[net.religion] Random Questions

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