Mopac

Morality comes from loving The Truth.

If you love The Truth, you will come to realize that you are wrong, even when you were sincerely believing to be right.

Having this real humility that comes from a realization of one's own faultiness, we forgive others for their faults, for if we condemn them, we really condemn ourselves for being no better.

Morality comes from love of The Truth. Truth is the standard.

That is why Jesus says that loving your neighbor as yourself is a commandment like unto loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind.

I'd also like to point out that there are still many Christians around today that take a more iconoclastic stance on this issue. As I said earlier, I would have been right there. I realized that I was wrong.

I personally do not use images, in fact, I do not have pictures or sculptures in my home. Not even of family. However, I know I would be in error to thumb the bible over someone's head for the use of icons. I am a vegetarian. Likewise, it would be wrong of me to demand others take on my dietary choices. Wrong and totally unscriptural. The images are for those who use them.

Historically, at least in the Christian world, icons served the purpose of being words to aide in the teaching of the illiterate. It was a lot simpler even to teach the interpretation of iconography than to teach literacy in a language. Besides that, being a language itself, crossed spoken word barriers. 

When it comes to how Jews use images, it is a similar context... educational purposes. They are not to be taken as gods worthy of worship. That is the point. Back in those days and even for thousands of years since, people worshipped statues and images as being gods. People still do this today, even in so called advanced societies.

Images in synagogues of all places. Stained glass is pretty common. I believe that constitutes a likeness.

Virtuoso, a moderator on this forum is a Jew and his avatar is a stained glass even come to think of it.

You aren't even talking about what I am, you have a nonargument.

Maybe you don't really understand what I'm saying as well as you think you do.

Lets keep it simple.

The Ultimate Reality is God.

The Ultimate Reality is whatever The Ultimate Reality is.

That is not the same thing as whatever you, I, or anybody thinks or believes it to be.

Can we agree on this?

You can't even substantiate that claim.

Is it true that there are lies?

Of course God is The Truth itself. If you want to hear the case for that, I am currently in a debate with the OP

Make them to worship them.

The preceding and following verses clear this up handidly.

None of these people saying otherwise even respect scripture, they are simply trying to be destructive.

Stephen has a faulty interpretation of the scripture, and context makes this very clear. Images are not to be worshipped as gods. Jews are not to make images to be worshipped as gods.

The ark of the covenant had cherubim on it. Right here, the brass serpent. This is in the scriptures themselves.

But if you want real confirmation, ask a rabbi, because they tend to take the law very seriously. Some synagogues have stained glass windows! Come on.

So if the Jews don't accept this interpretation that all images are illegal, whats the deal? Even in the Christian tradition, they have a name for this heretical belief, it is called iconoclasm.

Well, that's just like your opinion man.

Seems rather absurd and arbitrary.

"I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

But you wouldn't say that it is objectively true that you have subjective opinions or standards?

Not fussing at all. 

What is there to respond to? I am here to participate.

Then what is the standard?

My three fvorite words are I don't know.

Wouldn't you say then that you objectively have subjective standards?

Donald Trump is possibly the greatest shit talker to hold office. I think that counts for something.

He was definitely the WWE candidate.

I think it's strange that the same people who get on Trump for being too close to Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea, or any of these oppressive regimes seem so desperately to want to continue trade with China which is the largest oppressive government on the planet.

Sometimes I get the impression that the only thing truly liberal about this crowd is their standards.

The modern left is hangover from the cold war. The end result of several generations of KGB meddling. 

If you don't have any standards, does that mean there is no intrinsic value to anything?

Is having no standards a standard?

I don't know.

I am not talking about god, I am talking about God.

So you are off the mark.

You apparently know enough about it to know that it is unknowable.

Maybe there is more to be known even that you aren't aware of.

Gnostic or epignostic?

Greek lesson

Rationalmadman you still have me blocked, so I can't respond to your posts.

The Ultimate Reality is by definition One.

There are many gods, many realities, but The Ultimate Reality is One, as God is One, and all these realities exist by and through The Ultimate Reality just as all these gods exist by and through God.

But the kicker is, all of these realities and gods are ultimately unreal. They are real only in a sense. The Most Real, True Reality is only God.

And because of this, God is savior of all worlds.

How does it not have to do with it?

The thing we both can agree on is that God needs to be defined.

And if you define God as anything other than The Ultimate Reality or one of the many ways of saying that same thing, you are defining God to be one of the countless gods who have been refuted for centuries by those who profess to believe in this God.

If you don't believe this God, you aren't standing on anything. Maybe you don't see that now, but if you can accept that The Truth is God, and that is literally what the monotheistic God is, it should be obvious.

Whatever The Ultimate Reality is, that is God.

The art of keeping it real.

Dig?

A pretty good idea.

I think what I'm really trying to say is that The Truth can be known to an extent. You might have a friend. You might know this friend really well, but do you know everything about them? No, you can't.  But you can know how to be a good friend.

So it is with God.

I'm sure you can get more out of it than that.

Like how to deal with it for one.

 I appreciate the fact that the one religion the person who goes by "madman" denounces is Christianity.

No, that is what the word means.

So we all know God exists.

As far as these other qualities, those would be discussions about God, not the existence of God.

The Ultimate Reality is God.

Whatever The Ultimate Reality is, that is God.

I am more certain of God's existence than the existence of anything else.

Everything I experience could be an illusion, and I would say even likely is an illusion, but God definitely exists.

Whatever The Truth actually is, that is The Truth.

Knowledge of The Truth is not the same thing as The Truth. 

Christianity is not gnosticism, which is faith in understanding. Christianity is faith in The Word of God, which is The Truth.

It's relationship to The Truth. A personal relationship with God, which we all naturally have as we all have our own experience.

To me I do.

And I'm sure there are others, because I happen to teach this stuff to people who believe it.

In other words, you don't respect the subject matter all, and you are not really interested in understanding it. You are approaching the subject of God in an incredibly arbitrary manner.

I do agree.

What if agreeing on definitions is not possible?

By the grace of God my mission here is to educate. I will do as God allows me.

The Truth is The Supreme and Ultimate Reality. That is what we calll God.

I don't believe that Christianity is going away any time soon. The church has survived in times of devil worship and persecution before. You can't kill The Truth. 

What is the most the enemy can do? Destroy the letter, and even that would be a difficult task, if not impossible. The spirit is where the life is. Christianity is a religion of the spirit. The Spirit of Truth.

The essence of Christianity maybe can't be simplified into Truth worship...

Christian religion is to ABIDE in The Truth.

Maybe that is more accurate.

There is some truth to everything in creation, but The Truth is God.

Christianity the name might end, maybe not, but the essence of what Christian religion is will not.

Truth worship.

This is true religion, and even if forgotten it will be rediscovered. However, even if people cease and religion with it, God will always be there.

"Where I found truth, there found I my God, who is the truth itself" 

“God is the truth in its absolute fullness. He, therefore, is the primary, the original truth, the source of all truth, the truth in all truth. He is the ground of the truth – of the true being "

These are words from some of the most respected theologians of the last couple thousand years, and if Inwere to take the time to, I could not only present a very thorough list of similar quotations, but I could also use scripture to demonstrate that The Truth is God.

So you are very wrong, and a clue to this is that you don't seem to see what The Ultimate Reality and The Truth have in common.

You can get excited all you want, but you are wrong and I showed you how you are wrong. You are simply ignoring my argument. Your passionate foaming at the mouth is not warranted.

You asked if Christianity will go "the way of pisces" in this new age of aquarius. 

Still not really sure what you mean by these ages. What makes the transition from one of these ages into another any different than the transition from September to October?

So why do you associate Christianity with the age of pisces?

What do you believe the age of pisces means or implies?

What do you believe the age of aquarius means or implies?

Why do you refer to these ages as ways?

I think you'd have to start from the beginning, because I don't presume to know what you mean by an age of pisces.

Pretty much what I'm saying.

And God is understood in the context of theology as The Ultimate Reality. Jew, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Baha'i, certain Hindu sects, etc. Etc.

Besides that, this is The Supreme Being, and the only one I recognize as God. The Supreme and Ultimate Reality.

If God is defined to be something other than this, it isn't really the God that any but maybe the superstitious or uneducated believe.

The fish means fisher of men

What is a fisher of men?

I'll give you a hint, trolling is a fishing term.

I dispute that the fish has anything to do with an age of pisces, though I will hear your case for this.

Sacred number

1

Singularity

There is 1 God

Sacred number 

2

Duality

No hot without cold, light without dark, big without small

Sacred number 3

Trinity

God is seen through The Word by The Spirit of Truth.

Sacred number 23

Chaos! Anarchy! Discord! Bwahahaha!

Time signature 5/8. Fun to tap dance to.

Michael Jordan

23

23

23

23

23

God is both male and female but neither male and female.

God is a sexless being.

It is well understood in theology that references to God having a gender in old scripture are strictly grammatical.

Both man and woman were created in the immage of God.