Jesus (pbuh) - failed Prophet

[Pico]

Originally Posted by Quahom1

Who are you? I mean that literally. Are you your body? Are you your mind? Are you your spirit/soul? Or are you all three?...

Now apply that to God, and therein you find the answer to the guestion you seek...

Who is God, and how can Jesus claim to be God?...If Jesus is the "body", then the "mind" and "Spirit" of God are left. All three are God, but different manifistations of God. Jesus said, to know Him, is do know God the Father...I think that makes sense...

v/r

Q

Yeah, God made man in his Image. We are our physical body (Jesus is the physical embodiment of God), We have our soul which is our personality, thought, ect. (the Father is the main thought behind everything, He gives permission, etc.), and our Spirit is our connection to God (just like how God uses his Holy Spirit to connect Man with Himself).

[flowperson]

An excellent post Q. Some of us just pursue understanding the implications of what you wrote through differing pathways of seeking.

Thanks, and I might add that to me Jesus' primary message 2,000 years ago was to inform those who had gone before that they would involuntarily become more and more like Him (whether or not they liked it) as humans danced and fought their ways into the future. What do you think ?

flow....

[madeinrussia89]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

assalaamu madeinrussia

(we will have to narrow that name down a bit - how about MIR?)

Okay, when I look at those two statement they seem totally contradictory to me. If Christ was/is G-d then surely resurrection is through G-d because you say Chirst is G-d. Do you see what I mean? Your first statement says 'still just G-d' but your second statements appears to seperate Jesus (pbuh) out from G-d. (I am just never going to get this am I?!)

For me, the Christian Jesus (pbuh) could not BE G-d because it required G-d to resurrect him, he is therefore subject to G-d, as is all of creation.

As much as I totally disagree with your point of view, we'll just have to agree to disagree and let God figure out the rest, right.

[wil]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

assalaamu madeinrussia

(we will have to narrow that name down a bit - how about MIR?)

In Russian that means peace, yes??

Originally Posted by madeinrussia89

As much as I totally disagree with your point of view, we'll just have to agree to disagree and let God figure out the rest, right.

Well with a response like that I must say if I have the translation correct, the nickname fits!

[Muslimwoman]

Originally Posted by Quahom1

Who are you? I mean that literally. Are you your body? Are you your mind? Are you your spirit/soul? Or are you all three?...

Now apply that to God, and therein you find the answer to the guestion you seek...

Who is God, and how can Jesus claim to be God?...If Jesus is the "body", then the "mind" and "Spirit" of God are left. All three are God, but different manifistations of God. Jesus said, to know Him, is do know God the Father...I think that makes sense...

v/r

Q

Salaam Q

Very well put and perhaps an excellent explanation of our differing beliefs.

If a Christian looks at Q they may see your physical body, your soul/spirit and your mind. When a Muslim looks at Q they see Q, as a single being and do not look for the parts that make up the person.

I think where I struggle is when people put names to those parts and suggest they are independant of each other. Can your body or mind function without your spirit/soul?

Can you see why I get confused? If you believe Jesus (pbuh) is G-d, then why would you have to go through him to get to G-d, because he is G-d. Why not just say G-d is G-d, made up of many aspects and worship G-d as a whole?

[Pico]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

I think where I struggle is when people put names to those parts and suggest they are independant of each other. Can your body or mind function without your spirit/soul?

I dunno. If you look in Genesis 2 when God made Adam, He made the body first, then when God breathed his spirit into him Adam became a living soul. I know we can be spiritually dead (what happened to man after the fall), but I don't think that there is ever any separation to Mind/Body/Soul.

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

Can you see why I get confused? If you believe Jesus (pbuh) is G-d, then why would you have to go through him to get to G-d, because he is G-d. Why not just say G-d is G-d, made up of many aspects and worship G-d as a whole?

Well I guess one way to say it is that because of Jesus' sacrifice, we are able to get to God. Before we were spiritually dead from God. Because of Jesus' sacrifice God will give us his Spirit to live in our hearts.

This is a way I think of it (and I know the Bible does say this): to get to God we need faith in Jesus and his resurrection, once we do that God gives us his Spirit and he lives in us.

I can completely understand how Jesus being both human and God is confusing. It is quite mysterious how that can be done. But then again we are fallen people with finite understanding. I don't believe we'll ever fully understand how such a thing can happen this side of heaven. But it is something God has revealed to us.

[madeinrussia89]

Originally Posted by wil

In Russian that means peace, yes??Well with a response like that I must say if I have the translation correct, the nickname fits!

It's more like meer, but yeah, I guess it can be pronounced the same as " mir ". Funny, I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out.

[madeinrussia89]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

assalaamu madeinrussia

(we will have to narrow that name down a bit - how about MIR?)

Okay, when I look at those two statement they seem totally contradictory to me. If Christ was/is G-d then surely resurrection is through G-d because you say Chirst is G-d. Do you see what I mean? Your first statement says 'still just G-d' but your second statements appears to seperate Jesus (pbuh) out from G-d. (I am just never going to get this am I?!)

I see how you came to that conclusion, but it wasn't meant to seperate Jesus from God...

[Muslimwoman]

Originally Posted by Pico

Well I guess one way to say it is that because of Jesus' sacrifice, we are able to get to God. Before we were spiritually dead from God.

Hi Pico

Yet I do not feel in any way 'dead' from G-d or unable to get to Him. If anything I feel closer to Him now I see Him as a whole and worship Him as the One True G-d.

Maybe we just all have to find the path to G-d that feels right in our hearts and trust that G-d knows if we are genuinely seeking Him?

Salaam

[BlaznFattyz]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

Yet I do not feel in any way 'dead' from G-d or unable to get to Him. If anything I feel closer to Him now I see Him as a whole and worship Him as the One True G-d.

if God his holy and righteous and unseen in the spiritual dimension of Heaven, how do you get to him? how does your inner thoughts from a corruptible, mortal body with its impulses of electricity within your brain reach this God? now the sun and the moon and the sea and all the forces of the universe obey the commands of God, but as humans we do not. Only God is pure, good and holy. So then how can unpure people purify themselves? how can paradise be obtained from good works when we are not good. how can any of us as sinners ever please God?

[Pico]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

Yet I do not feel in any way 'dead' from G-d or unable to get to Him. If anything I feel closer to Him now I see Him as a whole and worship Him as the One True G-d

With all due respect, your feelings do not dictate truth.

[Muslimwoman]

Originally Posted by BlaznFattyz

how can any of us as sinners ever please God?

By being the best people we can be, by worshipping G-d as He has commanded, by ensuring that our good deeds outweigh our bad. G-d accepts we are only human and does not ask us to be perfect, He asks only that we accept Him and worship Him alone.

Originally Posted by Pico

With all due respect, your feelings do not dictate truth.

Correct, G-d dictates the truth. Is this not from the Bible?:

Matthew 4:10, "You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve."

So by worshipping and serving G-d alone I believe I am doing as G-d has instructed in all the Scriptures.

[Pico]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

Correct, G-d dictates the truth. Is this not from the Bible?:

Matthew 4:10, "You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve."

So by worshipping and serving G-d alone I believe I am doing as G-d has instructed in all the Scriptures.

Yes, you are supposed to worship God. But as I was saying about us being spiritually dead until we believe in Christ and receive the Holy Spirit which gives us life is something Jesus said:

Originally Posted by John 4

"23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

So we need God to revive our dead spirit because we can only worship God in the Spirit. When God made man, he wanted man to express himself. Our spirit was the way he would live in us to express him. Because of the fall we died spiritually, but because of Christ we can live spiritually for God.

[BlaznFattyz]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

By being the best people we can be, by worshipping G-d as He has commanded, by ensuring that our good deeds outweigh our bad. G-d accepts we are only human and does not ask us to be perfect, He asks only that we accept Him and worship Him alone.



Correct, G-d dictates the truth. Is this not from the Bible?:

Matthew 4:10, "You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve."

So by worshipping and serving G-d alone I believe I am doing as G-d has instructed in all the Scriptures.

I dont see how you can use any scripture of the bible when you reject the words of John the Baptist who proclaimed the Messiah and baptized him and Jesus Christ who said I am the way, the truth, and the life. if you want to accept truth from the bible as you use it as evidence, then you would have to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.

[Saltmeister]

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

If a Christian looks at Q they may see your physical body, your soul/spirit and your mind. When a Muslim looks at Q they see Q, as a single being and do not look for the parts that make up the person.

I think where I struggle is when people put names to those parts and suggest they are independant of each other. Can your body or mind function without your spirit/soul?

Can you see why I get confused? If you believe Jesus (pbuh) is G-d, then why would you have to go through him to get to G-d, because he is G-d. Why not just say G-d is G-d, made up of many aspects and worship G-d as a whole?

It's neither the body nor the soul. It's the character. It's the personality.

If God were to communicate with us, what would he be like? Would He write a book? Would He be a king, religious leader or judge? How would He "act out" or "express" Himself? How would He show this was God interacting with the world?

If you really think about it, it really doesn't have to have anything to do with the body or even the soul. There is no body. There is no soul. There must, however, be some agent somewhere acting out God's will. If God were to somehow communicate with us, it would have to be very political, as it always will be political. Thus, whoever plays out the role of God, demonstrating what God is like, has to be some politician.

Jesus' life was a parody. A parody on God. It was like an act, a play.

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

Ah-ha, now here is a statement my brain can get to grips with. So do you believe that Jesus (pbuh) coming to earth was simply G-d projecting Himself or an aspect of Himself so we could see Him?

An aspect of God, but not a part of Him. Jesus was "projecting God" but I disagree that it was so we could see God. No, what Jesus projected and what we could see in Jesus was something that we would see if only we could see God. The idea was to believe that what we saw in Jesus was also what we would see in God if we could see Him.

Yes, people saw Jesus. But what did they see when they saw him? Did they see just another politician? Just another religious leader? Another funny comedian with jokes to tell? Another story-teller?

. . . well maybe he was that. But maybe he was trying to show, or demonstrate, something much greater than himself.

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

Is it really so hard to just worship G-d without having to go 'through' anyone.

It's not about going through someone. It's about using a demonstration to understand something else. I see Jesus as a demonstration of something else other than Himself. Without the demonstration, we can't understand what is being demonstrated.

It's not really Jesus at all. It's what he represents that matters.

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

That Christians say you can only reach G-d through Jesus (pbuh) but then different Christians appear to have differing beliefs of whether Jesus (pbuh) is the son of G-d or is in fact himself G-d. I find it very confusing.

We weren't meant to focus on Jesus, the details about Jesus' existence, but on what Jesus represented.

Originally Posted by Muslimwoman

Yet I do not feel in any way 'dead' from G-d or unable to get to Him. If anything I feel closer to Him now I see Him as a whole and worship Him as the One True G-d.

Maybe we just all have to find the path to G-d that feels right in our hearts and trust that G-d knows if we are genuinely seeking Him?

Hey don't get me wrong here. Islam is the Straight Path, the direct path. Christianity is the Crooked Path, the indirect path. Christianity and Islam were introduced for completely different purposes, in response to different problems associated with people not getting their relationship with God right. The idea is not to think that only one is right and the other wrong, but to come to the understanding that maybe each of them was meant to address a particular problem.

A long time ago, a bunch of people thought they could manipulate God into accepting them by following a bunch of rules. In one sense it was a direct path in that you thought you could get to God directly because following rules to manipulate was a shortcut to get to God. In another sense it was an indirect path in that you thought it was only possible to get to God by following those rules.

Then along came Jesus, who said, no you don't have to follow these rules, you can get to God directly. If you believe me and believe what I say and believe in everything that I have lived for, the door is open for you. Nobody can stop you by condemning, criticising or judging you.

Now, here's the tricky part. It depends on how you approach this concept. If you believe in what Jesus said and did, then you have direct access to God, but if you believe in a philosophy about what Jesus said and did then that is a barrier between you and God. Your relationship with God would be indirect.

I'd have to take a Muslim's word for it, then the real purpose of Islam was probably not to put a barrier between Christians and God, but simply a response to the latter attitude, very much in the same way that Christianity was a response to the attitude that one could manipulate God by following rules or conforming to a particular philosophy.

Jesus appears to make the relationship indirect, but actually, I believe he was just a reminder not to become a slave of a philosophy of what he said and did, but actually to internalise what he said and did. We are dead if we adopt a philosophy rather than a reality, based on what Jesus said and did.

You have probably, indeed, discovered God through Islam. I believe that Christianity is just another way of getting to God, and that the two faiths are just different ways of expressing the same thing. Christianity looks like a Crooked Path from the outside, but it's just that the tradition is to believe in a God that plays hide-and-seek and therefore "hard to get" and therefore if we were sincere we would take the initiative and try and seek out a God that we can't easily find. Rather than taking the superficial, cop-out, most obvious, shortcut approach, trying to manipulate God, we try and probe deeper.

In one sense, you may already believe in what Jesus said and did, implicitly. The trouble may be the semantics that have been built around Jesus' life and sayings. If you believe there is no barrier between you and God and that you don't have to be a slave of any philosophy, you are probably warm on the trails. I won't let the label of "Muslim" get in the way.