Great discussion and good points brought up. Question marks seem to help.
It is often statements with periods which confess rigid belief in a thought or idea and which bring contention to bear. What is meant by salvation? Messiah? Savior? Lord? Man? Divine?
The contexts of Jesus life was that there was no one bible or accepted "book" of the law, but letters, writings, scrolls, collected and drawn from long before they were run through personal sieves of judgment and personal beliefs to arrive at a far diminished collection which some would consider concentrated, while others might see it as restricted to the point of a control mechanism at one end or innocent ignorance as in a hoodwink on the other. I have found it important in my studies to discover the Aramaic language (Jesus native tongue) and the culture of the Essenes from whence he arose.
In
The Healing Breath, acclaimed teacher and author Neil Douglas-Klotz leads listeners through some of Jesus most misunderstood sayings, the Beatitudes. He unravels the common translations (mistranslations?) and renders them as spoken in Jesus' native Aramaic to show how this seemingly simple set of statements reveals a profound source of divine connection. It was in this amazingly enlightening lecture series I first understood that the Aramaic language and culture have no concept of an afterlife, no idea of an external Heaven or Kingdom of God outside the self. And that for Jesus, the word prayer, did not mean petition or "communication" with an "other" as much as meditation and a return to a whole and connected state of being.
As Builders, words are important, as they "become the house we live in." I can see our words as bricks we lay, our language as ashlars.
I do not consider myself a Christian as it would seem a term denoting something that is not really decided on as of yet, but I definitely find delving into the study of it, along with other paths and wisdom schools to be enlightening and worthwhile food for thought.
Much to dwell upon in this thread. Thank you, Brothers.