Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!ukma!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: JKH107@psuvm.psu.edu (Joy Haftel) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sorry folks, it's NOT all relative. Message-ID: Date: 29 Oct 90 07:28:18 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: State Penn Lines: 68 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , davidh@tektronix.tek.com (David L Hatcher) says: > The experience of God living with in ones soul reaches way beyond >any defination as defined by man. Which is what you gave. I'm much >more interested in the religious experience of God as God Himself >is manifested with in the soul of man as the place to examine and >compare religious truths. So you're looking for a subjective answer to your question. How does religious feeling vary from Christianity to other religions? Well, I think you'll find that it is similar in most religions (allowing for some variation from the orgiastic to the philosophical). C.S. Lewis writes that the fullest religions have parts both "thick"-- orgiastic/emotional/mystical and "thin"--philosophical/rational. As most religions do have both (although there are exceptions, I'm sure), you are going to have to deal with both of them as you compare religions. > To look at the outer definitions is not looking at God as God is known >and experienced from the soul opened to God. Nor is it looking at the >place where God becomes alive for a person, again, that being with in >in his soul. Well, whatever the person believes in as a god will be experienced in the soul in a religious way. Whether it presents itself as a feeling of deep devotion or a passionate love of the divine, those feelings will occur in what I will call the "religious" center of the brain (for lack of a better term). So they will have some similarity. But what they believe to be the nature of their god will have a different effect on their actions and what attributes they assign to him. > Tell me about religion as experienced in God, not religion as >defined by man. Subjective = defined by man. I obviously cannot express what a Hindu or Buddhist or a Moslem experiences as God, as I don't have their unique experience. Neither can I give the experience of another Christian. I can only give my own experience of one night gazing at the stars, and being assured of the presence of a caring Creator. There are other experiences, but that one was a feeling of the presence of God. I'm inclined to be skeptical about it; I'd far rather use logical means of building my faith because logic seems more reliable than emotions. Faith is really the assumptions you make to build your logic on, and what is faith based on? Emotions? Guidance from God? I truly do not know, but I believe it is (in the case of Christianity) guided by God. I thus believe that while other religions may partially touch God, they are also being deceived by Satan who can manufacture religious emotions in people. > I present this question as asked by Thomas Merton in _Zen and the >Birds of Appetite_. > If a Christian mystic has an experience which can be > phenomenologically compared with a Zen experience, > does it matter that the Christian in fact believes > he is personally united with God and the Zen-man > interprets his experience as Sunyata or the Void > being aware of itself? Perhaps that could be because mystic feelings are mystic feelings, and therefore similar to each other rather than the religions having unity. > David Hatcher Joy Haftel "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh JKH107@PSUVM in the morning." --Psalms