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Desire to be a vessel of honor unto the Lord Jesus Christ?
Join For His Glory for a discussion on how
https://christianforums.net/threads/a-vessel-of-honor.110278/
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Taking the time to pray? Christ is the answer in times of need
https://christianforums.net/threads/psalm-70-1-save-me-o-god-lord-help-me-now.108509/
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aiki
Guest
Hello.
Interesting thread.
Hmmm...Can one not make a distinction between God's judgment and human wickedness? Isn't God's punishment of the wickedness of King David rather different than Arabs gratifying their sexual lust by molesting their boy prisoners?
Again, is this not an example of God's capacity and right to use good or evil to further His ends, rather than an endorsement of rape? I don't read this verse and think, "Hey, I can go out and rape!" Rather, I think to myself, "Wow, are they gonna' get it!" My mind is drawn to the truth of God's total sovereignty in this passage, not rape.
Gotta' go.
In Christ, Aiki.
Interesting thread.
Hmmm...Can one not make a distinction between God's judgment and human wickedness? Isn't God's punishment of the wickedness of King David rather different than Arabs gratifying their sexual lust by molesting their boy prisoners?
Again, is this not an example of God's capacity and right to use good or evil to further His ends, rather than an endorsement of rape? I don't read this verse and think, "Hey, I can go out and rape!" Rather, I think to myself, "Wow, are they gonna' get it!" My mind is drawn to the truth of God's total sovereignty in this passage, not rape.
Gotta' go.
In Christ, Aiki.
It is more Old Testament style of teaching. The Bible says to love your enemy, but noone ever does in the Old Testament. The Koran says to kill infidels but it says to get along with people.Heidi said:
So from both religions you can pull the good and bad from the holy books and use whichever to justify whatever you wanted to do.
For example, Spanish Muslims have issued a Fatwa Against bin Laden. So this is Muslim against Muslim for interpretation of the Quran. This is very similar to Christian against Christian in the world wars.
Basically, you can justify any action with the Bible or Quran that you desire. To me that is one of the biggest dangers of religion. People accept dogma and don't have to question.
Quath
A
aiki
Guest
Hello, again. :D
Quath you wrote:
Uh, I think this is true of the Bible only if you take it piecemeal, selecting only what suits your desire. It's not like the Bible is written specifically so that one can justify any action by it. To do this with scripture one has to misconstrue some passages or verses and ignore others.
Hmmm...The first time I can recall the "love your enemy" injunction being given in scripture is by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, when Christ says this he indicates that he is setting a new standard of conduct, different from what was okay in the past. He said, "You have heard that it has been said, 'You shall love your neighbour, and hate your enemy.' But I say unto you, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you...'" - Matt. 5:43, 44 Christ acknowledges a difference between what was the rule and what he is instituting as a new rule. You can't apply a New Testament command retroactively, Quath. :D
In Christ, Aiki.
Quath you wrote:
Uh, I think this is true of the Bible only if you take it piecemeal, selecting only what suits your desire. It's not like the Bible is written specifically so that one can justify any action by it. To do this with scripture one has to misconstrue some passages or verses and ignore others.
Hmmm...The first time I can recall the "love your enemy" injunction being given in scripture is by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, when Christ says this he indicates that he is setting a new standard of conduct, different from what was okay in the past. He said, "You have heard that it has been said, 'You shall love your neighbour, and hate your enemy.' But I say unto you, 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you...'" - Matt. 5:43, 44 Christ acknowledges a difference between what was the rule and what he is instituting as a new rule. You can't apply a New Testament command retroactively, Quath. :D
In Christ, Aiki.
Y
YESHUA
Guest
And no MY GOD never told anybody to rape anybody, have you read in the Bible that MY GOD explicit told a man to go and rape a woman?Quath said:
I have looked up Numbers 31:25 and I don't see the word rape anywhere do you? or even force marriage.
It must be that Muhammad told his followers to do this, so you think that the Israelites were to do the same or what?
And as for Zechariah 14:1-2
Its a statement something that will happen in the future and most likely it will done by the Muslims who will follow the example of their so-called Muhammad, and do you honestly believe that GOD would rape or condone rape no my friend I can assure you that those people that does such a despicable thing will end up in hell and that’s for sure.
Shalom and love in the name of YESHUA coming soon
chana
Y
YESHUA
Guest
So the Qur'an says to kill the infidels, and it also says to get along with people does say before or after killing the people? just how can you get along with the infidels when your suppose to kill them, because people who is not a muslim is an infidel right so as I asked before do you get along with the infidels before or after you kill them?Quath said:
Pretty hard to get along with the people your suppose to kill don't you think?
It is more Old Testament style of teaching. The Bible says to love your enemy, but noone ever does in the Old Testament.
Really just where does the Old Testament that you should kill infidels for not believing in same GOD as the Israelites believed in? And go read Jonah and you will se that GOD saved saved Nineveh from being destroyed. Do you think that the people in Nineveh believed in the GOD of ISRAEL?
Shalom and love in the name of YESHUA coming soon and then you can tell HIM face to face that you believe HE condoned rape and what ever you think HE condoned, the only thing you didn't believed was that HE was the SON OF GOD.
chana
chana
Quath said:
Quath,
It appears you're saying the founding fathers were Christians when it comes to owning & raping slaves. In other discussions you claim they were Deists, against America being founded upon Christian principals.
Are you implying they had spilt personalities???
Maybe you'll have to decide which one means more to you. I can't see how you can have it both ways.
Remember you're here because of curiosity (no agenda). You have to be careful while playing both sides because there's NO reconciling the extreme differences.
Justice
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-wall/wal-g003.html
In 1774, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush founded America's first antislavery society; John Jay was president of a similar society in New York. When Constitution signer William Livingston heard of the New York society, he, as Governor of New Jersey, wrote them, offering:
"I would most ardently wish to become a member of it [the society in New York] and... I can safely promise them that neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and Christianity... May the great and the equal Father of the human race, who has expressly declared His abhorrence of oppression, and that He is no respecter of persons, succeed a design so laudably calculated to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke."
Do you think that women that just saw their mothers, brothers, fathers and fiancees killed would want to marry their killers? They were forced into "marriage." If they did not satisfy the men, they were set free according to OT laws. Or do you think the women really wanted to be the property of their family's killers?YESHUA said:
Look at the next line:
Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle.
God is doing this. Not some Muslim.
I don't support Islam either. I believe in neither religion and notice thaht both have rules for how to kill people of opposing beliefs, Muslims and Christians look the same to me.
Deuteronomy 13:12-18.
From what I can tell, most of the founding fathers were Deists. However, most of Colonian America was Christian.Justice said:
The practical matter is that people abuse power no matter what their religious beliefs are. Atheists included. If America had been an atheist country with slavery, atheists would have raped their slaves. What I am trying to point out is that we can not point fingers and act like Muslims are any worse of character than any other group. The main danger is the acceptance of dogma which allows for someone to feel holy for believing in "equality for all" and "slavery is sanctioned by God" at the same time.
Quath
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aiki
Guest
Quath:
You wrote:
This is a statement that reveals a profound lack of understanding -- at least concerning what the Bible teaches. The case you're making for your point of view, Quath, is drawn almost exclusively from the Old Testament. You'd never be able to make the same case reasonably (not that you're making it reasonably now) if you worked exclusively from the New Testament.
You'll notice (or rather, you should have) that there were no Christians in the Old Testament. Christ the Messiah hadn't shown up yet to redeem humanity. You cannot say, then, that Christians were involved in the goings on of the Old Testament.
How Christians are to behave is well-established in the New Testament. Read the Sermon on the Mount and show me where Christ teaches in it that "Christians may kill those of opposing beliefs." The fact is, Christ says very much the reverse! He commands us to "love our enemies", "do good to those who despitefully use us" and so on. And following, not just the words, but the example of Christ, this is what a genuine Christian will do.
I know of no evangelical Christian group today that, as a group, carries on the same kind of terrorist activities associated with modern-day Islam. And no genuinely Christian group would. The truth is that more Christians die at the hands of angry Muslims now than have ever died at their hands before. But, while literally thousands of Christians have died this way in Muslim countries over the last hundred years, they have not taken to bombing buses, or assassinating Muslim leaders, or capturing and torturing Muslim believers. They continue to trust themselves to the hands of God and continue to die for their faith in Christ under the bloodthirsty hatred of Muslims.
Christianity has no such dogma. If you knew the Bible better, you'd know this.
In Christ, Aiki.
You wrote:
This is a statement that reveals a profound lack of understanding -- at least concerning what the Bible teaches. The case you're making for your point of view, Quath, is drawn almost exclusively from the Old Testament. You'd never be able to make the same case reasonably (not that you're making it reasonably now) if you worked exclusively from the New Testament.
You'll notice (or rather, you should have) that there were no Christians in the Old Testament. Christ the Messiah hadn't shown up yet to redeem humanity. You cannot say, then, that Christians were involved in the goings on of the Old Testament.
How Christians are to behave is well-established in the New Testament. Read the Sermon on the Mount and show me where Christ teaches in it that "Christians may kill those of opposing beliefs." The fact is, Christ says very much the reverse! He commands us to "love our enemies", "do good to those who despitefully use us" and so on. And following, not just the words, but the example of Christ, this is what a genuine Christian will do.
I know of no evangelical Christian group today that, as a group, carries on the same kind of terrorist activities associated with modern-day Islam. And no genuinely Christian group would. The truth is that more Christians die at the hands of angry Muslims now than have ever died at their hands before. But, while literally thousands of Christians have died this way in Muslim countries over the last hundred years, they have not taken to bombing buses, or assassinating Muslim leaders, or capturing and torturing Muslim believers. They continue to trust themselves to the hands of God and continue to die for their faith in Christ under the bloodthirsty hatred of Muslims.
Christianity has no such dogma. If you knew the Bible better, you'd know this.
In Christ, Aiki.
Y
YESHUA
Guest
aiki said:
I know of no evangelical Christian group today that, as a group, carries on the same kind of terrorist activities associated with modern-day Islam. And no genuinely Christian group would. The truth is that more Christians die at the hands of angry Muslims now than have ever died at their hands before. But, while literally thousands of Christians have died this way in Muslim countries over the last hundred years, they have not taken to bombing buses, or assassinating Muslim leaders, or capturing and torturing Muslim believers. They continue to trust themselves to the hands of God and continue to die for their faith in Christ under the bloodthirsty hatred of Muslims.
Christianity has no such dogma. If you knew the Bible better, you'd know this.
In Christ, Aiki.[/quote:b7657]
A big AMEN to that
Shalom and love in the name of YESHUA coming soon near by you be ready
chana
So I take it that you do not believe in the Trinity, that Jesus is God. Because if you do, then Jesus (as God) ordered all the stuff in the Old Testament.aiki said:
Do you worship Jesus or do you worship God? If you do worship God, you worship the being of the Old Testament that did all those nasty things.
The Old Testament says:
Leviticus 19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.
However, God ignored this whenever He started up a war. So the book can say nice things, but it is the actions which show that all people pretty much act the same.
The New Testament does promote something worse than anything in the Old Testament... the concept of hell. It is an infinite punishment for a finite sin. Now that would take a truly evil god to come up with that concept.
Eric Robert Rudolph was a Christian terrorists just as much as Osama bin Laden is a Muslim terrorist. Remember that Christianity started up the Inquisition and fought the Crusades.
In 782, Charlemagne beheaded 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity. Christians have fought each other as Protestant vs Catholic or Nazi Christian vs Allied Christian. American Indians were wiped out in the name of God by the incoming Christians. Christianity has a long and dark history.
There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as The Dark Ages. -Ruth Hurmence Green
Chrstian dogma takes many forms from its justification of slavery to the concept of hell. You can't prove hell outside of the Bible and so therefore it is dogma. There are many other things like this from "what is a sin?" to "who deserves to die?".
Quath
A
aiki
Guest
Quath:
Well, looks like I'm going to have to clarify a couple more things for you.
You wrote:
Part of your problem is that you don't see God (of the Bible, anyway) as He is. You are reasoning from your finite, imperfect frame of reference about He who is perfect and infinite. You see, God sets the boundaries of right and wrong. This is His prerogative as God. BUt when you say God has been "nasty" you set yourself up as His judge in this regard. Should God be beholden to you? Who then would be God?
God made those whom He destroyed in the OT. What life they had was begun and maintained by Him -- even when those lives were being lived in total rejection and defiance of His Holy Being. Whether or not you like or understand this, God is sovereign over all things. This means He, as God, has supreme right to do whatever He wishes with what He has made -- including the destruction of it. It is not wrong for God destroy and judge His creation if He likes; it is His divine right.
So, then, I do believe that Jesus is God. But I don't regard His severe judgment of sin in the OT as wrong. It cannot be, for none of God's actions, by virtue of who He is, can be wrong. If they were, He would not be God.
God doesn't have to play by the rules He gives His creatures to follow. This is like when a father tells his child never to play with the power tools in the garage, but uses them constantly himself. The father's age, and the greater knowledge and experience that go with it, give him the freedom to do what his child cannot, and the responsibility to restrict his child more than he does himself. This is not a perfect analogy, of course, but it illustrates my point that God's infinite and divine nature allows Him the right and freedom to act in ways that we must not.
God destroyed wickedness in the OT. His harsh judgment of the pagan nations surrounding Israel is meant, in part, to demonstrate this. We recoil and are offended by how severely God deals with sin in the OT, but this is a testament to our corruption, not His. We are easy with evil and so are stunned by God's perfect hatred of it revealed in the OT. We assume He's got a problem, when the truth is that we do. Typically, the pagan nations mentioned in the OT were nationally involved in child sacrifice, sexual perversion, and pagan worship. Generally, they were highly antagonistic toward the Jewish people. They weren't harmless innocents being bullied by an obnoxious Jewish deity. Far from it.
Obviously, God doesn't see sin the way you do. That He punishes people in eternal Hell certainly suggests this. It isn't that He is inordinately mean, but that you don't hate sin the way you should. It takes a thoroughly corrupt person to say the judgment of a perfectly holy God is evil. But when you reason from yourself to God, this is the thinking that develops.
Neither history, nor the Roman Catholic Church define what Christianity is; that is the sole right of the one we call Christ whose words are recorded in the pages of scripture. You want to say a thing is Christian, then it must be approved as such by the Bible. The Inquisition, or the terrorism of Eric Rudolph, or the oppression of Charlemagne, or the brutality of the Nazis or the American pioneers, none of these things may be called genuinely Christian for they are all condemned by scripture.
I may call myself a Christian but, as Christ himself says, "By their fruit you shall know them." If my conduct doesn't conform to the commands of scripture, then it is not Christian.
Christian dogma doesn't include justification of slavery. Never did. Christians may have held to such a belief, but this belief was not actually Christian. :o
The fact of Hell is, on the other hand, a kind of Christian dogma. But no one says you have to like it or believe. Go ahead and ignore what God has said. Deny He has said anything. That's your right.
In Christ, Aiki.
Well, looks like I'm going to have to clarify a couple more things for you.
You wrote:
Part of your problem is that you don't see God (of the Bible, anyway) as He is. You are reasoning from your finite, imperfect frame of reference about He who is perfect and infinite. You see, God sets the boundaries of right and wrong. This is His prerogative as God. BUt when you say God has been "nasty" you set yourself up as His judge in this regard. Should God be beholden to you? Who then would be God?
God made those whom He destroyed in the OT. What life they had was begun and maintained by Him -- even when those lives were being lived in total rejection and defiance of His Holy Being. Whether or not you like or understand this, God is sovereign over all things. This means He, as God, has supreme right to do whatever He wishes with what He has made -- including the destruction of it. It is not wrong for God destroy and judge His creation if He likes; it is His divine right.
So, then, I do believe that Jesus is God. But I don't regard His severe judgment of sin in the OT as wrong. It cannot be, for none of God's actions, by virtue of who He is, can be wrong. If they were, He would not be God.
God doesn't have to play by the rules He gives His creatures to follow. This is like when a father tells his child never to play with the power tools in the garage, but uses them constantly himself. The father's age, and the greater knowledge and experience that go with it, give him the freedom to do what his child cannot, and the responsibility to restrict his child more than he does himself. This is not a perfect analogy, of course, but it illustrates my point that God's infinite and divine nature allows Him the right and freedom to act in ways that we must not.
God destroyed wickedness in the OT. His harsh judgment of the pagan nations surrounding Israel is meant, in part, to demonstrate this. We recoil and are offended by how severely God deals with sin in the OT, but this is a testament to our corruption, not His. We are easy with evil and so are stunned by God's perfect hatred of it revealed in the OT. We assume He's got a problem, when the truth is that we do. Typically, the pagan nations mentioned in the OT were nationally involved in child sacrifice, sexual perversion, and pagan worship. Generally, they were highly antagonistic toward the Jewish people. They weren't harmless innocents being bullied by an obnoxious Jewish deity. Far from it.
Obviously, God doesn't see sin the way you do. That He punishes people in eternal Hell certainly suggests this. It isn't that He is inordinately mean, but that you don't hate sin the way you should. It takes a thoroughly corrupt person to say the judgment of a perfectly holy God is evil. But when you reason from yourself to God, this is the thinking that develops.
Neither history, nor the Roman Catholic Church define what Christianity is; that is the sole right of the one we call Christ whose words are recorded in the pages of scripture. You want to say a thing is Christian, then it must be approved as such by the Bible. The Inquisition, or the terrorism of Eric Rudolph, or the oppression of Charlemagne, or the brutality of the Nazis or the American pioneers, none of these things may be called genuinely Christian for they are all condemned by scripture.
I may call myself a Christian but, as Christ himself says, "By their fruit you shall know them." If my conduct doesn't conform to the commands of scripture, then it is not Christian.
Christian dogma doesn't include justification of slavery. Never did. Christians may have held to such a belief, but this belief was not actually Christian. :o
The fact of Hell is, on the other hand, a kind of Christian dogma. But no one says you have to like it or believe. Go ahead and ignore what God has said. Deny He has said anything. That's your right.
In Christ, Aiki.
What you are saying is "God is good no matter what. If you point out something bad, I will redefine it as good." Imagine if there was an evil god out there. How would you know? Say that somehow that Satan came into power. If Satan said "Everything I do is good", can you refute him?aiki said:
You are basically saying that genocide, rape, slavery and any selfish act imaginable is good if someone says that God promotes it. You place yourself in the same camp as a Muslim when they die for Allah in a suicide bomb because Allah can not be judged as being bad either.
If you want a Muslim to judge their god, then you should follow the Golden Rule and judge yours as well.
You can say that God has the power and right to destroy what He makes. Howwever, He can not claim to be just or merciful by the way He does it.
To be just, you have to punish people for a crime they committed. You can not let off some and punish others when they did the same thing. So when God orders children killed, He can not be just.
To be merciful, God would have to show equal compassion to all His creations. However, God favors one over another when nothing distinguishes them. He kills some, plagues others and sentences others to be slaves.
Can you imagine Jesus saying "All their wickedness began at Gilgal; there I began to hate them. I will drive them from my land because of their evil actions. I will love them no more because all their leaders are rebels. The people of Israel are stricken. Their roots are dried up; they will bear no more fruit. And if they give birth, I will slaughter their beloved children." ((Hosea 9:11-16) Jesus would be saying that he hates and wants to kill children. Is this the Jesus that you believe you know?
BY analogy, all the people of Earth are His children. So God is ordering one of his sons to kill another son. What father would do that? He incites David to count his fighting men and then punises David by killing 70,000 people. Does that sound like a loving father? An Assryian king makes fun of God, so God kills 185,000 people in response. Would you punish your daughter by killing her if her brother did something bad?
How do you destroy wickedness by being wicked? The Israelites were slaves (wicked). God freed them and then gave them rules to have slaves (including sex slaves and how hard you can beat your slaves).
God forces Pharoah to keep the Israelites as slaves so He can punish Egypt. He even kills children that had nothing to do with all of this to win glory for Himself. You can not stop evil by being evil yourself.
You are using the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Muslims say the same thing. They say that the suicide bombers are not true Muslims. You can do thatwith another. No true atheist would every commit a crime, therefore there are no atheists in jail. You can not try to define your group to be good.
Look at Nazi Christianity. It is Biblical if you believe that Hitler is being led by God. Hitler wanted to exterminate its neighbors like Joshua did. Hitler wanted to remove the handicap. In the OT, God does not want men with crushed testicles in his congregation. Everything the Nazis did was justified in the Old Testament. If you believe that Jesus is God then Jesus approved of it as well.
Christian dogma doesn't include justification of slavery. Never did. Christians may have held to such a belief, but this belief was not actually Christian. :o
History and the Bible would disagree with you. Here are some scriptures that justify slavery:
You may buy slaves for life:
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
You can sell your dautghter as a sex slave:
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11)
You may beat your slave as hard as you like as long as they do not die 2 days later:
When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21)
New Testament justifies slavery as well:
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5)
Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2)
Noah's cursing of Canaan in Gen. 9:20-25 was used to justify American slavery.
Quath
A
aiki
Guest
Quath:
I'm not sure you really want to understand, let alone adopt, a perspective different than your own. Nonetheless, for those who may be reading but remaining silent and who might be genuinely interested in embracing the Christian perspective I will continue to talk with you.
I wrote:
You wrote:
Nowhere in the above quotation do I say or imply that, Quath. I am saying that God establishes what is right and wrong, not you. Moreover, God doesn't redefine what is right and wrong to suit Him in the moment -- though, as God, He could if He liked.
As an atheist you come to the Word of God with a prejudiced eye. You're looking for anything in the Bible that you might construe as grounds to reject or deny God. Rather than reading scripture and giving God the benefit of the doubt, you eagerly jump to negative conclusions when you feel you have the slightest provocation to do so. It isn't very likely, under these conditions, that you'll come to any view of God that isn't profoundly warped by your prejudice.
You wrote:
If Satan had created all that was and said, "This is good and this is bad", how would I know any different? He is God (very hypothetically speaking) and He is the One who establishes what good and bad, right and wrong is.
This is what I mean by a "prejudiced eye". You are so quick to find the worst possible meaning (however strained) in what I say. I have said no such thing -- but I think you know that. If I am convinced that God has said these things are okay, then, yes, they are okay. However, it would take a great deal more than someone's say so for me to come to this conviction. In any event, the God of the Bible doesn't promote such things.
In one sense, yes. If a Muslim truly believes that Allah is beyond reproach, and that what he is doing on Allah's behalf is divinely directed and sanctioned, then he is simply doing nothing more, on the level of motive, than you are doing here on this forum as an atheist. Whether it be him, or you, or me, we, all of us, are simply obeying our convictions to whatever end they lead us. In this respect, we are all alike. Happily, my God is not the god Allah; He is not approving the murder of infidels today.
I cannot judge God on whether or not He is doing right or wrong, only on whether I like what He is doing or not. I am not God, which is what is required to judge Him, and so I cannot judge Him. Like you, though, I can go with my personal preferences and assess Him according to them. This is what you have done, Quath. And this is why it takes God drawing us to Himself for us to ever have a relationship with Him. Left to ourselves, our preferences always lead us away from God (as you so effectively illustrate). The God of the Bible is not a tame lion. He has teeth and may bite. Certainly, He won't be confined by any human's intellectual, philosophical, or moral box. These facts, among other things, make the Maker quite unpalatable to people initially.
I didn't always much care for what I saw in the person of the Creator: He wasn't manageable; He was so much more than me; He wanted control of me. If He hadn't got a hold of me, I expect I'd be more or less where you are. So, I did actually judge my God as I have Allah. But my God is real, and He reached down and in spite of my reservations about Him, made me His own. Maybe He'll do the same to you.
He can and He does, Quath! Read the Bible -- all of it. You don't agree with it, but He does make the claim, nonetheless.
Well, if God were operating according to your manual of conduct, you'd be right. But your view of the situation is limited; His is not. Your view of what is deserving of judgment is stained by a sin-cursed heart. His heart is perfectly holy. Obviously, then, you are going to come to different conclusions about some things.
This is an extreme oversimplification and generalization of the facts. Again, what you see of a situation and what God sees are two very different things.
Oops! I've run out of time right now. I'll respond to the rest of your last post later.
In Christ, Aiki.
I'm not sure you really want to understand, let alone adopt, a perspective different than your own. Nonetheless, for those who may be reading but remaining silent and who might be genuinely interested in embracing the Christian perspective I will continue to talk with you.
I wrote:
You wrote:
Nowhere in the above quotation do I say or imply that, Quath. I am saying that God establishes what is right and wrong, not you. Moreover, God doesn't redefine what is right and wrong to suit Him in the moment -- though, as God, He could if He liked.
As an atheist you come to the Word of God with a prejudiced eye. You're looking for anything in the Bible that you might construe as grounds to reject or deny God. Rather than reading scripture and giving God the benefit of the doubt, you eagerly jump to negative conclusions when you feel you have the slightest provocation to do so. It isn't very likely, under these conditions, that you'll come to any view of God that isn't profoundly warped by your prejudice.
You wrote:
If Satan had created all that was and said, "This is good and this is bad", how would I know any different? He is God (very hypothetically speaking) and He is the One who establishes what good and bad, right and wrong is.
This is what I mean by a "prejudiced eye". You are so quick to find the worst possible meaning (however strained) in what I say. I have said no such thing -- but I think you know that. If I am convinced that God has said these things are okay, then, yes, they are okay. However, it would take a great deal more than someone's say so for me to come to this conviction. In any event, the God of the Bible doesn't promote such things.
In one sense, yes. If a Muslim truly believes that Allah is beyond reproach, and that what he is doing on Allah's behalf is divinely directed and sanctioned, then he is simply doing nothing more, on the level of motive, than you are doing here on this forum as an atheist. Whether it be him, or you, or me, we, all of us, are simply obeying our convictions to whatever end they lead us. In this respect, we are all alike. Happily, my God is not the god Allah; He is not approving the murder of infidels today.
I cannot judge God on whether or not He is doing right or wrong, only on whether I like what He is doing or not. I am not God, which is what is required to judge Him, and so I cannot judge Him. Like you, though, I can go with my personal preferences and assess Him according to them. This is what you have done, Quath. And this is why it takes God drawing us to Himself for us to ever have a relationship with Him. Left to ourselves, our preferences always lead us away from God (as you so effectively illustrate). The God of the Bible is not a tame lion. He has teeth and may bite. Certainly, He won't be confined by any human's intellectual, philosophical, or moral box. These facts, among other things, make the Maker quite unpalatable to people initially.
I didn't always much care for what I saw in the person of the Creator: He wasn't manageable; He was so much more than me; He wanted control of me. If He hadn't got a hold of me, I expect I'd be more or less where you are. So, I did actually judge my God as I have Allah. But my God is real, and He reached down and in spite of my reservations about Him, made me His own. Maybe He'll do the same to you.
He can and He does, Quath! Read the Bible -- all of it. You don't agree with it, but He does make the claim, nonetheless.
Well, if God were operating according to your manual of conduct, you'd be right. But your view of the situation is limited; His is not. Your view of what is deserving of judgment is stained by a sin-cursed heart. His heart is perfectly holy. Obviously, then, you are going to come to different conclusions about some things.
This is an extreme oversimplification and generalization of the facts. Again, what you see of a situation and what God sees are two very different things.
Oops! I've run out of time right now. I'll respond to the rest of your last post later.
In Christ, Aiki.
Here is a good way to see how you judge morality... from Bible or from something else. Imagine you are back in the time of Joshua as an Israelite. God has ordered you to kill everyone in a city. You walk into a hut and see a mother with her baby son. Can you imagine picking up the baby and slitting his throat and then killing the mother? Would you do it or disobey God?aiki said:
That is pretty open-minded. However, it means that noone can every leave their religion because they can not judge their god as wrong. So Muslims will continue to kill infidels because Allah said it is morally good to do so. I would rather more people questioned instead of being led like sheep.
You believe your god is just as real as a Hindu, Muslim or Pagan believes. Obviously some people are mistaken in their beliefs.
I know He makes the claim, but He never acts on that claim. Can you imagine a wise king saying it is justice to punish people unrelated to a crime for that crime? Or say it is merciful that He kills by disease and sword instead of a peaceful death in their sleep?
Quath
A
aiki
Guest
Hey, Quath!
Sorry i couldn't get back to your posts any sooner. Gotta' work if I wanna' eat. :-D
I'm not going to go into your most recent post right now. I want to finish answering the one before it. Perhaps in doing so I'll answer both.
You wrote:
The OT characters, nations and places serve as pictures or symbols of NT spiritual truth. For instance, Egypt is a picture of the World with its carnal, temporal focus in which we all live. Canaan, the Promised Land, the land "overflowing with milk and honey", is symbolic of the spiritual relationship with Christ into which a person enters when they are "born again". The pagan nations surrounding the Israelites are symbolic of Sin in the life of a Christian believer. When God acted in the OT it was always, in part, with a view to establishing these symbols as such and illustrating various spiritual principles and truths through them.
The way God dealt with various nations in the OT is more complex, then, than the surface level upon which you are judging it. The judgment of God in the OT upon all the people who made up a pagan nation (men, women, and children) illustrates how God deals with sin and how He wants us to deal with sin in our lives. Just as God condemned all the people of a pagan nation, so, too, we must condemn all that is sin in our lives. God destroyed nations root, stalk, and branch. The nation was regarded as a single entity by God; all of it was representative of sin. Children are the life-blood, the future, of any nation. It is in children that a culture is preserved and moved forward through time. Thus, for God to have kept alive the children of these wicked cultures would have been tantamount to giving continued life to that which He hated and had condemned as wicked. It would have done violence to the example He was making of how we ought to deal with sin in our lives and ruined the message He was sending about His attitude toward sin. His interest in expressing His hatred for sin superceded His interest in continuing the lives of these children. This is the God of the Bible. He takes Holiness very, very seriously -- far more seriously than we do. He is not a tame lion.
God does show equal compassion upon all people. Many reject that compassion and are then left with only His judgment. You see, God gives us all the same choice: follow me and live, or turn from me and die.
Unless you have some kind of omniscience, you cannot make this kind of statement with any certainty. Unless you can see the playing field from God's infinitely superior vantage point, you cannot comment, except from a basis of opinion, on how He operates on it. This is like a young child watching a police officer direct traffic. The child sees the officer stop some cars and let others move forward. He sees the officer waving his hands in one direction and showing his palm in another. To the child the whole thing seems arbitrary and chaotic -- maybe even unfair. But, if the child understood the situation as the officer did, it would all make good and perfect sense.
Jesus, as God, hates the sin which some children in the OT represented. And demonstrating His hatred of sin was so important to God that He ended the lives of some children in order to do so. This is rather different than the situation you describe above.
As I said, my analogy isn't perfect. It was intended to demonstrate the point I made from it and nothing more. All people of the Earth are God's creatures, but only a few of them are actually His children. As to what God's reasons or motives are for everything He does: I don't know; I'm not God. I have given you some idea of what God was doing, but my human condition makes it impossible for me to give a perfect accounting of His conduct. Since this is so, you will assume the worst and I will assume the best.
This is a question that originates from an opinion. As such, I cannot answer it. Some of what immediately follows the above quotation requires an answer too long for me to muster right now. If you truly want to know about the Christian understanding of the issue of slavery in the OT there are essays and complete books written on the subject. Check 'em out!
As I have already explained, God had more on His agenda in the OT than merely playing mean games. Much of what He did makes a good deal more sense in light of the NT. If all that God was doing in the matter you reference above was arbitrary, then I'd be inclined to agree with you. But, such is not the case. God demonstrated His sovereignty over the hearts of men in freeing the Jews from Egypt. His actions demonstrated His saving power to His people. His actions taught the Israelites to trust God even when His plans to free them appeared to have failed. And so on. These were all things which were better in God's mind to pursue than catering to your personal sense of right and wrong. As I said, God is not a tame lion.
This is not my standard, but the Bible's. Anyone can read the Bible and see for themselves what the standard for a Christian is. This is not some fluid, subjective standard of my own. The definition of a Christian is as clearly stated in scripture as the definition of the word "cow" is in a dictionary. And this definition has not changed for 2000 years.
It is stuff like this which exposes your profound lack of knowledge and understanding of the contents of the Bible. I think you know that what you're doing here is unreasonable and specious. It seems like a lot of silly baiting to me, so I'll not say more than I already have.
Again, you have neglected to make the necessary distinction between OT and NT in suggesting these things are condoned for Christians.
Nowhere does this passage say the daughter sold into slavery is given specifically as a sex slave. Be careful not to read a modern meaning into phrases that are millenia old.
This isn't a promotion of slavery, but an exhortation to those who are slaves already to be so excellently. The emphasis in this verse is on righteous conduct before Christ, not the issue of slavery. Man, you didn't understand this verse at all! This is another example of the very prejudiced eye with which you read scripture. You are stretching verses well beyond their borders.
Same thing here. Paul's words in this passage command slaves who have become Christians to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the name Christian. He is saying Christians should be respectful and diligent even if they're slaves. There's no promotion or justification of slavery in this verse at all. Did you actually try to understand this passage?
Okay, that's it. Time for bed.
In Christ, Aiki.
Sorry i couldn't get back to your posts any sooner. Gotta' work if I wanna' eat. :-D
I'm not going to go into your most recent post right now. I want to finish answering the one before it. Perhaps in doing so I'll answer both.
You wrote:
The OT characters, nations and places serve as pictures or symbols of NT spiritual truth. For instance, Egypt is a picture of the World with its carnal, temporal focus in which we all live. Canaan, the Promised Land, the land "overflowing with milk and honey", is symbolic of the spiritual relationship with Christ into which a person enters when they are "born again". The pagan nations surrounding the Israelites are symbolic of Sin in the life of a Christian believer. When God acted in the OT it was always, in part, with a view to establishing these symbols as such and illustrating various spiritual principles and truths through them.
The way God dealt with various nations in the OT is more complex, then, than the surface level upon which you are judging it. The judgment of God in the OT upon all the people who made up a pagan nation (men, women, and children) illustrates how God deals with sin and how He wants us to deal with sin in our lives. Just as God condemned all the people of a pagan nation, so, too, we must condemn all that is sin in our lives. God destroyed nations root, stalk, and branch. The nation was regarded as a single entity by God; all of it was representative of sin. Children are the life-blood, the future, of any nation. It is in children that a culture is preserved and moved forward through time. Thus, for God to have kept alive the children of these wicked cultures would have been tantamount to giving continued life to that which He hated and had condemned as wicked. It would have done violence to the example He was making of how we ought to deal with sin in our lives and ruined the message He was sending about His attitude toward sin. His interest in expressing His hatred for sin superceded His interest in continuing the lives of these children. This is the God of the Bible. He takes Holiness very, very seriously -- far more seriously than we do. He is not a tame lion.
God does show equal compassion upon all people. Many reject that compassion and are then left with only His judgment. You see, God gives us all the same choice: follow me and live, or turn from me and die.
Unless you have some kind of omniscience, you cannot make this kind of statement with any certainty. Unless you can see the playing field from God's infinitely superior vantage point, you cannot comment, except from a basis of opinion, on how He operates on it. This is like a young child watching a police officer direct traffic. The child sees the officer stop some cars and let others move forward. He sees the officer waving his hands in one direction and showing his palm in another. To the child the whole thing seems arbitrary and chaotic -- maybe even unfair. But, if the child understood the situation as the officer did, it would all make good and perfect sense.
Jesus, as God, hates the sin which some children in the OT represented. And demonstrating His hatred of sin was so important to God that He ended the lives of some children in order to do so. This is rather different than the situation you describe above.
As I said, my analogy isn't perfect. It was intended to demonstrate the point I made from it and nothing more. All people of the Earth are God's creatures, but only a few of them are actually His children. As to what God's reasons or motives are for everything He does: I don't know; I'm not God. I have given you some idea of what God was doing, but my human condition makes it impossible for me to give a perfect accounting of His conduct. Since this is so, you will assume the worst and I will assume the best.
This is a question that originates from an opinion. As such, I cannot answer it. Some of what immediately follows the above quotation requires an answer too long for me to muster right now. If you truly want to know about the Christian understanding of the issue of slavery in the OT there are essays and complete books written on the subject. Check 'em out!
As I have already explained, God had more on His agenda in the OT than merely playing mean games. Much of what He did makes a good deal more sense in light of the NT. If all that God was doing in the matter you reference above was arbitrary, then I'd be inclined to agree with you. But, such is not the case. God demonstrated His sovereignty over the hearts of men in freeing the Jews from Egypt. His actions demonstrated His saving power to His people. His actions taught the Israelites to trust God even when His plans to free them appeared to have failed. And so on. These were all things which were better in God's mind to pursue than catering to your personal sense of right and wrong. As I said, God is not a tame lion.
This is not my standard, but the Bible's. Anyone can read the Bible and see for themselves what the standard for a Christian is. This is not some fluid, subjective standard of my own. The definition of a Christian is as clearly stated in scripture as the definition of the word "cow" is in a dictionary. And this definition has not changed for 2000 years.
It is stuff like this which exposes your profound lack of knowledge and understanding of the contents of the Bible. I think you know that what you're doing here is unreasonable and specious. It seems like a lot of silly baiting to me, so I'll not say more than I already have.
Again, you have neglected to make the necessary distinction between OT and NT in suggesting these things are condoned for Christians.
Nowhere does this passage say the daughter sold into slavery is given specifically as a sex slave. Be careful not to read a modern meaning into phrases that are millenia old.
This isn't a promotion of slavery, but an exhortation to those who are slaves already to be so excellently. The emphasis in this verse is on righteous conduct before Christ, not the issue of slavery. Man, you didn't understand this verse at all! This is another example of the very prejudiced eye with which you read scripture. You are stretching verses well beyond their borders.
Same thing here. Paul's words in this passage command slaves who have become Christians to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the name Christian. He is saying Christians should be respectful and diligent even if they're slaves. There's no promotion or justification of slavery in this verse at all. Did you actually try to understand this passage?
Okay, that's it. Time for bed.
In Christ, Aiki.
The deaths and torture that God inflicted was not symbolic. It would have been more symbolic for God to have died on the battlefield.aiki said:
So you are saying that if the Israelites had raised the children, the children would not have the culture of the Israelites, but of their former culture of which they knew nothing of? Look at Chinese people raised in America by American parents. Do they have a Chinese culture? No. You are reaching to use this to justify killing children.
Did God appear to every tribe around the world? No. Only tribes in that area report seeing him. All other tribes report other gods. So God picked one tribe to favor and He used that tribe to kill off its neighbors. Where is the equal compassion?
Unless you have some kind of omniscience, you cannot make this kind of statement with any certainty. [/quote:d882c]
I am just going by what the Old Testament says. Nothing more. (Maybe some history to see that no other tribes have written about Him.)
Can you see Jesus leading armies to war and ordering his men to ravage the city and kill every man, woman and child? How would you feel towards God if you have been born in this city? Could you watch your family killed and think this was a god of love or war? Were the children any more sinful than the Israelites? By actions it does not appear so. By genetics, I doubt it. By what is reported in the Old Testament, they were just as wicked.
This could have been done just as easily by God proclaiming that every Israelite would walk free. If the Israelites trusted Him, then no weapon or chain would stop them. Wow. Same symbolism with no bloodshed!
So a Christian is a follower of Christ who is also God. God/Jesus has told one race to kill all the other sinful races. God/Jesus has said that some handicapped people are not welcome to His temple. What in all of this makes Nazis not Christian? If they believe that Hitler is like Joshua, they are following the Bible and following Jesus.
If you saw what Jacob did with his wive's slaves, you know that having sex with your slave was common. God never turned off the slaves fertality and instead rewarded Jacob with children from these slaves.
This isn't a promotion of slavery, but an exhortation to those who are slaves already to be so excellently. The emphasis in this verse is on righteous conduct before Christ, not the issue of slavery. Man, you didn't understand this verse at all! This is another example of the very prejudiced eye with which you read scripture. You are stretching verses well beyond their borders.[/quote:d882c]
What about "Serve them" does not imply endorsement? If God was against slavery, it should read, "Christian masters should own no people as property." Or "Love another as yourself and therefore keep no other as a slave." Instead it tells slaves to serve their masters. You can put a different emphasis on it, but it still says the same thing.
I think you are selectively reading stuff into the Bible to make it more palatable. However, if you try to read it as it is, it shows the culture of the past and that is one in which killing and slavery were seen as morally acceptable. Do you agree with lines from the Bible like "happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks"? Or do you call this symbolism also?
Quath
A
aiki
Guest
Quath:
You just aren't listening to what I'm saying. Your prejudice has overcome your capacity to think outside of it. I'm sorry this is so.
See, this is just a thoughtless, reflexive response to what I've written. You don't like it, so you simply deny that it is so. You aren't discussing; only objecting and contending. The fact of the matter is that God's actions in the OT were often symbolic. Many, many biblical scholars for centuries have expounded upon these symbols.
Again, you aren't actually considering what I'm writing. Nothing I wrote is expressed in the above quotation. You've just skimmed over the import of my words and tossed out another objection. I said that in God's eyes the children of a pagan, enemy nation were part of that nation and as such were held under His judgment of that nation. Their age did not exclude them. God dealt with the nation as a whole: root, stalk and branch. To have separated the children out of the nation would've meant that a portion of the sin that the pagan nation represented was allowed to continue. As a perfectly holy God, this was not possible for Him to do. The issue isn't the children, but the holiness of God.
Yes, He did. His Creation declares Him loud and clear.
What? This is completely mistaken. God did choose out a people for Himself. BUt this was never to the exclusion of all other people. Any pagan person who wished to follow the God of the Israelites was fully free to do so. There are instances in the OT which demonstrate this. God judged and destroyed those nations which were wicked and made themselves enemies of His Chosen People. Being an enemy of God's people made one an enemy of Him, too. YOur characterization above suggests an arbitrariness to God's conduct that isn't there.
Inasmuch as the OT doesn't give a full accounting of God's perspective, it is not possible to speak to His methods and actions with a perfect understanding of them from it. You aren't really going by what the OT says anyway. You are taking bits and pieces out of the larger context of the entire OT and attempting to make a case. You don't make any effort to reconcile together all that the OT says about God. You've just chosen those things which seem to support your prejudice and then carry on like you have the full picture. I wonder if you operate like this in the rest of your life...
I expect I would feel alot like you do: under God's judgment, fearful, and resenting it.
Yes, the Israelites were often just as wicked as their pagan neighbours. The OT makes it clear, though, that this was more often than not because they had not dealt with the surrounding pagan nations as God had commanded. In any event, when the Israelites did fall into wickedness God judged them harshly, too. The affect of His holiness was applied universally.
Ah, here is the root of your problem! You think you know better than God in your finite, imperfect condition than He does in His perfect, infinite condition. You would tell God how to be God. The arrogance in this is stunning!
Here, too, you demonstrate your inability to see beyond your prejudice. You have obviously not read the NT or the OT in their entirety, much less taken the pains to comprehend them. You disconnect a few verses from the whole of scripture and then talk about them as though you understand them perfectly. But it is the entire context of the Bible in which these verses exist which defines their meaning. This is a basic principle of literary criticism, of which you seem to know nothing. Do you know what "specious reasoning" is? The above quotation is a perfect example of it. YOur thoughts above only demonstrate that you can think like a Nazi, not a Christian.
I gave the verse the emphasis that it supports; you have not. You have forced your agenda upon this verse as you have in most other instances.
Of course you do. You're an atheist. It makes no difference to you that my knowledge and understanding of scripture is far greater than your own. I'm just wrong no matter what.
I say there is more to the Bible than the proof-texts you've put forward. All of these verses exist in a greater context that qualifies and explains them. But you don't want to consider this greater context; you just want the God of the Bible to be bad, not because He is, but because you need HIm to be.
Well, I'm done talking with you about all this, Quath. I've done alot of work responding to your comments, but to no avail. You obviously don't want to see anything other than what you already believe you see. So be it. To continue with you in this dialogue would be the same as trying to get the Sun to follow a different path. It's on one course and nothing will move it from this course -- nothing except God.
In Christ, Aiki.
You just aren't listening to what I'm saying. Your prejudice has overcome your capacity to think outside of it. I'm sorry this is so.
See, this is just a thoughtless, reflexive response to what I've written. You don't like it, so you simply deny that it is so. You aren't discussing; only objecting and contending. The fact of the matter is that God's actions in the OT were often symbolic. Many, many biblical scholars for centuries have expounded upon these symbols.
Again, you aren't actually considering what I'm writing. Nothing I wrote is expressed in the above quotation. You've just skimmed over the import of my words and tossed out another objection. I said that in God's eyes the children of a pagan, enemy nation were part of that nation and as such were held under His judgment of that nation. Their age did not exclude them. God dealt with the nation as a whole: root, stalk and branch. To have separated the children out of the nation would've meant that a portion of the sin that the pagan nation represented was allowed to continue. As a perfectly holy God, this was not possible for Him to do. The issue isn't the children, but the holiness of God.
Yes, He did. His Creation declares Him loud and clear.
What? This is completely mistaken. God did choose out a people for Himself. BUt this was never to the exclusion of all other people. Any pagan person who wished to follow the God of the Israelites was fully free to do so. There are instances in the OT which demonstrate this. God judged and destroyed those nations which were wicked and made themselves enemies of His Chosen People. Being an enemy of God's people made one an enemy of Him, too. YOur characterization above suggests an arbitrariness to God's conduct that isn't there.
Inasmuch as the OT doesn't give a full accounting of God's perspective, it is not possible to speak to His methods and actions with a perfect understanding of them from it. You aren't really going by what the OT says anyway. You are taking bits and pieces out of the larger context of the entire OT and attempting to make a case. You don't make any effort to reconcile together all that the OT says about God. You've just chosen those things which seem to support your prejudice and then carry on like you have the full picture. I wonder if you operate like this in the rest of your life...
I expect I would feel alot like you do: under God's judgment, fearful, and resenting it.
Yes, the Israelites were often just as wicked as their pagan neighbours. The OT makes it clear, though, that this was more often than not because they had not dealt with the surrounding pagan nations as God had commanded. In any event, when the Israelites did fall into wickedness God judged them harshly, too. The affect of His holiness was applied universally.
Ah, here is the root of your problem! You think you know better than God in your finite, imperfect condition than He does in His perfect, infinite condition. You would tell God how to be God. The arrogance in this is stunning!
Here, too, you demonstrate your inability to see beyond your prejudice. You have obviously not read the NT or the OT in their entirety, much less taken the pains to comprehend them. You disconnect a few verses from the whole of scripture and then talk about them as though you understand them perfectly. But it is the entire context of the Bible in which these verses exist which defines their meaning. This is a basic principle of literary criticism, of which you seem to know nothing. Do you know what "specious reasoning" is? The above quotation is a perfect example of it. YOur thoughts above only demonstrate that you can think like a Nazi, not a Christian.
I gave the verse the emphasis that it supports; you have not. You have forced your agenda upon this verse as you have in most other instances.
Of course you do. You're an atheist. It makes no difference to you that my knowledge and understanding of scripture is far greater than your own. I'm just wrong no matter what.
I say there is more to the Bible than the proof-texts you've put forward. All of these verses exist in a greater context that qualifies and explains them. But you don't want to consider this greater context; you just want the God of the Bible to be bad, not because He is, but because you need HIm to be.
Well, I'm done talking with you about all this, Quath. I've done alot of work responding to your comments, but to no avail. You obviously don't want to see anything other than what you already believe you see. So be it. To continue with you in this dialogue would be the same as trying to get the Sun to follow a different path. It's on one course and nothing will move it from this course -- nothing except God.
In Christ, Aiki.
You are ignoring the concept that God could have been symbolic with a fruit tree instead of symbolic with the killing of children. We seek patterns (which explains why horoscopes are believed). However, we need to be objective and look at alternatives. Was there other ways for God to express a message beyond killing children? I think so. (Not that I believe any of it, but if it were true, God would be quite evil.)aiki said:
So you are saying the children are symbolic of the culture. However, that ignores the part where God says the children shall not pay for the iniquite of the father. So in His symbolism, God is going against Himself.
As God(Yaweh)? He is seen as Odin, Vishnu, Zeus, Ra and by many other names. These gods are not the same as Yaweh. They have different rules to achieve happiness with trhe Creator. So God did not visit these people unless He lied to them about who He was. Of if humans can get stuff wrong, then maybe the Israelites got the Bible wrong.
So the Hawaiians and South Africans and Asians never had a chance to learn of Him. So God excluded these people.
It is not just bits and pieces. Where the Old Testament says that the Israelites worshiped other gods and sacrificed humans to them, I am not picking and chosing. You don't have to look at the whole if the pieces are logical. (I don't have to know the history of chess to play the game.)
Or maybe the arrogance is you believe you know God. You believe that God lets people write false things about Him (book or Mormon, Quran), so why do you believe that the Old Testament is true? Why is it no more than stories like the Iliad or any other mythology?
But in my limited understanding, I know the rules of simple logic. It is not logical for God to say for people to love their enemy and then say for them to kill their enemy. Even if these people had to die for some unknown reason, why did God want them to have a suffering death? Just simple questions that do not get answered except for stuff like "God is mysterious."
Can you refute that Nazi philosophy is not in the Bible? Any justification you can give for Joshua killing all the neighbors can be given for Hitler as well. Just say the Jews were symbolic deaths and I have just repeated your justification.
I know. I kind of feel the same way. You are set in your beliefs and I am set in mine.
Quath
W
warner
Guest
I don't see no Christian following Jesus' example.Show me one Chrsitian who beleives in the One true GOD.Show me one Chrsitian who falls on his face in prayer.Show me one christian who is circumcised, Show me one christian who fasts and Gives alms on a regular Basis. Show me one christian who turns the other Cheek.Gary_Bee said:
It is all lip service and Slander of other People's faiths.Try to really follow Jesus.May be it will make you better christians.Then may be you can pick faults from other peoples Religions, other wise Like Jesus said to your forefathers "adulterous Generation" "hypocrites".
Peace
:angel: