Archive Home Page Subj: Re:Sin of Sodom 94-09-14 11:03:57 EDT
From: Joe Uhrig
>>Note that you effectively said God (also) ("including") is that head of lettuce. Sorry Joe, but the prophets and apostles who talked and knew God don't agree with everything you say. I see God in EVERYTHING in the universe. That is not the same as saying, "God IS everything in the universe"<<
Jeff, At what point does legalistic wrangling over what NO ONE HAS OBJECTIVE PROOF OF become counter productive or even emotionally damaging? "Seeing God in everything" or "God is everything" are perfectly good metaphors of what none of us fully understand. We have to live with contradictions in religion because none of us have access to the total picture. Or as Whitman said "Song of Myself" (and I'm real sure he wasn't talking about himself):
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes)."
Just because someone has been declared a prophet or apostle doesn't mean they have any more claim to the ultimate truth than the rest of us. I remember as I was travelling the Alaskan passage, encountering a beautiful young man who seemed overly enamored with seeking wisdom from older men and was on a quest to find a guru to further his study of Tibetian buddhism. I asked him why he thought he needed a guru and what he was seeking? He said he believed that there was a point at which all things turned and that he needed religious instruction from someone to help him find it. And as we were talking the ferry was about to dock and did a 270 degree turn and from our perspective on the deck it appeared as if everything was rotating around us. And I said to him, it seems to me that you've already found it.
The point is that each of us has a center around which we turn and from which we rotate around other centers great and small. The words of phrophets and apostles and guru's speak to external centers, but burried beneath all the stuff that is heaped upon us by our culture and roles (both good and bad) is a center unique to ourselves and no amout of guidance by others can define it for us. In some respects it's like the story of the emperor's new clothes. Sometimes we simply need to let go of the clothes we have worn in the past, and start anew.