Ask Miranda a theological question!

[miranda2]

Since the other thread is getting long, I thought I'd start another in case anyone was still interested. (Am I mad??....) Won't be offended if no-one posts!!

Sorry to go off track here
Tom dh has just joined your website. Very good site.

And to balance things out Tom, I run this ChristianMums

Nice one Doormat
He hasn't posted yet - everyone is being shy -I just loaded up some new forum software, so now it looks like there are no discussions at all on my site! Get him to post a new topic!!

Hilary - Fathers Direct is NOT a Christian organisation (I thought I'd make that clear for everyone else)

No, I see that, I've just been to look. Very impressed! Have you done the site?

Most of it - I'm the webmaster, but others work on it as well, and of course things like the magazine with Piers Brosnan, the training, the press work etc is all a team effort.

Oh - and mums are welcome We like mums.

Tom he is a bit tired now and says he will probably do it tomorrow.

Tom, something you said in your post is troubling me -

"what I understand is that Christ is the door to heaven, and only he chooses who will pass - of course following him will help, but it doesn't guarantee it (theres a parable about lanterns that says something about this!)"

So are you saying that even if we accept Christ as our Saviour and do our best to follow his commandments, then there is still no guarantee that we are saved? How then can we have any hope or assurance for the future? The bible says that if someone accepts Christ and lives his/her life accordingly, then they are assured of eternal life, doesn't it? The way your post is worded sounds as though absolutely no one has any assurance of salvation.

What does Miranda think? Surely Jesus' message was that anyone who believes in him and obeys his words, has eternal life... so I'm a bit confused about your take on it.

Ah, yes, but doesn't God these days save up his 'wrath' for hell and damnation (or isn't that fashionable any more?) The days of floods etc as God's wrath seem to have passed (or not be fashionable any more!).

I simply do not buy that it is arrogant not to believe in something. I don't believe in fairies. Is that arrogant?

I don't believe I have all the answers as to how the world was created. But I am very interested in the progress of our understanding. Just because we don't fully understand something now doesn't mean it is mystical and inexplicable in human terms. It took many thousands of years of medicine for people to begin to understand the mechanics of reproduction - early theories were amusingly wrong to us. Now we are coming close to creating life itself. For me, the big difference between us and most animals is not our 'soul' but our big, complex brains, that are so interestingly constructed that they can even come up with the idea of a God and find that warmly comforting. The more study and research into the human brain the more we understand where our feelings and thoughts come from - and sometimes the explanations can be disappointingly prosaic, I suppose.
It's so funny, isn't it, that you find such comfort in the idea of God and I think it's a truly appalling concept. I would just be devastated to find that instead of slipping away into nothingness, I was expected to live for all eternity in this dreadful sexless, passionless, family-less universe of 'love' with some old bloke/entity and his son runnning the show as a totalitarian regime with a strict if somewhat irrational door policy. That is my honest opinion!

Mind you, if I find myself being rowed across the Styx, I shall be mightily miffed that I wasn't buried with my best shoes, some good books and a few bottles of wine to take with me!

OOh, and one more thing. I believe that the Christian (though thoroughly unpleasant) concept that the pain of childbirth is a curse from God on all women is one of the key reasons why pain relief in birth is so grudgingly given, controversial, and why we praise women who don't have it to the skies. This is clearly an anomaly as this sort of praise isn't given, say, to men or women who endure migraines without pain relief or surgery, or tooth extraction. I have often wondered why doing it without pain relief is fetishised in our society, and suspect it does go back to the concept of Eve's Curse. Early attempts to relieve pain (Queen Victoria's 'blessed chloroform' were strongy opposed by the Church.

Tom - re the god putting up with bullshit and the resulting poverty etc and his lack of intervention. Well, why doesn't he intervene? He's god after all, If kids in Bangladesh are being killed by yet another flood (natural disaster, or are they all somehow manmade now?) why does he rely on only love as a way of pulling people pulling back together? It doesn't help teh devastated families.

Re the new earth new heaven thing - don't understand. You say we're (well, not me apparently) are not going to heaven but a new earth. So why is there a new heaven? Presumably this new earth/heaven business goes on and on. Isn't this akin to reincarnation?

Re lack of fear of hell etc. I think most people come to god through asking the usual what am here for/where amd I going? Surely the fear of NOT going to a heaven is one of the strong factors is choosing faith. If there was a faith stating that there is a god but there is no afterlife AT ALL, do you think it would have many followers?

And, no, Aloha, I agree. Heaven sounds awful, when described to me by a born again Christian, I asked her what it was and her version was that you would be with all the people that you had ever loved all teh time. What if they don't want to be you? I've loved people and then stopped loving them. I've loved people and fallen out with tthem - how unconfortable if they were all there? When is the cut-off point of deciding who I should be with?

Re arrogance - surely this comes about through mans arrogance to believe he has any relevance, that he is significant enough to be have been created. That he is no more than a sophisticated animal. Immortality, for me, comes from affecting someone in some way. We are all a product of who we meet etc, there must be few people who never meet anyone who doesn't say or do something which makes them re-think an aspect of their own thinking and behaviour. In turn, I affet someone else etc. That is immortality, for me.

Tinker I loved that last paragraph there. Arrogance just about sums up religion doesn't it. Thanks to Darwin et co. it is perfectly clear that we are just intelligent animals. That's it. fullstop.

Why don't religious people just get on with life, be nice to everyone and create 'heaven' on earth, instead of laying down conflicting laws and making out their way of life is better than everyone else.

e.g. I have to go to work past an enormous sign outside a church that says that I am a 'sinner and should repent'. How dare they..talk about slanderous and just downright nasty...its ARROGANCE again isn't it?

lil, as a Christian I agree with you about the signs that shout at you. Not very welcoming, is it? Rest assured that not all churches are like that.

Message withdrawn

OHHHH ! Dadslib, that'll give 'em something to chew on

Tinker, agree with you so much. Even the very nice Christians on this thread say that we non-believers are 'arrogant' not to believe in a creator, and I feel the same as you. I don't believe we are the all important creation of a god, that we have this special purpose and will live for evermore. I believe we are intelligent animals, who derive - if we are lucky - enormous sensual and emotional pleasure from our lovely, complex world and...that's it! I don't think I have all the answers, but I certainly don't think there is a big divine being out there who has either. Where is the arrogance in that? Are you arrogant if you don't beleive in Thor, or Wodin or Aphrodite? They were just as much believed in and worshipped as the current version of the Christian God? If not, why not?

Tinker, the 'everyone you've ever loved' is making me laugh! I'm thinking of all the celestial mother-in-laws still making their celestial daughter-in-law's life a misery by insisting on living with their sons, and me being mightily embarrassed by some of my ex-boyfriends!

dadslib

I'll answer that

I can't accept God doesn't exist because that is a step of faith I just can't make. Believing God does exist is a step of faith I can make, based on everything I have experienced.

By the way, for your info, your theology is called pantheism.

Christians would respond by saying that we believe that God is unmeasureable by current physics and other scientific means (which measure within space/time), and God is not contained by the scientific space/time concept of universe. IF by "universe" you mean simply everything that exists, then obviously, if God exists, God is part of the universe. But whereas traditional pantheism says the (space/time)universe IS God, Christians (and Jews and Muslims) would say that God created the space/time universe and is separate from it. Although Christians would add that God entered the space/time universe in the form of Jesus Christ.

On church - personally I hate most church services and rarely ever go - they're so naff, as is most of christian 'culture' I see about. I find it mostly awful, irrelevant, smug and sometimes outright offensive, so I'm no great defender of it. Sorry to other xians, but I do.

The last thing I'll say is that if anyone is GENUINELY interested in God, then there's no harm in praying something like...

"God, if you exist, please let me know in a way that only I could possibly understand, and that will convince me completely"

I'm ducking out now.

I also think that Christians have a different take on death. You see death as the end, full stop. That's why, when you see natural disasters happen and innocent people getting killed, it makes it all the more tragic because you don't believe that their families will ever see them again. It is a life that is simply snuffed out. We believe that those people will rise again on the last day. That death is no more than sleep. Families will be reunited. Death is as natural as birth.

That doesn't make it right however, for man to go around starting wars and killing innocent people. But that is man's responsibility, not Gods. Man has to take responsibility for his actions, we cannot simply start this chain of natural disasters through global warming, or attack countries or sell drugs to children and then expect God to come and sort it all out when it gets out of hand. It's a bit like knowing someone with depression. You watch them disintegrate before your eyes, but all you can do is make suggestions, give them organisations to contact, be there for them. But if they don't want your help, if they don't listen to your advice, what more can you do? They have to learn to help themselves.

Re: the Pope. He is around because us Catholics believe that Jesus made Peter the Rock of the Church. Since then Peter has been known as the first Pope. The Pope's duties are to hold the Church together, to act as spokesperson for the Church. The modern Pope is a bit like a prophet, or a wise man. And I happen to know that Custy has her bedroom walls plastered with his pictures, she just won't admit it!

I see what you are saying Rhubarb, but what I see as a sad event is life cut short in pain and fear. I do not think that it is sad to die old and fulfilled - and then go nowhere. It is suffering that I think is sad (and baffling in a universe created by a wholly good creator), not death itself. I think to die like, say the Queen mum or Gregory Peck, old, after a happy life and simply worn out, is no tragedy.
BTW how do you see this living again working out? Do children who die stay children forever, or do they grow up, in which case who raises them? Are you the age at which you died?

Also what about volcanic eruptions? Or Malaria?

custardo, won't comment on the entire history and purpose of the papacy, but as v. mixed up somewhat dilletante catholic, i will say i despise jpII's recent pronouncements on gay marriages. sheesh.

otoh, he has done/is doing a lot more than most world leaders to campaign for fairer trade, an end to third world debt etc.

Message withdrawn

I do see your point Aloha. And yes there are disasters that are nothing to do with man, just mother nature. There is a whole Biblical thing about suffering, but you would probably disagree with it. If you read Job in the OT, he is a man who lost his family, his wealth, his health, etc. But he never lost his faith in God. Therefore he was duly rewarded for his faith when his time came. It's the same with Saints, they did not blame God for causing their suffering, even though they did suffer terrible deaths in his name, they just accepted it in the knowledge that they were heading for a better life in Christ.

I too despise suffering. But very often it is suffering that brings out the best in people. For instance today myself and dd were on the bus, the driver noticed an old lady lying on the pavement. He stopped the bus and got out to help. A young Asian man came running up to help too, between them they got her sat up and called an ambulance. They then stayed with her until the ambulance arrived. The bus driver got some stick from other passengers for being late, but he refused to apologise to them, because he felt that his being late was justified. That old lady suffered today, I have no doubt of that, but it brought out kindness and mercy in the two men who helped her.

As for how old you are when you are returned, I have no idea. The Bible is not that specific. A lot of things are just 'wait and see' because they cannot be explained. That sounds naff, but I'm less concerned with those things than I am with the concept of suffering and the credibility of God.

BTW - I've already put in a good word for you for lending me those maternity trousers!