Are you a heretic?

[Thomas]

Hi Ciel –

To live in love and the experience of knowing love, is this a mystic experience,
What about to live in faith - without the comfort of knowing ... ?

It all depends on the 'knowing' ... and what we mean by 'love' ... the word has become a mere commodity in common usage today ... what most people mean by loving a thing, is that thing (or person) fulfills their needs or requirements ...

"But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect."
Matthew 5:44-48

This is what I mean. People do not love His Church – they see nothing but fault and lay blame – they look only for what is wrong.

There is often little or no 'pleasure' to be had in the kind of love of which Jesus speaks, because it is unconditional, it is a love that asks for no reward ...

And what of those saints who speak of the profound sense of abandonment, that is not fleeting, but lasts for years? What of St Bonaventure (a mystic of the 1st order) who speaks of the 'groaning of prayer'? Did they too not see the error all around them? Or did they kid themselves ... or did they practice the law that he commanded?

That's why, I think, tradition translates 'agape' (commonly, love) as charity in 1 Corinthians ... caritas is far more demanding than love, in that respect, in that common love requires something – caritas is pure gift.

... or the light of the spirit unfolding in man in reality...

Then what of:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"
Matthew 5:3

Let me be plain here - I'm not talking about the love of God, nor the love between people, that belongs to everyone ... one is not obliged to believe in God to love one's neighbour ... I am talking about those who respond to the call to witness the love of Christ by living his message ... a message which in itself is more than it demands ... as Scripture says 'be perfect' even when perfection is not required of the world.

Christ said 'I am not of this world' and those who are called to his church are not of this world either, and there is no sensible comfort for them here:

"These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for my name's sake: because they know not him that sent me."
John 15:17-21

I have disciplined myself to love his church even when I could see nothing but its error. Now by the grace of God I see that the Church belongs to Him and she is inviolate, and the error to man.

Thomas

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by InLove

Matthew 16 is one of those passages that, like it or not, does seem open to individual interpretation. I am inclined to believe that it was Peter's declaration to which Christ referred, not necessarily a nod to strict organizational rules. That said, I still trust that He knew there would be some organizing to do in order to further His Message. I also believe that He knew that humankind would tend to confuse the issue by the desire to pin it down. And I believe He forgives our blunders when He looks at the heart's intent and sees that it is because we want to be in His Love that we make them.

InPeace,
InLove

I would have to agree with you here, InLove, especially if you compare Matt 16 to 1 John 4

Matt 16:13-20 13 When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”
14 So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
20 Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.

1 John 4
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.
4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are of the world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. 6 We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

It is the people that confess Jesus as the Christ that make up the Church:

1 Peter 2
1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

4 Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, 5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

[Ciel]

Originally Posted by Ciel

Thomas, peace,

To live in love and the experience of knowing love, is this a mystic experience, or the light of the Spirit unfolding in man in reality.

- c -

Thank you Thomas,

My words need to be seen in one sentence.......... It is the love of the light of the Spirit. It is the highest of the high. It is pure love.

Now I differ with you when you propose love your enemies, it is not reality. But neither shall I hate them, I prefer to hold them in neutral repose.

You say, no pleasure in the love spoken of by the man Jesus, for it asks for no reward.....love loves to love, to give and receive, I have never considered reward, yet love freely given can enpower the source of love with enough light for a universe.

Something else in all honesty.... I've never gone along with the idea of saints or blessed are the meek. I would propose blessed are they who are rich in the spirit of love for they live in the grace of God.

All this love and hate stuff....... oh lord no...... all you need is love.

I learnt long ago never to go along with something proclaiming love, but with only the intention of control. Thus my opposition to any form of dogma. The light of the Spirit is without dogma it lives within man waiting to be free. And some are.

peace and light - Christina.

[Thomas]

Hi Christina -

In reality (? - another one?) this web format is far from ideal in such discussions, as the nuance gets lost ...

I learnt long ago never to go along with something proclaiming love, but with only the intention of control. Thus my opposition to any form of dogma...

I know what you mean, but then, the idea of 'divine love' is a dogma ... for there is no proof.

... and this is the point that I simply cannot escape. What we like is not dogma; what we don't like is a dogma ... when in fact they are equally dogma – what people don't like, and quite rightly, is a view or an opinion forced upon them.

I was brought up a cradle Catholic, and walked away, and said many of the things which I not speak out against here. I taught as much for 4 years in an Hermetic order. My dear mother talks of the heartbreak she felt when I insisted that 'Christ was just a man, a teacher, a sage, but nothing more ...' (and other dogmas of the New Age).

Something else I learnt ... the worst form of control is the dogma of 'anything goes' because fundamentally its a rejection of personal responsibility.

Then I learnt a lesson. Christianity is not about being a nice person...

'Man does not choose his tradition. Tradition calls the man.'

Thomas

[earl]

Nice discussion in this thread. Couldn't help but notice the passing discussion re "zen Christianity." Dogma-wise nothing probalby could be on the surface of it more different in aim (let alone method) as Buddhism and Christianity. But yet....First thread I ever started here was one I entitled the "zen of Meister Eckhart." One of my illustrative quotes of his from that thread:

"While I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing; there was no one to ask me. When I was flowing, all creatures spake God. If I am asked, Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of your house? Then I must have been in. Even so do all creatures speak God. And why do they not speak Godhead? Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. Godhead does no work, there is nothing to do, in it is no activity. It never envisaged any work. God and Godhead are as different as active and inactive. On my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them one in me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the wellspring of Godhead, no one will ask me whence I came or whither I went. No one missed me: God passes away."

And then Dogen the 13th c.e. founder of Soto Zen:

"To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things."

Have a good one, earl

[Ciel]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Hi Christina -

In reality (? - another one?) this web format is far from ideal in such discussions, as the nuance gets lost ...

I learnt long ago never to go along with something proclaiming love, but with only the intention of control. Thus my opposition to any form of dogma...

I know what you mean, but then, the idea of 'divine love' is a dogma ... for there is no proof.

... and this is the point that I simply cannot escape. What we like is not dogma; what we don't like is a dogma ... when in fact they are equally dogma – what people don't like, and quite rightly, is a view or an opinion forced upon them.

I was brought up a cradle Catholic, and walked away, and said many of the things which I not speak out against here. I taught as much for 4 years in an Hermetic order. My dear mother talks of the heartbreak she felt when I insisted that 'Christ was just a man, a teacher, a sage, but nothing more ...' (and other dogmas of the New Age).

Something else I learnt ... the worst form of control is the dogma of 'anything goes' because fundamentally its a rejection of personal responsibility.

Then I learnt a lesson. Christianity is not about being a nice person...

'Man does not choose his tradition. Tradition calls the man.'

Thomas

Thomas,

Wrote you a long post, and lost it on a frozen screen.

Incredible relief.......I realise this is what dogma does.......

It requires one to justify.

I am grateful for the wake up call, I was falling asleep.

And this I call a calling from God.

- c -

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Thomas

As I have said before, I remeber the craze for Buddhist Chanting, and one of the 'proofs' was the guy who chanted for a new Porsche ... and got one. I bet the Buddha would be proud ...

But as I am continually being told ... the guy knew what was best for him, perhaps Buddha wanted him to have a Porsche ...

Hi Thomas,

I've not heard of this before, but I agree (if that's what you're implying) I think it may well be heretical!

s.

[cavalier]

Originally Posted by Thomas

'Man does not choose his tradition. Tradition calls the man.'

I'm joining the thread late, sorry if I'm going off at a tangeant.
I would agree with you here. Do you think though that we already have all the traditions, or might some people be called by a tradition as yet unknown?

[Caimanson]

Originally Posted by cavalier

I would agree with you here. Do you think though that we already have all the traditions, or might some people be called by a tradition as yet unknown?

Sorry Cavalier, that is just very funny!

[cavalier]

Why?

[Caimanson]

I suppose it is more about your comment sparking an internal joke in me.
I got this sense of irony or sarcasm, not saying that you did, just the way I saw it.

If we assume that tradition calls the man, then where are we left when we also assume that men may be called by these yet unknown traditions (that are men's own creation anyway).

So the logical conclusion (and joke for me) is the opposite of the original stament: that man chooses and/or creates his own tradition.

Apologies if I make no sense.

[cavalier]

Originally Posted by Caimanson

I suppose it is more about your comment sparking an internal joke in me.
I got this sense of irony or sarcasm, not saying that you did, just the way I saw it.

If we assume that tradition calls the man, then where are we left when we also assume that men may be called by these yet unknown traditions (that are men's own creation anyway).

So the logical conclusion (and joke for me) is the opposite of the original stament: that man chooses and/or creates his own tradition.

Apologies if I make no sense.

You do make sense, but I don't agree.
I do not believe that traditions are created by men, I think they come from God. Perhaps I should say that they mainly come from God.
Even if you do not hold to this view however, I still don't think you're reasoning holds up. If not from God, traditions would be the creations of man, not a man. Any tradition would be greater than something one man could create. Therefore while mankind could create its own tradition, a man, as you suggested, could not.

[wil]

Originally Posted by cavalier

Therefore while mankind could create its own tradition, a man, as you suggested, could not.

Kwanza, TM, I think we can find a number of traditions that were started at the impetus of one...they may take a number of things from before and combine them....but haven't the others as well...

[cavalier]

Originally Posted by wil

Kwanza, TM, I think we can find a number of traditions that were started at the impetus of one...they may take a number of things from before and combine them....but haven't the others as well...

I confess to having no idea what Kwanza and TM are.
I would agree with you, some/many traditions started with the impetus of one. As both of those highlighted words would suggest however, the tradition was not the creation of just that one.

[Ciel]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Then I learnt a lesson. Christianity is not about being a nice person...


Thomas

Thomas, Where are you............ Where is the love?

- c -