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October 25, 2015 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 25 October 2015

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Reid

Just to expand on my 9.22, I’ve said this before, but it’s important, so to repeat: we are eternal spiritual beings experiencing a temporary physical existence, not the other way round.

Our bodies are mere interfaces to this world, a brilliant design that allows us to interact with it and thereby to grow in wisdom and spirituality as we live our lives.

Once you recognise that as a fundamental truth and process what that means, everything changes. Money, career, status, job, family all take on different meanings and more or less importance depending what they are.

The people who don’t recognise it are the ones who continue to pursue the former except family, which comes at a cost to their own spiritual growth and to their family, if they have one.

As Jesus said: what’s the point of owning the world if, in the process, you lose your soul?

But that’s precisely the path today’s world sets us all upon.

And at the end, it’s nothing, meaningless. If the MD of the biggest corporation in the world is on his or her deathbed, what are they going to be thinking of? Their careers? Pity them if so. I doubt even people like Murdoch or Gates would be thinking of that, then.

And that’s one of the many things that Christianity brings. The answer to that question and a knowledge that death is not an end, it’s a new beginning. That’s not the only thing it brings and it’s not why I’m a Christian BTW, but it’s one of the many many things it does bring.

The way I interpret the scriptures is my way, not my Church’s way, but my way. So I’m not speaking for my Church on this. But my personal interpretation, at this point in my life, which may change as I learn new distinctions, is that we’re here, in this world to learn one thing. How to love.

How to love others, and how to love ourselves. And the two are inextricably intertwined. At this stage in my journey, I don’t really see that you can have one without the other. And which comes first, I don’t know and maybe I never will.

But what the heck else could be the purpose of life? And what the heck else marks a successful life?

And as a Christian, the thing I love before all else, is God, the Great Architect, the being that created everything we see and everything we are. Because I just can’t see, that all of that, just happened to come about through random physics. It’s just not possible, at all.
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October 25, 2015 9:46pm
Nostradamus

Reid:

I went to a Church where we had many professionals: doctors, lawyers, scientists. One scientist there is a winner of the PM’s science prize. One of the doctors was a neurologist. And we all talked to each other like brothers. Equal. That’s how it is, at a Church, today.

Penny told us she won a good citizen’s award in 2010. Does that count for anything in your church – in the sense that it elevates her to legendary status – or would she still be on equal terms with everyone else?
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October 25, 2015 9:46pm
Reid

Penny told us she won a good citizen’s award in 2010. Does that count for anything in your church – in the sense that it elevates her to legendary status – or would she still be on equal terms with everyone else?

Yeah we’d probably have a morning tea for her or something like that Nosty. Of course all the lefties would be swooning round (there are quite a few of them), but I’d be sulking in the corner looking to see if I could take her hat and put it somewhere she’d never ever find it again…
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October 25, 2015 9:58pm
Awww C-mon

Awesome @9:46 Reid

Thanks
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October 25, 2015 10:12pm
Tauhei Notts

Nasska sounds like a 65+ old man who lived in provincial town New Zealand in his childhood.
Reid sounds like he is 20 years younger and lived in a biggish urban area.
As such, Reid would have no idea how suffocating that provincial town religious stuff was in the 1950’s. Nasska and I do.
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October 25, 2015 10:25pm
Maggy Wassilieff

I went to a Church where we had many professionals: doctors, lawyers, scientists. One scientist there is a winner of the PM’s science prize. One of the doctors was a neurologist. And we all talked to each other like brothers. Equal. That’s how it is, at a Church, today.

But do the dunny cleaners go to your church, or do they have to find some Methodist outfit?
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October 25, 2015 10:27pm
Reid

As such, Reid would have no ideahow suffocating that provincial town religious stuff was in the 1950’s.

True Tauhei although I was born in 1962 not 1972 (in Palmerston North) but as explained above, that is NOT what happens today and I daresay that if it used to happen like that in Eke etc, then why hallucinate that’s what happens today? I mean, nothing else happens today like it used to in the 1950’s, so why would religion?

But do the dunny cleaners go to your church, or do they have to find some Methodist outfit?

No we don’t have any of those Maggy, but that’s not because they’re not welcome, it’s because they’ve never knocked. We do have plenty of people who don’t earn much, and they talk to the doctors and scientists and the vicar just as easily as I do. Why?
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October 25, 2015 10:44pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Why?

You know why.

Because of the hierarchial snobbish nature of the C of E. Too lofty to move among the poor, the navvies, the farm labourers, the miners etc….
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October 25, 2015 10:49pm
Nostalgia-NZ

So poor people Reid, doctors, scientists, a vicar but no dunny cleaners? How about oxymoron’s?
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October 25, 2015 10:50pm
Inandout

Maggy Wassilieff: ‘Birds of a feather’ pertains to any group or organisation, whether religious or not. Masons have lodges where professional people tend to gather, as do exclusive clubs, although this is not as apparent as it once was. I can mix socially with most levels of society, once a commonality is reached in conversation. There are however certain religious types that I find very difficult to converse with and those are ‘born agains’, because the ones I have encountered have fixed ideas, and speak frequently of ‘my God’.
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October 25, 2015 11:01pm
Maggy Wassilieff

@inandout

I’m not a god-botherer and I do not hold any denomination of the Christian Church in high regard, but I think I am correct in believing that the Roman Catholic Church in NZ seems to encompass a broader social structure than any other denomination.

I know the school dunny cleaner attended the RC church in Island Bay as did the local GP (Chinese-Kiwi).
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October 25, 2015 11:15pm
starboard

Bretherns give me the shits..self righteous arseholes.
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October 25, 2015 11:55pm
blazeoflight

@reid 9:46pm

What a load of rubbish.
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October 26, 2015 12:59am

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