How can we step outside images of god that are centuries deep & realize they are only images?

[kpete]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by In_The_Wind (a host of the General Discussion forum).

SATURDAY, APR 4, 2015 05:00 PM PDT
You’re praying to the wrong God: What organized religion gets wrong about prayer
Here's how science and spirituality might find common ground -- and learn something about the universe
NANCY ELLEN ABRAMS


Our God-Capacity

It’s time to crack open the whole idea of talking to God. If we are in a universe now known to span more than sixty orders of magnitude, and God is emerging from the infinite interactions of human aspirations, we have to look at everything anew. We’ve already begun to do this intellectually, but can we do it emotionally? How can we step outside images of God that are many centuries deep and realize that those are only images and not reality?

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Religions offer up symbols and images bounteously, but a capacity is something that belongs to us as humans, not as members of any religion. Our god-capacity is not tied to any specific tradition or symbol. It doesn’t require any particular view of God. It’s the ability to scratch the meaning-itch with a symbol. Shouldn’t we want that symbol to represent the highest truth we know? people do indeed believe in the objective reality of their fantasies, and doing so can be wildly dangerous in this world, but trashing our god-capacity because some people do this is like trashing love because sometimes it goes wrong.

At this moment in history, what is the highest and best use of our god-capacity?

That is, what is best both for ourselves as vulnerable human beings and for the planet upon which all our lives and all our purposes depend? Like any capacity, the god-capacity needs to be exercised or lost—and is crying out to be exercised as new knowledge comes in and new generations face a changing world. The god-capacity has been used historically for great good and great ill, and it’s still capable of both. Only when we recognize that it belongs to us, not to any religion, will we realize that we could put it to much better use.

We have the power to change our images of God without losing God. This is what we need to do, given the knowledge now available, the needs we have, and the state of our world.



For Easter More:
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/05/youre_praying_to_the_wrong_god_what_organized_religion_gets_wrong_about_prayer/

[stone space]

1. Cesar Chavez had some thoughts on the effective use of prayer.

"We are militant. You have to be militant to stand on a picket line with a gun pointed at your head. You have to be militant to keep pressure on growers all the time, pushing them back from barrier to the next...We have found prayer important in nonviolent work, but it's most effective when accompanied by lots of hard picketing"

https://books.google.com/books?id=c_VE3xUR5FEC&pg=PR10&lpg=PR10&source=bl&ots=RO4GjYzcpC&sig=CX7lTxjB3XobI0M7u9hGe9kwBMU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1CnuVLCnDMWPyATEs4DIDw&ved=0CCIQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q&f=false

[In_The_Wind]

2. Locking

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