So we’re back to Simon and Garfunkel.
If the answer to what is right and what is wrong is unique for every single person, then there is no right or wrong. Somebody breaks into your house and steals your belongings-maybe God has a special reason for that person to do so, so why get in his way?
Yeah, by this logic the answer to my question is ‘discard the whole Bible’ since everyone Jesus (or any Biblical character) was talking to has been dead for ~2000. They weren’t talking to me.
Anyway, I know there are plenty of examples of violence in the Bible and ways of justifying it. In the end I think the OP has a point though. I just can’t see Jesus pulling out a gun and blowing somebody away for sneaking in and stealing his sandals and walking stick. I can’t see someone whose identity involves imitating Jesus as ‘loving their enemy’ by blowing someone away either.
The real bottom line though is that a lot of the prominent ‘conservative Christians’ we hear of are really charlatans. Look at Romans 13:1:
If members of the House followed that, they would seek to repeal the 1st Amendment separating church and state instead of passing bill after unconstitutional bill to end abortion. Probably the real answer to the OP is, “those aren’t Christians, those are people who just pander to Christians”.
I just came back to the thread after ignoring it for a few days. Lots of interesting points are being made in here. I can’t see Jesus “blowing someone away” over stuff, which Christians are not supposed to be overly attached to.
Your Romans 13 quote reminded me of a previous thread that I started, over Revolutionary War generation Christians. This country was founded on insurrection – how was that okay, in light of Romans 13? But now I’m changing the subject in my own thread. I probably shouldn’t be doing that…
Didn’t mean to sound rattled. Let me see if I can give a short answer to your concern. (Probably not.)
The short answer is that those parts of the Bible that Christians have discarded – selling thieves into slavery, mixing wool and linen, staying away from menstruating women, allowing different types of cattle to graze on the same land, etc. – are from the Old Testament. The Old Testament applied to Israelites at that time.
Christians aren’t bound by the Old Testament. The New Testament sets forth a new covenant between God and man for getting into Heaven. (The primary difference is that the Old Testament covenants said that people had to follow a list of rules. The New Testament covenant says you have to believe certain things.) So, as a general rule, Christians aren’t bound by the Mosaic/Levitical covenant, and those provisions don’t apply to them.
There are several examples of where this is set out in the Bible. For example, all of Galatians ch. 3 touches on this subject, but here’s the most pertinent part (emphasis added):
And here’s Hebrews ch. 7 (I’m cutting it down to what I think is the most pertinent part):
Selling thieves into slavery was a judicial law that applied to the Israelites, and doesn’t govern Christians. Mixing wool and linen was a ceremonial law that applied to Israelites and doesn’t govern Christians. Homosexual acts are condemned in the New Testament, so Christians generally don’t believe that they’re free to ignore those laws.
That’s the simple answer. Unfortunately, the real answer is more complex.
Prominent Christian thinkers break the laws of the Old Testament down into three categories: judicial/civil (punishment of thieves, treatment of slaves), ceremonial (circumcision, wearing two different types of cloth), and moral (honor your mother and father).
For example, here’s Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica:
And here’s John Calvin:
Christians generally believe that they don’t have to follow the judicial or ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. But they do believe that they have to follow the moral precepts of the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament is still the same God in the New Testament. So if he considered something immoral before, he probably still considers it immoral now.
So Christians generally feel like they’re free to ignore the judicial and ceremonial laws, but they still feel bound by the moral precepts of the Old Testament. That can lead to some serious inconsistencies. And yes, some Christians tend to use it as an excuse to follow those provisions of the Old Testament that they want to follow, and ignore the others.
Unfortunately, Christians are not perfect. But that’s a point that’s made over and over throughout the Bible.
That was a very thorough, well-thought-out reply!
/blush
I’ve got to admit, I felt uncomfortable writing that response. My own ideas on homosexuality are a bit more … nuanced? Conflicted? Completely made up? I’m not sure. But I generally don’t agree with the line on homosexuality hewed to by most Christians. So I’m probably not the best person to defend that position. I hope I’ve been fair to their position, though.
I think that you were very fair to their position. I didn’t start the thread to go “Christian-bashing”, though I admit my initial tone might have indicated otherwise. I was raised in the very conservative and fundamentalist Church of Christ, and while I did not agree with a lot of the dogma (anti-science, anti-evolution, etc.) from a fairly young age, I have never thought of the individual Christians that I know as monsters to be scorned, or anything like that. I just disagree with the mindset of Biblical infallibility, that’s all.
I enjoyed the discussion of the old and new covenants. I think that it is not well understood by non Christians and even by many Christians. I was raised Missouri Synod Lutheran and did not understand this philosophical distinction until I had wandered away from the faith. Then (as now) I viewed it more as a marketing decision than a philosophical one. Faced with a resistance among potential converts to cutting off part of their penis, Paul’s response was “That does not apply to us any more”, causing goyim everywhere to release their grip on their crotch and look more kindly on the faith.
I noticed in your discussion (I am talking to Age Quod Agis here) that you talked about the old covenant applying to the Israelites, not the Jews. Why the distinction?
Also, is there any indication that Jesus endorsed this philosophy?
I was trying to highlight the fact that those laws applied to the tribe of people that lived in that location at that time. If I had used the word “Jews,” I was worried that it might suggest that modern Jewish people are bound by those rules. In my experience, most modern Jews don’t follow those rules anymore.
I used “Israelites” because it highlights the fact that the people following those laws lived in a particular place and time. Modern inhabitants of Israel are now called “Israelis.” So again, “Israelites” just restricts the term to a particular place and time.
To be honest with you, I didn’t think too deeply about it. If that’s inaccurate, I apologize. I’d welcome any input you can offer.
Luke 22:20 (at the last supper):
There are other version of this. See, e.g., Matthew 26:27-28; Mark 14:24; 1 Cor 11:25.
But I believe it’s generally thought that Jesus’s specific teachings deviated from the Old Testament law. The Old Testament frequently says that God will make a new, permanent covenant between God and man. See, e.g., Isaiah 61:8; Jeremiah 32:40-41; Ezekiel 16:60-63; Ezekiel 37:26. Then Jesus came along, and his teachings seemed to: a) fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament; and b) deviated from the Old Testament law. So it’s probably more about Jesus’s life and teachings, than about him specifically saying, “I’m making a new covenant.”
Seeing as how conservative Christians tend to hammer away at the literalism of any given Old Testament passage, I’m highly skeptical of this blanket hand-wavy dismissal of a specific legal code that Almighty God Himself was supposed to have laid down.
“New covenant” is a vague yet loaded phrase that’s being exploited to offload all that is inconvenient about OT law even while maintaining that there are no flaws or contradictions is in the biblical fundamentalist world view.
How clear was Jesus himself in making the distinction between those Israelites to whom the laws of the Torah apply and everyone else?
And why doesn’t the new covenant take care of gay people?
Wow. The Christians will call you on creating a false, um, trichotomy, but I take your overall point.
(Though to be fair to poor Yeshua, he probably was less, “end of the world,” and more, “get the Romans out.” The crazy, “everything must die,” strain seems to have really got going in the English-speaking world 200 years ago.)
The OP quotes Jesus saying, “resist not evil.” What does Matthew Henry have to say about that? “Oh, sure, you can resist evil.” OK, so the Sermon on the Mount is not authoritative to him. Why bother then?
You are certainly free to be skeptical. If so, I’d encourage you to investigate it. Your investigation can start with the chapters and verses I’ve cited in my earlier posts that specifically mention the new covenant. They appear in both the Old and New Testaments. In fact, there are entire chapters in the New Testament that discuss the concept. And they don’t discuss it vaguely. They do so specifically.
Christians are often guilty of citing the Biblical provisions that support their preferred conclusions, and ignoring the provisions they don’t like. This is not one of those circumstances. And if you can honestly read the Bible and arrive at a different conclusion, then I’d love to hear your basis for believing that. But unless you can offer a different explanation, then I’d suggest it’s not the Christians who are engaging in a “blanket handy-wavy dismissal.”
According to Matthew, he quotes Jesus (after being asked when the end of time would come), and what were the signs, Jesus is quoted a s saying;" The sun will lose it’s light, the moon will turn to blood, the stars will fall etc. says no one knows the hour or day, but the father; but also is quoted as saying;“this generation will not pass away until all these things are accomplished” He also tells the people standing there listening to him that he would return in his father’s glory with his angels while some of them were still alive! It didn’t happen! either Jesus never said this or he didn’t know?
I think that’s the reason for using “Yeshua” instead of Jesus. He was arguing that the real guy never said it.
The current thinking amongst Christians is generally one of two things: He was speaking in parable form again, and didn’t literally mean what he said, any more than there literally was a Prodigal Son or Good Samaritan. Or he did mean what he said, but we misunderstood the word for “generation,” which instead refers to the Jewish people as a whole. And, yes, this is part of the reason for these Christians’ pro-Israel stance.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own interpretation and believe the statement took effect in 1914 or so, although they are now also starting to change the definition of generation to where it covers two generations. Their beliefs on the matter have been in flux since their founding.
Sooo, Yeshua was the freeman on the land and Jesus is the corporate entity?
You’re forgetting the Preterist explanation-
Within a generation of Jesus’ death, due to the Jerusalem Establishment’s continued persecution of His Church, Divine Judgement came upon Judea through Civil War and the Roman Siege. Josephus indeed records weird stuff in the skies, but also the Sun going dark, Moon turning to blood, & Stars falling is Old Covenant symbolic language for “the lights going out” on a society (used in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, etc.) The Temple was also desecrated starting in 62 A.D with the High Priest having Jesus’s nearest relative “James the Just, Brother of our Lord” murdered on the Temple grounds, and concluding in 70 AD with its destruction & Titus having his troops offer sacrifice to the Roman Standards on its grounds. Thus, the Old Covenant Aion came to an end, Christ was shown having ascended in the clouds & enthroned by Father God, and the Church released from its Judaic roots to extend His Message, and even His Reign, throughout the world.
Btw, I’m a Christian Zionist who emphasizes moreso Genesis 12 & Romans 9-11 than Matthew 24, tho I can’t neglect Ezekiel 37-48 (which I think is first about the post-Babylonian Restoration, but resonates into the future).
The more time it’s taking for Jesus to get back, the more popular Preterism is becoming. If He doesn’t return (after all, He just might!) soon, it’ll be a more dominant interpretation - Btw, it has always been part of Church teaching, just not a majority view.
Yes, Some Christians say Generation meant something different that we do today , but Matthew also says," There was 14 generations between David and Jesus using the word generation as we do today!