Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Religion

This is the viewpoint of Christianity I have from reading about it from various sources:

Repent for your sins and become righteous. This is more important than any ritual worship.

COMMENT:  “Take a good look at your past foolishness. Was it really that bad? Take responsibility for it, make amends, and get straight.” This helped unburden many Jews who were made to feel guilty because they could not fulfill each Jewish law in the most exacting detail.

The Kingdom of God is vastly more important than a mere hope for one’s own nation.

COMMENT:  Jesus wanted Jews to expand their viewpoint from being tribal and nationalistic to being universal. A person is not just a member of a group; he is a member of the mankind. Don’t think it right to commit sins on others simply because they are not a part of your group.

The Kingdom of God is here…

COMMENT:  The Kingdom of God is not a condition that waits in some undisclosed future. No, the Kingdom of God is a present possibility of goodness that is hidden, like a seed, inside every person.

The offerings of a contrite heart and a pure life is far more important to God than offerings of first fruits or year-old kids.

COMMENT:  One should not be so concerned with the outward performance of the laws that one forgets the spirit of the law (which emphasized love of God and love of neighbor). Jesus wanted people to free themselves from sins against their own conscience and their neighbors.

You do not have to wait until conditions are ideal in order to live the right way. A man is what he is inside himself.

COMMENT:  Get your own act together, now.

The Kingdom of God is the ultimate goal of all human effort.

COMMENT:  Wherever there are righteous people using mercy, kindness, and love as their way of life, there is the Kingdom of God. It does not depend on a certain time or certain place. People must discover their capacity for goodness and begin to live in the right way.

God did not blame sinners half so much as some people did. God is ready with forgiveness the moment a person sincerely asks for it.

COMMENT:  Your sin is really not as bad as you are made to think. Just be honest with yourself and look at what you really did.

Freedom from guilt is a profound and inspiring experience which instills one with a belief in God – same as, having certainty in oneself without pride. 

COMMENT: People of Jesus’ time responded to authority and not to conscience. To get his message across, Jesus had to use the phrases such as “Will of God” and “Kingdom of God” even when it got him in trouble with the Roman rulers who were afraid of any other authority.

Reference: Religion

BIBLE:  THE BOOK OF GENESIS

Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

This first verse of the Bible introduces, acknowledges and celebrates the fact of CREATION. Creation is “bringing into existence,” or “manifesting that, which was not manifested.”

In creation there is always a manifestation that was not there before. In a light bulb, we have a form that didn’t exist before the light bulb was invented; therefore, the light bulb was a creation. But the light bulb was created out of existing materials.

That there are the manifestations we call heavens and earth is self-evident. So they must have been created out of something that existed earlier. This is confirmed by the law of conservation of matter and energy in Physics. Something that existed earlier is identified in Genesis 1:1 as God. It is, therefore, a natural conclusion that the concept of “God” implies the causative principle as well as the materials from which heavens and earth were created. Therefore, heavens and earth are simply an extension of God.

We may, therefore, say that God created the light bulb, even though that is an event much smaller in scale than the creation of heavens and earth. In this case, God is much more than the inventor, Thomas Edison. He wasn’t the only one who contributed to the development of this revolutionary technology. Many other notable figures are also remembered for their work with electric batteries, lamps and the creation of the first incandescent bulbs. Besides, we are looking at bodies and minds, which themselves are manifestations.

We may, therefore, conclude the following about God of Genesis 1:1.

1. Heaven and earth are an extension of God because creator and creation cannot be separated from each other.
2. God is not a human like beingness. It is rather a deep abstract principle describing order precipitating from chaos.

This nature of God is beautifully expressed in the Vedic Hymn of Creation. To think of God to be otherwise is to operate from a viewpoint of mystery. Bible need not be interpreted from this viewpoint of mystery.

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