Why interfaith?

muhammad_isa said:
back to the free-will conundrum.
Overall, we reap what we sow. We wrong ourselves.
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The entire world flooded? They all reaped?

The entire city plagued?

This thinking causes folks to say things like G!d sent a hurricane to punish homosexuals...

Lol, but left Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin run rampant and kill millions...or did the millions reap what they deserved?

I cannot abide by any belief that purposes anything similar to be true or justified...

I would not want to live in paradise forever with those that do.
 
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wil said:
I would not want to live in paradise forever with those that do
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Souls that only want to be close to the divine source
 
wil said:
The entire world flooded?
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I don't think it was .. the account is basically true, but exaggerated..

wil said:
..but left Hitler..
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G-d intervenes as He wills. It's a bit difficult to judge the actions of THE "time Lord"

wil said:
Stalin run rampant and kill millions...or did the millions reap what they deserved?
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It doesn't work that way .. one has to see the bigger picture..
..much like those responsible for climate-change aren't necessarily the ones who immediately suffer.
That's the whole point. Free-will allows mankind to oppress others.
Those that wrong others, such as in the holocaust, should know that death cannot prevent them from justice.
I don't know about you, but 100 years of being with violent criminals would be unbearable.

wil said:
I would not want to live in paradise forever with those that do.
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G-d knows what is in your heart, and it will be laid bare eventually.
..as I say, we reap what we sow :)
 
RJM Corbet said:
'Suffering can be holy.'
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wil said:
That was used to keep playing people enslaved for centuries.
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Bringing it out now. Are you denying the fact?

Christopher Hitchens' twisted argument casting Mother Theresa evil for spending her life picking up dying human debris from the streets of the worst slums on earth to help them die with dignity, in a bed with nuns to be there. She wasn't running hospitals. She was running hospices for the dying.
wil said:
Be happy with your lot in life...
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All I know is through the window of what I am. Spiritual laws may not be the same as natural laws. Nature is all I want to be? As in ... is it?
 
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wil said:
The entire world flooded? They all reaped?
The entire city plagued?
This thinking causes folks to say things like G!d sent a hurricane to punish homosexuals...
Lol, but left Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin run rampant and kill millions...or did the millions reap what they deserved?
I cannot abide by any belief that purposes anything similar to be true or justified...
I would not want to live in paradise forever with those that do.
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I quite agree, I argue when people suggest any kind of 'just desserts' be it ensconced in scripture or the idea of karma.

There were strong links, in the Old Testament, regarding sin and suffering. The OT traces the development of doctrines in the face of changing times. Job is an extended meditation on how and why God might let bad things happen to good people. Conversely, wo/men of all times and all ages ask why the bad flourish and the good suffer.

In Luke 13:1-5, Jesus actually refutes the OT notion of something akin to karma. 'Good' men were slaughtered at prayer in the Temple by Pilate in an act of retribution; 'Bad' men, working on a building project for Pilate and funded by monies obtained by him by selling temple treasures, were killed when the tower they were building collapsed.

There's the usual Pharisaic legal trap being set here in the questioning, but as usual Jesus takes the debate above the level of common assumption. In neither case did these men die because they were sinners over and above other men — it was common to assume that goods and ills were distributed in some fashion by God 'as He wills', but that is not so ...
 
Thomas said:
..it was common to assume that goods and ills were distributed in some fashion by God 'as He wills', but that is not so ...
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It's difficult to pinpoint the complete nature of God.
We have been given some knowledge from scripture, and our conscience and intelligence,
but as we can only imagine 'where God is' or 'what God is', we can only compare Him to this physical existence,
which is very limited relatively speaking.

One thing I'm personally sure of, is that physical death is not final.
In turn, that means that 'goods & ills' can come in this life and/or the life hereafter.
We also have to remember that God can see all .. He is aware of every person's heart, and
who will be born tomorrow and who will die.
 
Our thoughts are prayers
And we are always praying
Our thoughts are prayers
Take charge of what you are saying
Seek a higher consciousness
A state of peacefulness
As every thought becomes a prayer.
RJM Corbet said:
Has God never answered your prayer? Or have you never prayed?
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lol, as as Sunday school teacher, I'd ask the kid who said he prayed for a better family relationship what his thoughts were when his mother asked him to cleanup his room before he played with his friends, or when his dad while drinking beer and watching football told him to mow the lawn...

I'd ask if they thought G!d was able to hear all their thoughts, all their prayers, which thought was spirit acting on, how was the universe to know which was .most important, when we mostly curse and complain about the family...but only occasionally ask for good relationships.

So I'd say yes, no, and all the time to both a questions, but as usual using my definition of G!d, prayer, and answer....

G!d answers all prayers, ya gotta accept that sometimes the answer is no! (Or get off your ass and do it yourself, ie pray but move your feet) the ole teach a man to fish is involved here.
 
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RJM Corbet said:
Has God never answered your prayer? Or have you never prayed?
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I've never had a prayer go unanswered. Often in unexpected ways, but an answer nonetheless and very often a seemingly negative response, has had a positive outcome somewhere down the road. Mind you, I never pray for that which God has already provided. That is, rather than telling God about my problems, I tend to tell my problems about God. ;)
 
Perhaps God responds to the prayer of the soul?
 
The trouble with 'prayer' is that most of us are taught how to pray as kids (if at all) and never really question what prayer actually is.

I would say if prayer is the same as every other activity, then it's not prayer. Prayer is something specific, which is why it has its own name.

Thoughts from Frithjof Schuon:
Prayer: The remembrance of God is at the same time a forgetting of oneself; conversely, the ego is a kind of crystallization of forgetfulness of God. The brain is, as it were, the organ of this forgetfulness; it is like a sponge filled with images of this world of dispersion and of heaviness, filled too with the tendencies of the ego towards both dispersal and hardening. As for the heart, it is the latent remembrance of God, hidden deep down in our “I”; prayer is as if the heart, risen to the surface, came to take the place of the brain which then sleeps with a holy slumber; this slumber unites and soothes, and its most elementary trace in the soul is peace. “I sleep, but my heart waketh.” (Understand Islam)
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Prayer (aim of individual): The aim of individual prayer is not only to obtain particular favors, but also the purification of the soul: it loosens psychological knots or, in other words, dissolves subconscious coagulations and drains away many a secret poison; it externalizes before God the difficulties, failures and tensions of the soul, which presupposes that the soul be humble and upright; this externalization – carried out in face of the Absolute – has the virtue of reestablishing equilibrium and restoring peace, in a word, of opening us to grace. (Echoes of Perennial Wisdom)
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Prayer (quintessential): The important thing to grasp here is that actualisation of the consciousness of the Absolute, namely the “remembrance of God” or “prayer,” insofar as it brings about a fundamental confrontation of creature and Creator, anticipates every station on the two axes. It is already a death and a meeting with God and it places us already in Eternity; it is already something of Paradise and even, in its mysterious and “uncreated” quintessence, something of God. Quintessential prayer brings about an escape from the world and from life, and thereby confers a new and Divine sap upon the veil of appearances and the current of forms, and a fresh meaning to our presence amid the play of phenomena. Whatever is not here is nowhere, and whatever is not now will never be. As is this moment in which I am free to choose God, so will be death, Judgment and Eternity. Likewise in this center, this Divine point which I am free to choose in the face of this boundless and multiple world, I am already in invisible Reality. (Logic and Transcendence
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