DAVID WALSH AND OTHERS:
Thanks for your very positive, thoughtful and helpful responses to this new thread. Also, David, thanks for the comments you made about Matt 25. I have always found you to be a god-like person--one blessed with
GOD, the Gift Of Discernment.
THE INTEGRAL APPROACH TO CHRISTIANITY--have you read about it?
Integral Christianity is all about the Spirit's Call to Evolve. you will learn about the book,
INTEGRAL CHRISTIANITY by Paul R. Smith.
http://www.revpaulsmith.com/Click on WRITINGS more than once and you will come to:
Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve!
THE EVOLUTION OF ALL RELIGIONS into deeper, wider, and higher dimensions is crucial to the evolution of human spirituality and consciousness.
In this book Smith presents just such an inviting and expansive pathway for the Christian religion that is faithful to a Jesus-centered theology of biblical interpretation and illuminated by the emerging field of integral philosophy.
The perspectives of integral theory and practice articulated by Ken Wilber help uncover the integral approach that Jesus advocated and demonstrated in the metaphors of his time – and that traditional Christianity has largely been unable to see.
Smith incorporates elements of traditional, modern, and postmodern theological viewpoints, including progressive, New Thought, and emerging/emergent ones.
However, he goes beyond all of them and moves to a Christianity that is devoted to following both the historical Jesus and the Risen Cosmic Christ whose Spirit beckons to us from the future.
He says, "The oldest thing you can say about God is that God is always doing something new.
Jesus pushed his own religion to newness by including the best of its past, and transcending the worst of its present. He calls us to do the same, whatever our religion is today.
Jesus continues to be a prototype for all spiritual paths in their task of keeping up with the Spirit’s evolutionary impulse to welcome the next transcendent stage."
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JESUS' CONTROVERSIAL DIALOGUE AT JERUSALEM -- John 10: 22-42
Please read the words of Jesus, carefully. Interestingly, as I read the words of Jesus in the Gospels, nowhere does he say that he, and only he, is The "Son of God", and others are not.
Quite the opposite! More than once he advocates 'orthopraxy'--that is, the doing of that which is good and true, not just 'orthodoxy'--the holding, often too rigidly, of generally accepted religious beliefs, dogmas and opinions.
Ideally speaking, we need to be wary of rigid, fixed-position thinking. To serve the highest good we need to have beliefs and actions working in harmony under the gentle guidance of agape-love (benevolent willpower).
BTW, David, thanks for making your comments openly.
Did you read where the mother thread, '
Philosophy of Religions, all Religions ...' now has well of 8 million hits?
Lindsay
