Somebody wanted to remind me of the one of the more famous Biblical passages. It was sent without explanation. Could it apply to the Iraq war? The Reggae war? Blogging abuses?
I report, you decide.
“You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor
and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of
your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and
on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the
unrighteous.
- Matthew 5:43-45
That’s of course Jesus C. speaking – for the benefit of my fellow heathens. Certainly words to live by in any case.
49 comments
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March 29, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Anonymous
His name is Yeshua. Jesus is a transliteration of Yeshua from Aramaic to Greek then to English. Yeshua is a more direct transliteration from Aramaic to English. That you like the message places you one step removed from being a Chrsitian Eric. In fact, Yeshua noted that people believed or not mostly depending on whether they liked the message. I see a great transformation overcoming you. Perhaps you will be the new Paul.
March 29, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Anonymous
“for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good…”
she makes her ‘reggae rising’ for the evil and the etc.
March 29, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Eric V. Kirk
Perhaps you will be the new Paul.
I have no intention of ever running for District Attorney.
Budda boom.
March 29, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Anonymous
Spare me the religious bullshit. There is no god. This person is delusional and believes the Earth is only 5000 years old. Tell them to fuck off.
March 29, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Anonymous
Thanks for the smile, DA would probably not suit you.
March 29, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Anonymous
Why would you not run for DA? It’s a steady 133k a year Eric, and exclusive underground garage parking at the courthouse.
March 29, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Anonymous
So basically, love your enemy because god shits on everyone equally.
March 29, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Stephen Lewis
His name was Jesus Christ since the New Testament Gospels were written in Greek, not Aramaic which none of the NT writers seem to have known very well, e.g, the mistranslation of Mary’s Jewish appellation, “the women’s hairdresser”, “mgadla nshaya” in Aramaic, into Mary Magdalene in Greek.
The wisdom saying by Jesus is especially relevant for those using religion as weapon against peace and harmony between peoples. Would that Christians follow Jesus instead of Paul.
March 29, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Anonymous
Would that Steve follow Jesus’ advice in his dealings with “progs” and “enviros”.
March 29, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Anonymous
and Jews
March 29, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Stephen Lewis
I certainly do.
“Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Mt 12:34
“Woe to you,, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you all those entering to go in.” Mt 23:13
“Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed.’ And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’
They answered him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will be made free?’
Jesus answered them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill me, because my word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.” Jn 8:31-38
“Indeed I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie–indeed I will make them come and worship before your feet, and to know I have loved you.” Rev 3:9
There’s a spiritual war going, folks, in case you haven’t been following the signs of the time.
March 29, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Anonymous
Steve Lewis is a nut.
March 29, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Eric V. Kirk
Spare me the religious bullshit. There is no god. This person is delusional and believes the Earth is only 5000 years old. Tell them to fuck off.
Angry much?
But maybe I’m due for a thread on the existence of God.
Thanks for the smile, DA would probably not suit you.
It wouldn’t. Not that I don’t respect those who do, but my own personal views and sentiments would make that role problematic for me. Public defender maybe.
Why would you not run for DA? It’s a steady 133k a year Eric, and exclusive underground garage parking at the courthouse.
More can be made in the private sector, if that’s your goal.
March 29, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Eric V. Kirk
This person is delusional and believes the Earth is only 5000 years old.
Had to separate that one. I don’t believe that person said anything about it. Why do you assume that?
March 29, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Anonymous
The worlds second most ask question; What does the “H” stand for in “Jesus H. christ”
From Wicapedia:
The Greek name of Jesus, is transliterated “IHS,” “IHC,” “JHS,” or “JHC.” Since the transliteration “IHS” gave rise to the backronym Iesus Hominum Salvator (Latin for “Jesus savior of men”), it is plausible that “JHC” similarly led to “Jesus H. Christ”.
And now you know the rest of the story!
March 29, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Eric V. Kirk
I always thought it was “holy” because of the exclamation “Holy Christ.”
March 30, 2007 at 12:25 am
Anonymous
There’s a spiritual war going, folks, in case you haven’t been following the signs of the time.‘
There has always been a spiritual war going on at all times, on Earth.
March 30, 2007 at 12:31 am
Anonymous
Atheists should call these faith mongers on the terrible disease of faith. Eric I encourage you to watch these videos. In fact I encourage you all to do so. This is a BBC video by Richard Dawkins, famed professor and author. It also includes a typical conversation with a wack job christian, aka Ted Haggard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYJeP9q3Z0s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-koIZhXQDvs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SAgLVU_3VU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YACj__MCboU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP9aDttADcg
March 30, 2007 at 2:04 am
Stephen Lewis
Nicholas Copernicus,
Sir Fancis Bacon
Here’s a list of dumbbells and crackpots who believed in God.
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Rene Descartes
Isaac Newton
Robert Boyle
Michael Faraday
Gregor Mendel
William Thomson Kelvin
Max Planck
Albert Einstein
March 30, 2007 at 2:11 am
Anonymous
Faith is an abdication of personal responsibility. Simple as that.
March 30, 2007 at 2:45 am
Stephen Lewis
And that’s why our nation’s founding fathers had so little of it. As did those listed above. They all were off guzzling beer and chasing whores when they weren’t gambling the family fortune away.
March 30, 2007 at 2:55 am
Stephen Lewis
Some people think belief in God and spiritual reality is magical thinking and a waste of time at its least harmful level and a dangerous drug to society at its most diabolical level. Yet others know that a world without magic is a dead world.
To enter the Kingdom one must become as little children. The world is new to them–filled with magic.
‘Jesus said, “The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live.”
–Gospel of Thomas
March 30, 2007 at 3:10 am
Eric V. Kirk
Steven – Einstein was pantheistic. He didn’t believe in God.
March 30, 2007 at 3:12 am
Eric V. Kirk
There has always been a spiritual war going on at all times, on Earth.
But not on Saturn?
March 30, 2007 at 3:17 am
Anonymous
After dinner this evening I turned on kmud. I missed the first half of the talkshow but listened for a while to some ‘spiritual teacher’ blab on and on about “surrendering one’s will” Following BS like that will make you into someone without purpose. Which in turn makes your life meaningless. Without willful intent and purpose your mind becomes mush and you are ready, like sheep, to be led anywhere.
March 30, 2007 at 3:18 am
Anonymous
I find it funny that in the past steve has defended his anti-Semitism and overall Jew hate by saying he dislikes all religion. Yet here we have him quoting Christian scripture and encouraging people to embrace all things magical. Steve, I understand you predisposition toward fringe thought, and as such It is no surprise you see no difference between Harry Potter and the Pope. I would have thought you to be slightly more sophisticated in regards to your rabid bigotry.
March 30, 2007 at 3:42 am
Anonymous
Jesus was the True Messiah and Steve and everyone, can now accept him into their heart as their personal Lord and Savior. Amen
March 30, 2007 at 6:22 am
Anonymous
Let me paraphrase Steven Lewis: Jesus hated the Jews so I’ve been right all along.
BTW Lewis has been tossed off more religious discussion blogs than anyone online.
He is planning a trip to Israel with his sword.
March 30, 2007 at 10:42 am
Stephen Lewis
Where have I said I dislike all religions? I do find fault, lot’s of them, with ORGANIZED religions, especially the traditional Abrahamic ones, but that’s not unusual for intellectual believers in God. I follow the Gnostic solitary path which holds that each one had to forge their own personal relationship with God, no organized religion else can do it for them. It is very akin to the Cheyenne philosophy that “No man can tell another what to do”. No one on earth can tell another how to believe in God.
Heavenly Intercessors are excluded from this category. Jesus Christ is the primary Heavenly Intercessor sent from God. And I do try my best to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.
By following the teachings of Jesus Christ, by understanding why Jesus was so very anti-Pharaisic Judaism (from which modern rabbinical Judaism developed), I have found that Jesus’ position on Jews elicits censorship from the traditional Christian and Jewish religious discussion websites. I once posted direct quotes from the Gospel of John on Beliefnet, the largest Internet religious talkboard, and the post was deleted by Bnet monitors as “anti-Semitic”.
As for getting kicked off “more religious blogs than anyone online” that’s a fairly gross exaggeration of what I did state which is holding the record for getting kicked off Beliefnet. com. They are quick to censor more posters in my experience than any other talkboard venue, especially anything remotely suggesting “anti-Semitism”. Jewishperson and the Jewish anons would love Beliefnet’s keeping the world safe from critics of Zionism and Israel. ABC network owns Beliefnet and Steve Waldman is its CEO.
And I am not planning a trip to Israel with Paxcalibur. I already did it back at Easter in 2003 and was honored by over 500 Palestinian Christians in Nazareth. Paxcalibur is now the newest religious icon to grace the Church of St. Mary in Nazareth, Israel. They have invited me back to participate as I did before in their annual Easter procession but I have to postpone my return until later this year or at Easter of next. Contrary to my fan club, I have many friends and I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone on earth’s, God has blessed me with so many rich life adventures and experiences that no amount of money could ever purchase. God is Good!
And eric? You’re wrong. Einstein did believe in God.
“Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking about time, gravity, and the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2). Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe. The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: “Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in “Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists.” This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: “I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” Einstein’s famous epithet on the “uncertainty principle” was “God does not play dice” – and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed. A famous saying of his was “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
March 30, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Anonymous
Religion is the excuse used by members of one group to attack and kill members of another group.
Diamond, GUNS GERMS AND STEEL
March 30, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Anonymous
“the conversion of matter to energy (E=mc2)”
It’s actually the equivalency of matter and energy.
March 30, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Stephen Lewis
You are leaving out all the other social turf wars men engage in to establish and defend their territory. It isn’t just religion that men will make into weapons against peace but practically anything that can be construed as territory for possession, e.g. ideas as well as religious formulas.
One of the main reasons I am a Christian and not say a Buddhist or Sufi is that Christianity contains the most powerful set of ideas and especially dramatic image of male self-sacrifice of power for love of humanity that exists. In other words, my interpretation of Jesus’ sacrifice is biologically and not theologically based yet I arrived at this belief via a profound mystical experience.
My personal Christian belief system isn’t much like the traditional (Pauline) Christian one but it does share in many of the major elements of Gnostic Christian theology, especially the emphasis on establishing individual revelation and relationship with the Creator.
March 30, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Eric V. Kirk
Sorry Steven.
http://skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id8.html
March 30, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Stephen Lewis
Sorry, eric, you didn’t read your source carefully. In it Einstein states:
“From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist…. I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being.”
Of course to a Jesuit, Einstein’s opinion of his personal beliefs would appear atheistic but he held that “God does not play dice with the universe” which is the fundamental process, random chance, by which atheists believe the universe evolves.
March 30, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Eric V. Kirk
Key words in there, “you may call me an agnostic…”
March 30, 2007 at 7:48 pm
jahlove
But do YOU believe in GOD??
March 30, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Eric V. Kirk
I’m agnostic, but open to it.
March 30, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Anonymous
Do you see that there is a divine design? A divine intention or purpose?
March 30, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Stephen Lewis
eric, you’re going all over the board now with Einstein’s beliefs:
Originally you said:
“Steven – Einstein was pantheistic. He didn’t believe in God.”
Now he’s “agnostic” your post above implies. Actually, “pantheistic” implies a believe in God, “theo” remember–i.e., pantheistic– “God is everywhere”
March 30, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Eric V. Kirk
He commented once about God being all of us and everything. But I didn’t read the statement as literal, anymore than his dice rolling comment.
March 30, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Eric V. Kirk
Anon 1:31 – as I said, I’m open to the possibility. I’ll elaborate later when I have some time.
March 30, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Anonymous
In the bible, it teaches us to believe as little children believe. As a child, I believed as a child, and learned the lessons of my folly.
As I became an adult, I had learned my lessons well. Now I have left childish things behind. Reality is those things that you can touch and perceive.
I would like to believe in all the wonderful things that religion teaches. But I have seen the lies. Enjoy your heaven, too bad I won’t be there to say “I told you so” when you molder into dirt.
An agnostic has a clear open mind, and is likely to treat his fellow man better than a “believer” because he knows that this is all there is, and you need all the friends you can muster to live your life well! The agnostics legacy will be having people love them long after they are gone.
March 31, 2007 at 12:35 am
Eric V. Kirk
Anon 4:09 – that’s western ethnocentricity at its worst, when you can find no value in a perspective other than your own.
The universe is a big place. I don’t have many answers. I don’t even have all the questions.
March 31, 2007 at 12:48 am
Anonymous
04:09:00 PM
The love that others have for someone long after there gone, and the tears… is what I personally call the manifestation of spirit, as in spiritual, right here and now.
As for religion and the Bible and heaven and all of that…that’s an interesting bunch of stories. So are Grimm’s fairy-tales.
March 31, 2007 at 1:20 am
Anonymous
Eric youve turned into a Nihilist more than anything. Just look at Hank Sims – thats where youre headed.
Following that logic train theres no reason to oppose fascism. No reason to fight poverty. No reason for the profession of law.
Do you want to be a Hank Sims? Do you want to see an elderly woman shot in the back of the head by the police and go, “Oh, I don’t have all the answers, and I certainly don’t have all the questions…”
Grow a spine Kirk, live up to your last name.
March 31, 2007 at 3:17 am
Stephen Lewis
Hey, that’s my blog host yer bashing, buddy. Without eric here being all liberal and everything how could I plaster my world-saving insights all over his blog?
Don’t listen to him, eric. Listen to me. Now what you should be doing is this to find God:
Look for synchronicity events with religious information happening to you. There’s no other way to confirm Something outside of you is there, Something with the ability to “arrange” the universe and your life to bring you what you need to open your mind to the reality of the spiritual world underpinning the world of the senses. Look for Signs, eric, Signs of God.
Try looking Signs for the next 666 days and report back to me.
April 1, 2007 at 3:26 am
Eric V. Kirk
Anon 6:20 – fyi, “kirk” means church in ancient Scottish.
And what does agnosticism have to do with fascism? Does Hank believe in God?
April 1, 2007 at 3:52 am
Eric V. Kirk
Stephen – as it happens I woke up to crop circles in my lawn this morning.
April 1, 2007 at 8:16 am
Stephen Lewis
eric, stop smoking that crack in the morning. Those weren’t crop circles-they were piles of dog poop. And take those Redwood Realty Signs off your lawn too while you’re at it.