Why do many Fundies go after homosexuals, but not after people who shave?

Great Debates
21

You still don’t get it, do you? What’s at issue is not what they believe, but the implications of what they believe. I believe that one of the implications of what they believe is that Paul was God’s representative on earth, and therefore basically God incarnate. Do Christians have the same interpretation of their beliefs? Probably not. Is that in any way relevant? No.

You don’t think that speaking for God is a mark of divinity?

No, clearly they don’t. If they did, they would give just as much weight to my belief that homosexuality is not morally wrong than they do to Paul’s belief that it is. Fundamentalists believe that Paul had a special relationship with God that the vast majority of humanity does not share.

22

as quoted here, whoever wrote this (leviticus,i guess? i’m not a bible scholar) is putting the responsibility on the observers of the behavior to take action.
same for this quote:

although i doubt the assailant private part seizing community is as outspoken and identifiable as the homosexual community.

for the rest of the quotes, including the shaving one, it seems to be implied that god will administer any applicable punishment. are there other easily identifiable groups that, according to the bible, are supposed to be punished by the observer that the fundies ignore?

23

The problem here my friend, is that you are conflating divine inspiration with divinity itself. I am not an expert on what Christians believe Paul’s relationship with God was, but I am willing to wager it consists mainly in him speaking to Jesus Christ and writing down Christ’s word. (I suppose it’s possible that he spoke directly to God, although I don’t really know, but this would not really change anything since under Christianity, Christ is both man and God anyway.) This does NOT mean that Paul is God to Christians. Being God’s representative on earth does not make you God, it merely means that you have a special relationship with God. Likewise, speaking for God, does not mean that you are a deity yourself, merely that the deity has charged you with a particular task or message to convey to the world. It is true that Christians believe Paul had a privileged relationship with God, in that he knew JC, but that doesn’t mean he IS God.

If what you are saying is true there is no such thing as a prophet or apostle or otherwise divinely inspired person. Many saints are supposed to have communicated with God, Christ, Mary, or any other number of divine personages, so are they God too? What about Moses? He spoke to God. Is he God? Do you see how being inspired by God, and thus having the force of God’s word behind you is one thing, and BEING God (or a god) is another?

24

Bokonon summed up my position pretty well, but I’ll state it again:

Believing that God inspired a man so that certain writings of his were error-free is completely different from believing that the writer himself is anything but a normal individual.

Muslims are very sensitive to this. Christians used to call Islam “Muhammadism,” which they found very offensive since they did not worship Muhammad nor find him divine. He was simply the vehicle through which God dictated the Qur’an.

Most Christians do not believe in any sense that Paul was “God’s representative on earth, and therefore basically God incarnate.” Paul, like Jude, James, Peter, and John wrote some letters. The letters that ended up in the New Testament are believed by many Christians to have been supernaturally protected from error. This does not mean that Paul never sinned, that he never held false beliefs, or even that he necessarily knew that certain of his epistles were being inspired by God.

Perhaps an analogy will help. When a person breaks his arm, a doctor sets it in a cast, to prevent further damage and to help it heal correctly. Similarly, a writer under divine inspiration is wearing a divine cast, if you will. God, like the doctor, takes certain actions to prevent the person in question from making an error in his writing.

Does getting one’s arm put in a cast make one a doctor? No. Likewise, having one’s writings inspired by God does not make one God.

Aarggh! I can’t believe I’m going through all this trouble to explain something with which I vehemently disagree.

25

So if we can find four lawyers who represented the Beatles, well, buy them a guitar and sign 'em for an album deal.

Ummm…no. A lot of people speak for God. The trick is to know which ones actually listen to God and which ones just like the sound of their own voice.

Ummm…no. Fundamentalists believe that the bible was inspired by God. Paul and other NT scribes were merely mortals who had the Word of God “breathed into” them.

26

FYI:
Saul of Tarsus, later Paul, never met Christ. After his conversion on the road to Damascus, all of his divine inspiration came from within–either the Holy Spirit (if you’re a believer) or self-generated (if you’re not). He did meet Peter and some of the other apostles, but never the Christ.

27

TBEA incisively remarked:

That is one of the most wittily profound comments I’ve seen on this board in a long time. Thank you for making it.

If I used .sigs regularly, I’d ask for permission to make it mine.

28

[blush]Thanks. Permission would be humbly granted[/blush]

29

Actually, there are hard and fast rules. See Mark 12:

And Acts 15:

So Christians have basically six major commandments to follow. Looks pretty cut & dry to me.

If only obeying them was as easy as listing them. :frowning:

30

Good answer, Jersey. Now comes the kicker. Ignoring the Old Testament (as we’ve been given to do based on Paul’s take on the application of the Jewish Law to Christians), how does one define “sexual immorality”? There are some quick and dirty answers: promiscuity (understood as giving vent to lust without any significant relationship implied), compelled sexual acts of all sorts, adulterous relations (because they break promises). But none of them explicitly define all homosexual acts as constituting immorality. To be sure, one can take some of Paul’s other statements, but that goes beyond your “six basic commandments” thesis.

I don’t say this to shoot you down but to hear what your opinion would be in dealing with this, which is obviously one the churches are going to have to deal with.

31

OK, JerseyDiamond, then what about the prohibition against witchcraft? That isn’t among the six you listed, yet most Christians would agree that there is a valid prohibition against it today.

What about taking God’s name in vain. Most Christians would agree that this is forbidden today, no?

Is “Honor thy father and mother,” out the door then? That’s not among the six you mentioned.

Zev Steinhardt

32

“Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or off the edges of your beard.”

“Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.”

“A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.”

“Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear.”

—Goodness gracious; The Lord is actually Mr. Blackwell! Where are the parts in the bible about not wearing white after Labor Day, and not mixing navy blue with brown?

33

JC had only ONE Commandment- “Do unto to others…”, or “Love one another, as I have loved you”. This covers “Honor thy Father & Mother…” and also any curses or similar acts that a “witch” might do.

Did not Hillel say: “What is hateful to you, do not do unto others. This is the whole Torah- the rest is commentary.”?

34

Eve remarked:

Hey, it’d be my guess that He figured He didn’t have to spell everything out. Human ingenuity is quite capable of producing the Talmud, with pilpulim on the written Law to cover every need. Haven’t you read Rabbi Aimi bat’ Bilt or Mart’a ha-Eliezer, called “the Servant” (or something like that; translations seem to vary)? :smiley:

35

**

So, since I stand up in honor of my parents when they enter a room, are they required to do the same to me?

Does this mean that my parents owe me exactly the same amount of honor I owe them? Do I not owe them more respect than they owe me? Do I have the right to discipline my children, since they don’t have the right to discipline me? Surely “do unto others…” cannot cover a parent/child relationship.

**

What about an act of witchcraft that isn’t a curse? What about simply flying around on a broomstick (to use the tired old image)? Or raising up a spirit (See the end of Samuel)?

Sure he did. The commentary, however (the other commandments) helps to define that. They govern how we deal with each other.

Zev Steinhardt

36

It’s really not that difficult.

Witchcraft is worshipping rocks and trees and nature and what-not. That’s in violation of “The most important one…Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

If you’re worshipping something other than God, then you’re not loving him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, are you?

Ditto taking His name in vain. How is that loving Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

If you’re dishonoring your father and mother, you’re not exactly loving them as yourself, are you?

Come on, I’ve read enough of your posts to know that you’re a very intelligent person. Why do you resort to petty nitpicking like this instead of using that wondrous gift from God in your head that’s called the brain?

37

If someone has divine inspiration, one is, at least partly, divine.

No, that does not follow.

No, communicating with GOd is not what I’m talking about.

In a basic sense, they are the same. That’s what I mean when I say that they “basically” believe that Paul was God. I don’t mean that they believe that Paul was God; I mean that, in a basic sense, they believe this. I don’t believe that they believe that Paul is God; I believe that, in this situation “Paul is God” is a valid approximation of what they believe. As far as whether or not a statement is true, they make no distinction between a statement made by Paul and a statement made by God.

Opus1:

They may claim that they don’t worship Muhammad, but I say they do.

tbea925

If you can find a set of lawyers such that there is no difference between their playing and the Beatles’ playing, then they would indeed be quite a catch. According to fundamentalists, Paul did not simply “represent” God; he was the same as God, as far as truth was concerned.

Since the original is caused so many problems, I’ll reword it:
My position is that fundamentalists believe that the word “God” can be freely exchanged for the word “Paul” in statements such as “Paul wrote this letter”. In other words, in certain situations, they make no distinction between Paul and God.

38

Oh, gork, Ryan, you must not have been feeling well when you made that post. While I often disagree with your points, they at least make sense. This time you’re well out on a limb being gnawed loose by arboreal beavers and seemingly have no clue as to where you’re wrong.

Point:

For Christians (and nobody else would have reasonable grounds to debate the issue), the question of inspiration is paramount. For any Christian, God in some way lies behind the content of the Bible. For extreme conservatives, He is the verbatim source of the content. For most conservatives and moderates, He caused the people who wrote the various books of it to write what they wrote – in their own voices, conceding in passing the occasional direct attribution to Him of a given utterance. For liberals, He was the inspiration in the sense that various pictures exhibited in St. Petersburg inspired Moussorgsky’s composition – no literal activity, but a sense that in writing the chapters, the authors were in some way expressing His will in their own possibly errant ways.

Paul was the author of several letters in the N.T. God was the inspiration of the content of those letters in one of the ways above. This does not make Paul in any way identical or equal to God, or even a close approximation of Him, nor would any Christian of any stripe suggest so. The parallel would seem to be that since you post on the SDMB, and Ed Zotti is in charge of the SDMB, you are therefore Ed Zotti, or a close approxiation of him. I trust you find that as absurd as I do, and can read backwards from that analogy to take my point.

No, one’s message is. Major difference between message and medium here, McLuhan to the contrary notwithstanding.

No, and saying this before fundamentalist Muslims could significantly shorten your lifespan. They are insistent to a degree that leaves even Jews amazed on the oneness and otherness of God, Muhammad being his messenger, the “seal of the Prophets,” but otherwise purely human. Any suggestion of an equivalence between the one and the other is the blackest form of heresy to any Muslim, and a scandalous insult to suggest that he believes so.

I will conceded that to some (only some) fundamentalists, the ideas “Paul wrote this letter (under divine inspiration)” and “God wrote this letter (by dictation to Paul)” could be synonymous. For everyone else, though, including most fundamentalists, the distinction between Paul as human author and God as source of the content through inspiration by the Holy Spirit is a very clear one, regardless of the extent to which they see God as influencing the wording, style, and textual structure.

Sorry to be so bitchy, but the distinctions matter greatly to most Christians, and I would assume to the Muslims affected by the other part as well.

39

Actaully Poly- that is on of the reasons why the Celtic church is not considered a “pauline church”- we(in general) think that Paul was inspired by JC to work for Him, rather than persequete Him- but after that Paul was on his own. Ie, Pauls letters are no more “holy Word” than those of any of the early church fathers. But I am just quibbling.

Umm, Ryan- as you can see, I am hardly a big supporter of Paul, here, in fact, perhaps the opposite. But you are quite wrong on this. Just drop it- really, and we can go back to the OP. Poly is very right on the rest of his points.

40

I am really impressed Polycarp with your patient and respectful response. The Ryan has shown himself to be quite insightful at times in the past. However in this case I find him inciteful. I wanted to pull my hair out.