Jesus was speaking of judging others in that quote, jmullaney, not just judging for yourself what is right and wrong. Nor is prison or a fine condemnation in my eyes; why is it in yours? We are not saying “you are a horrible person”, we are saying “what you you did was wrong and you must face the consequences of your action.”
Good lord! Someone has understood me. Thanks Sauron. Don’t worry – if anyone is lucky enough to get me as a juror, probably the best he will get is a mistrial. If he gets really lucky he might get off, and not do what he did again. Maybe he’ll even be innocent, who can say? I’ll do a lot of things in my life which I feel are wrong, but sending someone to prison will not be one of them.
Well, note how upset people get when I state my opinion of right and wrong and they fall into the wrong category. They think I am judging them. Is it a thin line? Or perhaps the line isn’t there at all? I don’t know.
To condemn means (among other things, but as long as we’re dueling dictionaries) to make a judicial finding of guilt. Condemn can also mean to condemn to punishment. I think prison is a punishment. So, a finding of guilt by which a person is put into prison is, by definition, condemnation.
No no – fuck you. Fuck you for the arrogant, lying, intellectually dishonest, dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers hypocrite that you evidently are
Are you INCAPABLE of not misrepresenting things? I mean, is it like a birth defect? I am not calling the Bible “a simplistic code,” as everyone but you – who evidently DO have the brains of a trout – must know. Shoot, I just posted:
Now, follow me carefully here: I am NOT talking about the Bible! I am talking about your ridiculous extrapolation from the golden rule, which extrapolation CANNOT BE FOUND IN THE BIBLE. It can only be found in that casaba melon you call your head.
By which you mean, I assume, that it should be punished by God in the afterlife, not by men in the here and now. But that, of course, was not what I was talking about; I am talking about the punishment of crime by men, in the here and now. You HAVE said that crime should not be punished by men, no matter how henious the crime. This was, is, and always will be, ridiculous – and totally unsupported by scripture. DO YOU NOW DENY THIS IS YOUR POSITION?
I asked “what do you think should happen to the unrepentant criminal?” to which you replied, “Hell if I know!!!”
Nice attempt at willful misunderstanding again, but as I have said, I will not allow you to get away with that. What do you think should happen to the unrepentant criminal in the here and now, by means available to men?
I said:
To which you NOW say:
Let’s be VERY CLEAR here. I meant, of course, that you extrapolate from the golden rule that no crime, no matter how henious, should ever be punished by humanity. Do you deny that this is your position?
Wow, allow me to lick my wounds . . . okay, moving on:
I asked:
To which you replied:
I don’t find it a valid answer because it is TOTALLY NONRESPONSIVE, you nimrod. Just look:
“How do you know this?” “His will would be blah blah blah.” Hmm. Let’s try again: “How do you know this” “My God is Love blah blah blah.” Nope. Third try: “How do you know this?” “God wants us to love each other blah blah blah.” I can just imagine you answering other questions begining with that confusing word “how”: “Excuse me; how do I get to the library from here?” “This town is a great town; we have many outlets for books. I like bookstores. Bookstores are fun.” Thanks!
I asked “Who are you, who admittedly lives in unrepentant sin and does not try to do otherwise, to tell the rest of us what God wants?” to which you replied, “I have no authority.” Hallalujah! A straight answer! Of course, it only leads to the obvious next question: If you realize you have no authority to tell the rest of us how to live, then why the fuck do you do it?
Society did. Y’know, that whole “rule of law” thing. Are you now saying that no crime can be temporally punished by humankind because no one has the authority to do so? Again, this is a yes or no question, although not a particularly elegant one, but then these questions tend to get longer as I include every little detail to hamstring your attempts at obfuscation.
The scripture does not rule out temporal punishment or condemnation for secular crime. Where you are sticking your head up your ass is by claiming that it does. (Well, that’s one of the places where you’re doing that.) There is NOTHING in the scriptures that prohibits or even frowns upon the meting out of secular justice for secular crimes, and if you contend that there is, then you are – altogether now – an idiot or a troll. Or both.
If the evidence is NOT before the jury, and I’m a juror, then there is no way I could know of this evidence. Right?
(BTW if I’ve missed anyone’s complaints any where back in this thread, please remind me. I’d rather not look back through it.)
Oh, that’s helpful. Look, Jesus said you should judge other people righteously. In the verses you are so fond of quoting, He said you will be judged by the same standard you use to judge others. It sounds to me like he is saying “judge well” not “don’t judge”.
It does mean other things. I don’t think Jesus had access to our modern dictionaries. Nowhere does Jesus tell us to let killers walk free, to let others rape our daughters and not punish them for it. He does chastise people for excessive judgementalism and warns them that they will face the same judgment they mete out. He warns them not to focus on the letter of the law, but on the spirit. I do not think your interpretation of his words is one He would condone, although He would, I daresay, forgive you for it. 
From the desk of Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian:
“Look,” said Jesus, “You’re going to hear a lot worse if you stay up here. I’ve got to be honest. Well, obviously. Hell is hotter, but we have the more obnoxious people up here. Most of them have filthy mouths.”
“But I thought you had to be good to get up here!”
“You worked for America’s best Christian all those years and didn’t even learn the rules? All you have to do is accept me as your personal savior. I mean, no exaggeration, we get murderers with mouths like sewers, but just before they died, they accepted me as their personal savior so we have to let them in. We don’t want to, but those are the rules.”
“But I though you had to also, like, love your neighbor or something.”
“No. You weren’t following. You don’t have to love your neighbor. You don’t even have to be nice to them. You only have to love me with all your heart. I guess you can tell who writes this stuff,” Jesus said with a laugh. To be honest, I wasn’t finding any of this very amusing as I had just overheard a pair of female angels who sounded like hookers. “You only have to treat your neighbor as you would treat yourself. See the difference? The Golden Rule can lead to wild results with the grossly dysfunctional. Frankly, we get a lot of masochists with Tourette’s Syndrome.”
“You know,” I said, “Nothing personal, Savior, but I’m not sure if I even want to be here.”
Before I could even tell Jesus that I had only made a hyperbolic observation to convey exasperation, He began flapping His arms and turned into a lovely white dove. He flew away before I’d had a chance to ask Him if Revelation had really been written by someone on mushrooms.
Okay, JMULLANEY, I’ll put the question to you using VERY SHORT WORDS. This is a HYPOTHETICAL. (Whoops, long word – I’ll try harder.)
A man is a serial child molester and murderer. He is also not surprisingly, a sociopath. He knows the difference between right and wrong, but he does not care. He does not repent his crimes; he revels in them. He will attack and kill again if given the opportunity because it feels good when he does so. He will not stop, because he enjoys doing these things. How do you know? He told you so himself; he loves to boast of what he’s done.
This man is caught by the authorities. There is overwhelming evidence of his guilt, which is actually not even necessary since he freely admits he did, does, and will do again the things he is accused of.
What do you think should happen to this man? And I mean in this world; not the next.
I think the best bible verse for this thread is a proverbs one. “A wise man knows to not give advice to a fool, but to give advice to one who will thank him for it.” And no, don’t think those were the exact words.
Jodi - You’re beautiful when you’re flustered, outraged, intelligent and articulate. 
jmullaney - So, how do you feel about circumcision? Oh, sorry. Wrong thread.
In the spirit of DNFTT, my advice on dealing with Mr. Mullaney:
Forget Using Cites and Knowledge;
Religion Is a Game to Him, To be an
Obnoxious, Full-of-himself Flake**;** Just ignore.
I am trying to answer you, so please be patient with me.
Gee, you seem angry. Was it something I said? 
So, you are saying you want to have my love child? Yes, that must be it.
Of course? I don’t have psychic powers, lady.
That is my position.
They should be shunned.
Nope.
Perhaps the Taoist saying would help to obfuscate and frustrate you further: those who say do not know, and those who know do not say. How do I know God is love? It is axiomatic. How do I know God wants those who love him to love his fellow man? It follows, more or less, from the axiom that God is love. How do I know there is a God? Because he reveals himself to those who love him. How do you love God? Keep his commandments. How do you know what they are? I was taught by someone who knew. How do I know those are the right commandments? Because were they not, God would not have revealed himself to me. Could there be other Gods? Perhaps, but this one is superior. Why? Because this God is Love. Isn’t that circular reasoning? Yes, that is why I made God is Love an axiom at the outset.
I see a perfectly logical consistency here.
Once upon a time, there was a woman who was betrothed to a prince. The prince had gone off to battle for a long time and had not returned, and no one knew where he had gone and many presumed he was never coming back. The woman had sworn to watch over the kingdom until the prince returned, but many others had come to lay claim to the kingdom in the prince’s absence. So the woman found a judge to hear her case, but this judge neither feared God nor cared about men. But the woman kept coming to him with her plea: “Grant me justice against my adversary.” For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!”
Some may lay claim to such authority, but it is not properly theirs. Can it be punished? Of course. Should it be? If you do not regard shunning such a person as punishment, then no.
Do not condemn, or else you will be condemned.
Other than the law of love, dear.
Right. All you know is that this sociopath pleaded “Not Guilty”, and that there is overwhelming evidence of his guilt of MULTIPLE, HEINOUS murders.
So what’s your move?
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. Matthew chapter seven, verse one. Trust me – you don’t want to be judged.
No, but I imagine the translators did!
Jesus said he came to “proclaim freedom for prisoners.” That may be only symbolic, but it starts to add up.
Well, if Jesus isn’t about the forgiveness of sins… Maybe we should make all sins illegal then Jodi’d never have to forgive anyone? Hey, pal: I forgive you, but I’m going to lock you up anyway? Fuck that. That isn’t love. You can’t convince me otherwise.
I am in no position to judge what should happen to this man.
Yes, and do not cast pearls before swine. I might remind: I am not the one who wants to keep people in prison thought they have repented of what they have done. If I’m the swine, then forgiving is bad and vengeance is an act of love.
Then how do I know he has not repented?
You keep missing that pesky second line, doncha? I will be judged as I have judged. That’s fine by me. And of course, you also forgot about the line where Jesus tells us to judge righteous judgment.
And I doubt they were hung up on technicalities and insist that “condemnation” must mean “sentence to prison”.
It sounds very symbolic. Never did he say “I will let murders go free from mortal punishment.” Since he explicitly tells people to judge righteously, I must assume he thinks judging is OK, as long as you do it well.
Jesus said you should forgive, yes, but not forever and ever. Punishment helps ensure repentence. Prison keeps a dangerous person from harming others while we attempt to help them. I could forgive a person, and still punish them, because I believe they should face the consequences of their actions.
It is refreshing to see such an open mind.
“Shunning” on the other hand, appears to jmullaney to be consistent with both his do-unto-other bit, and his love-your-neighbor bit, forcing us to conclude that:
A) The fucked-up serial-killer type in question wishes to be shunned (was that positied in the description, or just somehow work its way in there?)
B) It is a loving thing to shun someone.
One wonders how far it is down the slippery slope from “shunning” to other forms of punishment.
I begin to think that, in addition to your other failings (and, lo, they are a legion), you don’t really know much about the book you so often turn to for justification: the Bible. Oh, you quote it, but I’ve seen damn little evidence that you understand it or even have studied it much.
You did this before when you cited the adulteress at the temple for the proposition that temporal judgment is not sanctioned. You cited that story without any recognition that the intent behind it was to entrap Jesus using the holy law – not the secular law – and that His refusal to be entrapped can in no wise be construed as a mandate against secular law or judgment. Quite frankly, pretty much anyone who has spent even a minimal time in New Testament study knows this is more or less the party line on interpreting that passage.
Now you do it by quoting Matthew 7:1 (“Judge not, lest ye be judged”), with apparently the same lack of thought or study.
From http://www.horizonsnet.org/sermons/sm28.html :
From http://www.pbtseminary.com/books/pink/Sermon/sermon_39.html :
YOU may believe that “judge not lest ye be judged” means tha no person ever has the right to judge another, but that is not the way the verse is generally or reasonably understood. So you can cite it until you are blue in the face; that won’t make it mean what you say that it means. And, again, I’d ask you for just ONE cite that stands for the proposition that this particular passage is to be read in such a way. You can also say that it stands for the proposition that we should all put egg salad in our hair, but you run the risk people will point out you sound like a fucking moron.
I’ll drink to that, Milo! In fact, there’s something I wanted to point out a long time ago, but did not for fear of dulling an otherwise lovely thread of considerable import.
This is how you lose your temper, Jodi? What you’ve managed here is more sensible and coherent than most people manage at the very best of times. Cheers. However, I think you need to develop your wrath. Try hitting things and screaming / typing incomprehensible obscenities regarding someone’s parentage as a start.
On second thought, stay your wonderful, cool self. There are plenty of folks like me to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.
On third thought, it’s time for me to lay off the drink.
[sub]p.s. Still love that sig.[/sub]
Mullaney. Do you wish to be shunned? No, your behavior here shows that you wish to be the center of attention. Since you do not wish to be shunned, how can you shun others? That is against God’s law, isn’t it?
And what about this?:
Prov 17:15 Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent-- the LORD detests them both.
Yes, I think “Do not Judge” means “Do not Judge.” I know, it is waaaayyy out there – an amzing an unfathomable leap of logic like the world has never seen no doubt. Judging right from wrong is another matter entirely.
I can’t convince you “do not judge” means “do not judge” so I’m an idiot. You know, I’m going to sleep well tonight for a change.
Er. Do… not… judge. You want a cite that says this says “do not judge.” Hmmmm… probably one that doesn’t merely quote the verse where it says “do not judge” right? Well, I’m shit out of ideas how I’m supposed to do that. Sorry.
Yes, I’m clearly the moron here. Your sheer lucidity is a credit to whatever educational system produced you.