult his omniscience and hence needed Jesus to do the work of actually acting more like a coherent consciousness - even though he supposedly becomes more like his father in the book of Revelation, which seems to turn everything on its head from that perspective.

Overall, I think its an interesting read, it has some very plausible truths in terms of cogs and components of reality - just that I really don't think I'd take it as my new bible or embrace this as my own theistic model, partly due to lack of expertise I'd say its gut instinct, further though I still get the impression that it closes with simply too much injustice unaccounted for and unanswered.

It's interesting that Jung says that God refuses to consult his omniscience. I have always thought of God as a master chess player thinking moves ahead, working out, if this happens, then that will happen and if people usually react like this, then they will do this etc.

So the earlier point asking if the Romans and Jews carrying out God's will in killing Jesus, so why should they be condemned? My view is that it's not so much that God made them kill Jesus, he worked out a plan of atonement and figured that if a Christ figure appearing in a politically fractious Jewish/Roman climate of Israel he would probably be killed, so that would be an ideal time to place him on earth. Of course this is only my theory and I can't prove it. As far as I remember he said of the Roman soldiers, "forgive them, they know not what they do." I would also like to point out that I view Jesus and God as separate individuals in this scenario. I once read that the point of Jesus coming to earth as a human was to prove that a perfect human could be faithful to God up to the point of death. He was meant to die, he didn't really belong on earth in the long run. That is also why I don't buy into the theory that he had children with Mary Magdalene, because he had no need to leave progeny, he said to Pilate before he died that his Kingdom was not of this world.

I'm not sure if you accept the idea that God is outside time. If you do, all the talk of God being a master chess player or making plans makes no sense. If He is outside time he sees all of time the way we look at a diagram showing all of history. He doesn't have to plan anything, he sees before him both the past and the future. It's like an artist looking at a painting and seeing a bit of color here, a line there. It's all done, complete, finished. And we creatures living through time can have no conception of what it would be like to be like that.

Speaking from evidence alone (what ive heard and gathered, which is likely limited and perhaps ignorant) I can believe that Jesus existed, but here's what i think happened:

Jesus was considered a harbinger of this religion (which was gaining popularity during the fall of the Roman Empire) and he was viewed as dangerous by the higher ups (Jesus was a political adversary, as well as spiritual). Well, Judas was his friend (to the extreme meaning of the word) so Jesus hatched a plan . . . a plan that would make him a martyr. Jesus paid Judas the silver (which was enough for him to start a new life since he would be viewed as a traitor, and both knew this) and Judas turned him in (he was probably paid more so his future, whatever it was, would make him set for life). Jesus was then tried, convicted, then hung on the very symbol of his faith (the cross). When interred, Judas had some time to get a team together (probably a few loyal followers) to get Jesus out of the chamber and bury him elsewhere. Judas would not leave with them yet . . . as he had to stay there and portray his friend's last statement (probably got a haircut to look enough like Jesus to fool anyone in the dark . . . even puncturing holes into his hands and feet to complete the facade). The maiden came by, spooked the hell out of her while delivering the message, and he left after she ran away. So, the religion is now set in stone with plans under way to oust the remnants of the Empire (which took 450 more years) and ensured the religion's reign for the next 1000 (yes, this is the revelation/apocalypse tale). The rest of the bible is either physically or genetically impossible.

I generally stay out of this sort of thing, but here I will go out on a limb.

The key is MYSTERY. Truth that cannot be simply comprehended. The book title - "Your God is too small"? Consider how I am to the Mob and how they are to me. They do not get what I say and do. I do not get what they say and do [though I think I understand THEM better than they understand ME].

If God [hypothetical first cause, whatever] is smaller than us, like a dumb GIGO computer, se we could design him, the Universe is doomed.

If God is the same size and type as us, so we [or a given NT, whichever] could understand what he was doing, the Universe is doomed - I know I can not grasp it and could not run it.

If God designed and runs the Universe, he has to be bigger - more complex - very different in operation. In which case there is no way everything he does will make "sense" to me, just as what I do makes little sense to my dog.

I don't know if I agree that God is outside of time myself. That's why I said that I called him a chess player. I don't see him looking at the whole map of time, but making calculated moves. I have issues with understanding the fabric of time and I thought that I had best not digress down a quantum physics route. I read an excellent chaper in a book by David Deutch called "TIme, the first quantum concept," where he pretty much argues against space-time theory and I really enjoyed it. Although he argued for multi-verse theory (which I also have issues with) so I didn't agree completely with him. But he likened space-time to a series of postcards placed one after the other and each postcard is the time labled now. I read that and thought, "that means that all the postcards have already been laid out and we have no freedom of choice." So either he works things out in advance or he gives things a little nudge when he needs to. But then what does he control and what doesn't he control? I don't know.

I usually stay out of this sort of thing too, but I'm having a slow week at work and I'm bored.

I like your reasoning here. I like to think of it in this way. If I sit my dog down and explain to her where her dinner comes from, she will never understand.

The thing is, I want to understand God's ways and it frustrates me that there are some things I don't understand.