The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

Not necessarily...

Fair enough.

If something was right all the time, then it is kind of nonsensical to not trust it. So when a person says those are the people you shouldn't trust, they must mean people who claim they are right but are actually wrong.

Okay, the personal experiences thing. Is it true that most Christians have a "personal" relationship with God? That's something I never got. I heard this one theory floating around. If you believe something bad enough, you can create a mental construct in your brain which contains the properties of the thing you believe in. So, in a sense, everyone is imagining God, and then interacting with this character inside their own minds.

It's specific to the USA and protestant revivalism.

I would say that all people have some kind of relationship with God (non-Christians just call it something else). This isn't overly supernatural per say. I would just equate it with "God is tugging on my base intuition to steer me in the right direction".

@Handle: I dont think thats true. The personal experience goes back to the very beginnigs of Christianity, well before the Reformation. Nearly every mainstream monotheistic religion has some equivalent. As to what it is, you sense the presence of a loving God in your life. Imagine standing in a dark room, knowing one of your friends is nearby, without quite being able too see or hear them.

edited 16th Nov '16 12:29:03 PM by DeMarquis

That's debatable

http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2006/march-online-only/your-own-personal-jesus-is-language-of-personal.html

Iirc, having a personal relationship with your God was a radical concept. Certainly didn't apply to Greek pantheon.

Well, some of them did. Didn't often end well for them.

@Handle: Well, that's clearly the opinion of one theologist. And, just to re-emphasize it, having a personal relationship with God is not associated exclusively with American evangelical protestants. The Catholics, to name one major denomination, also use this concept. And there is plenty of biblical support. The phrase "personal relationship" isnt used, of course, but the requirement to "love God" is, and that certainly describes a personal relationship to me. Here's a pretty decent take on the idea from an educated, liberal Christian: "...It would mean a focus on a loving relationship with God and others, and not a focus on abstract rules or doctrine. It would mean an experienced faith now, and not just one that looks to a book from the past. Or more precisely, it would look to Scripture not as a set of rules, but as a witness to what the disciples had experienced of God in Christ in order to get a hold of what they had gotten a hold of." That practically describes my faith.

As for the history of it, as I said there are plenty of biblical references, and it appears that the idea of a personal God was not uncommon in the very earliest Church. However, at least according to this article, the idea was lost somewhat after the Catholic Church "locked up" the Bible, so to speak, and represented God as a distant and unresponsive figure. The modern conception of a personal God then begins to develop again after the Reformation. Tyndale, apparently, had a big influence on this with the King James version of the Bible (this may be over-simplifying history a bit).

I think part of the confusion comes from the evangelical concept of accepting Jesus as your personal savior (the "Being Saved" experience). This is ""not"" the same thing, and most Christians do not accept the idea that only a "salvation" experience qualifies one as a true Christian (which many evangelicals do believe).

Gods being close or "personal" was quite common, until a shift to something more distant. The earth itself is considerably closer than the Sun.

A possible example of this would be the many gods that inhabited the islands of Japan before the Yamato spread their faith and Amy became the distant celestial god ruling over all. The dichotomy between "land gods" and "celestial gods" still exists.

edited 16th Nov '16 2:24:42 PM by TerminusEst

Probably matches the times humans somewhat managed to "tame" nature,in comparison to older times.Only for things to get rough again!

edited 16th Nov '16 2:47:01 PM by alekos23

Why does this make me think of the quote

@De Marquis: indeed, it's just one guy. My point being, there's a discussion to be had.

Amen. I'd be a lot more comfortable with Christians if they were like this rather than like Mike Pence. But I still wouldn't be entirely comfortable. Here's what the Mormons have to say about establishing and improving your personal relationship to God:

Scripture study, day and night? Is that really advisable?

I used to feel something similar. These days I just call it "me".

"The dichotomy between "land gods" and "celestial gods" still exists."

Sometimes I feel there is this dichotomy between YHWN and Jesus, one is the distant god who dosent even have a face, while the other is the personal, human part who is always there with you

Not surprising, my opinion of christianism will be "Jesus is very cool guy...but damn is father is an asshole"

Of all the possible frames they could have picked for the preview picture of that video, they chose that one?

edited 16th Nov '16 4:06:20 PM by Elfive

Dem wacky Mormons. For another take on the whole prayer and personal relationships with God, give this article a read. It outlines the Catholic take on different types of prayer, and their use as methods of becoming closer to God in different ways, as explained by Father James Martin, an American Jesuit Priest, well known as the author of several books on the topic.

This sort of thing was assumed when Descartes made his famous argument "I think, therefore I am." The part that comes next is less commonly cited, and is roughly "I have an image of God in my head that is more perfect than my own imperfect self, therefore it couldn't have come from me, therefore it must have come from an external God. And if God exists, and is as omnibenevolent as my image of him, then He wouldn't be lying to me about the existence of the material world." The whole thing was an argument against solipsism by appealing to a mental construct of God.

edited 17th Nov '16 3:36:15 AM by Clarste

'Course the counter is that the image in your head isn't more perfect than you. You just think it is.

Orthodox Christian doctrine has always acknowledged a "personal" relationship with God in the more general sense of that word: i.e., God knows and is concerned with us as individuals (though en masse at the same time, as a Church). We, in turn, may interrelate with Him as individuals in prayer, through His grace, and (for Catholics and High Protestants) through the Sacraments.

However, what folks usually seem to mean by "a personal relationship with God" involves an intensely emotional, intimate, quasi-visionary kind of back/forth that's pretty much a minority stance. It's certainly got precedents, though, in early mystics like Margery Kempe, or Sts. John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. However, the modern version pretty much got started with the German Pietists ... from whom it trickled down to the Anabaptists, and also to many forms of modern Evangelicalism.

It seems that the same words and phrases are being used to describe what are very different things.

I have trouble hearing the phrase "personal relationship with God" without immediately picturing a Gilligan Cut to someone flipping off the sky with both hands whilst yelling "FUCK YOU!"

That actually happens.

Nobody said it had to be a cordial relationship.

If its too comforting you have to start asking if you are just fooling yourself.