I do question the value of the bible.
So in my view Christ is not a middle man nor should he be only seen as a mediator between God and humanity. He is the Son of God and we made him into something which has caused a lot of suffering.

So then for you Jesus represents something beyond the confines of instutional religions and even the Bible itself?

True enough. I can't say that I disagree.

Now of course I do question everything even to extent of questioning whether the Jesus tale is completely symbolic and not even a fact of real early 1st century history. A lot of mythological and mystery type teachings are set up that way ( not even really historical), so why couldn't this be the very same? It's difficult to say for sure...

But either way, I see this whole thing as people trying to grasp at the great unknown. The only way to do that is by symbolic analogy, metaphor, etc. You have to try and draw from the symbolism of things that are known to the mind (the earth, the sky, animals, people) in order to try and pitch it past to the actual mystery of the Great Unknown which is the meat of the matter.

And the churches are mistaking the symbolism of things that are known as if they are the final reference - as if the great unknown is literally in the form of man, or as if it's literally a mind, or as if it's anything at all that can be named or described in a literal sense. You actually have to let go of all of those things in order catch the point underlying it all.

The theists that I know who have taken their mythology to the mystery function level have a very different concept of God than most people do. You could toss the bible in the trash as the work of errant man grasping to try and understand God and it wouldn't phase them in the least. The religious institutions are rendered irrelevant in some cases, as is the very concept of a middle man anything at all. If the organization is not acting as transparent to the transcendent (the mystery underlying the metaphor) then the organization is simply blocking the way. And in a lot of ways I'd say that's true, a lot of these organizations are blocking off the deeper function of the mythological symbolism. At least that's the way some of the theists see it @ the Joseph Campbell foundation....

Tat, your question is indeed how I see Jesus and God. For me not one religion is able to comprehend their complete and true meaning, and we certainly don't need any institutions telling us how we need to look at them.

According to me there is a higher being, a powerful force we can call God, but personally I don't feel the need to fully understand God. I do believe that Jesus was his first Son on Earth, but just like we have done with God, we have created an image of them so that through the ages and certainly these days, the one institution claiming to be its representative (the church), has become totally corrupt.

Robert just posted something similar here:

http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... =26&t=4025

People have more or less made an idol out of Jesus and the Bible.

Ok so.... for a long time, i didn't know where i fit in with religion, i figured it would come to me in time ... and on my own, I tried christianity, and didn't really like the rules or policies they had or have......so one day i decided to research as many religions as i could... so i went to the bookstore, and took a bunch of books on different religions and did research online also.... nothing stirred in me at first, but then when i started reading about the history of buddhism, I got hooked on it immediately. A lot of what was written in the book, were the same things i believed in...... That's where the difference lies between christianity & buddhism.... Christians have to be in a higher power to make themselves feel better and read the bible all the time.... Buddhists Believe in themselves, in their own self worth, they depend on themselves, and not in a higher power............well that's how I feel...... thanx for listening ..... and Blessed be

lately i've been thinking how the concept of god as external doesn't work

i mean as soon as you think of god as "over there" watching you, well it makes him evil, for example, why doesnt he stop the babies dying in pain, why doesnt he intervene in the horrible exploitation of humans by other humans etc etc etc

the whole concept of god as "outside" wanting to come in is dubious

but if instead the concept is "inside" wanting to transform out it makes more sense

if god is internal, hiding behind your eyes so to speak

trying to find god would be like trying to find your glasses when you are wearing them, or trying to find your glasses when they are wearing you even.

like that saying if god forgot who he was he would be man, or if man failed to realise his unity with transcendant mystery he would think his brain was all there was to it.

if god is conceptualised as "the mystery behind all things" and that we ourselves are a part of and one with then we might be happier and get a little further.

my point is that "external" god is an unworkable concept and an "internal" god makes a little more sense (just a little)

to clarify, someone said to me long ago "i am god, i've always been god and i always will be god" ...well i thought they meant they were yahweh and that they personally had created the universe, but i see now that all they were saying was "i am one with the transcendant mystery" or "tat tvam asi" or "i and the father are one"

people are so slow to wake up to the transcendant that is immanent within them and indeed is them.

some people think "oh how egotistical to say i am god" but really isn't it even more egotistical to deny your unity with all and say "i am separate and divorced from all" you just end up alienated from even your very self.

when i look at the universe i see myself in the sense that i too am part of all that.

all in one and one in all just like a tesseract.

for ages i was looking for god and frustrated that he was so hard to find, but if i was god and i wanted a good hiding spot where would be the last place they would think of looking?

again, people think "oh how egotistical to say i am god" but really isn't it even more egotistical to deny your unity with all and say "i am separate and divorced from all" you just end up alienated from even your very self.