Well, it feels like it's been a long time since I've blogged, even though I guess it's not really! I'm back in a hostel in San Diego after spending 3 days Mexico building a house, which I absolutely loved and didn't want to leave! Before I talk about that though I have to talk about the rest of my time in LA/ Santa Monica!
So as you may know, I had planned a couple of days break in Santa Monica before I headed down to Mexico, to get back a bit of energy, be a tourist, all that kind of stuff. Apparently not meant to be. On my first night in Santa Monica, I came across another mission group, and decided that I wanted to know what they were on about. Basically, they are a group that live together and work together and are working to offer education to christians about some alternative views and interpretations of the bible through a series of DVD lectures, followed by a discussion with one of the team members (each person usually stays with the same person throughout all of the lectures. They're also aiming to use the media to portray a more positive image of christianity, and finding and promoting common ideals and goals that christians share with other religions. The people that work there also live together in the same house (about 11 people). I spent 1 day in their office, and only got through 3 dvd lectures (I think because I kept going off topic and asking their opinions on other things during the discussion), but I'll list what I think they were trying to tell me.
- Evil is what stops us from fully commiting to christian life and dedicating all of our time to mission (eg work, other social priorities)
- To understand our purpose, we must first understand the nature of god, which allows us to understand our relationship with god, which allows us to understand our position in the universe, which helps us understand our purpose.
- A perfected being is one whose mind is focused on god and our body is acting that out. When this happens, our formation is complete.
- When we are alive, we are in both the spiritual world and the physical world. When we die, we leave the physical world and are only in the spiritual world. There, we do not have our bodies to hide behind and so everything is out in the open and we cannot hide who we truly are or what we think/ want.
- The original human fall was not a literal fruit, but a spiritual fruit, and the sin was actually Eve commiting an impure sexual act with the fallen angel Lucifer. Eve was striving to understand the power of the parental love that God has for us, and then understood that Adam was actually her intended partner and so went to him. Because of this, the reason that we have sin in our lives is because we are children of Satan, not God.
This lase one seemed to be their most important point, and they clearly wanted me to agree with it. However, they could not tell me who had come up with this theory, and when I read the passage later there were a few things that didn't make sense to me, but they were very passionate about it! Basically, they believed that Gods kingdom would come with perfected beings (centred on God) reached maturity and got married and had God centred families. That's apparently what God wants us to do.
It was interesting, and a lot of their basic views and ideals were really good, but some I disagreed with a bit. I did really like how they took the time to discuss each section with people after they watched the lecture, and they then offered mission opportunities to people after they had worked through all of the DVD's, which was cool. I think they thought I wasn't God centred though, because I wouldn't come back the next day because I wanted to at least get some touristing in while I was there! So I went and saw the Hollywood sign and the Chinese theatre and the hands in the ground, and the stars with peoples names (found John Howard and Bob Hawk!), and nearly saw Mariah Carey (they were setting up for her concert), and wandered around LA, saw Little Mexico, all that. It was a fun day, but to be honest I didn't think it was really worth all the hype that it gets being LA.
I was going to write about Mexico now, but I think I'll let this one have it's own write up and be back (hopefully tomorrow night!) with all my Mexico fun!
Laura
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3 comments:
HI LOVELY LAURA!
Oh wow it has been so long since I read your blog-this is partly something that I couldnt help! Up here I dont have access to my optus email, so I couldnt find out what your blog address was! But now I have found you, and I have caught up on everything that you've been doing! It all sounds really inspiring and exciting, and you're meeting so many interesting people!
I hope you're going really well, and now I will be in constant contact with you again! I'm thinking about buying one of those phone cards!
Keep enjoying yourself, and i hope you have lots more God inspiring conversations with lots of different people!
Lots and lots and lots of love!
Amé
Some personal comments on original sin and "the fall".
To me the central dilemma is the observation that, while humans are capable of great love (we are children of God), they are also capable of great evil, and indeed, we all have an unloving selfish streak within us. How do we explain that? From a modern view, I see the selfishness coming from evolution. The person who puts themselves first is likely to live longer, have more offspring, and spread their selfish genes through the population. Selfless love is not likely to be a product of Darwinian natural selection. Jesus was not an evolutionary success; he died young and as far as we know, he had no offspring. So the greater puzzle for modern man is why do we possess the ability for selfless love. How do we explain Jesus other than by invoking God? The writer of Genesis did not know about evolution, so he assumed the good was the norm, and set out to explain the selfish streak.
To me, your Santa Monica friends are confusing the fact with the metaphor. God is our father in the sense that we can see God in people, especially Jesus. We did not get our chromosones from the devil or from God. Only humans can pass on human chromosones. (I see the same problem in taking the virgin birth of Jesus literally.) Of course the Biblical writers did not know about egg cells, much less chromosones.
So I would see some truth in their statements. The selfishness that comes from our evolution does limit our ability to express our better nature, the "God in us". Overcoming that selfishness or self-centred-ness can well be described as the coming of the Kingdom of God, but again, that is the metaphor; I don't see God moving into Buckingham Palace.
There is another interpretation of the Genesis story that always appealed to me. Note that, before the story of the fall, the man is given "dominion over all the earth". What does he do? He lets the snake and the woman tell him what to do! The "sin" is refusing to accept freedom, and take responsibility for his actions. That tendancy also is part of being human. We value freedom, but we like to have someone else take the blame if it goes wrong. We like someone else to tell us what to believe, rather than having to struggle through it ourselves. "Just give me the answer."
I had better stop before this turns into a thesis.
Dad
Hi there,
Posting thoughts on a 'public' site like this is really scary for OLD people like me, but since you now have me with a Facebook account, I guess I can try and be fully 'hip' (your word!) and do this too.
I just have trouble with the concept (and always have had, but was surprised when in the US to discover that it is a widespread belief there - dad says it is just the Catholc (ie RC) theology) that man is basically bad and saved by Christ's sacrifice. Seems to me that each person is given the power to decide their life, and Christ offers salvation by example and teaching - that sounds a bit of an inadequate description of his role, but he is definitely not just the human sacrifice to the heathen-like gods to appease them and earn our redemption, and we are not inherently bad.
Love,
Mum
ps as you know, this is my second attempt to post this - having gathered up courage and typed my message, blogspot went off air on me. It also thinks I am 'David', but let me assure you I am not.
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