| Starboy,
My point is that an ideal or the core value of some "faith" may be corrupted without the participants taking any notice. Information (provided by the angel in Rev 19 & 22) which would be useful in measuring progress toward the goal of the core value statement (the Lord's Prayer) is ignored. Whether it was the third heaven, as mentioned by Paul in 2 Cor 12:2, does not matter. The examination of the information and the questions that would be a part of that examination are not found within the "faith" at least not since Origen.
The model you assume is Jesus. Why? Abraham is the person Jesus mentions as the center of the faith. If you are sitting with Abraham "in that day," according to Jesus, you are in the faith. Abraham is all doubt in the oral tradition. The God of Abraham does not approach him until Abraham has rejected the "faith" of his father and nation. In the stories Abraham mocks the faith of his father and king.
So my observation that corruption goes unnoticed, as illustrated by the Christian response to information that comes from their God and is absolutely true according to their scripture, is a good one. Jesus is not the only one who knows what the angel says when John attempts to worship the angel. Everyone who reads the book knows that it is the heaven disciples of Jesus want to go to that John visits and that John is doing there what people during the imperial Roman period did on earth regarding worship. There is a clear conflict between what John prays for and what his actions would result in. That conflict is not examined. So I say the problem is that the ideal often becomes corrupted without the faithful noticing or doing anything to restore the ideal. Christians since Origen was anathematized are at cross purposes with their God and think they are doing well. |