God talk

  Today I've been thinking about when Jesus said that our righteousness has to surpass that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.   These are actually incredible words because If we think about it Jesus had many run ins with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and they were always trying to trip him up.   Yet Jesus said, your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.   Nicodemus was also a Pharisee he was a Pharisee that actually believed in Jesus, secretly, that he was the Messiah. Now the question is: How can our righteousness surpass that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees? The Angel of the Forest I met Water Lily   The Pharisees and the Sadducees kept the law absolutely perfectly, and they even made a fence around it so that it would be impossible to break the law when our Lord and saviour grew up in a place where the Temple, the Second Temple, was still around also there was a place in the desert where people worshiped God, because for them the Templ

  Last time we looked at the state of the spiritual life within Scripture.   We got great encouragement from the importance of being set free from the slavery of sin.   Some religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism do not have the tradition of sin.   They have karma, cause and effect and the belief in an eternity of being born and reborn before being liberated from this body.   The body is seen as a prison, and it is important to break out of this prison to be one with Brahman again.   It is interesting also that Brahma the first person (god) of the Trimurti has only a couple of temples in India given to his name! As the creator god obviously, he was the one who caused this prison in the first place.  In Christ there is hope, we can also remember Noah and think about our responsibilities to this creation as human beings.   Having said that the individual is still responsible for her own actions good and bad.   Although bad actions are not seen as sin in general it comes pretty close