Preview: a read-only copy of the forum. To post or reply, use the current forum.

Confession of sins

42 posts · 6 participants · started Feb 15, 2015, 4:14 PM

KerynMember
Feb 15, 2015, 7:01 PM

nelsong wrote:

So where are these valuable experiences stored? Who makes the choice to make the experience something that is stored in the value experience data bank? Is it simply value itself that has a way of hanging on? More automatic? Do we have a choice in the matter? Could this be part of why it is difficult if not impossible to get rid of memories? Storage more in the superconscious? Or shared with physical consciousness as well as superconsciousness? Or is there a data storage system out there? We will be judged at some time, does the judge have access to our value experience storage? Just pull it out of ourselves or maybe has the metaphorical check list? Just thinking out loud.

Much remains unanswered, but this quote from TUB is somewhat helpful:

^(1236.2) ^112:6.4 In the morontia estate the ascending mortal is endowed with the Nebadon modification of the cosmic-mind endowment of the Master Spirit of Orvonton. The mortal intellect, as such, has perished, has ceased to exist as a focalized universe entity apart from the undifferentiated mind circuits of the Creative Spirit. But the meanings and values of the mortal mind have not perished. Certain phases of mind are continued in the surviving soul; certain experiential values of the former human mind are held by the Adjuster; and there persist in the local universe the records of the human life as it was lived in the flesh, together with certain living registrations in the numerous beings who are concerned with the final evaluation of the ascending mortal, beings extending in range from seraphim to Universal Censors and probably on beyond to the Supreme.
nelsongParticipant
Feb 15, 2015, 8:44 PM
great quote, thanks.
emanny3003Blocked
Feb 16, 2015, 12:04 AM
Take care to confess your sins only to God, who know not sin and can look past (forgive) before you ask. Guilt is a poison for the soul.

156:2.7 “Said Jesus: “My disciples must not only cease to do evil but learn to do well; you must not only be cleansed from all conscious sin, but you must refuse to harbor even the feelings of guilt. If you confess your sins, they are forgiven; therefore must you maintain a conscience void of offense.”

It is the consciousness of sin that is poison and leads to guilt. Guilt leads to offense and offense leads to defensiveness.

Even though Bonita believes that guilt is “useful”. Poison is useful to some.
MaraParticipant
Feb 16, 2015, 1:29 AM
One man’s wine is another’s poison.

To each his own desserts.

You get lemons, make lemonade.

A kind word turns away wrath.
emanny3003Blocked
Feb 16, 2015, 11:58 AM

Mara wrote:

One man’s wine is another’s poison.

Which disciples drink wine and which drink hemlock?

156:2.7 “Said Jesus: “My disciples must not only cease to do evil but learn to do well; you must not only be cleansed from all conscious sin, but you must refuse to harbor even the feelings of guilt. If you confess your sins, they are forgiven; therefore must you maintain a conscience void of offense.”

Did Jesus say in this quote that some should harbor guilt?

Mara wrote:

A kind word turns away wrath.

Where are the kind words. You invite wrath but you will not get it from me.
BradlyParticipant
Feb 16, 2015, 2:14 PM
Bonita wrote:

Do you recall the section about the reversion directors? They create jests out of memories of past experiences of struggle. What seems so bitter to us now might make us laugh later. I’m not saying that the mother who killed her child will ever laugh about that, but she most likely will have a different, less painful, viewpoint of the whole experience on the mansion worlds. She’ll see the value gained from the experience, rather than the pain. That’s how I see it anyway, for what it’s worth.

I also wonder this poor mother’s reaction to finding her child in the nurseries, all happy and well cared for, awaiting those who loved her upon the world of birth? Context and perspective will be profoundly changed and improved on the mansion worlds. All are guilty of much, no? Sometimes by tragedy, or without bad intent, and often enough purposefully and self serving. Will this mother face this new and wondrous life and all the reconnections of loved ones without the vale of materialism and the falsehood of material death as the end of all things? Yes she probably will. This is the type of thing though that can cripple a mind and heart by the magnification of loss by guilt….a real double whammy. May the spirit touch her mind to comfort and heal such a mortal wound delivered by such a tragedy. These trials test one’s faith in our source and destiny. May this sister find her way home to God’s embrace and the assurance of glory to come.

"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
emanny3003Blocked
Feb 17, 2015, 1:05 AM

Bradly wrote:

Context and perspective will be profoundly changed and improved on the mansion worlds.

All that must be accomplished NOW is to realize your place within eternity. This cannot be done in study. It is an instantaneous event when one IS aware of God. It requires no study. It requires no time.
BonitaParticipant
Feb 19, 2015, 3:40 PM
Keryn,

I was thinking about this subject and wondering: Isn’t the confession of one’s errors necessary for forgiveness? We cannot experience forgiveness ourselves until we forgive others. Forgiving others means that we have recognized an error in them. Sometimes we cannot see our own errors until they are made obvious by another person committing them. Recognizing them in others helps us recognize them in ourselves. When we forgive that error in another, we are gaining forgiveness for ourselves as well in that we finally become conscious of the erroneous thinking-behavior. I think this applies to evil, since a great deal of evil is not conscious. When evil becomes conscious and deliberate, it becomes sin. And I think that is another issue altogether. I’m just talking about evil here.

Another thing that is somewhat irritating about a general confession of sin, say as they do as part of the liturgy, is that it really means original sin. Original sin doesn’t exist, and that makes it hard to say those prayers and really mean them.
KerynMember
Feb 19, 2015, 4:25 PM

Bonita wrote:

Keryn, I was thinking about this subject and wondering: Isn’t the confession of one’s errors necessary for forgiveness? We cannot experience forgiveness ourselves until we forgive others. Forgiving others means that we have recognized an error in them. Sometimes we cannot see our own errors until they are made obvious by another person committing them. Recognizing them in others helps us recognize them in ourselves. When we forgive that error in another, we are gaining forgiveness for ourselves as well in that we finally become conscious of the erroneous thinking-behavior. I think this applies to evil, since a great deal of evil is not conscious. When evil becomes conscious and deliberate, it becomes sin. And I think that is another issue altogether. I’m just talking about evil here. Another thing that is somewhat irritating about a general confession of sin, say as they do as part of the liturgy, is that it really means original sin. Original sin doesn’t exist, and that makes it hard to say those prayers and really mean them.

Bonita, I do not think along those lines, but I can understand that there would be value in confessing one’s errors to oneself in order to then forgive ourselves. That is a matter of personal behavior/ preference as to the means by which one utilizes their TA and their understanding of their own behavior to try to become more like God.

The quote I posted on the first page of this thread is instructive here. This is when Peter and James asked Jesus whether confession is necessary for forgiveness. I posted a longer excerpt on page 1 of this thread, but the relevant gist of it here is the following:

^(1898.4)^174:1.4“When a wise man understands the inner impulses of his fellows, he will love them. And when you love your brother, you have already forgiven him. This capacity to understand man’s nature and forgive his apparent wrongdoing is Godlike. If you are wise parents, this is the way you will love and understand your children, even forgive them when transient misunderstanding has apparently separated you. The child, being immature and lacking in the fuller understanding of the depth of the child-father relationship, must frequently feel a sense of guilty separation from a father’s full approval, but the true father is never conscious of any such separation. Sin is an experience of creature consciousness; it is not a part of God’s consciousness.
BonitaParticipant
Feb 19, 2015, 4:41 PM
And don’t you think that being wise enough to recognize apparent wrongdoing in another person means that you are also capable of recognizing either the potential of making a similar mistake yourself or the realization that you have already made that mistake in the past? I don’t think it’s possible to recognize other people’s wrongdoing without having experienced it on some level yourself. Experience is what gives us wisdom. When you forgive wrongdoing in others, you are also forgiving yourself and thereby experiencing God’s forgiveness as a personal reality experience.

4:3.4 Man’s wisdom grows out of the trials and errors of human experience; . . .

130:4.11 The presence of evil constitutes proof of the inaccuracies of mind and the immaturity of the evolving self. Evil is, therefore, also a measure of imperfection in universe interpretation. The possibility of making mistakes is inherent in the acquisition of wisdom, the scheme of progressing from the partial and temporal to the complete and eternal, from the relative and imperfect to the final and perfected.
KerynMember
Feb 19, 2015, 5:02 PM

Bonita wrote:

And don’t you think that being wise enough to recognize apparent wrongdoing in another person means that you are also capable of recognizing either the potential of making a similar mistake yourself or the realization that you have already made that mistake in the past?

Yes, I do. But honestly, I’m not going to go looking for it. I have learned that what works best for me is to always look for the positive in others. Look for what others are doing *right* and then emulate that. The difficulty in identifying “apparent wrongdoing in another person” is that I have no way of knowing their motive. Only God knows a person’s motive so only God can judge wrongdoing in others.

^140:10.5 The one characteristic of Jesus’ teaching was that the morality of his philosophy originated in the personal relation of the individual to God—this very child-father relationship. Jesus placed emphasis on the individual, not on the race or nation. While eating supper, Jesus had the talk with Matthew in which he explained that the morality of any act is determined by the individual’s motive. Jesus’ morality was always positive. The golden rule as restated by Jesus demands active social contact; the older negative rule could be obeyed in isolation. Jesus stripped morality of all rules and ceremonies and elevated it to majestic levels of spiritual thinking and truly righteous living.
BonitaParticipant
Feb 19, 2015, 6:02 PM

Keryn wrote:

Yes, I do. But honestly, I’m not going to go looking for it. I have learned that what works best for me is to always look for the positive in others. Look for what others are doing *right* and then emulate that. The difficulty in identifying “apparent wrongdoing in another person” is that I have no way of knowing their motive. Only God knows a person’s motive so only God can judge wrongdoing in others.

I said nothing of looking for wrongdoing in others. I agree that if you’re going around looking for wrongdoing then your own motives are questionable.

What I did say is the recognition of wrongdoing in others. There’s a difference there. You don’t go looking for it, but when it shows up you recognize it because of experiential wisdom, which means you must have encountered it before. And if you have encountered it before in yourself, then you have a better understanding of the motivation behind it.
KerynMember
Feb 19, 2015, 6:22 PM
Sure, but it’s really very simple. Even young children intuitively know when they have done something wrong. I don’t need to see it in someone else first, I know because of the bad feeling I get (my TA influencing me). So I say to myself, “Woops, that was a mistake. (Recognition of error.) What I did caused me to feel badly about myself and it hurt someone else. I will not do that again. I goofed up but now I know better.” (Forgiving myself).

This is just human nature and our TA helping us.

My question that prompted this thread is about something entirely different – the formal confession of sins (or “sins” by some instiutionalized church’s definition, not TUBs definition) to another person for the purpose of being forgiven. I think the answers on this thread have sufficiently answered my question in that regard. Particularly when Bradly wrote:

Bradly wrote:

Great topic and post. This has always plagued me as well Keryn, as a child primarily, when I was told that I was guilty by birth and had to confess my sinful “nature”, I was quite perplexed. I have come to believe that this “confession” spoken of is more of a sincere acknowledgment of a specific thought and/or act that is unworthy and unrighteous that we first discern, then accept responsibility for our poor response ability, and acknowledge to ourselves and to God within that there is a change of mind needed and a new will to learn and grow by this “confession”. Too often in churches one need only publicly confess or do so to a priest to be “absolved” and yet for many such an act brings no true contrition or change. Confession without change is not confession as described in the UB. It is the discernment for a need for change that makes our acknowledgement/confession a moment of transformation, progress in spirit, and transcendence from material attachment.
emanny3003Blocked
Feb 19, 2015, 9:16 PM
Confess only to God who knows you and knows your brother. Forgiveness is then instantaneous to yourself as you forgive your brother. It is automatic.
MaraParticipant
Feb 21, 2015, 6:26 PM
They tell us confession if sin is essential to religious growth and spiritual progress.

89:10:5 The confession of sin is a manful repudiation of disloyalty, but it in no wise mitigates the time-space consequences of such disloyalty. But confession — sincere recognition of the nature of sin — is essential to religious growth and spiritual progress.
nelsongParticipant
Feb 21, 2015, 7:37 PM
So how does the concept of automatic and simultaneous sincere confession and forgiveness work if you have never sincerely and honestly without reservation “forgiven” somebody?

Aren’t we told that we must forgive before we can be forgiven?

on a side note: who holds a grudge against Lucifer or Adam and Eve? Can you forgive them? Two have confesed while one has aparently not.

Has time helped us with these?
MaraParticipant
Feb 21, 2015, 8:28 PM

nelsong wrote: Aren’t we told that we must forgive before we can be forgiven?

The Father in heaven has forgiven you even before you have thought to ask him, but such forgiveness is not available in your personal religious experience until. . . .

146:2:4 3. By opening the human end of the channel of the God-man communication, mortals make immediately available the ever-flowing stream of divine ministry to the creatures of the worlds. When man hears God’s spirit speak within the human heart, inherent in such an experience is the fact that God simultaneously hears that man’s prayer. Even the forgiveness of sin operates in this same unerring fashion. The Father in heaven has forgiven you even before you have thought to ask him, but such forgiveness is not available in your personal religious experience until such a time as you forgive your fellow men. God’s forgiveness in fact is not conditioned upon your forgiving your fellows, but in experience it is exactly so conditioned. And this fact of the synchrony of divine and human forgiveness was thus recognized and linked together in the prayer which Jesus taught the apostles.
MaraParticipant
Feb 21, 2015, 8:58 PM

nelsong wrote: on a side note: who holds a grudge against Lucifer or Adam and Eve? Can you forgive them? Two have confesed while one has aparently not.

Interesting question – can I forgive them? I ask: did the choices they made have an effect on me personally in my experience that I can attribute to them? No. I have no experience with them personally, and no experience with what they did, so my answer is no. I think forgiveness is between you (or me) as a person, and someone else. Lucifer and Adam and Eve are way too far removed. They have their forgiveness issues. No, I do not hold a grudge. I do not have a persistent feeling of ill will, animosity, antagonism or enmity toward them. Their confession or lack of confession is between them and our Creator.

Jesus said this, in part, about divine forgiveness:

174:1:3 “A part of every father lives in the child. The father enjoys priority and superiority of understanding in all matters connected with the child-parent relationship. The parent is able to view the immaturity of the child in the light of the more advanced parental maturity, the riper experience of the older partner. With the earthly child and the heavenly Father, the divine parent possesses infinity and divinity of sympathy and capacity for loving understanding. Divine forgiveness is inevitable; it is inherent and inalienable in God’s infinite understanding, in his perfect knowledge of all that concerns the mistaken judgment and erroneous choosing of the child. Divine justice is so eternally fair that it unfailingly embodies understanding mercy.”

Nothing in human affairs can take the place of actual experience.
BonitaParticipant
Feb 22, 2015, 7:53 PM

nelsong wrote: . . . on a side note: who holds a grudge against Lucifer or Adam and Eve? Can you forgive them? Two have confesed while one has aparently not. Has time helped us with these?

I don’t hold a grudge and I definitely forgive them all. I figure if these divine beings can screw up pretty badly, then my little screw ups must seem like chump change in the grand scheme of things. Just the same, I want my mistakes forgiven, so I most definitely forgive them. Personally, I think Adam and Eve suffered enough from their mistakes. Not so sure about Lucifer though . . . but he’s insane and madmen deserve a little compassion, I think, but only if they keep the bugger locked up (restrained by love). If he gets loose, then I don’t know about the compassion thing. Face to face, I’d probably try to kill him if he made one false move. Just being honest. I’d do the Jujitsu Jane thing and squash him like a bug . . . just kidding.
nelsongParticipant
Feb 22, 2015, 11:42 PM
Lol

But seriously, when we forgive it likely has little if any impact on the person being forgiven but it can be profound for the person doing the forgiving.

it opens us up to many possibilities for growth

Reply on the current forum