Good morning,
@Eternal Entity,
Good morning Angelina.
Thank you for your reply.
One statement in particular caught my attention:
"My choice not to self identify as a Christian has nothing to do with avoiding The Christ."
I'd be interested to hear more about that.
I was replying to you implying it was.
You speak of the Father, creation, and the Christ in ways that suggest these are all important parts of your understanding.
How do you understand Christ's role in relation to the Father?
"The Christ" as I understand it, is the overall process - The Source Reality. The Field of all Consciousness. The "Glue that holds it all together" et al...
The Father is the Entity representative (specific to humanity) of The Field of Consciousness Which encompasses Absolutely Everything... which could be said to being "GOD".
In that, The Father is not a particular gender and is just as suitable being referred to as The Mother.
The Son is representative of the human being who has relationship with The Father - and specific to Jesus (the common name Christianity uses) - acts both as the directing sign and the gateway to The Father - the individual humans access to relationship with.
I'm not asking about labels but about Christ Himself. What do you see as His place and purpose within your understanding of reality and of the Father?
Christ is not so much a "him" as the overall reality (as I touched on above). Jesus (the Greek name for the person) was the representation of the Field (The Christ) within a human experience, ambassadoring The Christ through said human experience - passing that data of experience on to those who followed after him - in a similar manner in which YHVH used Moses.
The overall message (contained in the Bible - and in other less known script) had to do with bringing individuals to the awareness of the possibility of direct relationship with The Father in order to circumnavigate the mediator system of Priests and prophets and even angelic encounters, all of which in their own way had proven to have evolved into a shadow of the Real and needed a "shake-up" as consequence.
The same pattern evolved after the ascension - humans are simply habitual creatures and tend toward the "need" to let "others" mediate between The Father and The Individual - It is well known and understood.
Sin = Having no relationship with The Father - as portrayed in the story of Adam.
Thus the idea "all are born into sin" is the same as saying, all are born without relationship with The Father.
The outcomes of Sin are the symptoms such as envy, pride, murdering, et al - these things are done by individuals because of their lack of relationship with The Father.
As with the story of Adam - death was promised yet it is not physical death. The death Adam experienced was the withdrawal of The Father from Adam's life experience.
The offspring were thus born into Sin - born without relationship with The Father. The Father had withdrawn - leaving humans largely to their own means. "The rest" (as the saying goes) "is history."
Part of that history involved The Son - The Son knew The Father. Was born with knowledge of a prior existence and relationship with The Father, and The Son eventually told others about that and how - through listening and understanding the words The Son shared (many of which are not recorded in the Bible) - it was possible for individual humans to wilfully connect with and through that, have relationship with The Father.