Jewish panendeist?

I think I am! And, I notice a strong background fear, informed by a 60 year theistic premise/identification, of negative response from a retributive God. Don't want to be lectured or chided here. I understand the irrationality in my head. But my gut is knotted - even as my heart leaps at the prospect of re-creation/liberation. Just like to be understood. Other former or presently identifying Jews here?

Welcome!

No Jewish Panendeists here that I'm aware of but I think there are a few here that have studied Kabbalah which has many Panend(th)eistic aspects.

Feel free to jump in on any discussions... even old ones. It's always good to get another person's perspective.

It was a Jew who invented the Panentheism, Spinoza.

"The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late eighteenth-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:

the unity of all that exists;
the regularity of all that happens; and
the identity of spirit and nature"

I have become a "Jewish Panendeist" after listening to Neal Donald Walsch's 4 or 5 CDs. As noted earlier, they begin to repeat, but it all makes sense to me. I am not as "afraid" as I had been, though I did not eat leavened bread for Passover and still will do the Shma. I was bar mitzvahed orthodox but came from a mixed marriage of Catholic father and Jewish mother so I certainly did not have a Kosher home.

I am reading a book by Gerald Schroeder, Phd. He's an MIT physicist who is Jewish and explains through statistics and evolution how God makes sense. I have also read some Kaballah and Buddhism and, to a large degree, they are saying very similar things. I am beginning to accept the concept of "1".

Rob M wrote:

I am beginning to accept the concept of "1".

Just curious. In regards to what?

The author Jonathan Kirsch; many of his beliefs are in line with pandeism/panendeism

For "1", in regards to all matter and energy -- even energy that we currently do not sense or experience -- is all connected in a single "living" (if "living" is defined as having energy or matter" being/organism. I sometimes wonder if G-d is not just the total understanding of the entire organism.

Thanks for the Jonathan Kirsch reference.

Hi,

I am a former christian, almost stronlgy thought about converting orthodox jew, even as far as talking with Rabbi's,. I was heavly involved in the christian church. even as far as studying to become a pastor. When it was like one day I just woke up! I began to wonder why jews didn't except jesus to be the messiah. One day Iwas at a book store and thought I would look at buying a book on judaism. I bought a book by a orthodox rabbi. I then started looking online for lectures. One thing I liked was that jews unlike christainity, at least the christainity i was invovled in, the one things jews believed was that when something bad happens it is not the devil, but god, Well, to be honest I kind of liked the idea. because their thought was that the bad was actually for my ultimate good. And that I need to learn to believe and have faith. The reason I liked that so much better then my christian faith was I always felt that of the bad was the devil or most the time was the devil, then why would a all powerful god not stop him. Why would a creator of according to the bible create a devil and have no control over him and they wage war?? if he is god shouldn't he have known that? Christians typically get this idea of Satan from Ezekiel 28 which is ridiculous, if read in context. Anyway, I also began to see that jesus did not fulfill on the prophecies to be the messiah. Also as deut, says over and over God is ONE!!! Well after some more thought on the character of God according to the new and old testaments, all the contradictions, I began to look at the people and thier gods. If christians are so right why are so many hypocrits, same with all relgions really, Judaism, why so unkind to gentiles. I almost converted but started thinking why would god make me who i am if he wanted me to be a jew? anyway then not to mention I prayed harder, study my bible more, spent more time seeking and searching for god then any person i have ever met. I am not trying to be arrogant here if you only new. I spent probably 24 hours a day i guess with the exception of sleep, on praying focusing, and learning about god. Begging for him to reveal to me thre right path after a few years of this and no anwser. God must not be personal! However I do believe he reveals himself to us, through nature. I do think maybe he possibly does intervene somtimes (I know that is not a deist thought) and I do believe whatever happens is his will, because if he is the god of this world he could certainly stop it if he wanted. I believe, he is good. I believe every living thing gets its life from him. and their for we all have a piece of god in us. from the tree, to a blade of grass, to the bug on the sidewalk to you and me, we all only live because of him, and in the end I believe that life does not simply cease to exist but returns to that from which it came. I see it kinda like this: say god was a stick of butter and every living thing you to the bug is made up of that stick of butter, you break off a piece for every leaf and a piece for every bug etc etc,, and in the end if you put all the butter back that you broke off you still have a stick of butter and all that ever existed still exists, cause we only existed through him and the life he has given us. So I don't know maybe I am not a deist, Honestly I don't know what I am. I only know that I do not believe in organized relgion, I do not believe god actually communicates with his creation except by natural ways such things that happen to maybe was god communicating (but can't really be sure ), but more so when we see how the world is made up. such as the laws of nature, and how that reveals to us a more sure answer of who and what God is. If this is not deism, whay is it? cause I seriously dont know. As far as being a jew I was not one but close to converting.
Thanks
Ryan

gratefuldawg wrote:

I almost converted but started thinking why would god make me who i am if he wanted me to be a jew?

another thing I felt was that while I believed apart of Christanity and Judaism, I felt like I was forcing myself to believe the rest, that which I really did not believe. After looking into deism I found this which is the perfect quote to explain my thought:

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief. If I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chasity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commision of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this. -Thomas Paine-