An entertaining imagination of the Bible's meaning

  • Thread starter Thread starter lemondiesel
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
L

lemondiesel

Guest
Hypothetical Situation:

The Bible is the story of consciousness. God and the Devil are our battles between justice and injustice. We were just animals, run by our primitive instincts, our basic survival skills…until one day we became conscious of our existence. The OT describes a time when man had conflicting times in choosing to do good or evil. The NT, is Jesus’ recognition that we as human beings are incapable of being conscious of our existence. When we run on primitive instincts, it is basic conflicts over survival, but when we become rational thinking human beings, we create new conflicts. We create social differences, inequalities, races, whatever else you can think of. Revelation talks about a time, end of days, where human beings will become savages again. Maybe after a nuclear war? Who knows haha. We will be run again on survival instincts, and we will lose our rationality, our knowledge; we lose what makes homosapiens Man. When we are no longer rational thinkers, we no longer are aware of existence…

…and the awareness of existence is the awareness of God

😛
 
That was indeed imaginitive! I loved the exploration of ‘becoming aware, it being challenged, and loosing awareness again.’ What I get out of Revelations, is a matter of ascending and decsending morality. Like the ‘Original Position’. When the world will be able to possess such a position due to God’s light decsending upon us and our morality ascending upward. I personally (like a citizen of any country, haha) think America will lead this one day when we are ready. All will be one equally in Christ! p.s. I love how anyone can post on here. I’ve left the Catholic Church and am now joining the Episcopal but can still retain some of that great Catholic thinking of wild ideas with this site! I hope to be equally impressed with the Episcopals :).
 
I too was also Catholic. 17 Years in a Catholic school with Church everyday Sunday. It does feel good to come on here and at least keep some of these thoughts active in my mind because I have left the Churches teachings.

All I have come to is, a rational person acknowledges that he knows nothing 😦

Welcome to the forum!
 
That is a great icon, Lemondiesel! I found your hypothetical situation much closer to the actuality of things than the Church’s explication. I won’t start at Creation, because we’ll see if even smaller steps might be of interest to you. So, how about the alleged “Fall?”

IMHO, the “Fall” is the story of the dawn of human awareness. I say awareness because I consider Consciousness a synonym for God, along with Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Spirit, etc. Humans have a generic yet malleable energetic formation of awareness referent to identifying with a point in space/time called a body. Other bodies, animal bodies, have awareness as well, but they are more or less instinctual. In humans awareness is reflexive. We can be the object of our own awareness. Hence, such phrases as “watch yourself…!” And this is a key to the revelations of the Mystics, and the Saints and Sages of the Ages.

So the “Fall” was that moment in time when the first humans “ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Animals don’t know good and evil, only instinct, and in this way they “walk with God in the Garden.” They don’t know any different. But there was a moment when, (Hey women! Thank you!) “mankind” entered into the capability of acting in subject/object awareness. This was the “fruit” of the tree with its roots in heaven: The brain, the root ball is “up” and the branches grow “down.” ( Shades of Moses,* yes?) “Eating” means to incorporate totally and use the energy of. The root ball, under the influence of the attraction of Divinity, shall we say, (they wanted to be like Gods) developed into this new arena of awareness, tempted by the serpent, the age old symbol for rising energy, into the arena of reflexive cognition. Man recognized himself as an entity, discrete as well as being a part of a group. Each one developed an interior private world as well as the consensus exterior world. We see the results of that today in the astonishing diversity of human activities, unlike animals which all act pretty much the same. I mean, we have common traits, but they operate in a larger dimensional capacity.

So rather than being an instinctive pack animal, the matter of group action became one of choice, reason, education, and discovery. Thus “good and evil” is synonymous with choice, opposites, and distinctions. It might better be called “awareness of consequences,” but the Bible is heavily invested in morality, so it came out with a spin based on values and judgement rather than priorities and distinctions.

So, congratulations, Lemondiesel, you have, as is usual in many cases of awakening, on your own stumbled on the deeper meaning of scriptures, parables, and myths.

*Moses is a royal Egyptian name, btw, as in Thutmoses, or Ram’ses, loosely meaning “son of” or “born of.” So who, without a prefix was “-Moses” son of?
 
If I were to try to imagine things along these lines, I’d say that at some point man became self-conscious, and simultaneously obtained free will, because either one should necessarily imply the other.

At this point “sin” was made possible as moral responsibility was made possible, meaning that man became capable of refraining from doing evil/selfishness/harm to others and at the same time became capable of committing much more heinous acts than he would’ve been able to conceive of before, or even have the wherewithal to do.
 
Yes, in “Catholic” terms it could accurately be said that way. What is telling, though, in your statement, FHansen, is that you did not as well say that we have the commensurate ability to transcend ourselves and do great good. The way you stated it is, I don’t know, so Puritan or Calvinistic in a manner, in that it appears to emphasize the traditional burden of guilt that seems to come with the Faith. Where is there room in what you said for Bach, or Padre Pio, of Sts, Avial, Sienna, Assisi, or Aquinas? Not even to mention the “secular” wonders of transcendent good which stem, necessarily, from the same source. Is it not so, that we tend to manifest what we put our attention on? Mark 11:4, eh? If you think you have guilt and perdition, hey, it’s yours. But don’t put it on me or others. The mind organizes around what we put attention on. I choose God and Good.
 
Tuno said:
Yes, in “Catholic” terms it could accurately be said that way. What is telling, though, in your statement, FHansen, is that you did not as well say that we have the commensurate ability to transcend ourselves and do great good. The way you stated it is, I don’t know, so Puritan or Calvinistic in a manner, in that it appears to emphasize the traditional burden of guilt that seems to come with the Faith. Where is there room in what you said for Bach, or Padre Pio, of Sts, Avial, Sienna, Assisi, or Aquinas? Not even to mention the “secular” wonders of transcendent good which stem, necessarily, from the same source. Is it not so, that we tend to manifest what we put our attention on? Mark 11:4, eh? If you think you have guilt and perdition, hey, it’s yours. But don’t put it on me or others. The mind organizes around what we put attention on. I choose God and Good.
Click to expand...
Oh, ok, if that’s how you prefer to see it. I was responding with the same train of thought as in the OP.

Of course humans became capable of guilt at that time-unless we think responsibility for human acts so depraved they’d repulse the most vicious animal if possible should be ignored or treated as normal.

Of course humans became capable of acts of love along with creativity, education, pursuit of excellence in general, things the “Catholic” church, as opposed to many other religious sects, has consistently promoted. Duh.
 
OK, sorry, I see that about the OP. The tone of it for some reason clicked into catechism classes and too many sermons that slathered it on to us like thick paste that attracted vermin. Like Erma Bombeck said; “Guilt-the gift that keeps on giving.”
 
It is truly amazing though if you read the Bible as a way of telling how we got consciousness and certain situations with which we used conscioussness, the Bible is even more extrodinary than I originally learned.

Some situations I thought were interesting. When Abraham was asked by God to kill his son. Maybe this Abraham story was to explain that even if your mind tells you to kill, and in this case your own blood, then you’re mind (if you truly have “God” conscious) will tell you to stop. Abraham could have realized, and been rational, that killing his own blood would have been an irrational thing to do.

Obviously the Bible is one of the most interesting and mysterious books ever written, but we must remember that it was written by man, not God. I am not saying its bad to believe in the Bible, but I think people need to remind themselves that they are believing the words of man.

The writers could have created the Bible to explain why they have consciousness, because remember scientific discoveries like evolution were not theories yet. (they could have been thoughts, but there was no sound proof…to my knowledge anyway haha)
 
Tuno said:
OK, sorry, I see that about the OP. The tone of it for some reason clicked into catechism classes and too many sermons that slathered it on to us like thick paste that attracted vermin. Like Erma Bombeck said; “Guilt-the gift that keeps on giving.”
Click to expand...
Yeah I kinda suspected that afterwards and could’ve been a bit more sensitive in my reply. In any case I like the line of inquiry of the OP and think it’s interesting to take various perspectives into account. There’s much to be better understood from the account of the fall, IMO, but one way or the other I think it definitely has something of relevance to tell us.
 
Yes, agreed, there is much to be learned. It is a tricky course in some regards. E.g., what if you claim that the Bible as is contains the law and the will of God. Two things at least come to mind. First, the OT there are instances of rape, incest, public exposure, murder and genocide all done under the suggestion or direct command of God. How does that wash? And second, looking at the proliferation of religions even in the Christian arena, we have to look at the ideas of communication, translation, interpretation, history, witnessing, collections, linguistics, meaning, symbolism, and a whole host of things. And we have to look at them in many cases through the eyes of men and women far less accomplished than the Exemplar of the Church. I get the feeling sometimes of trying to use the compound eye of a bee or some-such when reading the Holy Book, and the gets even much worse when reading commentaries. Seems like a complicated route.
 
Tuno said:
First, the OT there are instances of rape, incest, public exposure, murder and genocide all done under the suggestion or direct command of God.
Click to expand...
How about this. Since we are rational thinking human beings, those instances can show when using rationality (or our “God” conscious) is wrong. We should be using rationality and reason towards the benefit of everyone, not just a particular group or society. They are only temporary solutions, but play a larger effect on the whole.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top