So THAT was a roller coaster ride. Gee. And to think I’ve always been afraid of them.
Manhattan, I have very strong doubts that going from non-believer to any sort/form or kind of Christian would ever be achieved by reading the first several books of the NT in order. I don’t think that reading the Torah would turn a non-believer into a Jew, either.
It seems to me much more likely that absorbing bits and pieces as a child or in discussions with friends would be a more likely avenue because the ideas, themes, high points would have some kind of logic and, if you will, pathway. By the time you began to do cover-to-cover reading you’d gloss over the oddities and more frightening/illogical parts.
Also going to church or worship helps - the sermons or discussions would be explained, even parts like Jesus withering a bush that hadn’t produced fruit out of season, might sound very reasonable in some light or another.
Look at how jenkinsfan started this thread - not at the beginning of the world or Jesus’ birth but with verses that would be the start of a discussion.
Heck, with all those gospel stations on TV you should be able to pick up the message in the comfort of your own home!
I believe that the word of God is perfect and that God has revealed his wisdom in a variety of ways, including to those who wrote the Bible. Unfortunately, this revelation has never taken the form of dictation (“Moses, take a letter”). The point being that any time the conduit for the message is imperfect (i.e., man) then there’s the possibility that the message is not completely true. I think this explains a lot of troubling contradiction and arbitrariness in the Bible.
A possible example:
God’s word: Impersonal sexual union that lacks any commitment or care displeases Me, in that it dehumanizes My children and treats them as objects and not as the precious brother or sister I have charged you to nurture.
Man’s interpretation: Um, I’m pretty sure I’m hearing God say that orthodox sexual union within a heterosexual marriage is OK. So, that probably means everything else is at the very best suspect. Let’s codify this and see if we can get it past committee! After all it’s God’s word.
God: My word is perfect and complete and I will choose My way to reveal it to you. You don’t get to choose which parts you like and follow because, well, I’m God.
Man: Is somebody getting this all down? Josia, you type it all up, we’ll do an edit and get this this out as the complete guideline, unabridged. Seems pretty important to God that we make sure it’s understood that there’s to be no negotiation on anything we put in here, since–after all–it’s God’s word.
Jois put it nicely, I think. There is truth in there, profound truth, that can be discovered through reflection and discussion and explanation. It’s worth the effort. But don’t lose sight of the fact that in every instance the final rendering of the Word was done by some mortal, if well-meaning, human. Don’t let the silly stuff (passages that actually contradict each other, to cite an obvious category) throw you. Don’t even assume that any garbling of the message was deliberate. We’re all human, most of the time doing the best we can. That includes all the Bible guys.
And why doesn’t God just issue an unambiguous manual to remove all the confusion over what exactly is the real deal? The fact that He has not leads me to conclude that the process of faith and discovery that we evolve through is one that pleases Him.
Sorry, it’s not really interesting. I was baptized into the Methodist church, though I’m Episcopalian now, and I’ve always been a believer in the literal sense. That is, I’ve always believed (dare I say known) that God is real.
It’s more to do with the transformation within me from royal bitch (powers I can still call on, when necessary) to semi-decent person. Hell, I’m even a member of a lay religious order (Daughters of the King). This was almost wholly confined within the five years I was married. It was the worst mistake of my life - I’m paying for it in so many ways, ways you couldn’t begin to imagine - but God brought me through it and changed me forever in the process. Forced me through it, almost, when all I wanted to do was die.
Do I believe that the Bible is the inerrant and only revelation of God to mankind? No. That makes no sense. If one believes it to be so, they’ve taken a near-Deistic stance on God. Any time God interacts with the creation that is a revelation. The Incarnation is a revelation totally separate from the canon. The canon may document it, but it is not the same. Besides, the canon wasn’t settled for what, 300 years or so after the Ascension of Christ? How’d they know what to pick? I think revelation might have played a role in deciding that, don’t you?
But, as jenkinsfan has said his OP was meant for witnessing, I’ll throw my own favorite verse into the ring, a verse I know from personal experience to be true…
…and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Yeah, I guess that’s kind of my point. We didn’t see the Resurrection. So it seems to me that in the Chrisitan religions, God has personal knowledge that for even Jesus’ closest followers, mere miracles weren’t enough. They had to see the guy come back from the dead and ascend into Heaven right before their eyes! I started on Acts this weekend, and there Peter and all are running around gathering converts. How do they do this? With their superpowers. People see these guys using their superpowers and then believe. And yet much of contemporary Christianity posits that I will go to hell if I don’t believe, even though I am not the witness to any of this. I daresay that if someone just gave Peter a book about miracles, he wouldn’t have bought it.
As Euty makes clear, the answer to these questions is “no.”
Reading the Bible straight through. Wow. I tried it once, and ditched it almost immediately.
I think I was less than clear in my initial post. You’re right, we did not physically witness the Resurrection. The point I’ve been trying to make is that the Apostles are the ones to know firsthand whether or not the Resurrection story is true. It either happened or it didn’t. If it didn’t happen, they had to make it up. It’s not like you and me, 2000 years later, trying to discern the truth. They, unlike us, would know for sure one way or another.
What would be the point of them lying about it? What would that serve to accomplish? Why would they die in the ways they died, proclaiming what they proclaimed, if they knew the story to be false?
Sir, I really don’t think that there are any “Bad God” passages, but thanks for your interest. If you want to learn more about Jesus and why He is worth worshipping you might try reading the Gospels. They give a much more detailed and more powerful description of His life, miracles, and selfless love than I ever could.
Yes, I have read the passages. The Bible sometimes includes mistakes made by people to warn us against making the same ones in our lives. Some will heed the Bible’s warnings and save themselves a world of hurt. Some will not. BTW, this is a response to the passages posted by Holly. Some people will live and learn. Others read the Bible.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. I always thought Jesus was in the best light possible. He left Heaven, His heavenly body, His position on the right hand of God and died in a dark cold world for people that hated him.
Manhattan, if you want me to prove to you that Christ is alive, I nor anyone else can. We can show you His empty tomb. We can read the Bible to you. But only you can ultimately decide in your heart what you believe. I accepted the Gospel of Christ as a response to an invitation in a sermon. The first step to Christianity is faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. (see Hebrews 11:6) After you put your faith in Christ you’ll have all the proof you need. I promise.
The Jackel, your previous post filled with inserts made my head spin trying to remeber who wrote what. Would you mind asking your questions again? Thanks.
Except that, in the Orthodox (Jewish, not Christian) tradition, that is exactly where the Torah (Written and Oral) comes from. (For purposes of discussion, I am calling the “Oral Torah” that oral tradition that was given to Moses at Sinai but not written down by him, not later discussions of it).
Exodus 11 : 5 (NIV)
“Every firstborn son in Egypt shall die, from the firstborn son of Pharoah who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl.”
Psalms 137 : 8-9 (NIV, paraphrased)
“Happy is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
Matthew 19 : 14 (KJV)
“Suffer the little children to come unto me.”
I detest prooftexting, so I’m not going to get into that argument, but I will say this… the Psalms are not meant to be read in the same manner as other books of the Bible. They are prayers to God which did, at times, include some fairly nasty sentiment. I can’t count the number of times I’ve asked the Big Guy to smite a few people, and I’ve given him clear instructions on the proper way to do so.
But the Psalms are a record of various people’s pleas to God. You can’t use them against him.
How dare you categorize my discourse as “complaining.” I thought I was being a sort of a wise curmudgeon.
Anyway, I think what you mention is exactly my point, unless I’m misunderstanding you. Even if one believes God spoke directly to Moses, the process that got it into the print in my Bible was a lengthy one, involving lots of people, numerous translations of translations, countless interpretations and edits. It was not communicated on a recorded line in some sort of universally understood language. Even if it had been, presumably God’s thoughts are complex and difficult to absorb–and just as difficult to communicate in something as base as our own languages.
I can’t get my secretary to take understandable phone messages, and she’s only one person between me and the source (and believe me, the people calling me ain’t God). What chance do we have of absolutely precisely getting something as complex as the word of God into print given the chain of events between the actual occurrences and today, even if you take every instance of a chat with God recorded in the Bible as, well, uh, gospel?
I would say that this is because you give God the ultimate benefit of the doubt.
For instance, consider a conversation I was having over at the LBMB (which seems to have crashed of late). One person over there was talking about how he narrowly avoided being on that collapsed bridge at the NASCAR race a few weeks ago. Everyone was chiming in to say, “God is good, praise God.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “how can you possibly look at this situation and say, ‘God is good’? Sure, God may have been good to this guy, but he was spectacularly bad to the 97 people or so who were seriously injured in the fall. If you truly believe that God intervened in this situation, either he favored one person over those 97 enough to save him but not them, or he had something against those 97 people and chose to smite them. Either way, I wouldn’t call God ‘good’.”
The response was that we can’t really know God’s plan. Sure, it may seem to our feeble little minds that God was bad to those 97 people, but it will all work out for the best.
So in other words, when good things happen, it’s because God is good. When bad things happen, it’s because God is good and unknowable, and it will all work out in the end. To me, this is akin to counting a batter’s hits as hits, and counting their strikeouts as hits, too. Of course he’d be batting 1.000!
I don’t really have anything against this opinion, since it is fairly consistent with my perception of God. If, however, you consider God to be a being with a personality that actively meddles in everyday affairs, it requires some faith indeed to unequivocally say that “God is good.”
Thanks for your replies, all. From them, I’ve decided that I’ve done a poor job phrasing my main question. I’ll try again at the end of this post. Jenkinsfan said
I was being flip, but my reference to “Bad God” passages was directed at other posters to this thread who quote “Jesus killed the Pigs” and “God murdered the Egyptian babies” passages. And as I related in my first post to this thread, I have read the Gospels. Recently. In fact, within the past couple of weeks. It’s why I have the questions I do.
That’s exactly my question. If I read the Gospels correctly, He did not in fact die for people who hate Him, but for people who love Him or hate Him or don’t even know Him, but who would come to love Him. Right? If you don’t come to love Him (or at least worship Him), you go to Hell (Exceptions for the young and those who never know Him, I guess, are standard in many sects of Christianity. I’ll assume those for purposes of this thread.) Right?
Once again, you’ve posed my question better than I have, and I thank you for it. Here’s the thing. Reading the Gospels, I see a bunch of disciples constantly doubting His divinity and asking for yet another repetition of proof. “Restore one more guy’s sight,” “save that guy,” “how will we feed all these people,” etc. And even then, they doubted until they saw Him in person following the resurrection. They had no faith (or very little faith), and they saw it in person! If God knows this (which presumably He does, having been there), by what right does He expect us to have any faith whatsoever 2000 years later? Does He assume us to be somehow stupider or more sheeplike than the very people who witnessed Christ contemporaneously? I daresay that if a smart guy like Peter had nothing more to go on than an old book and a collection of other believers, he wouldn’t have bought it. If God was willing to provide proof after proof at the time, why does He choose not to now, thus damning to hell people like me whom He has endowed with a skeptical nature? Doesn’t that make him, well, not a very good God?
First, you seem to be taking the Resurrection as a “proof” God offers of his existence. That is not the primary purpose, or even a peripheral one. The Resurrection was to triumph over death and give life to those hopelessly bound by sin. Likewise, miracles were not performed as proof of the existence of God, either - that was already pretty widely accepted. They were proof of Jesus’ claims to be the Son of Man, and proof of God’s inherent goodness in a way, but not of his existence in and of itself.
Second, the “I’m going to hell” remark: I do not know how accurate this is. Justification by grace through faith is a widely accepted doctrine in most mainstream Christian churches (and even some not-so-mainstream). However, not all Christian denominations limit God’s saving power to that particular doctrine, not even the Catholic Church. Some presume to define it that way, I do not. Justification is a positive statement - “all who believe in me shall not perish”. I somehow don’t think that is intended to be a “gotcha!” clause to those who honestly seek and can’t take that final step. Maybe it is, who knows? But I’d find it very difficult to worship a god so hell-bent on blocking people from eternal life.
What sort of proof would be required for God to be a good God? What would he have to do for you to believe?
Forms of governing can be divided into republics and tyrannies. In a republic, the leader is subject to the same laws as the people; in a tyranny, s/he is not.
Jehovah is a ruler; Jehovah is not subject to the same laws as His people are; therefore, Jehovah’s Kingdom is a tyranny and Jehovah is a tyrant.
(I’m going to uphold the Orthodox Jewish position on this. cmkeller is a lot more knowledgeable on this than I am, so it might be a good idea to have him point out where I’ve erred.)
The Tanakh (essentially, the Hebrew Old Testament) is, as best we can determine, the original version. (Note that only the Torah – or Pentateuch – is considered as having been dictated directly to Moses when he was in a conscious, active state. The rest of the Tanakh – the Nevi’im, or Prophets (not quite the same as the Christian take on who’s a prophet), and the Ketubot, or (spiritually and historically significant) Writings – are not considered to be inspired on the same level as the Torah.)
Now of course when I say “The Torah is the very word of the Holy One, etc., etc.”, that should be taken to mean “the Hebrew version of the Torah, etc, etc.”. All sorts of translations are available, but are not to be considered authoritative.
Moreover, we have the questiuon of vocalization. The Hebrew alphabet, like all Semitic alphabets, does not include vowels. In Hebrew, like in all Semitic languages, the base or root meaning of a word is carried in the consonans, whilst the specific usage of a word is carried in the vowels used.
(Yes, I know that that’s overly simplified. I’m trying to keep this down to under a hundred thousand words. I won’t go into plene and defective orthography here.)
The “received tradition” on vocalization is the masoret. Masoretic vocalization usually agrees with the consonantal text, sometimes makes clear which of several readings is the actual one, and occasionally makes sense of the obscure.
Even the vocalized text of the Torah is not complete, however. Together with the Written Torah is a Oral Torah, handed down from Moses at Sinai, which completes and explains the text. The Oral Torah was just that – oral – for centuries, as any written version could only be incomplete and, therefore, subject to error.
Final conclusion: the New International Version is but an echo of what was actually said. To assert the opposite would be a surprise; after all, we’d hardly accept a translation of Shakespeare into literary Ming Chinese (assuming that such a thing exists) as authoritative, would we? OTOH, finding such a translation would not constitute a disproof that an authoritative text does exist.
