Using the Bible to prove the Bible IS circular reasoning. D’uh.
That’s the very definition of it!
badchad-perhaps you should read the part about not judging others, hmm?
And so Jesus was out walking, his Mom was along, just another day in Galillee. And his Mom says “Look, son…I mean, Son…theres a wedding, and they’ve run out of wine! Can’t you do something about that?”
And the Lord sayeth, “Yeah, sure. Get me some water, we’ll get this party cookin’!” Well, what else could He do? Moms are like that, aren’t they?
Bible says “Jesus Wept”. I believe it. Doesn’t say he laughed, made bad puns in Aramaic, lifted a leg when He farted, but they just left that out. How could you possibly love people without being people?
Betcha the Lord has “Life of Brian” on CD.
Badchad, I have been taught a hard lesson recently, and I’m going to learn from my mistakes:
It’s impossible to reason with someone who has formed an unreasoned dislike or hatred of one.
Those questions you ask are based on a literalist reading of Scripture. And you know the answers that a literalist would give.
Let me emulate my Lord, and ask you who said those things, and if the person or persons who did have moral authority over you? Then the answers to the questions you asked me will be based on the answer to the question I just asked you.
God didn’t write the books of the Bible, men did. Moreover, the Bible is not a single book, but a collection of books written over a period of roughly five hundred years and in different countries. The Bible did not drop out of the sky as a completed work ab initio, rather it evolved through a long, arduous process. You are free to think it was guided by the Holy Spirit if you wish.
In the period of the Early Church, there wasn’t any agreed upon source for Jesus’s teachings. The Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas had greater authority in the first century Church than did Hebrews or James, which were considered not inspired. All 27 books of the New Testament were first listed together in the order we know in a letter from St. Athanasius in AD 367, and the canon of the Bible was closed sope 30 years later. But even then the bible was tinkered with, most notably by Martin Luther, who pronounced Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation revered but not inspired and then moved them to the end of the Bible.
Read more Church history, His4Ever, so you will make more informed statements in the future.
Moreover, His4Ever, since you claim to revere the Bible as the literal Word of God, what do you make of this passage from I Tomothy 2:11-13:
His because Eve deceived Adam and led him into sin, you and all women are subject to men, which means that you must be quiet on matters of doctrine and submit toPolycarp and me. We’re men, so by your own standards we outrank you. Let the men handle the teaching of Gospel and you get busy making babies because Paul said your role is childbearing.
Here endeth the lesson. Praise be to God!
Ah, beloved 'bear, you attempt to bring reason into the mix, and that is not kosher to the standards that these folks operate under. (Not all evangelicals, I hasten to add, are included in “these folks” – I can point you to several wonderful evangelical people with whom I’ve had intelligent and productive discussions, some of whom belong to this board. I’d name Mean Girl, Navigator, and even GOM (whose stance is sometimes but not always non-rationally based) as examples of people who will discuss on the basis of agreed facts as well as a common faith.)
There appears to be a selectivity in which Bible-defined sins are worth avoiding among the other group of evangelicals, however, a different group than we liberal Christians, working from Christ’s own teachings about what we should focus on, choose. The poor oft-beaten horse of His4Ever’s remarriages is one example, but far better is the ignoring of the Ninth Commandment as regards, for example, me, Catholics, Mormons like Monty, and others who don’t deserve having the truth spoken about them. And, of course, you and your partner are engaged in a “deathstyle” because nothing matters to the two of you but your sexual gratification (as opposed to women who have trouble with remaining celibate). This post is closed-captioned for the sarcasm-impaired.
I’m sorry if I appear bitter, but, being human, I have gotten a crawful of judgment from people who are so convinced of their own self-righteousness that they can spare time to slam me for having the temerity to ask that they show compassion to others, myself included. May God show them more mercy than they have shown me!
I’m sorry that your fellow believers have been so merciless to you merely for disagreeing with them. OTOH, God has given you the opportunity to be a witness to them of returning love for hate and blessings instead of curses. Remember that Jesus Himself, reviled by the crowd as He was being crucified, said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” If Matthew 25 is any guide to the truth, then your judges here will face a fearful judgement themselves.
“But, Lord, we harrassed liberal Christians, we condemned homosexuals, and we closed our minds to any sources of knowledge that contradicted our closely held prejudices.”
Then God will say, “Hey, ya mooks, I didn’t tell you to do any of that garbage. I told you very clearly to love your neighbors, to do good, to befriend the widow and the orphan, to be an example of My love to a suffering humanity. Instead, you chased away people who would have come to Me, and you made My name synonymous with petty bigotry. Away to the fire prepared for the devil and his angels!”
masonite:
*badchad, you just lost me (and I have been paying attention…)
Why, now, is Polycarp going to burn in hell, if the fundies are right? Refresh me on exactly who goes to hell, and who doesn’t, in the fundie worldview. Thanks.*
Sorry I quoted only part of Polycarp’s paragraph but responded to it all.
He wrote:
*And we’ll see who gets it right. If Czarcasm has the right of it, it won’t matter, because when we die, the neuroelectrical network that comes up with all this stuff will shut down, and we’ll be nothing whatsoever except a memory. If the way that I understand Jesus’s teachings is right, there are a lot of “good churchgoers” who are going to find themselves classified as Ovis capra rather than Ovis ammon on the basis of what they didn’t do for “one of the least of these” and because they decided they were righteous enough to sit in judgment over others. **And if the “Biblical morality” folks are right, then we end up with a god who meets the typical freshman-atheist list of scathing condemnations, and I’m not sure that I have any respect for such a god. He sure isn’t the God that I know.
And, of course, in the last scenario I’m personally doomed**, like gobear** and the rest of the International Conspiracy of Evil-Agenda-Bearing Fags – I fell in love with a boy once.*
I was just working out of Polycarps above outlined frame of mind. Going with that, I guess he goes to hell for respecting the god of his imagination rather than the god of the bible. Sorry for the confusion.
How convenient. It sure is nice to know who gets to go to Heaven and who is thrown into the Pits O’ Hell now, instead of having to wait unto the final judgement. Would you mind telling us who else is doomed for eternity, so that they might stock up on asbestos underoos?
Just swinging on by the forum…
You can guess all you like who’s hellbound, but God’s the judge.
Gobear- Don’t you mean, “…an example of My love to a suffering humanity, who have broken the ten commandments over and over and over again, understanding day by day their lawlessness through the conviction brought by their concience (the law being written on their minds), deserving a just punishment for their sin.”?
You talk about judgement, but the proverb says a spiritual man can judge all things. Of course, he himself is not THE judge, and we are called to be merciful and loving to the people of this world, but to a point. God won’t say “Hey, ya mooks, I didn’t tell you to do any of that garbage.” God will say, “Well done good and faithful servant, for preaching to the luke-warm christian hypocrites, who have only escaped the fire of hell by inches, and who came so close to being spewed from my very mouth into the pit into the unquenchable fire. And well done for warming people from the coming day of judgement, when all men will stand before the living God, guilty as charged, bent down on knee with tongue fully silenced before me, homosexual, adulterer, or liar.”
This is the gospel. If I understand your comments above, you’ve a lot of work to get it right. Matthew 25 is a guide to the truth, but it isn’t everything. Jesus was talking about God’s chosen people, then. The rest of the book talks about us now.
Have a nice day 
Nomadic_One, perhaps you missed my question. I certainly hope so – the other interpretation to your lack of an answer to my question that you do indeed believe that God is an evil asshole who sends mountain lions to eat children if their friends and relatives don’t pray exactly the right way, and that you continue to worship Him despite that belief. That’s, uh, inconsistent with my interpretation of the message of most witnesses for Christ.
When I say “well done for warming people” I REALLY mean “warning”
FYI: God kan spel betar than i can
badchad: OK, fair enough. I have this little sensor that goes off whenever somebody condems somebody else to Hell, and it buzzed loudly. But I see now that you were running with Polycarp’s own reasoning.
It’s interesting that you both agree you have vastly differing conceptions of God, and if you are right, Polycarp and all the other “liberals” (using that term very broadly) are let out of salvation. For the purposes of this discussion, that would include me too.
Allow me to opine that both “sides” ought to see this schism as painful and shameful. If anybody here is “going to hell”, the angels are weeping about it, not celebrating. I’d be so bold as to request a bit more compassion from the “fundie” side particularly. You guys are coming off as a very exclusive club that nobody would want to join. Think of the stakes! Can you afford to be even the tiniest bit smug?
As for me, I was raised on “he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved”; all the fire-and-brimstone Church of Christ preachers of my youth never denied that. I’m sure they would regard me as being in some grave error, but I think they would assure me of my salvation in spite of any of my errors. Not that it’s up to them, of course!
Yep, you’re entirely correct. God’s the judge.
And God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the Second Person of that Trinity specified what He found wrong with using the Bible (the Tanakh) as something with loopholes for your own faults but grounds for sitting in judgment over others who aren’t “saved” like you, and specified precisely what He considered to be proper behavior for people to undertake.
But of course you’re too set on judging others to take a good look at yourself. May God have mercy on you. Because I no longer do.
“And the Second Person of that Trinity specified what He found wrong with using the Bible (the Tanakh) as something with loopholes for your own faults but grounds for sitting in judgment over others who aren’t “saved” like you…”
You don’t? Oh no! runs and dives behind a rock Now I’m scared! Look Polyperson- I can’t even make out your point. What are you trying to say? Jesus specified what he found wrong? What are you on about? Ohhh, you’re going with the whole “I don’t understand bible theology properly, so I’m just going to say you have a whole heap of loopholes to make your theology work (ie: sitting in judgement over people).” Did you just read what I said, or do you just work on reflex posting? You have no idea wat scriptures I use to reach my conclusions, but hey- if you want to call it loopholes, well you can live the rest of your life with a wack-eyed view of basic bible theology. You choice pal.
Manhattan-- why ask a question that’s so easy to answer, just by reading the bible?
Reactor, if you can tell us which parts of the Bible you believe in, it would help us understand where you come from.
Do you follow the old and new testament, or just the new?
Do you believe that the Bible is 100% accurate? Do you believe that some of the Biblical stories are alegories, or do you believe that everything in the Bible happened just as it was written down?
Do you believe that the version of the Bible you read from is the only accurate version, and if so, which version is it?
Reactor, if you want it laid out in simple words, Jesus Christ taught that one is to turn to Him and follow Him, showing compassion to one’s fellow man and loving them as He would, to the best of one’s own ability, and not peruse the Bible as if it were a lawbook, deciding which of your fellow men are sinners and why. He’s pretty explicit about this.
And if you choose to hold the text of the Bible over and above what He had to say as reported in it, that’s your prerogative – but I’m telling you, as explicitly as possible, that He said something quite different.
badchad, I see your point now, and I regret presuming you were playing a different game on me. Yes, I’m very well aware of my own shortcomings, and trying my best to do what He would have me do. In our previous conversations, I never intended to say anything different – though I can see where you’d derive from them a quite different view. And I’m aware of the gamble I’m taking in presuming that Jesus’s message was what I see it as being. It’s one I choose to take.
But I find the accusations of hypocrisy and lukewarm-ism in some recent posts to be unfounded. Can we target where people see me as such, and perhaps discuss that?
H4E:
H4E:
It is the living word that I draw upon for understanding the written word. For me, the living word is the living Christ that continues to guide my decisions. It is that which enables me to continue to love and forgive and from time to time shake off my own self-righteousness. (That last one is a real problem for me.)
It is the living word that reminds me that Paul admitted to making mistakes. That is why I don’t believe that Paul was right when he said, “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.”
If I really believed that Paul was right when he wrote those words, I would have to give up participting at SDMB altogether.
What do you believe is meant by “Christ is the living Word”?
I can hear the "but. . . "
Yes, that’s sort of the whole idea of the Christian schemata in re sin and redemotion through the Atonement…
Matthew 7 says “Judge not lest ye be judged.” Jesus was very clear about the Pharisees who set themselves as judges of ther men when they themselves are ino better than the rest of humanity.
I take it you are also including the people who eat shellfish and who wear cotton-poly blends because the same Hebrew
word that is used to condemn homosexuality is used to ban those practices as well. If you are going to frown on us fans of musical theater, then you are bound to rail against people who eat Oysters Rockefeller.
Interesting because I was going to say the same about you.
In other words, you’re another of those Nine-Commandment Christians.
sigh
Czarcasm, I dont judge people, I leave that to God. I should rephrase that I try not to judge people , i do occasionally but i am working on it.
Polycarp
Polycarp, Im sorry if people have transgressed you before. but, NOT ALL CHRISTIANS work like that. It greatly bothers me when people lump all christians together into one big group and because of something that one might have done once it automatically makes all Christians bad. It says in the bible that and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; I am sorry if my “self-righteousness” is the cause for any of this. sigh
To everyone. There is more to Christianity than just reading the bible and going to church and occassionally spurting out some prayer. Its a whole encompasing lifestyle.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” That renewal of the mind is what I hope for all. Might I be so bold to say that Christanity is more than just believing, its the works and the transformation that accompanies it. Alot of people search for what is “origional”, in music people always want “origional”, when they dress they want it to be “origional”, and in life they want to be “origional”, but today im telling you that being a true Christian is origional. Take is as you will. I love you all and if you have any questions shoot away.