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To: mdmathis6
The final teaching of the Bhagavad Gita is to surrender utterly unto the Lord, the Supreme Person, giving up all fear, all other desires, all self-will - to voluntarily give one's will and one love to God. That's pretty universal. I've had some interesting discussions with a Catholic on FR - not trying to convince him to change, or he me - but one can call God many different names and He is still the same person.
89 posted on 07/09/2003 7:35:32 AM PDT by First Amendment
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To: pram
You have to recognize what you are surrendereing to, or at least thru which "portal" you are surrendereing to "God" thru.

Remember to that the Bhagavad Vita came into being about 500 BC(with various antecedents and later refinements). Hinduism was an old religion about the time Christianity came into being. Interestingly enough, Socrates was also alive at that time. The world was seeing an increase of philosophical and intellectual development all over the known world , in places disconnected from each other, all at the same time. Israel and the Hebrews were suffering the "400" silent years at that time. God was surely winking at various nations, at those pagans who were sincerely seeking his presence. What the Bible states now, is that all religions are nought, only Christ is now sufficient for salvation. A man may indeed surrender is whole will to God, only to discover that he receives his will back again, empowered as a "son of God". Jesus how-ever was to be that gate that all men may enter in. There is saftey in that portal, in that in the process of surrendering to God in the name of Jesus, a man may know to whom he is truly surrendering. Devils may masquerade as various angels of light to deceive men, to ensnare them in false doctrines or to literally possess them. By entering at the Christ gate, Jesus will ensure that a sinner seeking repentance will not let Satan deceive that man, for he declared of himself,"If any man has seen me, he has seen the father...!"

We know grade A beef as such because a generally trusted authority has certified it such...there is some faith involved with that. The Bible declares that we can know we are coming to God by accepting Christ into our lives. One has to be convinced by faith that this is so, and this faith is actually granted us by the father. The thing is..and I don't why even a lot of Christians get hung on this...is that God wants to grant this faith to any-one who, bound with sin and gagged with condemnation, is desperate enough to at least "wriggle his little finger" in God's direction.

The Hindu's highest Goal is to enter Moksha or extinction, the release from the cycle of Reincarnation, and the total extinguishing of self consciousness, the joining with a so-called universal unconsious God. The are various sub-beliefs and Buddhism is an off shoot of Hinduism.

The God I worship is personal and dynamically alive. Though we "live in God"(which Hindu's teach)"we move and HAVE our BEING"(which Hindu's and Buddhists would strongly disagree with). We are NOT GOD, if that were the case, I should have had consciousness of this from my birth! I am the only mdmathis6 I will ever be for all of eternity, the biggest promise scripture has given me regarding eternal and personal consciousness is that he has promised to give those who worship him"...a small stone with our own names written on it known only to each individual and to God himself". It is that promise of eternal uniqueness, and our knowledge of our own unique value to God(each one of us)is what Eve was truly hungry for when she reached for that forbidden fruit.

To be "like the Gods" isn't what we are hungry for; to be our true selves and loved by God is what we are most desirous of. Of a truth of irony, the more like our true selves (that God endeavors to make of us) we become, the more "like the Gods" we become.

God called himself, "I AM that I AM", and many of us when alone and meditating on our own consciousness have had that odd shattering experience of experiencing our own total"I AM" ness, a sense of our total soulishness, a sense that the universe could have existed with out us..yet here we are! We are most like the image of God in this respect, in that we have this consciousness of self(I AM'ness) distinct from all else around us. Hindu's and Buddhist's would argue this is illusion, that we must seek to lose this sense of self to escape from suffering.

God however found a way, in the expression of his Godhead "BODILY", Jesus Christ, to embrace our suffering, to take human pain and loneliness into his own consciousness while expressing his spiritual compassion for us, by dying for us so that the penalty of being in violation of his eternal Tao, his Logos, his LAW, could be lifted from us. He emptied his blood, his life out for us so that we might have life. This promised life is in essense, eternal personally and integrally centered consciousness, with a glorified body incapable of sin and suffering, yet this personal centeredness for-ever being shared with God...who after all is 'All in All'!
90 posted on 07/09/2003 10:20:41 AM PDT by mdmathis6
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