colors wrote:i just feel that due to the high level of ritualism in services/worship, i was never able to develop a relationship with God--it's as if he was masked behind the mechanics of worship, as if by the time I was done "worshipping", i forgot what my intentions had been to start with; i was too tired to look for God...i couldn't reach him.
don't know how else to explain it.
Thank you colors- that is exactly what I meant. That loss of connection can happen simply because, "It confuses rituals or symbols with the thing it symbolizes... it places importance on things that are meaningless, (the act of the ritual,) and therefore
distracts from the real thing.
Even if it doesn't feel like it, it's harmful." I believe this could possibly be a spiritual rule, where when there's ritual there's a loss of connection to God.
Using a ritual is like using a medium other than God to connect to Him. Jesus is our medium to get to God; any other is heretical. You don't need to go through a priest to confess to God your sins, (as some Catholics do, though I understand others and non-Catholics merely do it to confess to a human after they first confessed to God,) and you don't need to use any other ritual to "help" you reach God. Jesus came to be our medium to reach God, and being in Him and Him being in us
we need no other medium. Other mediums only
get in the way!
bizzt wrote wrote:So what if you do the Cross before you Pray who cares as long as God knows where your heart is.
Yes, however what I'm saying is that rituals affect your heart, and because of that it
does matter. There is a natural tendency, (oftimes undetected,) to place undue attention on the ritual itself, and consequently you give proportionately less attention to
God Himself while performing the ritual. I'll use math to describe this: your total inward attention at a given moment is 40, let's say. When you perform a ritual you naturally give that ritual 5 or 10 of your attention points. That leaves you with 35 or 30 attention points for trying to reach God using that ritual, vs. the 40 you would've given without the ritual. If there's a lot of rituals all right in a row or close to each other the attention you naturally give to the rituals goes up, say from 5 to 20, or 10 to 30. Now you have only 20 or 10 attention points going towards God Himself. This cannot be helped- it is the way our brains are wired. Now if you get quite used to the rituals you can easily start to either: rely on the rituals to do the inner spiritual work of reaching for God, (which they cannot do by themselves, and so shouldn't be relied on for this,) and out of that reliance your attention to God Himself goes way down to 5 or less,
or you could be so used to them that you pay less attention to them and so more to God- but you still won't even match the attention you'd give God without them!
The rituals will not increase your total attention points! They can only take from them what should be going to God Himself! Mastermind wrote wrote:People seem to have the impression that Catholics believe they are saved only by works. I know they don't think that, they think they need both.
To rely on Christ
plus something is to not wholly rely on Christ. Again, all we need is Christ, and anything more equals spiritual death. Christ is the whole of our salvation, and any view with His saving work being less than the whole of our salvation negates the salvation. Galations 5:4 states You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. Notice that this means that if you
at all seek to be justified by law you have fallen from grace. It's either wholly grace that you're saved by, or no grace.
Dan wrote wrote:All christians are supposed to do works, works are an indication of being saved.
Yes, but they are an
indication of salvation, not a
requirement for. That's the key. If some Catholics, or a lot of them, believe in faith plus works, then those Catholics aren't real Christians. That's why people say that, Mastermind. Well, that and a whole lot of other blatantly unbiblical doctrines they hold. However, you can be Christian and have other unbiblical doctrines, but if you have enough of them people will most likely assume you're not a Christian at all. That's a very popular assumption no matter what unbiblical doctrines you hold. Many wrong = more wrong is likely.
Mastermind wrote wrote:there is a lot of misinformation regarding the RCC.
Don't mean to point fingers, but it seems to me that you're the one with the misinformation. Don't you know anything about their unbiblical docrtines? (Sorry, I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it!) Isn't it obvious they worship, (they call it honor but it's much more,) things other than God? It's idolatry! They worship their select "Saints," Mary as the "Queen of Heaven" and "perpetual virgin," the pope who's word apparently is put above the Bible, and place their faith in blessings instead of God, medals of saints, blessed water and rituals. Tell me if this doesn't sound like it contradicts RCC views, As he was speaking, a woman in the crowd called out, "God bless your mother- the womb from which you came, and the breasts that nursed you!" He replied, "But even more blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice." Luke 11:27, 28 Once when Jesus' mother and brothers came to see him, they couldn't get to him because of the crowds. Someone told Jesus, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, and they want to see you." Jesus replied, "My mother and my brothers are all those who hear the message of God and obey it." Luke 8:19-21
The RCC hold Mary just below Christ, with no one else on the same level as her. What's wrong with this picture? They put Mary above all other Christians, and above their "Saints" who are above all other Christians, and Jesus in their own Bibles rebuked this very thing! I do not hate Catholics, but I absolutely hate the docrtines! This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. (Mark 7:6-7)
