Comments on: My faith healing

By: Ben Williams

Ben Williams — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:24:03 +0000

Hi. I am the former ORU student who prayed with Chip Camden the night his eyes came into alignment in my dorm room. What an incredible thing that was! I was not aware of the responses you all were making on this site in response to Chip’s original post about his “Faith Healing.” I found it just recently. I admit that I have not read every word you all have entered, but I have skimmed parts.

This recent interaction with Chip and this discussion about his “healing” have gotten me more interested in what people who do not believe the Bible do believe. I am a pastor, United Methodist, so I have been speaking about the coming of Jesus into the world because it is the Christmas season.

Planning to speak on what has been said about Jesus from various sources this coming Sunday, which will be Christmas Day, I ran across an interesting quote attributed to H. G. Wells.

“I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.” Whether or not Wells said that, it is arguably true.

The folks who put no faith in the reliability of the New Testament say that the early church made it up. They don’t know that Jesus even existed, and if He did, He surely did not say and do all those wonderful things attributed to Him.

Interesting. A cadre of uneducated, poor, nameless people in Judea made up a personality, and they did such a smashing great job with it, that their made up personality has affected human history more than any actual human being throughout human history. If that is what happened, then we might want to reconsider the possibility of miracles, because that would have been one.

Just thought I would add that thought into the mix. God bless and Merry Christmas!

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:24:06 +0000

Who knows? We have little information about where that symbol came from, and nothing earlier than the Middle Ages.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:45:18 +0000

Overturned tripod… at some point I remember thinking that someone has overturned the tripod: Before there was a Father and a Mother, producing a son. Afterwards there was a Father, producing a Son and a Daughter.
And hey, place the one motif on top of the other, and you get the seal of solomon – coincidence?

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:34:15 +0000

Memory is a funny thing, isn’t it? I’m having major deja vu about this whole interchange.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:21:34 +0000

You know… I have no idea. I was completely certain there was a statement like that, but I can’t seem to find any references to it.
As I recall it, it went pretty much like I wrote it, except in Danish.
Maybe I’ve dreamt it? Hey! Divine inspiration! Time to start a new religion :p

By: Justin James

Justin James — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:26:45 +0000

LOL, that actually happens to me all the time.

J.Ja

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:16:32 +0000

I'm not recalling the passage to which you allude. Perhaps something like Matthew 12:38-40?

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:29:23 +0000

Sorry, I mean Justin.
Brainfart. Must be something I read

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:41:19 +0000

James, about postmiracular hangovers, I think you’re on to something.
Somewhere Jesus says something like “As it was in the beginning, so shall it no longer be”, I take that to be a clause to preclude further miracles (and further prophets, perhaps, but the next supposed Christian prophet came along under a hundred years later, with Revelations). It also handily divorces the “new yahweh” from the old, there being no trace of the latter in the postmythological times that follow.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:54:28 +0000

It’s a funny potpourri, isn’t it? Banal and sublime, all mixed up.
Also in the literal translation, a pot of rot, considering the south american fascination with decay it exudes.

The image of the aleph is very powerful, it successfully boggles the mind, in ways that seem pregnant with revelation.
Trying to see it in the minds eye is futile, but imagining having seen it is not. A bit like imagining having heard a trace of the Tao, it can inspire towards a state of mind that is less far from the road – not wanting to use the word “closer”.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:57:14 +0000

I had not read Borges before, but I found a translation here: http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html

Thanks for that.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:42:26 +0000

The way I see the Tao Te Ching, using the Road image inherent in the word Tao, the one “following the road” is really standing in the trackless wilderness, trying to find the road. Except that “trying” and “find” are both red herrings. Actually it’s being there in the trackless, but walking on a road that is actually nowhere.

It’s a bit like Borges’ Aleph; it’s there, and it’s not there.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:05:36 +0000

Even Paul isn’t consistent on that score. The whole business of admitting Gentiles was pretty radical in his day, and he really sought to expand Christianity to embrace all the ideas that he considered true from other religions — he just did so incompletely. And then his writings got canonized.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:59:42 +0000

The way I read Tao Te Ching, the Tao can't be nailed down to any prescription. So perhaps following the Tao might lead to these behavioral outcomes, but their consistency across cultures (and situations) would be coincidental.

By: Justin James

Justin James — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:06:19 +0000

That’s about where I am as well. I have little complaint with the Bible itself, but I believe that there are gaping holes in it, and that traditional, mainstream Christianity tries to fill these holes with pure nonsense. I like that Baha’i fills these holes sensibly, and in a way that creates a message that I can get behind, one of universal tolerance. Also, the Baha’is that I have met have an obvious peace with themselves and the world that even when I find it in members of other religions (other than Buddhists), it usually feels forced or even outright faked. Back to, “if it works for you…”, it seems to be working for them extraordinarily well. I’ve been holding off on visiting them to read the source material, but honestly, I’m not sure why I’m being so cautious… probably because some part of me feels that it is some sort of betrayal to the Bible to check out other things. That’s something that Christians have successfully taken from the Bible, sadly, this oppression against daring to think differently. Of course, it’s all from Pauline epistles; Jesus has the whole “fig tree” analogy which is fine, but it’s the Pauline epistles that make you feel dirty just for seeing a Koran on a bookshelf…

J.Ja

By: Justin James

Justin James — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:59:18 +0000

I actually thing Lewis uses it correctly, having read the Tao Te Ching, but not the original Lewis material (just excerpts). My guess (it’s been a while since I read the Lewis stuff or the Tao Te Ching), is that Lewis feels that certain right living that is prescribed across the board by all belief systems is part of maintaining the Tao, or perhaps that the Tao itself, the harmony, leads to that kind of right living. It’s an interesting idea.

J.Ja

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:49:34 +0000

I have a lot of respect for the Baha’i. If someone wants a “spiritual” approach that accepts and encourages rationality, it would be hard to do better.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:43:57 +0000

It seems to me that C. S. Lewis is reappropriating the term “Tao” when applying it to any specific moral principle. That’s OK for his purposes, but should not be confused with its usage in Tao Te Ching.

I agree with you that pragmatism is about all we can rely upon. Even the fundamentalist’s decision to believe the Bible literally is in theory a pragmatic one: s/he believes that such a belief will be the best thing they can do for themselves.

Pragmatism, of course, presumes that I am able to reasonably assess the benefit of each of my options. That may not be the case, yet I trust myself better than anyone else.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:34:53 +0000

True. D’oh!

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:34:31 +0000

That scene in Job is pretty interesting. It reflects the Canaanite notion of the court of the gods, presided over by the chief god (El in the Canaanite, Yahweh here). The “satan” is literally “adversary” — so really just a lesser god who has something against Job. This whole book seems to come from Edomite tradition, and there’s a good case to be made for the worship of Yahweh having originated in Edom/Midian.