Talk religious to me...

[colliemommie]

So, flist, what is your religious state? What do you self-identify as? Are you part of an organized religion? If so, what sect? Do you consider yourself devout? How often do you attend serivces? Hw often do you pray/meditate/otherwise practice at home? If you are not part of an organized religion, do you consider yourself a religious/spiritual person? Why is my return button not working? Any religousy thoughts you want to share? How do you feel about original sin / mysticism / intercession of saints / the resurrection of the body / life everlasting? Manifestoes welcome! *Disclaimer: I will not try to argue anyone out of any beliefs, convert anyone to anything, be disrespectful or make fun. I will probably ask questions, but I majored in Religious Studies in school and I'm fascinated by all traditions, so it's coming from a place of genuine interest. Anyone who can explain vicarious salvation to me in a way that makes sense gets all the internet cookies in the world!

Comments

[sambeth.livejournal.com]

Am I too late?

I'm a lackadaisical Roman Catholic. I attend church maybe ten times per year - my own church maybe half a dozen times, and a few appearances at my sons' church.

I pray every day. In an organised way when my sons are around, and in a chaotic way when I'm on my own.

Original sin is... Um... God made man with full ability to choose either good or evil. He had to, in order for man to be an autonomous being, not a beast or a dolly, but a true companion in His creation. Man chose evil, in the bible story, which I suppose means that in order to have the capacity to do wrong we must have something wrong about us? Because it would be impossible for a perfectly good being, like God Himself, to be bad. (Although that's a paradox, because Omnipotent, so there we are, I don't know what I'm on about.)

Mysticism is cool with me, but I will have to be merely an observer of such practices - I'm not mystical myself. I'm glad mystics exist and share their insights with us, though.

Saints intercede for us because they love us and, err, God is often busy. No, that sounds ridiculous, you can tell I've never really thought about this before.

The body will be resurrected at the End of Days, I think? I'm not really looking forward to that, though.

Life everlasting is already happening in some weird eternal way which we can't perceive because of our own earth-bound judgement (Kantian category style). Somewhere in the divine realm it has all happened, and is happening, and will keep happening. I have no idea what that means in terms of events on earth which change outcomes, eg the birth and death of Christ, or my (apparent) decision to do one thing rather than another. All will be revealed after I die, or so I believe.

God so loved the world that he sent his only son to live and die here, so that we would be saved. His death = our eternal lives, because by living and dying as a man, he fully entered into and shared our humanity which enabled him to redeem us. Or rather, he showed us how a whole world, including its deity, and its creation, death and resurrection myths can all be reduced to one thing - love. Christ showed us that a flawed human love is both sufficient and necessary to redeem a broken world, but it has to be our love, our human love. His divine love is insufficient, clearly - He loved us all the time, but that wasn't enough to save us. By sharing our humanity, he forged a human loving relationship with each of us, which enables us to attain salvation by accepting Him and loving Him back. He had to die, because that's what it is to be human - all that is common to all humans can be reduced to, we are born, we love, and we die. Without any of those elements, we're not really human. That's why he had to be born too, rather than just appearing out of the sky.