Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 2nd mo. 29, 2016 at 11:46pm

Kirby:  being chosen should make sense to anyone who has bought a particular breed of dog for a particular reason.  We have used selective breeding for our own purposes for many years.  Why wouldn't God use it?

                      

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 1:28am

Um, the genetics of human populations is pretty much a stew, with very few 'pure' anythings (except, I read somewhere or other, isolated groups like the Hottentots.) Populations that have traveled a lot... come out looking a whole lot like the people they've settled among.

Other qualities? Well, if there's one thing human DNA definitely determines -- It's the capacity to pick up, transmit, fit into a culture.

If you think of a brain as like a computer, and what people do with it as like the software... (though they aren't, quite) -- The best electronic equipment in the world, running bad software -- is basically a garbage-in garbage-out device.

People, being far more complex and flexible than any other creature --specializing in adaptability, if anything -- are entirely dependent on emotional & cultural inputs to become people at all. The circuitry needs to be working, but that in itself just doesn't suffice.

So if God has chosen Jews to "breed" anything -- it would be to produce a culture, not a genotype. God does breed -- and interbreed -- cultures rather freely, coming up with rich&strange combinations to be sure -- but that would be true of anybody else's culture as well.

Are you saying that God set up the Jews to provide a culture that would cross-breed with every culture it encountered, so as to produce strange hybrids? Various forms of Christianity, Islam .... even Buddhism to some extent? (But Judaism-proper comes with better tunes, doesn't it?)

Seems a far-fetched way of putting it. Couldn't we just say, "chosen" to be a pervasive influence on the world's religious thought?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 11:58am

I'm not one of those who thinks "Jewish" means anything special in terms of DNA or genetics.  

Sure, some families proudly trace "blood lines" (in itself a goofy term), akin to Daughters of the American Revolution. People like to find things to be snobby about.  

I'm not sure anything genetic was implied in the "breed of dog" analogy, but lets be clear the label "Jew" no more refers to a genetic breed than does "Christian".  Not in my book anyway.  

Others are welcome to their alternative racialist theories -- I'll keep my safe distance (ten feet at least) thank you very much.

I see one planet, very tiny (at the scale I'm using) and lots of humans on it.  There's my Promised Land with its Chosen.  How these humans choose to label themselves internally is their business.

http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2005/12/thinking-globally.html

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 12:20pm

I think we're all clear that 'child-of Abraham' is a 'belonging-to' relationship rather than a biological one. Even in Exodus, it's clear that 'a mixed multitude' of Egyptian-&-misc persons move out together with the Israelites & presumably become part of Israel upon arrival.

Anyway, the point for this discussion would be that Jewish influence on religious thought... which has not been digested as well as it might be by various descendant branches ala Christianity, Islam etc -- but seems to inevitably include that Jewish sense of "History", ie that we are part of a process that's leading us-all somewhere --

but one element of that is that God is intervening, causing suffering  when necessary (for _some_ purpose) -- and that we don't escape what's coming to us just by dying...

The infinite Hells of Islamic & various Christian sects (Such places likewise exist for some Buddhists, although you get out in a kalpa or two with good behavior...) --

Those seem to be a side-effect of people Thinking Too Much, ie trying to do theology as if it were an exercise in mathematical logic.

What else?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 5:54pm

I am talking on a soul level here and not a physical when I suggest that God is interested in breeding a particular type of soul and of course just like one of his creations he could be interested in breeding a variety of souls for different purposes.  Paul does mention there are different vessels for different purposes.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 7:58pm

Thanks for clarifying James. 

Yes, God seems to love diversity, even if many in His creation have little tolerance for it.

What I find interesting throughout the human career is the foreshadowing of future developments in earlier times. So uncanny sometimes.

People think about hard about problems way ahead of their time, so often, as when Ada Byron (daughter of the poet) became fixated on "programming" when the only machine even close to a computer was as yet too complicated to actually build.[1] 

We saw premonitions of chess-playing computers as well, in the form of The Turk, ostensibly a "robot", that beat Napoleon.[2]

And those are but recent examples. 

Humans seem able to travel into their own future and lay the groundwork for it in their own time.  The sense of a Divine Plan, of Teleology, ala Teilhard de Chardin, permeates such a reading of history (which critics will say depends entirely on hindsight).

Those with prophetic vision help "sing the future" into the present. [3] 

Their visions may seem confused and unclear, even to them, which explains why they say it's from God, from outside their personal experience or considerations.

Leading people to freedom, out of slavery (bondage, oppressive servitude), and coming to co-create with God as willing partners, seems central to Jewish teachings.  There's a willingness to be led, to attend to a source, and to work in a space of gratitude.

Back to advertising:

Picture a glossy poster, showing Planet Earth, a blue cloudy ball, hanging in empty space. 

Caption:  Promised Land. 

Another poster shows the same Earth but swaps in a different caption:  Game Park. 

Then we see children playing:  Wild Life.

Another side of my media campaign (should we call it that) is to embrace the fact that we're animals (lucky!), and share the planet. 

One of the sickest aspects of human beings collectively that I most distrust is their infernal bigotry towards their fellow non-human beings.  That's what Satan is always whispering in God's ear:  "look how they trash your Garden, look how they treat your greatest gifts (your only Son) with contempt.  Push the button... push the button..."

But God made a covenant with humans after Noah to never "push the button" again.  But the Devil is awfully clever and figured out we could be made to push the button ourselves.  Humans are really *that* self destructive.  More proof they're a mistake, right?  So why did God choose them? 

In Judaism, the rabbis ponder such questions, debating amongst themselves why God still loves humanity.[4]

WILD LIFE

http://grunch.net/synergetics/terms.html

[1]  https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html  (a prophet)

[2]  http://ed5015.tripod.com/SkepticsTurk104.htm  (foreshadowing)

[3]  http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/reason5.htm

[4]  https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120311075054AAow9MC

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 8:57pm

James, do you mean -- to produce 'souls' as in 'Suffering is good for the...'

?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 3rd mo. 1, 2016 at 10:23pm

Not at all.  I mean He looks at how a soul responds to grace and gives those who respond in a way he designed them to respond more grace.  Those souls who don't respond to grace and do their own thing he just leaves to their own devices and doesn't give them any more grace.  I believe that grace, unmerited favor, is what allows us to act at our best, against our own self interest.  I also believe that grace is the result of Calvary and though it is free, it is precious in God's sight therefore He doesn't waste it on souls that don't benefit from receiving it and by benefit I mean become better souls more like Him.  It's a use it or lose it situation like in the parable of the ten talents (Matthew 25:14-29)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 3rd mo. 2, 2016 at 9:42am

Um, I don't think this is quite 'it' -- but there's enough beauty to it that I'm having some difficulty saying why.

I guess the problem is the notion that Divine favor can be 'merited' or 'unmerited'. So far as I understand Jesus, from God's viewpoint it's all nothing but favor.

However, human needs differ; and for some people, some of the time, what they need doesn't look at all like what they want.

The I Ching has it: ~"If a person is not as he should be, the blessing of Heaven does not go with him, and nothing he does will further him."

There isn't a Divine decision to 'cut this person's power until he pays the bill' --  but so far as he sees himself and his interests separate from everyone else's, there's no pleasing him -- and that's why even an omnipotent Being can't help him without violating logic -- as in Mark Twain's war poem about two nations both praying for God to help them win.

-------

That parable is one of the problematic ones; the reading of it as a demand to put one's spiritual assets to work is definitely of value --

but it can also be read, also appropriately, in the concrete historical situation, as an attack on the sort of zero-sum economy that was crushing the bulk of Jesus' audience. That is, the master who goes off 'to be made king' is more like Herod Antipas and his ilk than like the one who tells Jesus to preach 'forgiving people 7X7 -- even 70X7 -- times.' Without clobbering them for the 771st transgression, not unless they uh need that...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 3rd mo. 2, 2016 at 10:35am

The key to parables is perspective.  Jesus used people as they are not as they should be so in his parables he used His culture's reality to teach spiritual truths.  Jesus says elsewhere that he spoke in parables that hearing they shall not hear.  I have had some argue that every King or Master cited in a parable is a type of God.  That just doesn't wash with me.  Parables are meant to be confusing as are the OT prophets.  Check out Acts 8:29 to 39 where Philip encounters the Ethiopian eunuch.  While I believe "types" play an important role in Biblical interpretation I believe there are too many exceptions that prove the rule to just plug them in automatically.  After all as someone once said there is "one Jesus Christ that speaks to my condition".  It's always a good idea to get His opinion on what the bible is actually saying.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 3rd mo. 3, 2016 at 9:35am

One of Jesus' dimmer followers, in editing the oral tradition into written form, has Jesus saying that his parables are meant to enlighten the Chosen Folks and bewilder the Left-Out -- but seriously, this could not be Jesus's meaning. (Some disguising of meaning was involved when saying the bare truth would have immediately gotten Jesus arrested and executed, but no one would have been deceived by that.)

Parables are intrinsically ambiguous in that people have some choice in deciding what to apply them to: ie, When Matthew has him talk about good plants being kept and bad ones thrown out, is that referring to people (which might indeed suggest a Calvinist explanation)? -- or about ideas & practices?

Mark, a few paragraphs after the statement you mention, has Jesus add: "For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest, ; nor is anything secret, except to come to light." And certainly a parable or saying can take on new meanings as God leads a person to read it better.

And the bottom line Gospel is that God is good as well as powerful, powerful as well as good -- and means us all well, as we are told to mean each other well.

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page