levasseur@morgan.DEC (Ray EMD & S Admin 223-5027) (09/05/85)
I have a few questions that really didn't fit the content of my latest postings. I guess you could call these trivia questions about Christ; things that I could not find in the Bible. Since I'm not a Bible scholar, please have patience since I'm doing a lot of catch up work. (1) On our local Engineering Network we have notesfiles, somewhat similar to newsgroups. There is a Bible.not which had a question that I've always been curious about, "Did Jesus ever laugh". I was raised to believe that he was the man of perpetual sorrows. True, Christ suffered terribly on the cross but did he not come to share our humanity as well as to preach to us as the true Messiah? I can remember an old issue of Playboy magazine that had an article about Jesus. The picture showed him clutching at his robe, laughing. Supposedly in scripture there is no mention of him having a good laugh. I would think that he would have laughed or at least smiled at the antics of children. If he enjoyed the multitudes, he must have laughed. Who wants a sourpuss God! If he did laugh and smile was this maybe a moot point that the scripture writers thought was not important enough to record. (2) I once read an interesting book "The Mustard Seed" by some Bagwhad Shaheed or other mid eastern name. It was a dissertation on the Gospel according to Thomas. Only the four Gospels were incorporated into the Bible. I guess it was God's choice to only have 4 since this is supposed to be inspired writing. Has anyone ever read the Gnostic gospels? In his brief period of ministering to us he must have said much more than that which is recorded. I read an article some years back where Christ is quoted as saying "He who does not dance does not know life". Where does this statement come from? The article referred to dance as celebration (not the leud and lacivious kind in strip joints). There was a book I was thumbing through in a Christ- ian bookstore that stated Christ commented on going bald, that it was not a measure of a man's worth. I've seen many trivial statements, supposedly by Jesus in various Christian books. Anyone know the source since I have not read the New testament from cover to cover.....barely scratched the surface. (3) I once had a book called "The Man Nobody Knew". I can't quite remember the author but I think It was Bruce something or other. Anybody ever seen it and what did you think? I had originally picked it up at Logos (Christ- ian bookstore) and would like another copy. It spent a lot of time on Jesus the person and questioned the man of perpetual sorrows story. According to the book Jesus did not think of the flesh as wicked. It mentioned after his ascention the early monks hiding in caves self flagelating their own bodies as evil flesh. The book mentioned this as a perversion of the word of love. Any thoughts since I was raised in a self flagelating atmosphere. My mother always kept repeating that God must truly love her since he brought so much pain on our family. Does God bring pain on us? I would hate to think of a God who sits up there snickering while we squirm down here, or does he suffer with us, empathising with our misfortune? (4) My old pastor and I chatted about sin. Ok! we're all sinners to some extent. We also discussed the final judgement and who would get what. Father Mike told me in his opinion, I might be surprised who gets into Heaven and who goes to the other place. Example: someone has a bad drug habit, is a slave to heroin. I find this hard to believe but the pastor said that that person may well recieve salvation; it would be the heartless, money hungry pusher who he wouldn't want to be near on the day of judgement; same goes for porno and other human degrading industries.....anything for a buck.....fuck the poor sucker who gets hooked. Any thoughts on this? Another Baptist pastor told me that God is so forgiving that he would even absolve Satan if he approached and was truly sorry for (ahem!) raising so much hell on Earth. Is there any substantiating scripture I can read that backs this up. Sorry for taking up so much space but I've gathered a lot of questions over the years since starting to turn around from my misguided understanding of God. I guess a lifetime of living in a screwed up world makes it hard to believe that there is such a loving, caring, forgiving God. Maybe one sin we have com- mitted is making God in our own image; bitchy, spiteful, full of hate and anger. Ray