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Originally Posted by Catwoman
But why feel the need to label it 'Christian'? Why do you have to be something?
Why can't you just be?
Of course it's possible I'm missing something here and what I call 'now' is actually 'god' but my rational, secular mind (equally as conditioned as an irrational, religious mind) can cope better with calling it 'now'... what is god. What do you mean. Explain yourself in three sentences!
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The other explanation is that your "now" and my "God" are different things. If you have the experience that I had three times a week, you wouldn't be upright, much less coherent. No, I've experienced the "now" moments as well. That's how I know the difference.
Three sentences won't do it. But here's a start. The idea that "labelling" something is wrong is a product of the 60s, and invalid for the rest of the human timeline. I detest it. "Don't label me, I'm
unique." No, you're not.
So, if we accept that labelling is a good thing, particularly when it enables us to accurately represent something to other people, then we can move on.
The Christian experience is labelled as such because a couple thousand years ago, people who knew Christ wrote down his words and teachings. He primed us on what to expect from a relationship with him, warned us against worshipping other things that seemed similar but weren't, and said that when he was gone from earth, the Holy Spirit would take his place as a comforter and teacher until his return. When I refer to my earlier experience, I am talking about what I firmly believe to be an experience with the Holy Spirit that Jesus referred to in his teaching. Not universal consciousness, not "now", but a named, unique, individual being who communicates God's will to humans. I can't lump that in with some kind of random adrenaline dump.