And if that interpretation is one of violence? Given the state of the old testament, it is certainly possible. Even if you disagree with it, how do you know that it isn’t ‘inspired’? ‘God works in mysterious ways’ after all.
Honestly, you have no way of knowing what god wants based upon that book. You are just filtering it through your own personality and coming up with something that you can live with and makes you feel happy. And if you had been raised a Hindu we wouldn’t even be having this conversation at all because you’d most likely be agreeing with me that the whole thing is a bunch of tripe.
I really wonder how supposedly intelligent people can believe this stuff and continue to believe it after reading threads like this. Is it just stubbornness that makes people to continue to believe that there is an elephant in the room when obviously there isn’t one?
To avoid a mix-up as we had earlier, I would like to point out that both of Zoe’s quotes in Post #340 were from Voyager’s in Post #338. The attribution of the first quote to Valteron is a typo.
That would be nice, but so many of the paths are contradictory that we’d have to say that the only inspired seekers were pantheists or other such. We have lots of religious Dopers who are examples of this. But any Christian who says salvation comes only from accepting Jesus does not qualify. If that path is correct, and Moslems and Jews are damned, I can’t see how any god would make this the nature of reality whole also inspiring someone to follow a path that leads to damnation.
Isn’t what makes Christianity unique is exclusive salvation through Jesus? I don’t see how that jibes with multiple inspired paths.
And since we have no way of knowing if the parts we accept from the Bible are from God or from man, and ditto for the parts we reject, shouldn’t we choose how to act based on our best human moral judgement, with advice from both Biblical and non-Biblical inputs? In other words, we should judge the worthiness of all our moral guides as if there were no God at all. Thus an atheist morality (which does not reject moral guidance from any book just because it has been claimed to be divine) is the only rational morality to choose. I don’t mean adopt atheism - just act as if it were true in choosing which course to follow.
I actually think many moral believers do exactly this, as we see how they reject parts of the Bible they can’t stomach morally. It’s something I respect them for, since their choice of what is right over what has been dictated as coming from God is a much harder one than any I have to make.
Many Christians believe that and many of us don’t. I haven’t held that belief for a long time. I was surprised to hear Billy Graham say on Larry King one night that he believed that many people of other faiths would be in heaven. (I’m paraphrasing his words.) I do remember that he quoted the scripture that says, “Many sheep have I that are not of this fold.”
Not surprisingly, his son Franklin Graham does not agree.
My personal belief is that no distinction is made between believer and non-believer. But I also generally tend not to think of heaven as a “place” as many Christians do. But who knows?
Allah the conception of God worshipped by Islam? Neither does YHWH, God of the Jews, whom we worship, together with His Son and Holy Spirit.
In other words, the issue is a difference in human conceptions of Him, not a difference in His essential nature.
Allah is not “the name of the Moslems’ God.” Like God-with-a-capital-G in English, Allah is the word for “The God” used as name. And Arabic-speaking Christians from throughout the Middle East (and elsewhere) will affirm that Allah does indeed have a Son, with whom He and the Holy Spirit are co-eternal, who was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried, etc.
I thought our being forgiven had to do with how well we forgive others.
It’s not a matter of “getting around” God’s law. It’s being aware that we may not know what God’s law is, based on those passages. It’s understanding that The Bible was written by men who may have tried sincerely to put down what the spirit had spoken to their hearts, but were still influenced by their culture and preferences. We look at history and we see the slow progress of the changing hearts of men. The end of slavery, womens equality, racial equality, the slow progress of religious tolerance. We see that our understanding of the depth of love Jesus spoke of is slow in coming. When did you last read MLK letter from Birmingham jail? Speaking of civil rights.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.”
“This “Wait” has almost always meant 'Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
After decades of pressure to remain in the shadows, out of sight and out of mind, which was always a painful form of dishonesty for all involved, they{the gay community} and others are saying “No more” It is time to deal with this particular inconvenient truth. What is required is to grant human beings the same basic rights as other humans who share their society. IMO to deny these rights based on “we believe this is what God thinks but we may be wrong” is an act of judgment and a lack of compassion that contradicts what Jesus taught.
You’re right, Jesus said, “Go your way and sin no more” there’s also the principle of James 4:17
Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.
Would it be a sin to own a slave in the US today? Is it a sin for men to use passages in the Bible as an excuse to oppress women? If a church would not allow women to speak in church or pray with their heads uncovered would you find that antiquated and oppressive? How much worse is the oppression of the rights of the gay community?
We’ve discussed the term cherry picking, but IMHO some verses that stand out.
John 4:24
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 16:13
However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth;
John 8:32
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
1 Peter 1:22
Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
Luke 12:31
But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.
Luke 17:21
nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Romans 14:16-18
16 Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil; 17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 For he who serves Christ in these things[a]is acceptable to God and approved by men.
Consider these and the many verses where we are to see the fruits of the spirit in a persons actions. Consider the lesson of “when you did it unto the least of these you did it unto me”
Would you deny a mentality ill person basic human rights as you tried to cure his illness? I don’t fault people for having a sincere belief that homosexuality is somehow wrong. I don’t agree with them but neither do I condemn them for believing as they do. When that belief translates into actions that affect the lives of others then I can judge the action. Engaging in an active campaign to withhold basic rights to people based on a provisional belief seems wrong to me.
In any activity we see as detrimental to others we must choose when and how to intervene, and when to allow them to choose and face the consequences of their choices. Jesus didn’t follow people around saying “Hey I thought I told you to sin no more” He even knew his disciples would sin and deny him before they denied him. He encouraged people to choose love and truth above all else, and then allowed them to choose. Jesus saw into the hearts of others and was perhaps better spiritually equipped to make those judgment calls than those of us who believe provisionally based on interpretations of some others mans writing and tradition.
Well people gay or straight can certainly be caught up in a lustful moment. Long term monogamous relationships can hardly be called lustful moments can they? If a person discovers they are only sexually aroused and moved to romantic love by members of their own gender thats hardly a lustful moment either. I’ll assume you’re sincere but frankly you mentioning demonic possession and mental illness seems like an attempt to justify a practice that is unjustifiable.
{bolding mine}
And since we don’t know, oppression and the denial of civil rights seems a totally inappropriate response. Even sinful.
I don’t agree. Jesus taught us that we expressed our love to God and him by loving our fellow man. We don’t love God first , loving our fellow man is loving God.
When Jesus described the most important commandments he said “the second is like unto it, love thy neighbor as thyself” meaning they are in essence the same thing. You can’t truly love God and truly love Christ without truly loving others. How is denying someone the civil rights we want for ourselves an act of loving them as ourselves?
I think we can see that we are still growing, still learning, still trying to put the principles that resonate for us into day to day practice. That means we can, indeed must, take responsibility for our actions rather than justify them or blame them on the actions of others. But we can still believe. You’ll see me using the term “believing provisionally” more and more and thanks for that.
If we believe provisionally then we choose provisionally too don’t we?
When people use phrases that try to blame their actions on God, we need to correct their language. They must be made to take responsibility for their own choices and made to understand that just because you’re interpreting what you think is a holy book, you are not excused for bad choices. They’re not exempt from the consequences because they thought they did the will of God.
This deserves a more lengthy response than I can afford right now. When I’m done with my thread on Jesus’ relative lack of intelligence, and some of the other religions threads have died down, I’ll start one on cherry picking the bible. I just want to make sure I can do it justice.
I think a difference is that Christians believe that the Jewish God YHWH is real and the correct God, I don’t think Muslims can say this, but I may be mistaken.
You are. Muslims refer to Christians and Jews, both, as “people of the Book”–the Book being the Jewish Tanakh/Christian Old Testament. That is why all three religions are called Abrahamitic as they all trace their origins (in their own views) to the call of Abram, later Abraham, by the one true God.
We all think that “the other guy” has gotten some important aspects of revelation totally wrong, but it is in the traditions of both Christianity and Islam that we are following the same God that revealed Himself to the Jews. (The Jews, naturally, figure we have each made a really bad left turn soemwhere down the line, but only a few Jews actually think that Christians and Muslims are worshipping different gods–they just figure we’re seriously mixed up.)
I know the Christian Trinity, Father Son and Holy Ghost. I am pretty sure that Allah (as in Muslim God) is a single God, and IIRC that is pointed out in their scriptures. What I am asking is about the Jewish God, according the Christian belief the Trinity was/will be always and forever. Does Jewish belief also have this, but just don’t accept Jesus as the Son of God? Or do they have a singular God?
If they have a singular God who is the messiah they are waiting for? What God was talking to Adam and Eve and walking among them, since no person can see the Father?
If it is a trinity or at least if God has a son then how can the Muslim God be the same since He is a single God?
Well, simplest answer is the Sh’ma: “Hear, O Israel; the LORD your God, the LORD is One.” They do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity; to them it’s a somewhat offensive philosophical gimcrack. Their understanding of the God of Abraham is that he is, uh, a “unitary executive”-- one in nture and supreme in power.
Typically, a Jew is no more focused on waiting for the Messiah than a UCC member is on the Second Coming, or a Baptist on the fine points of sacramental theology. But the standard teaching is that the Messiah will be a man, a descendant of David, who will himself be righteous and will lead the people back to righteousness and safety/victory.
Good question. What God was having a dinner party with Abraham at Mamre, if Moses is told that no one can see the face of God and live? Or if no one can see the Father, what are we to make of “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”?
Rather, what we have is a series of discrete accounts, each of which is pointing to something different: God’s transcendence, God’s immanence, God’s righteousness, God’s wrath, God’s lovingkindness, God’s ready forgiveness.
Let’s try this once more, with feeling:
Genesis contains the account of the God whom Abraham worshipped. This is the one true God, accept no substitutes.
The Jews understand him to have revealed his name to Moses, and established the Covenant at Sinai under which they live.
The Christians understand that to be true, but for him to have revealed his nature as triune, three Persons in one Godhead, and the Son to have been incarnate as man, Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Moslems understand 1 and 2 to be true, but somewhat misreported in Scripture, and 3 to be bizarre.
By the way, there’s a small problem evidenced with your own grasp of orthodox Christian doctrine (or perhaps only in the way you express it – I’m not judging your understanding but raising the issue to help clarify if the misperception is real and not my misperceiving your meaning).
In Trinitarian theology, God does not have a Son – he is a Son … along with Father and Holy Spirit. While Jesus incarnate as man did what humans ought to do, and worshipped the Father, he is no less God than the Father.
The issue is not whether the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Gods have Sons: it’s that they are all pointing to differing understandings of the same God, the one who called Abraham up from Haran to the Holy Land, who sat with him beneath the trees at Mamre, who commanded and then commuted the sacrifice of Isaac. Him.
Because that’s who the Jews say they’re worshipping, that’s who the Christians say we’re worshipping.
And that’s who the Moslems say they’re worshipping.
My complaint in a nutshell. This country, this entire culture, is being dominated and run according to principles avowed ONLY by those who self-identify as members of a radically unstable and irrational cult practicing indoctrination and mind-control. Anyone who self-identifies as questioning this cult too sharply is (not automatically but almost) disqualified from serving in public office, simply because the extent of this dominance is too great.
In my ideal world, Bush (for example) would be ridiculed, instead of being embraced, for his membership in this cult, but in this culture, cult-membership is NOT something one needs to disavow but rather to proclaim from the rooftops, wherever relevant and wherever irrelevant. A candidate who stated something as mild as, “My religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are of no importance in this election,” however, would be effectively disqualifying his candidacy. His statement would be declaring himself to be a lunatic and an enemy of Xianity.
The pertinent question is what kind of dialog can begin to change things? How do we do that while still preserving people’s constitutional rights? It’s easy to make fun and feel intellectually superior. Real solutions are more complicated.
