You are DEFINITELY not a Catholic......

And I guess the majority of Americans could not be called Christian under the "do not take up the sword" part...

Hmm interesting

West and Pericles,

"... guided only by people who have an absolute and overt interest in their particular individual interpretation." - West

As Michael Polanyi notes the idea of worship is not the exchange of information, rather to "indwell" in worship. Objective analyses are difficult from this starting point. Relatedly, "authoritarian traditionalism" (Church/Priest/Minister) makes it hard to become an individualist progressive in a congregation. I have had students disagree with me in open class, but I am yet to see a church member challenge a priest, during a sermon in open church. The attitude to knowledge discovery and the potential synthesis of ideas is a canyon apart in a lecture vis~a~vis a sermon. The Church dictates the programme and said programme appears self-serving and appears to reinforce a "denominational" attitude, rather, than a question to test posits, even the quest for god through the lense histographies, which stand outside the theocrasia.

The early Christian Church was based on house and small Jesus-group workship. There was a strong focus on martyrdom and virginity. A Martydom was seen as a "second" baptism and martyrs-elect were said to have the power to forgive sins. This later was moderated, wherein persecuted/tortured but released Christians could forgive sins. The Holy Spirit came upon the martyred and later the pursecuted.

Independently, opportunists were building an organised Church, which would assume the Confessors and the lay members, under politically motivated bishops, whom put themselves above the Confessors and the lay members. The bishopss like with the Isalmic leaders led stood there distance will calling others to fight the good fight and die at the hands of the Romans. The first 10-12 bishops of Christianity were either Jewish or had their titles fabricated by later writers "spinning" translations.

[Main source: Robin Lane Fox]

Philo,

If Yahweh's behaviours in the OT were replicated in front of the apparently humanist NT Jesus, would Jesus deem Yahweh to have sinned? If god is perfect, why would emulating Yahweh's genecide in the Middel East [The Flood] be sinful [nuke the Aswan dam] ?

When did Hermes promote the Ten Commandments of God? That's right. Hermes wasn't a spokesman of God. Therefore he didn't say what God would have him communicate to the world.

Not all spirits are alike. Spirits differ in character, some with malice aforethought, some with God in mind. l John 4: "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits ot see if they are from God." As one tests humans, test the spirits.

Malicious spirits tend to tell humans something they cannot test e.g. that there are multiple lives to live for each human.
How would that be tested? New Age spirits tell their human channels that the latter have had past lives. This is untestable.

Telling humans that humans never die is perpetrating a fraud on the human who believes it. That human will die, and be dead (no future lifetimes) and it will be irreversible.

The purpose of telling a human that he or she will never die (i.e. will have multiple lives) is to remove the one choice the human has to have true eternal life, by lying to that human about the future.

If that isn't malicious,what is? Removing true choices is malice filled. And unclean spirits do it with polished advertising techniques -- they gloss up their false alternatives, the better to be believed.
That is, they play to the weaknesses of the particular human they are targeting. Have a big ego? They play to that. Have a small ego? They play to that. Have pride of appearance? They play to that. Have a fear of old age? They play to that. Whatever it takes.

Carl Jung, one of the original New Agers, helped eliminate the idea of spirits from the modern lexicon of legitimate thoughts with his concept of the collective unconscious. Messages he got from the spirit Philemon he walked and talked with, Jung said came from the "collective [human] unconscious." Who is Jung that "modern man" should follow him? He was an occult founding father of psychiatry.

See what happens when you start talking about spirits........
Gibberish and BS starts spewing forth from the lips and fingertips of people once thought to be sane. Jung was a big believer in dream interpretation, but all of that doesn't really have a basis in fact or proper research either. The spirits I prefer are those distilled by monks.

Bugsy,
Interesting. When the ancient Greeks began to embibe fermented drinks and discovered they caused weird and uncontrolled behaviour they assumed the participant was filled with a spirit that was released by the drink. Hence the name spirits when refering to alcoholic drinks.

The use of the term spirit in Christianity refers to a belief system that influences and controlls behaviour. Test every spirit means test the thought, motivations, and outcomes of a belief system to see how it encourages moral excellence and blesses life, relationships and community.

Truth is truth no matter who expresses it, and is not the exclusive property of any person, or system of belief. "love your neighbour as much as you love yourself" is a Christian truth and if practised will fulfil outcomes of blessing for life and community. Understanding Christianity in reality means witnessing the love of God expressed in human relationships. The expression of Love is a spiritual quality and identifies the character of God - for God is love. The spiritual expression has healing properties to relationships and community - it is the truth - it is the blessing that identifies its sourse.

Going by this thread god has manifested himself as the Titanic, yes it took the movement of atomic particals within free space to bring the physicality of both boat and iceberg to truth with absolutist consequences. Same could be said for the routes of electrical charges in your heads in their desperation to see demons and gods within squinting sight so believable but not so pandemic as to convince all the people all the time.

Atomic physics screams out that most of the universe is made of nothing. In that sense only nothing is everywhere and god being everywhere when the only thing everywhere is nothing. God is therefore nothing. Dust off your old logic tables philosophers it holds true.

Philo, Hawaii et.al. when you cannot find your car keys do you believe they have actually "vanished" into thin air?

P.S Jung's bent was the universality of symbolism he never claimed the Yeti went through his garbage or the Loch ness monster rocked his boat.

That said Jung was wrong about the universality of symbolism. Western arachnophobes would never worship new world spider gods.