Seraphita wrote: > "Who is on those pictures, Daddy?" > He replied, "The Virgin Mary and Jesus." > She picked up the icon, kissed it and hugged it to her chest exclaiming, > >"Oh, daddy, they love you so much!" >"Then," he told me, "We understood. It's all about affection." > > If it's really all about affection who needed Christianity? People have > been affectionate to their friends and family since time immemorial. And > one can't be *affectionate* to one's enemies!
Odd that you didn't quote the very next sentence: "Love, in fact, is the heart and soul of the theology of the early Church Fathers and of the Orthodox Church" (emphasis added). That would be God's infinite love and compassion, not ordinary human affection. The writer is making a distinction between (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity and Western Christianity and how and why they diverged after the first roughly four centuries following Christ's death (and presumably his resurrection). You'll need to read the rest of the essay to understand what that distinction is all about. Your other points are something of a straw man where Eastern Christianity is concerned, as you'll find if you read the rest of the essay. No version of Christianity can be really consonant with TM metaphysics, but it appears to me that there are some elements of Eastern Christian theology that are more resonant with TM than those of Western theology. (emptybill, corrections/reflections solicited.) > Here's the simple alternative. If you look at the basic Advaita-Vedanta > "outlook" isn't it saying that there is in reality only One Self. It is only > in > appearance that there are many of "us". If therefore any one individual > sins we've all sinned as there is no difference between us *in reality*. > One man slips up - Adam - and we all take a pratfall. No man is an > island. > > But if you recognise that there is just the Self as the one actor how can > any one man be guilty? - that is precisely to imagine oneself apart from > the whole. The forgiveness of sins balances Original Sin.
