QuakerQuaker migration starting soon, can you help?
Hi QuakerQuaker fans,It's time to start the migration of QuakerQuaker to a new online platform. It…See More
QuakerQuaker
Primitive Christianity Revived, Again
The Belief Factor
I used to be intrigued by science fiction stories that played with the nature of scientific laws & facts-- imagining that the Earth was flat until someone realized it couldn't be, for example. One of these, Richard McKenna's 'Fiddler's Green' really took me over the edge. McKenna had a small cabal of occultist passengers sabotage and sink a freighter in a very empty place, off the shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, a place so far from other human psyches that collective reality, "God" as they said, "was thin" enough to punch a hole through. They then persuaded the lifeboat crew, dying of thirst & without other hope, to join them in the effort to collectively create a new world, and live in it together.
In the late sixties, overwhelmed by the imperfections of this world, but also seeing what a perfect whole humanity formed, how much we needed one another and how much I needed the solidity of the physical world, that story kept coming back to me with existential horrors, over months & even years.
Most Americans seem to assume that the physical world is primary, we and our beliefs existing as part of it. But there's much evidence, including the Bible, that the universe is more than "atoms and the void," or "matter and energy".
You don't need your perceptions altered to see improbable events. One can calculate that a certain number of unlikely, meaningful "coincidences" would happen just as a matter of course-- but unless you pride yourself on being a Skeptic, after awhile it becomes clear that such events happen far more than probabilities would demand, and that they're happening precisely because they do have meaning; they are addressed to us!
It is not possible to prove to a true Skeptic that belief influences physical reality. His belief so influences physical reality that inconvenient evidence doesn't happen to him. It is obvious to the Skeptic that this explanation is ridiculous, so I won't try to argue it further.
In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, "Jesus said to them, 'Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.' And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief." More than once, when Jesus is shown healing someone, he says "Your faith has made you well."
That always puzzled me; could he or couldn't he? Why would Jesus need someone else's faith to heal them?
Just a notion I picked up, trading comments on another post: This is because "that of God in us" really is God, really possesses the power by which God created and maintains the universe.
It is a universe, not a chaos. We don't fly apart into disconnected realms of clashing belief-systems. But where our attention is, there also is our local, personal influence. It isn't given to us to over-rule God in our jurisdiction; it belongs to us because God breathed it into us all, beginning with Adam.
Used heedlessly, without awareness, by people behaving as "isolated individuals", belief can be destructive. Some people, clinging to old pieties, or following Newage beliefs, try to change their beliefs in the service of their egos... and they don't entirely manage to change their beliefs or their experience. Beliefs are, to a large extent, given.
But people can open (or close) their minds. They can ask to know what God is working towards, and put their faith in that, seeing that it must come. If not now, when it is time.
How? By praying for wisdom, to know better what is worth desiring, what we come to desire most deeply as we grow in the Light to recognize that.
Quoting Julian of Norwich on prayer: "For though the soul be ever like to God in kind and substance, restored by grace, it is often unlike in condition, by sin on man’s part.
"Then is prayer a witness that the soul willeth as God willeth; and it comforteth the conscience and enableth man to grace. And thus He teacheth us to pray, and mightily to trust that we shall have it. For He beholdeth us in love and would make us partners of His good deed, and therefore He stirreth us to pray for that which it pleaseth him to do."
In the late sixties, overwhelmed by the imperfections of this world, but also seeing what a perfect whole humanity formed, how much we needed one another and how much I needed the solidity of the physical world, that story kept coming back to me with existential horrors, over months & even years.
Most Americans seem to assume that the physical world is primary, we and our beliefs existing as part of it. But there's much evidence, including the Bible, that the universe is more than "atoms and the void," or "matter and energy".
You don't need your perceptions altered to see improbable events. One can calculate that a certain number of unlikely, meaningful "coincidences" would happen just as a matter of course-- but unless you pride yourself on being a Skeptic, after awhile it becomes clear that such events happen far more than probabilities would demand, and that they're happening precisely because they do have meaning; they are addressed to us!
It is not possible to prove to a true Skeptic that belief influences physical reality. His belief so influences physical reality that inconvenient evidence doesn't happen to him. It is obvious to the Skeptic that this explanation is ridiculous, so I won't try to argue it further.
In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, "Jesus said to them, 'Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.' And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief." More than once, when Jesus is shown healing someone, he says "Your faith has made you well."
That always puzzled me; could he or couldn't he? Why would Jesus need someone else's faith to heal them?
Just a notion I picked up, trading comments on another post: This is because "that of God in us" really is God, really possesses the power by which God created and maintains the universe.
It is a universe, not a chaos. We don't fly apart into disconnected realms of clashing belief-systems. But where our attention is, there also is our local, personal influence. It isn't given to us to over-rule God in our jurisdiction; it belongs to us because God breathed it into us all, beginning with Adam.
Used heedlessly, without awareness, by people behaving as "isolated individuals", belief can be destructive. Some people, clinging to old pieties, or following Newage beliefs, try to change their beliefs in the service of their egos... and they don't entirely manage to change their beliefs or their experience. Beliefs are, to a large extent, given.
But people can open (or close) their minds. They can ask to know what God is working towards, and put their faith in that, seeing that it must come. If not now, when it is time.
How? By praying for wisdom, to know better what is worth desiring, what we come to desire most deeply as we grow in the Light to recognize that.
Quoting Julian of Norwich on prayer: "For though the soul be ever like to God in kind and substance, restored by grace, it is often unlike in condition, by sin on man’s part.
"Then is prayer a witness that the soul willeth as God willeth; and it comforteth the conscience and enableth man to grace. And thus He teacheth us to pray, and mightily to trust that we shall have it. For He beholdeth us in love and would make us partners of His good deed, and therefore He stirreth us to pray for that which it pleaseth him to do."
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Rickey D. Whetstone on
-
Well . . . ignorance is the biggest beast that keeps mankind from developing a relationship with God. If . . . they have never been with God . . . they don't know what they are missing.
I was raised in a culture of rules and regulations . . . I was the third generation.
A hostage . . . that does not know . . . that they are free to walk . . . will never walk away. The hostage thinks . . . they will die . . . if they walk.
Denominational rules are pleasing to the physical eye and physical brain.
The majority of mankind fail to trust their spiritual eyes and ears.
-
Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on
-
What it leaves out... This isn't just a failure of transmission (I've often thought that God assigns parents & children to each other as exercises in misunderstanding, frustration and forbearance) but something that sets in, in each person, as yesterday's blinding illumination fades into the past and the New Day becomes Thursday.
-
-
My younger brother believes that we are placed on earth with a certain set of beliefs installed or preprogrammed by God before we are born.
I . . . on the other hand believe that we are born neutral . . . and we allow or accept the family beliefs or family culture to influence our spirit. As I understand it . . . we are allowed to eat from any tree in the garden. However . . . if . . . we eat from the tree of the knowledge (judgement of others) of good or evil we will die (cease to grow ) spiritually.
-
-
I guess God wants some way to tell one human from another, short of adding serial numbers...
I agree that that Good/Evil tree can be worse than whiskey.
But "judgement of others"? Does this imply that Adam really needed Eve to help him eat it? So that he could start thinking of her as an "other"?
And are you sure that it isn't more: "judgment of others" == "judgment of myself." Both potentially good and evil in effect?
-
-
As . . . I see it . . . Adam can not blame Eve.
As . . . I see it in Matt 7:1 we should not judge anyone or anything.
I can see nothing good in judgment of others . . . but to each his own way of life.
thanks
-
-
As I read this, Adam in fact does blame Eve.
Should Adam then turn around and blame himself for blaming Eve? Or is there something in this very "blaming" we should suspect? It isn't just "shooting others" that bothers people.
But deciding that we don't want to give or receive blame: we have to have examined these feelings of blaming and/or feeling blamed, and found some standard of judging-- "evaluating"?-- by which we just plain don't like them, despite them being common, perhaps necessary human processes (like throwing up, for example.)
Likewise, if we see some person giving vent to judgmental feelings, we can say, "Thou shalt not be judgmental!" and hope it helps. Or just try to gently point out something more like, "There's a booger hanging from your soul."
-
-
Forrest
You crack me up . . . man . . . I can't stop laughing.
Some day . . . in the next life . . . you and I are going to have some fun . . . running around doing crazy far out things with Jesus.
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- Next ›
Support Us
Did you know that QuakerQuaker is 100% reader supported? Our costs run to about $50/month. If you think this kind of outreach and conversation is important, please support it with a monthly subscription or one-time gift.
Latest Activity
"Hi Christopher, thanks for your ongoing support all this time; I understand needing to slow down…"
In person gathering - Friends of the Light
7th mo. 22, 2023 all dayFriends of the Light - Online worship
6th mo. 4, 2023 from 7pm to 8pm
"Hi Martin,
I hope other users have been making occasional/regular donations. I am…"
© 2023 Created by QuakerQuaker.
Powered by
