Kudos for Deutschland Post for honouring a philosopher on a stamp. It gives me the pleasure of knowing that one country values thinkers and confrontational thinkers at that.
Feuerbach has helped me to a place of peace when it comes to accepting "God" as something that is real inside of a person, instead of real outside of the person.
"A God to whom his determinateness is an insult lacks the courage and strength to exist. Determinateness is the fire, the oxygen, the salt of existence. An existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an insipid and preposterous existence. But there is nothing more, and nothing less, in God than what religion puts in him…" Ludwig Feuerbach
I grew up around a narrative that was contradictory at its best. Jesus was coming back some day, but Jesus also lived inside of me. I remember having that conversation with my great uncle before he passed away. I told him that Jesus coming back and Jesus living within couldn't logistically happen at the same time. That was a contradiction that I couldn't ignore anymore. I have become a little more brave to catch people on their Christian catch phrases. I ask them to explain what they mean when they hand me one of those easy to say but harder to explain collection of words. I am not trying to dislodge their faith... but their faith needs to be a little more secure if it is going to last the storms of life. So my questioning commonly used idioms can't be so damaging to someone who has what they deem as a solid faith.
"To every religion, the gods of other religions are only conceptions of God; but its own conception of God is itself its God – God as it conceives him to be, God genuinely and truly so, God as he is in himself. Religion is satisfied only with a complete and total God – it will not have merely an appearance of God, it can be satisfied with nothing less than God himself, God in person…" LF
I am enjoying the back and forth of AFL... finally. I understand the need for balancing different views. It keeps the story fresh and relevant. I guess that is the whole point.
"In order to enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing. But he also does not need to be anything for himself, because everything for himself, everything he takes from himself, is not lost, but preserved in God. Since man has his being in God, why then should he have it in and for himself? Why should it be necessary to posit and have the same thing twice? What man withdraws from himself, what he lacks in himself, he only enjoys in an incomparably higher and richer measure in God." LF.
When I was reading through Feuerbach's reading today, I had this thought come through my mind. Sometimes I don't know what do do with my thoughts other than my write them down and share them with the online ether.
"When you reach out to embrace God, you will need to embrace the God that's been handed down to you. If you want to reach outside that God that was handed down to you, you may find that there is no God to embrace." Ruby Neumann
