But haven’t you heard? It turns out a “day” might not have meant the same time period back then. It wasn’t necessarily 24 hours, you see.
Problem solved! The bible is totally confusing, mistranslated, incomplete, etc. - therefore, just make it fit whatever inconvenient, contradictory facts come your way!
That’s kinda the point. The lack of unity among Christians and the diversity of doctrines, the changing of doctrines and practices as one church breaks of from another, demonstrates that doctrines practices can and do change. The technicality that the RCC hasn’t changed it’s doctrine much is pretty unimpressive. They have clearly changed their pracrtices, and their tendency to hang on to tradition and their image of the true church has resulted in a lot of changes as new religions sprang from those critisizing them.
That was not my intention. I can’t predict which churches will change or how many. I wouldn’t even calim that most will change. I will say that the ones who refuse to change will aid in religion being seen as less valuble. Again, it’s not a matter of just catering to some modern view for the sake of being modern. It’s a matter of equality and justice and acknowledging the truth. Chrisitianity once justified slavery, the subjegation of women, segregation and used the Bible to oppose interracial marriage. Now very few would. You can’t keep preaching about a righteous God and brotherly love while excluding a certain group , and still be taken seriously by a society that has passed you by. Just as those groups that embrace young earth creationism, and Bible literalism are less relevant and taken less seriously now.
As SSM becomes more commonly acccepted and SS couples and families are more an equal part of society new generations will see doctrines and practices that reject them as less relevant. Younger Christians will question whether such a doctrine is correct or just an old tradition and changes will occur.
That said, since SS couples will be such a small % of families there will be plenty of room for hold outs There are still places in the south that frown on interracial marriage, but how are they viewed by the majority.
The folks who opposed interracial marriage said the same thing.
It’s not just secular understanding but the progress of human understanding and concepts of justice and understanding new facts.
Christianity has long held that homosexuality was a choice. Now we see it’s not and people are born gay. More people are openly gay which leads more people to the experience that gay people are just nice regular people who happen to prefer thier own gender rather than the evil perverts they have been painted to be. The question that occurs is if they are born gay, then didn’t God make them that way. If he did then maybe it’s not an evil sin, but just part of God’s diversity of creation.
And that’s fine - but what irks me is that once that new understanding is found, many religions just turns around and insists that they finally have it right, and you better follow the new rules because they can’t possibly be wrong.
When will Christianity realize it just doesn’t know everything?
and any religion that holds on to doctrine for the sake of tradition while humanity moves on will certainly be seen as less relevant. Once again, this is not about just catering to modern fads. It goes much farther and deeper than that.
Even people who aren’t religious see the positive side of encouraging brotherly love, compassion toward others, helping the poor and the sick, personal discipline, honesty, etc. That’s why a Christian who lives these principles is a more effective testimony than the ones who merely give it lip service. When you use your religion to stubbornly justify something seen as unjust and unfair, {not just unpopular} you have become a less effective witness.
Actually, the Bible never says being gay is a choice. Being straight isn’t a choice, and people knew it, yet you weren’t allowed to fornicate.
Now I suppose that there is room for Christianity to accomodate homosexual relations as part of a marriage. It’s not like the definition of marriage hasn’t changed before. In Biblical times, a marriage was between a man and several women. It wasn’t a command that you had to marry more than one woman(you didn’t have to marry any at all if you didn’t want to), but it’s obvious that the Bible does permit polygamy.
So it could just be that God has a problem with fornication, not necessarily homosexuality.
Sure, but then the next question is why you need religion to do that.
Fair enough, yes, religions evolve and sects are more progressive or more reactionary.
Which still does not mean, to harken back to the OP, that they should be civilly penalized (or rewarded) for it.
Ha, says who? How does it’s clarity explain the differences among those who use it as their holy text?
I don’t know what to make of this jumble of bad logic. It makes very little sense and contradicts what I thought was pretty common knowledge.
I disagree, but I doubt I’m ready for another tangent discussion in this thread.
Sounds like Christianity isn’t doing a very good job of figuring out what God wants.
I don’t know many that operate that way. Usually the ones who insist they can’t be wrong, {because they speak for God} are the ones who buck change the most.
I have an old friend who belongs to the RLDS church. They believe God still speaks through their prophet. A few decades back the world church brought out a “revelation” to ordain women into the priesthood. Her congregation rejected it and seperated from the church. I pointed out to her that she and they had rejected what was presented as a revelation from God, to follow their conscience. She acknowledged that was true. Then I asked her if that created some moral obligation for them to extend that same freedom to others. On that she wasn’t sure.
Some do, some don’t. I don’t mind reminding those that think they do, that they really don’t.
Well, some are just bamboozling. For example, the Church of England got started for no other reason than Henry VIII didn’t like what Jesus had to say about divorce. Jesus couldn’t be more clear that divorce makes you an adulterer. And the Bible couldn’t be more clear that adultery is a grievous sin. Which makes divorce a grievous sin if you’re a Christian. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Christians who don’t believe divorce is a sin are just making shit up.
Other sects disagree on the areas that are actually unclear. The significance of faith vs. works is a big point of disagreement among different Christian sects. Another HUGE problem is the role of the Old Testament. Jesus was not clear on whether the old law applied still or not. So you have some sects observing the Law and others who get their rules from I don’t know where since they say the law is “fulfilled”, which doesn’t really mean what they think it means.
Some sects don’t believe one can be saved without being born again. Well, they all believe that actually, but the older mainline ones seem to think you can be born again into a religion you were born into, which makes no sense to me. No one is born again at 16 or whatever age they let kids get baptized, and baptizing babies is just insipid, IMO.
So yeah, there are parts that are unclear and parts that beg further questions which the different sects have different answers for. But that doesn’t mean the Bible is full of such unclarity. It just means that the parts that aren’t clear generate a lot of controversy. Which is true of any book or movie. I’d say that Star Wars is a pretty straightforward adventure flick, but that doesn’t stop fanboys from endlessly debating every minor detail and what it all means. You’d almost think it was a religion.
But anyway, a lot of the Bible is very clear: don’t fornicate, don’t get divorced, don’t hate your brother, be generous, don’t seek vengeance, don’t be lazy, and believe in Jesus or else burn in hell.
I don’t believe you do. I don’t care what path people choose for their personal growth. If religion works for some then great.
Pretty much all religions operate that way to some extent, by definition. That’s part of what religion is. Is there any religion you know of that says “we speak for what we think God said, but hey, we could be completely wrong about this.”?
But some are worse than others, of course. I think there’s three kinds - those that adapt, those that stand firm and fade away, and those that adapt but act like they’re standing firm and appeal to people with short memories or little knowledge of their own history.
Wonderful story, thanks. I wonder what she did next.
Well, then, maybe churches should focus on those and just STFU about other things that aren’t so clear.
The more important question is how literally do we take the Bible and how much authority do we grant it in our lives. That varies greatly from person to person, church to church. The Bible must be interpreted by men. Who’s to say which group is interpeting it correctly?
Not really. Henry VIII and the Church of England accepted Roman Catholic teaching against divorce, at the time. (Lutherans did not, and IIRC the pro-Lutheran Cranmer wanted to liberalize the laws about divorce, but his party lost). The Church of England refused to remarry divorced people with a living spouse until 2003, believe it or not.
Henry’s disagreement with the Pope (at least, the pretext for it) was about some fairly technical points of doctrine, specifically whether marriage to a brother’s widow was incestuous (Leviticus 18 and Deutereonomy 25 disagree on the matter), whether his brother’s marriage had been consummated, and whether the Pope had special authority to issue dispensations from marriage laws. In some ways he was actually taking the more ‘conservative’ position.
Also, the New Testament (where it mentions homosexuality at all, which isn’t much) implicitly treats it as a choice (see the discussion in Romans 1), and a conscious violation of the natural order. If it is not in fact a choice, then there’s some room for arguing that Paul and the early church were arguing from false premises.
The implications of ‘those things’ aren’t always clear.
For example, ‘fornication’ is the English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek word meaning loosely ‘sexual immorality’, with both the Greek and Latin etymologically related to the word for ‘prostitute’. (Some English versions use the word ‘whoremonger’ in Revelation 22 to translate fornicatores, which is etymologically pretty good choice). How do we know exactly what ‘sexual immorality’ is supposed to cover? We could go by what first century Jews thought was sexually immoral, or we could try to construct some sort of sexual morality based on natural law, virtue ethics, etc. or we could subscribe to a harm based moral reasoning, or any one of a number of things.
Likewise, the New Testament talks a lot about economic morality, but there’s lots of room for debate over what its guidelines mean and what sort of society best embodies them.
I was just making a point based on his claim. I’m sure there’s not much that’s clear, or ever can be clear. Everything has details to be decided.
Churches should do more to educate people on how to think about these things and less simply telling them what they should do. But I guess alot of people need a perpetual parent to just lay down the rules for them.
I don’t expect any religion to say that other than as a purely intellectual acknowledgement. The Bahai teach and encourage the individual pursuit of truth. IOW, don’t just take our word for anything but seek sincerely for yourself. I haven’t looked at how specific denominations operate for some time, but I suspect some of the more liberal ones are similar. An attitude of, “here’s what we offer and teach, if that works for you then welcome, if not then good luck in whatever you pursue” rather than a BELIEVE OR BURN attitude.
It’s hard to avoid history when so much of it is readily available. I use church history a lot in discussions because IMO it demonstrates rather clearly that there is no certainty and nobody should seriously assume to speak for God or use the Bible to justify what is essentially a personal opinion.
I’m convinced that for some people there is a real emotional need and attachment to religion and the congregation. She was a single Mom and the congregation was like a surragate family. Their approval meant a lot. Sadly we eventually lost touch in part because she was being told I was a bad influence.