Your post is a mess. Can you fit it?
BTW, This comment I made, "God has not given me a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgement"." This came from scripture. It's deals with the Holy Spirit and what God's children are given.
Oh Dear, what a mess!
Yes, I will have a go at fixing it but obviously I can't remember my exact words. Apparently Sparrowhawke was not happy with me commenting about you - so I will try to work around that which may make it rather more long-winded.
The issue is not so much one of fact, belief or intent as providing genuine help to your fellow man rather than judging him, preaching to him or saying something which will inevitably, or probably, be received as criticism. Unwelcome preaching is far too prevalent here on this forum, it is frequently used as a thinly veiled method of openly judging and criticizing our fellow man. Unwelcome preaching has no place here, we can all find conflicting quotations for a retort if we wish to and that certainly should emphasize, to even the most dull-witted, the absolute futility of a simplistic reading of The Bible.
It must always be borne in mind that your fellow man may well not be as bright as you are – or conversely he may be operating at a far higher level than most of us will ever understand (Einstein, Hawkings etc). I would not want to cast aspersions on anyone here but 50% of the population have an IQ below 100. They are slow or even incapable of working things out for themselves and they rely on what they are told by their ‘superiors’.
If these ‘superiors’ are preaching ‘hell fire and damnation’ the majority will believe what they are told. It has always been so. If one of those ‘superiors’ reads a passage out of The Bible which clearly damns the practices of any individual or group of individuals they WILL feel judged and criticized by that ‘superior’. Many people simply cannot cope with the shame of that situation and their lives are ruined just because some ‘kindly’ person thought they were doing God’s will. I do not accept that it is God’s will that you ruin people’s lives, I believe it is God’s will to support our fellow man.
A simple example is the tradegy still unfolding in several African countries where the ‘superiors’ have been telling the gullible masses, ‘do not suffer a witch to live’. The result has been multiple murders and torture of a great many children. It is Salem all over again.
Obviously the message is straight from scripture (Exodus 22:18) so one may easily think there is no harm in preaching it, indeed one may think one is doing God’s work. With only a little thought, we will all realise that saying such things to poorly educated individuals with a relaxed attitude to violence is inviting them to commit horrors upon their fellow man out of ignorance and good intentions.
Extend that now to a fairly common situation in one of your local churches. A woman is being shamed from the pulpit for imagined shortcomings (we have read cases here). All with good intentions but her life was just ruined by ‘good intentions’ by the pastor ‘following scripture’. Do you need more examples? A very common one would be children shamed by their parents for a whole range of natural instinctual behaviour (use your imagination). Parents are the biggest single cause of psychological problems right into adulthood yet they act out of ‘good intentions’ (usually) and often because they think they are following the will of God. They have nevertheless just ruined their child’s life by imposing a sense of shame for something natural and God-given.
If one person judges another, and there is some tenuous biblical justification for doing that, they should keep quiet about it. By all means, if there is a suitable opportunity, ask if they know what The Bible says about their behaviour but we must all be ready to recognize that our own interpretation and understanding of The Bible is just that – our own. Some of us consider it to be a great book of wisdom with unique historical records and an insight into the lifestyle and belief of people 1,700 and more years ago whilst others treat it as ‘the inerrant word of God’ and accept every word of it as fact – so much so that they are able to totally ignore the very obvious factual errors. They take allegory and parable as fact and make no distinction between the recorded word of Jesus and the words of someone else even when they conflict with the words of Jesus. Even more mystifying, those people happily ignore passages that don’t suit them and feel totally justified in doing so (charging interest on loans for example). They feel that they should follow all of the instructions set out but then decide that they can ignore great swathes of those instructions by claiming that they don’t apply any more, despite Jesus’ very clear words,
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. They justify their exclusion of those swathes of law by vague and sophistic reference to a ‘new covenant or ‘ceremonial law’.
That long introduction is to illustrate that a simple reading of The Bible will not reveal the inerrant word of God. It may to some but any one of us may very easily be wrong in our understanding. Some of it is so clearly fable that none of us take it literally but other parts do still fool some people into thinking they should be taken literally. That, in part, is the reason that the Christian Church is so fragmented. If only we could agree that
none of us can be absolutely sure that we are right, we would be more tolerant of each other’s views and we could have a universal Christian church. All the time we have people adamant that they are right, that automatically means that they consider the others to be wrong – ALL the others. I must point out again that there are 200 major Christian denominations and many thousands of smaller sects. That is clear evidence that there are a huge variety of views. Some of them think they should be killing child ‘witches’ and some think they should be calling their neighbor ‘evil sinners’. Jesus (and Gandhi:yes) told us we should just be loving them – which seems a far better way of helping others than judging and condemning them even if you kid yourself that you are 'just' quoting The Bible. If you think that God has given you the wisdom to judge others – think again. On matters of God's law that is for God and God alone. Judge others at your peril. I'm sure you know what Matthew 7:1 etc says so I won't bother to quote them.
To those who judge me, I say -
I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.1 Corinthians 4:3-5(NIV)
I accept that you believe you are right but that is the word - 'believe'. None of us can 'know' to the extent that we can condemn others, we can only guess, assume and 'believe'. I accept that you 'believe' that 'God has given you sound judgment' BUT that really, really does not give you the right to judge others. That you should leave to God.
Gandhi was one of the most Christ-like people to have lived in my life-time yet you dismiss him and judge him. It really is difficult to understand your motives and certainly your logic. Where is your love for Gandhi displayed? Or even your respect for him?
As has been said earlier there are literally thousands of differing beliefs, just about Christianity, all based on careful study and all, in part, different from your beliefs. None of us actually KNOW which are right.
None of us, no matter how confident you are that God has given you ‘judgment’. If all of those millions of good Christians believe something different from your beliefs, are they all wrong to your mind? If so, there is a word for that ;)
You seem, to me, to be entirely missing the point of the sermon on the mount. 'Love' was the message. Almost unique at that time in the history of religions. Severely corrupted since then by many religious leaders and forgotten by many individuals - but forgotten at our peril.
love Aardverk
PS - I have kept a copy of the text this time so if anyone deletes it again I will send it privately. Sorry about the length, I did try to avoid that.
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LOL I like him.
Your point is well made. You seem to display good understanding (I dare not say 'judgement' ;)).
