Ask me to ask you something!
Feb. 4th, 2004 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
percivalYes, it's meme time again.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cynthia_black asked me:
1. What is your favourite music?
Ska, dance, melodramatic rock, lounge music
2. How many books do you own?
Dunno. 300+ in Edinburgh, many more in Germany.
3. Which country in the world you haven't yet been to would you most like to visit, and why?
Iceland (geography, friends); Finland (geography; learnt the language once); Canada (geography); Japan (religion)
4. What is your preferred comfort food?
Grande skimmed decaf latte & biscotti, Starbucks. Other coffee shops tend to use espresso that is too bitter for my taste. Failing that, a brownie or a rich tea biscuit with milky coffee will do.
5. What is your view of God?
The force of love, the ground of life, not gendered, with no beginning and no end. The Light, the Truth. That which is, undivided, whole, peaceful.
If you seek for God with a sincere heart, you can find God. Periodically, teachers of humankind emerge who have a special knowledge of God. In their teachings, they transmit that knowledge in a way that is suitable to the culture and age they lived in. To me, Jesus was one of the most eminent of those teachers.
Since it was through Christianity that I first encountered God, I still hold Jesus in very high regard and accept him as one of my two main teachers. (The other one is the Buddha.) But I do not believe that he was the actual son of God. Rather, I conceive of him as a human being, albeit an extraordinary one, and as a devout Jew, who had an astonishingly deep understanding of God and knew how to mold this understanding into teachings and parables that are accessible to everybody, theology degree or not. Paradoxically, I feel much closer to Jesus the Jew than I ever felt to Jesus the Son of God.
(queenriley, you may be amused to hear that at some point in my teens, I decided that if I could not believe in the resurrection anymore, I would become a Jew. Turns out that now I've lost my belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, I turned to the Quakers and Buddhism instead. Funny that.)
I find it difficult to reconcile my view of God with a view where people who do not seek God through Jesus are condemned to eternal damnation. I also do not believe in the existence of a Hell except for a very abstract view that defines Hell as being "distant from God".
********************************
If you want me to ask you five questions, drop me a line!
cynthia_black asked me:1. What is your favourite music?
Ska, dance, melodramatic rock, lounge music
2. How many books do you own?
Dunno. 300+ in Edinburgh, many more in Germany.
3. Which country in the world you haven't yet been to would you most like to visit, and why?
Iceland (geography, friends); Finland (geography; learnt the language once); Canada (geography); Japan (religion)
4. What is your preferred comfort food?
Grande skimmed decaf latte & biscotti, Starbucks. Other coffee shops tend to use espresso that is too bitter for my taste. Failing that, a brownie or a rich tea biscuit with milky coffee will do.
5. What is your view of God?
The force of love, the ground of life, not gendered, with no beginning and no end. The Light, the Truth. That which is, undivided, whole, peaceful.
If you seek for God with a sincere heart, you can find God. Periodically, teachers of humankind emerge who have a special knowledge of God. In their teachings, they transmit that knowledge in a way that is suitable to the culture and age they lived in. To me, Jesus was one of the most eminent of those teachers.
Since it was through Christianity that I first encountered God, I still hold Jesus in very high regard and accept him as one of my two main teachers. (The other one is the Buddha.) But I do not believe that he was the actual son of God. Rather, I conceive of him as a human being, albeit an extraordinary one, and as a devout Jew, who had an astonishingly deep understanding of God and knew how to mold this understanding into teachings and parables that are accessible to everybody, theology degree or not. Paradoxically, I feel much closer to Jesus the Jew than I ever felt to Jesus the Son of God.
(
queenriley, you may be amused to hear that at some point in my teens, I decided that if I could not believe in the resurrection anymore, I would become a Jew. Turns out that now I've lost my belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, I turned to the Quakers and Buddhism instead. Funny that.)I find it difficult to reconcile my view of God with a view where people who do not seek God through Jesus are condemned to eternal damnation. I also do not believe in the existence of a Hell except for a very abstract view that defines Hell as being "distant from God".
********************************
If you want me to ask you five questions, drop me a line!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 07:34 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-05 08:30 am (UTC)1. What exactly are you doing your Ph.d. on?
2. Why that topic?
3. Why that uni?
4. Do you regret it sometimes?
5. What do you believe in?
hello!
Date: 2004-02-04 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-08 04:26 am (UTC)That is so my religious belief too!
can i...
Date: 2004-02-15 09:39 pm (UTC)I was reading a post on guttaperk's page to which Brightfame was responding (they are both 'real' friends of mine) when i came across your name. I really enjoy reading your entries and find that my thinking and feeling is similarly aligned with yours. This post on religion spoke specifically to interests which i am currently exploring.
When tell people about what religion i am i commonly say, i'm a practising buddhist who still holds on to my christian history. I was intrigued by ur posts and hope to add you to my friends if that's okay.
I sincerly hope all is well with u and urs.
cheers.
Re: can i...
Date: 2004-02-17 04:29 am (UTC)