Reply #197: Precisely the point! If you have faith for any kind of reinforcer, positive or negative, that's not

[patrice]

faith. It's a quid pro quo. It's not the thing, like a marriage or whatever it is, for it's own sake, but for the sake of something else. And the life of Yeshua clearly, ever SO clearly, demonstrates no quid pro quo. He wouldn't have done what he did if he had had to be reinforced all of the way to the crucifixion for it. And then, THE TOMB WAS EMPTY, afterall, no one saw what happened and that is indeterminent, and to decide it was such and such, e.g. whatever religion conventionally says it means, again, seems to be the opposite of what people say they are referring to by means of the word "faith", indeterminent = indeterminent not some kind of guarantee, so . . . as Jeremiah 23 (the whole chapter) says the "word" has to be yours, your flesh on the line for truth, not someone-else's, your flesh WHATEVER the consequences. And then the story of Yeshua also adds to that: No more scapegoats/excuses. No deals for anything, not even "eternal life". Jesus showed us how to live our BEST approximations of truth for its own sake and none other. You need to actually BE free to BE that "Way", John 14:6, but, unlike Yeshua, most of us are FAR from free, though we're still supposed to be trying to BE that "Way" to truth, because that IS Life. And one of the most highly specific traits of our flesh, as that which is referred to by means of the label "human", is reason.

It all actually seems kind of rational to me. Too bad so much mumbo-jumbo has been made of it.

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Sorry about all of the capitalization, but I think, especially in this day of media overload, we're becoming kind of semantically superficial, so I'm trying to drill down into what I'm referring to by emphasizing certain details of it.