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Devotion to God
Because he is absolute, Jesus doesn’t offer a path of devotion that consists of daily prayer and piety to God. He wants total, unswerving devotion: You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind.
In other words, every thought must be of God and every action directed toward him. Such a teaching is unworkable except for the most pious of recluses. The same holds true for the complete selflessness required on the path of service and the total fixation on spirituality required on the path of contemplation.
But denying the world is a path to extinction, which no one can advocate. Nor can we assume that Jesus wanted us to annihilate our egos and personalities in the name of God. It’s more reasonable to assume that reaching Heaven requires an unfolding process.
Devotion, service, and contemplation remain viable ways to transform yourself, yet even the most devout Christians fall into the trap of believing that they don’t have to transform themselves inwardly, that performing enough acts of devotion will suffice or that doing charitable work among the poor and sick, or thinking about God as often as possible, will be sufficient.
Jesus warns us against this trap when he speaks, in parable form, about seed that falls on waste ground and doesn’t sprout. The seed is his teaching; the waste ground is a mind unprepared to receive the truth.
What Jesus doesn’t elaborate upon is how waste ground can be made fertile. We are neither hopeless nor fully realized in God. We turn to Jesus because he understands the territory of the unknown, the source not only of a messiah but of the soul itself.
Adapted from The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2008).
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add your comment »I would love to be "good" all the time...totally devoted to God, thinking spiritual thoughts, doing good deeds, loving everyone without judgement, etc, etc. I am not though. God realizes the shortcomings of us humans which is why he sent his son and is a merciful God who forgives.
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None of us need to be affiliated with one religion or another in order to be a good person. The intention of what we do reveals what is in our hearts. We cannot walk around believing we are self-righteous and 'holier than thou' just because we attend church on Sundays or worship five times a day; and that those who don't are bad. That in itself is egotistical and judgemental. Not something Jesus would have taught.
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Jesus did not adress his teachings to "the most pious of recluses", he adressed the common man, the hypocritical preachers and priests and the wielders of unjust authority.... His teachings are for all men, for all time, as is His love: that we should love God as he loves us, and that we should love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves.problem is we make an Idol out of the man, and all to easily ignore the message: the message of self abnegation contained in his life. To all those who say: "Jesus died for you!". I would reply : "Do you die for Jesus? Daily?" Jesus' life is the exemplar and archetype of the common path. Not difficult to understand, but hard to accept, and harder still to put in practise.
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Yes. You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Jesus was sent for a reason. There is none perfect. He came to save you and total devotion is what you should strive for every day. The parable about the seeds explains what I mentioned last week. He who does not want to find God, will not find Him. But this does not mean He will stop trying, even if the ground these seeds land on is infertile, He still loves you. He does not call you to be perfect, He calls you to accept and follow Him. The message that He is sending is not that you need fixing; it is one of love and forgiveness. HE has already paid the price of our sins. Where you spend your eternity is up to you and whether or not you want to accept this fact, because when it comes right down to it, you have to make the choice, not Him. He will not make you accept Him.
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Wonderful
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loooooooooooooooooooooool
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Almost every deed, thought I do and have is about our earth, my child, to help humanity and its processes....yet I feel like the loneliest person alive. It's not fun to be evolved and though I want to evolve more I feel like I'm a standstill and no-one to guide me, if ever there was. I have to return from whence I came to continue...making me even lonelier...I can understand why few turn to this path.
It's not truly agricultural, sometimes waste grounds are meant to tell 'it's time to move on, you won't grow prosperous here'.
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Okay let me see if I got this right you want children to grow up to adulthood over night with out teaching them pow there they are complete and perfect. Until you can take out the greed for power from their life how are they going to be with out greed. Sorry before any child will have peace to grow and learn we need to stop fighting over the garden and start tending it.
Don't look for paradise till you plant it
Love you
Daggi
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This probably explains why some so called Christians aren't very God like people......they are too busy trying to look and act like a godly person..on the outside.....and haven't really transformed to him ...on the inside...
and why some people who are not public Christians are pure of heart.....because they have transformed on the inside...where it really counts.
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The premise in this blip of homoginized, pasteurized, shotgun affect and attempt to explain scripture is a bit like watching a dog chase its tail... there is a dog, the dog has a tail and the dog is ambulatory... but those are not the benefits of the dog... its not feel good, cute or humorous.
Christs life and death were to sum up all that Yahweh tried teaching humans for centuries... you're taught right, you know what is right so do right... w/ an understanding there are consequences both positive and negative for doing the same. AND that what matters is in the heart, the minds direction to do right, do unto others as you'd have done unto you... love thy neighbor as thyself ...
Christ died and the veil was torn and the separation from God is to be no more... walk with Christ as Lord, friend and savior and Yahweh as Father... loved and respected in the same sense as one's own father should be... but thats not cool these days... honoring ones parents regardless of circumstance could very well lay the groundwork for a life of grief and resentment... decades of dissension, disrespect for authority and flaunting all forms of privacy in public, televison and movies which disrespect what is decent and decency is laughed at and mocked...
Any Mother and Father know their child will make mistakes... but after a while the NATURE of that child will surface and indicate what is drawing/driving his/her heart... a troubled soul or on that has found peace, trust, love and knowing
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