The purpose of life in Christianity

[Faker He-Man]

Btw - I would like to think I would be the person to allow someone else to take my place but I suspect that no human being faced with these two polar opposite choices would be able to act against their own eternal best interests.

why not?

 

[Faker He-Man]

P.s. what prompts your interest in this hypothetical question @Faker He-Man ?

I think it's a really good question that can be honestly answered. I always enjoy seeing peoples' thought process when facing that question.

 

[Faker He-Man]

Btw - I would like to think I would be the person to allow someone else to take my place but

No "buts"! If that is what you would honestly prefer to think, just change your thinking. It's not difficult. We pretend it is, but it isn't at all.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

I think it's a really good question that can be honestly answered. I always enjoy seeing peoples' thought process when facing that question.

Am I hypothetically permitted to ask what you might do?

 

[Faker He-Man]

Am I hypothetically permitted to ask what you might do?

Have you ever wept tears of joy? Maybe I'm just an overly-sentimental, softhearted sapling.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

Have you ever wept tears of joy? Maybe I'm just an overly-sentimental, softhearted sapling.

No, I have! We were created for joy!!!

I like this quote from C.S. Lewis on the subject:-

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

 

[Faker He-Man]

No, I have! We were created for joy!!!

I like this quote from C.S. Lewis on the subject:-

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Do you suppose C.S. Lewis was generally dissatisfied with his everyday experiences? It seems that way to me.

EDIT Further thoughts after reading this more carefully and letting it sink in:

There is the Greater Self, and the lowercase s, or ego "self" that is "you".

"you" are not in the driver's seat.

"you" can only create illusion because "you" are as the protagonist in the film, not the director.

This desire that he mentions, the very goal, the very search itself IS ALSO the very "self", as there is no "you" without the illusion, just as there is no illusion without "you".

In this manner the musings you have quoted are themselves the very thing standing in the way, the very thing stopping him short of the final realization.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

Do you suppose C.S. Lewis was generally dissatisfied with his everyday experiences? It seems that way to me.

EDIT Further thoughts after reading this more carefully and letting it sink in:

There is the Greater Self, and the lowercase s, or ego "self" that is "you".

"you" are not in the driver's seat.

"you" can only create illusion because "you" are as the protagonist in the film, not the director.

This desire that he mentions, the very goal, the very search itself IS ALSO the very "self", as there is no "you" without the illusion, just as there is no illusion without "you".

In this manner the musings you have quoted are themselves the very thing standing in the way, the very thing stopping him short of the final realization.

He puts it in slightly different and perhaps less ambiguous therms elsewhere in this address:-

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

God is not genocidal. Only someone who thinks every word in the Bible is the literal word of God would think he is genocidal.

How much of the bible do you read literally and how much is myth and how do you know the difference?

I think you just go by what you can get away with.

Hypocrisy and lies are a Christian forte.

Regards
DL

 

[Faker He-Man]

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

I wonder if he ever realized that all experience, even the experience of "infinite joy" (whatever that is) is a temporary distraction.

 

[Lisa]

Question for anyone: If God told you "you believed, so you are saved, and you're free to take your place in heaven, but I am giving you the choice for someone else to take your place in heaven instead"

In this purely hypothetical scenario, what is your answer?

Paul already thought that.

Romans‬ ‭9:3‬ ‭
For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
​

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[Red Sky at Morning]

I wonder if he ever realized that all experience, even the experience of "infinite joy" (whatever that is) is a temporary distraction.

From what though? His washing up?

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

Paul already thought that.

Romans‬ ‭9:3‬ ‭​

For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.​

​

‭‭

I guess the quality and quantity of people that might be saved by such an action is what we might take into account. Jesus turns the whole equation on its head here:-

Romans 5:7-9 (KJV)

7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. 8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

 

[Faker He-Man]

Paul already thought that.

Romans‬ ‭9:3‬ ‭​

For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.​

​

‭‭

Nah, it looks like Paul was selfishly extending this wish only toward descendants of Isaac. It's not the same idea at all.

 

[Faker He-Man]

From what though?

from levity.

 

[Faker He-Man]

From what though? His washing up?

I'll put it this way. Whatever it is that he had conceived of as "infinite joy", he will be eternally searching for this, but will never find it. Even if we think we have found it, whatever "it" is, there is always more and more and more and more.... Do you get my meaning? All of the "doing" and the "trying" to understand, and all the discussion in the world only obscures and confuses further. It is that very "doing" that stands in the way.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

I'll put it this way. Whatever it is that he had conceived of as "infinite joy", he will be eternally searching for this, but will never find it. Even if we think we have found it, whatever "it" is, there is always more and more and more and more.... Do you get my meaning? All of the "doing" and the "trying" to understand, and all the discussion in the world only obscures and confuses further. It is that very "doing" that stands in the way.

I understand your sentiment but it is a matter of perspective. If the lives we live now are as good as it gets (as the film title goes) we had better get on with being satisfied with it and enjoying it for what it is.

On the other hand, if the best is yet to come, nobody enjoyed a starter at a great restaurant less due to the knowledge that the main course would be along in due time!

 

[Lisa]

Nah, it looks like Paul was selfishly extending this wish only toward descendants of Isaac. It's not the same idea at all.

They are his brothers...he was concerned for them.

Romans‬ ‭11:1‬ ‭
I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.​

‭‭

 

[Faker He-Man]

On the other hand, if the best is yet to come, nobody enjoyed a starter at a great restaurant less due to the knowledge that the main course would be along in due time!

The idea is that the ego can never be satisfied with the main dish, because the ego is expecting something else entirely. That is its nature. The main dish will forever seem bland and uninteresting to the ego, and we will continually send it back to the kitchen.

 

[Red Sky at Morning]

The idea is that the ego can never be satisfied with the main dish, because the ego is expecting something else entirely. That is its nature. The main dish will forever seem bland and uninteresting to the ego, and we will continually send it back to the kitchen.

Romans 6, 7 and 8 discuss what happens to the Ego (or “I”) in the heart of a Christian. I can’t speak for anyone else but I am not who I once was.

In addition, the joy I mentioned earlier is something I sense daily in my spirit. It’s the anticipation of a country I have never visited, a face I have never seen and a voice I have never heard.