Thoughts on 2nd discussion on spirituality last night:
We were trying to define what we believe and categorise those beliefs into 3 categories:
What would be worth dying for?
What is pretty important?
What is not that important?
Having blown my mind in trying to think if eternal life is worth dying for(!!) I began to consider that everything I believe is only an approximation anyway. A bit like when I studied physics and once I understood anything, someone went and found yet another particle (or whole layer of particles). My belief in God is a belief in someone about whom I am trying to discover things. Once I think I've got it cracked then I discover that God is a lot bigger than I imagined. I'm sure of a very few things, maybe they go something like this:
* God exists
* I don't understand God
* If I did understand God then he wouldn't be worthy of the title
* God accepts me and loves me and is interested in me
* God relates to me through a complex structure involving the holy spirit and Jesus
* I don't need to understand that structure
* Existence is more than just physical
* Death is a milestone on a journey
* I can trust God
That's rather more than I expected to put on the list, but none of those things depend on my understanding them.
I think there is a difference between knowing and believing. Beliefs tend to come from the intellectual. I tend to think that 'knowledge' in this area comes from what might be termed a spiritual interaction. I would say that I know that God exists, because that comes from something deep within me. It's not something that someone cleverer than I could argue me out of. It's almost as if denying the existence of God would be denying something that defines my existence.
I like to think that Adam and Eve actually existed because it's a model I can work with and from which I can develop ideas. If someone were to come up with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary I would be happy to start working with a different model. There is not that within me that says they had to exist. Allegory is just as useful a model to me as history in aiding my thinking about God.
Next session in a month.
We were trying to define what we believe and categorise those beliefs into 3 categories:
What would be worth dying for?
What is pretty important?
What is not that important?
Having blown my mind in trying to think if eternal life is worth dying for(!!) I began to consider that everything I believe is only an approximation anyway. A bit like when I studied physics and once I understood anything, someone went and found yet another particle (or whole layer of particles). My belief in God is a belief in someone about whom I am trying to discover things. Once I think I've got it cracked then I discover that God is a lot bigger than I imagined. I'm sure of a very few things, maybe they go something like this:
* God exists
* I don't understand God
* If I did understand God then he wouldn't be worthy of the title
* God accepts me and loves me and is interested in me
* God relates to me through a complex structure involving the holy spirit and Jesus
* I don't need to understand that structure
* Existence is more than just physical
* Death is a milestone on a journey
* I can trust God
That's rather more than I expected to put on the list, but none of those things depend on my understanding them.
I think there is a difference between knowing and believing. Beliefs tend to come from the intellectual. I tend to think that 'knowledge' in this area comes from what might be termed a spiritual interaction. I would say that I know that God exists, because that comes from something deep within me. It's not something that someone cleverer than I could argue me out of. It's almost as if denying the existence of God would be denying something that defines my existence.
I like to think that Adam and Eve actually existed because it's a model I can work with and from which I can develop ideas. If someone were to come up with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary I would be happy to start working with a different model. There is not that within me that says they had to exist. Allegory is just as useful a model to me as history in aiding my thinking about God.
Next session in a month.
posted by Peter and Heather King at 1:02 pm
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