A spiritual view of Genesis

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

Hi Judy: You made me chuckle! How right you are. But, then you know I have been trying to understand for a long time, have it make sense in relation to my life and I think, yes, little by little I understand more and more.....how nice to know I am making progress. love, beej

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a talk on science and religion and the speaker brought out how closely Christian Science resembles the study of mathematics, that in studying mathematics, a reality emerges that is completely devoid of matter and that the laws of mathematics, unlike those of other natural sciences, are unchangeable - in other words, they are fixed facts, not changeable hypotheses. He predicted that eventually it will be recognised that everything is thought and that reality is entirely mental, not physical.

Today I noticed this article which just about sums up this L-O-N-G thread on the chapter of Genesis as discussed in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy

What Science and Health says about evolution
Jeffrey Hildner
Reprinted from the January 2003 issue of The Christian Science Journal

"All Science is of God, not man."

The "Genesis" chapter has a lot to say about Charles Darwin and Louis Agassiz, the two leading naturalists of Mary Baker Eddy’s day. Agassiz (1807–1873) popularized the study of natural science in the United States. In opposition to Darwin (1809–1882), he "held that earth’s organisms tend to become more complex and better suited to their environment over time through a series of independent acts of creation by a Supreme Being."

Mrs. Eddy respected them both. "Natural history is richly endowed by the labors and genius of great men," she wrote. "Modern discoveries have brought to light important facts in regard to so-called embryonic life." But, unflinchingly, she delivers a one-two punch to both. ………

The import of Mary Baker Eddy’s "Genesis" chapter isn’t abstract or academic. It’s tangible. "It is this spiritual perception of Scripture," she wrote, "which lifts humanity out of disease and death and inspires faith."

All the limitations and downsides of life that go along with a view of life as material (heredity, inferior genes, bad environment, competition for survival and so forth) are out the window when the origin of species is seen from a spiritual point of view.

Love and peace,

Judy

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis

Hi again everyone!

I've decided to resurrect this thread, as page 1 (which took me weeks to write) contains (to me) the explanation of one of the most pervading deceptions that has every been imposed upon human thought - the Adam and Eve allegory and the 'fall' of man. This teaching has gone throughout Judaism, Christianity and also Islam. Adam is the first prophet of the Qu'ran. This teaching has influenced probably the majority of the people on our planet, without them realising it. (For example, women will say "I have the curse" without even knowing where that belief and imposition came from)

To recap briefly - Genesis 1 is a description of spiritual reality (not to be taken literally as a 6-day material creation) all about our one-ness and original perfection. The harmony, perfection and completeness of Genesis 1 is echoed in Isaiah’s prophecy in Isa 11:1-9, Isa 65: 17-25 and also Revelation 21.

The Adam and Eve allegory is all about duality, limitation, evil, suffering and being excluded from all good.

What prompted me to come back here today was reading what Kim had posted in the Gospel of Judas thread:

One can find some names of gods in the bible, but in order to see what is actually written rather than what has been translated into English, one has to look at the Hebrew.* Starting with the first line of Genesis, one can immediately see that in Hebrew, "God" is another of those words that has also changed in meaning over the ages.* In English, the bible speaks only of one God, but in Hebrew, in over 2600 instances, the word is plural: "gods," or elohim starting with the first line of Genesis.* Since the beginning, the word has been "Gods."*
Some of the gods have been identified by name - such as Jehovah or Yahweh - who is believed to be the only god of the universe by approximately half of the people on earth at this time.* Jehovah is described as a "war god," with an impressive death count including men, women, children, babies and animals.* Although the name of Jehovah only makes it into the English translation four times, in Hebrew it occurs over 6000 times.* In English we usually see this word translated as "LORD."* (Caps theirs.)* Other gods are also named, but as stated, this is translated repeatedly into English as "God." *This in turn gives the impression that the entire bible was only referencing the words of one God - Jehovah - when this is apparently not the case.*

In some instances, different gods gave conflicting instructions.* In Genesis, for example, there were conflicting instructions pertaining to what mankind may and may not eat. *In Genesis 1, mankind is told by the unnamed elohim that we may partake of all seed-bearing fruits and vegetation on the face of the earth.* There is no mention of anything forbidden, and there is also no mention of Jehovah.* The unnamed gods in Genesis 1 stated we were created in their image.*

Genesis 2 tells a different story.* The Jehovah elohim tell mankind that severe penalties will apply if certain forbidden vegetation is so much as touched.* (The list of forbidden fruits and vegetation continues to this day.)* Unlike the unnamed elohim in Genesis 1 who stated we are in their image, the Jehovah elohim state instead that we are dust - and will return to dust - an insult that until the Gospel of Judas has been unchallenged.*

The Gospel Of Judas,
Barbelo & Long-Kept Secrets
By Mary Sparrowdancer

I’m so thrilled that others are revealing this huge difference between the two accounts of creation – the spiritual and the material.

Just to quickly mention the many Hebrew names for God. It is true that there are the names of the deities of idol-worship, like Baal and Ashtaroth named in the OT, but the prophets were not referring to several gods as Ms Sparrowdancer states, but to the nature of what they perceived was God – and these cover all gradations from inspired revelation to human opinion!

Name in Hebrew also means nature. To me, the many name

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

dear principled, first off, you said that parts of the bible are the writers' opinions. not true! the bible is "GOD BREATHED" which means that GOD told all the writers what to say! he didnt tell them" how" to say the words but "what" to say. that way people who are in their different stages of spiritual growth could understand what they were reading! why do you think we have 4 different gospels? because people of different ages were going to read them! mark was a young man,and luke was a doctor ,so you see, there were different perspectives of the same story of JESUS! secondly, GOD didnt say that he "created male and female in his image " to mean that he was both male and female, remember, he created man first, then when he made woman, he made her for as a companion for the man!!! thirdly, satan caused sin to enter the world, thats why GOD wanted to distroy theevil people in the world! when GOD made man, at first it "was good"!, then when people started to sin, because of satan,he was sorry that he had made man!

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

Hi Principled

I would just like to confirm what Venetian said in an earlier post about Good and Evil and perhaps go a little further

There is NO Good or Evil

There is only GOD who is LOVE

Good and evil are in themselves judgements dependanton perspective
Perfection needs no perspective for it is all knowing and infinite and complete - it needs no judgement - It simply IS
God would therefore need neither good or evil which leads me to think Genesis should be read again with a deeper idea - who is writing Genesis ? God or Man ?

The later NT and Jesus is remarkably free of judgement isnt it - from what i hear anyway !

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

Dear Tony,

Thanks so much for this post – now, after 6 years of writing on HP I realise why I rub people up so much – it’s all a misunderstanding! As Mary Baker Eddy explains:

The chief difficulty in conveying the teachings of divine Science accurately to human thought lies in this, that like all other languages, English is inadequate to the expression of spiritual conceptions and propositions, because one is obliged to use material terms in dealing with spiritual ideas. (Science and Health p 349)

A misplaced word changes the sense and misstates the Science of the Scriptures, as, for instance, to name Love as merely an attribute of God; but we can by special and proper capitalization speak of the love of Love, meaning by that what the beloved disciple meant in one of his epistles, when he said, "God is love." Likewise we can speak of the truth of Truth and of the life of Life, for Christ plainly declared, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." S&H 319

I totally agree with you that God is Love. Our understanding is the same:

"God is Love." More than this we cannot ask, higher we cannot look, farther we cannot go. (Science and Health p 6)

Divine Love is infinite. Therefore all that really exists is in and of God, and manifests His love. S&H 340

The Jewish tribal Jehovah was a man-projected God, liable to wrath, repentance, and human changeableness. The Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death. It is indeed mournfully true that the older Scripture is reversed. In the beginning God created man in His, God's, image; but mortals would procreate man, and make God in their own human image. What is the god of a mortal, but a mortal magnified? S&H 140

People go into ecstasies over the sense of a corporeal Jehovah, though with scarcely a spark of love in their hearts; yet God is Love, and without Love, God, immortality cannot appear. Mortals try to believe without understanding Truth; yet God is Truth. Mortals claim that death is inevitable; but man's eternal Principle is ever-present Life. Mortals believe in a finite personal God; while God is infinite Love, which must be unlimited. S&H 312

This Life, Truth, and Love--this trinity of good--was individualized, to the perception of mortal sense, in the man Jesus. (Rudimental Divine Science p 3)

In the first chapter of Genesis, matter, sin, disease, and death enter not into the category of creation or consciousness. Minus this spiritual understanding of Scripture, of God and His creation, neither philosophy, nature, nor grace can give man the true idea of God--divine Love--sufficiently to fulfil the First Commandment.
The Latin omni, which signifies all, used as an English prefix to the words potence , presence , science , signifies all-power, all-presence, all-science. Use these words to define God, and nothing is left to consciousness but Love, without beginning and without end, even the forever I AM , and All, than which there is naught else. (Message to 1902 p 7)

I know that that absolute, inclusive, unconditional, divine sense of Love is what you are speaking of too Tony. However, some might mistake the word for its human derivatives and think of sensual love or possessive love, or the exclusive love of tribe or gang.

So let’s get back to your argument with my use of the word good. I completely agree with every word you’ve written above, except your opinion that good is only a judgmental term and lumping the first chapter of Genesis together with its counterfeit and labeling them both as human opinion! Many New Agers (for want of a better umbrella term) are repulsed by moral judgments and equate the word “good” with good morality – the opposite being sin. They see a religious sense of good as being governed by the doctrines of the religion and also see that on every human level, good can be subjective – what is goo

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

Good and evil are in themselves judgements dependanton perspective
Perfection needs no perspective for it is all knowing and infinite and complete - it needs no judgement - It simply IS
God would therefore need neither good or evil which leads me to think Genesis should be read again with a deeper idea - who is writing Genesis ? God or Man ?

I am not to sure about this one. Yes we should all be loving, but it is the good and evil within all of us that makes us unique. Before youstone the messenger think honestly about who is going to cast the first stone?

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

Firstly regarding us all being unique
What I was shown was that we are all ONE mind and indeed not unique at all - We are in fact all the same - You and I are perfectly the same in our "mind" right now , yet in our different perspective of the story we think we are living "believe" we are different and that then causes the ideas of you or i and me bad you good etc etc - a huge playground game called seperation - or perhaps the SON of GOD with a 6.5 billion personallity disorder lol
In loving each other as ourselves we begin to see we are all the same and in that is the healing of our mind into its true state - oneness
This idea can bring fear because it suggest we lose our minds to another or to Gods and so our identity - but i assure you that you and I are exactly the same thinking conciosness and you only gain - more than you can imagine 🙂
Seeing all as our brothers is the first step in realising we are all the same - Jesus is you and I !
So good and evil are simple the tools to keep us sperate and in seperation we dont do God - because God is ALL 🙂

I hope that makes some sense lol and i certainly wont be stoning you as you are me 🙂

Hi Judy and thank you so much for your reply

I completley understand what you are saying and in that yes we are on the same page - not that it matters if we are not- because and without talking in riddles we always are - It cannot be any other way hehe

I have struggled with language since my experience

My first attempt to explain to my wife were

"We are all ONE and there is only LOVE, All else is irrelevant"

Lol you can imagine the blank look on her face hehe

It is most fustrating in that you nearly have to modify your language dependant on the situation but i expect this will come as i continue on 🙂
I do know that many ACIM students speak and quote Mary Eddy Baker alot - It certainly appears the message is mirrored in most aspects from your posts.

I simply stick with ACIM as if you can imagine experiencing God and then 2 years later reading exactly what you experienced in a book- when you couldnt describe it yourself - lol well i am sure you have had your own experiences like this 🙂

Much of what i write about is just my thoughts about the Bible - I am always happy to be corrected as long as it fits with what i was shown - what we are 🙂

It seems i have been given the knowledge of what we ultimately are and its my "works" to fit the "irrelevant" bit into being truely helpfull for the journey home ?

I experienced a formless God and it was made clear there is no form -so of course when people say God created the Earth it simply doesnt fit
That is where ACIM and Religion again differ completely and why I question the idea that God created Earth or anything in form for that matter
Looking simply what would the infinite want with form whcih creates spaces and divisions and can only ever be imperfect as it is forever changing - perfection is constant as it needs not alteration

Sorry - going on again

Love and thankyou for your reply and understanding

Love Tony

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your reply – I am so enjoying being able to communicate with someone who understands where I’m coming from! There have been individuals in the past – and Venetian is one who is present, but away in India at the moment, with whom the exchange of ideas is always stimulating, respectful, though at times we diverge – which is fine!

As your post is in two parts, let me share some of my insights. I find that it’s easier to explain spiritual ideas through the concept of numbers and musical notes. We are all able to grasp that behind the material “evidence” of a number or note is an eternal, infinite, incorporeal spiritual idea of a note or number.

Take a number 3:

There is only ONE idea of the number 3 in the whole universe.

That number 3 can be written represented on a piece of paper (or a stone or a scroll) in Egyptian or other ancient hieroglyphics, in Romanised script, in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Russian etc etc script, but they all represent the number 3.

The spiritual idea of a number 3 was never born, will never get old, sick, become injured, infirm and will never die. The universe will never run out of the number 3. No war will ever be started because one man has taken all his neighbour’s number 3s.

Take the spiritual idea of a chair:

A chair represents utility, comfort, beauty, rest, support, and many other spiritual qualities. A decree could go out to destroy every single chair in the world, but they could still be made again, because what is behind the material objectification that we perceive as chair is an eternal spiritual idea. Now, chairs are made in limitless shapes and styles and that’s how I see the spiritual idea man who is objectified as human men and women. I see that we each have a unique spiritual identity, which is one with God.

Of course, in its material objectification, there can be a divergence from the original purity and goodness of the spiritual idea of chair. It can get worn, broken stained or eaten with woodworm, but that counterfeit (like Adam and Eve were the counterfeit of the real spiritual idea of man) never exists in spiritual reality. The dream seems very real, but the spiritual idea is never IN the dream and is never touched by it either.

Mary Baker Eddy puts this so much better than I can:

The universe of Spirit is peopled with spiritual beings, and its government is divine Science. Man is the offspring, not of the lowest, but of the highest qualities of Mind. Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged. Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual,--they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite,--in order that sin and mortality may be put off.

This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace. (Science and Health p 265)

ORIGINAL: tonyamendola
I experienced a formless God and it was made clear there is no form - so of course when people say God created the Earth it simply doesnt fit
That is where ACIM and Religion again differ completely and why I question the idea that God created Earth or anything in form for that matter

Eddy saw that Genesis 1 was describing the spiritual creation of the universe, including man, she saw it all as spiritual, eternal ideas. At this present stage of our experience, we are living in the physical (seeming) world and most of us cannot grasp purely absolute, spiritual concepts. God will reveal HimHerself to us where we are but we will all one day drop these mortal chains, wake from the Adam dream and claim our dominion over the earth (over mortal beliefs). She told her students to always think in the absolute (from the standpoint of Spirit and spirit

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

Do I believe in a personal God?
I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know not what the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is, or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father and Mother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being to diviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to the apostle who declared it, "God is Love,"--divine Principle,--which I worship; and "after the manner of my fathers, so worship I God." (Miscellaneous Writings P 96)

Hi Judy

Nicely put I think that most of us mortals could go along with that quote. I feel that at the root of all religions and ideals is the acceptance of a Supreme Being, although the name changes, the spiritual sense is there. That god or the Supreme Beingis love I would never dispute. Once we accept that I feel that irrespective of our personal beliefs in various writings and books we are all worshiping in some way that Supreme Being. Yes even though they would not admit it so do some so called atheists that I have met.

Completely off the subject I know but doesn't everyone love a rousing hymn?

RE: A spiritual view of Genesis for Songstress

I do understand where you are coming from and certainly i am learning to tone down the "Earth isnt real" message as it indeed is required temporarily as a learning aid.
Be glad we didnt speak three years ago lol (kidding)

Learning should be happy and saying to many the Earth isnt real brings fear which is not my function - I know i was beginning to see everything as the same when i was shown - so it wasnt a dissapointment or fearfull to know its not real at all - to some that would still be an unbearable loss but i had already decided in my mind that Love was the treasure - if that makes some sense again lol

Its been difficult as I know everything is in thought and the only real thought is Gods aka LOVE but as you have said that is a concept too far for some presently and hence the learning aids are in place to slowly nuture love - andthe gentle unlearning of all else .
A bhuddist told me a year ago to work on gentleness as my message was a bit "BAM" hehe and I have to learn that while I was ready for it, some are not yet.
This btw makes me no more special than any other as we are all perfectly equal - its just a time game which itself doesnt exist.

I have pasted a section of ACIM speaking about bodies and to some degree why we believe in form

5. What Is the Body?
W-pII.5.1. The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. 2 It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. 3 For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. 4 Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. 5 How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside?
W-pII.5.2. The body will not stay. 2 Yet this he sees as double safety. 3 For the Son of God's impermanence is "proof" his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them. 4 For if his oneness still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked? 5 Who could be victor? 6 Who could be his prey? 7 Who could be victim? 8 Who the murderer? 9 And if he did not die, what "proof" is there that God's eternal Son can be destroyed?
W-pII.5.3. The body is a dream. 2 Like other dreams it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. 3 For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. 4 Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. 5 But we can change the purpose that the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.
W-pII.5.4. The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. 2 Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. 3 The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. 4 Now is the body holy. 5 Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill.
W-pII.5.5. You will identify with what you think will make you safe. 2 Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you. 3 Your safety lies in truth, and not in lies. 4 Love is your safety. 5 Fear does not exist. 6 Identify with love, and you are safe. 7 Identify with love, and you are home. 8 Identify with love, and find your Self.

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