Precepts and commandments

Yes, and what matters most is how people apply them in their daily lives.

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Yes. But in this scenario we are the children. I mentioned earlier that: “it is difficult to see the entire story when you are mired in the middle of a particular section of a story. And although there are many spoilers (prophesies), we can’t see the full story from where we are”. So we might think that this causes us “pain of life and limb”, but that may well be because we don’t see the big picture. There were certainly difficulties that I went through as a child that, at the time, I thought were “the end of the world”, but I grew and it all turned out just fine - they were nothing. I guess that in this section of the narrative, ‘faith’ for a Christian means putting trust in the Father that he knows what is best for his children.

Of course the other alternative is to not create children and bring them into this world of suffering - that’s another thing that I said at various points in my childhood which I would disagree with now that I have a better appreciation of the bigger picture.

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Stuart, I like what you wrote there. But let me add to Mat’s initial and now your formulated different perspective a third one. I’m grown up in christianity, stepped out for politics as a student in the sense of marxism, stepped into buddhism when I became more mature and mindly wider-opened. From there I revisited my christian education and read into jewish and christian spirituality, theology and thoughts.
One day, in preparation for some interreligious discourse event I realized that one can mature-out from commandments- to recipes-faith so to say.
Example was the commandment of you shalt give respect to your parents. A commandment I found much “suspicious” as a young man. After I got a child myself, and had to deal with disrespect I understood that as a mature man I’m able to dismiss my feelings for my child. And it might happen, perhaps… But for the child I as the father have somehow a monopol-position; if the child looses me, this might be catastrophic, inducing a long stream of karmic consequences. Then I understood: whether or not christian - for the child it is a good, wholesome recipe to give parents respect. (Interestingly some of the attendents of the event were suprised by my words and even liked them much).

And actually, in a german usenet-forum for theology with jewish-educated contributors one time it came up, that also in jewish spiritual-history a faction exists/has existed understanding the commandments as helpful recipes for harmony in familiar, wider social and even spiritual relation.

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This is very beautiful. :heart: I love it when harmony is forged across religious divides.

I was chatting to a Catholic priest about purgatory some time ago, and his view was that the reason for the existence of purgatory was because all of those in heaven need to coexist in harmony, so if you haven’t quite made it to that mental space where you can live peacefully with others without any anger or ill-will, then this was another chance to do so.