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It's using Scripture. He was reciting Scripture when he said that. You can certainly deny that if you'd like, but Jesus did affirm the Scripture.
Jesus affirmed that the passage He was reading had relevance at that time and place. You claim it is blanket affirmation of everything in there. In the story of the woman taken in adultery, the point was that scripture did NOT apply as written for NEW reasons.
Well, yes. What I hate is the calamitous doctrine that makes the Bible the ultimate, not to be challenged authority for the Christian faith.
The problem is that many of the people who hold this seriously defective doctrine can't wrap their mind around the idea that the Bible is a useful TOOL in the toolbox of the Spirit, but NOT an authority in its pown right. They see any challenge to the idea of the ultimate authority of the Bible as a denial of the value of that book altogether. It keeps them from having to face the shortcomings ad well as the valued contained in it.
Indeed. A favorite quote is "The Bible is not the true word of God. Christ is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right Spirit, and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him. We must not use the Bible as a sort of encyclopedia out of which texts can be taken for use as weapons" (C.S. Lewis). Far too many Christians use the Bible inappropriately, as a weapon.
Maybe we just tire of people like you who claim you have the truth making false and illogical accusations. Almost every atheist, even on these forums, gets along with the vast majority of Christians. It is difficult to get along with those who insist on claiming we hate others, that are lives cannot have any worth, that we are immoral, that our lives are hopeless and that we can neither be kind to others or even love another person. All those accusations have been made agaist atheist by Christians on these forums and are no more true than the blood libel against Jews or any other such claims.
It is not Christians, your God or your Bible I hate, its the individuals that place those with different beliefs in religion or politics or those of other racial or ethnic group as inferior or even as a sub human. I have read more hatred by Christians towards atheists or Muslims than I have read hatred towards Christians. If you wish to bash atheists on your Christianity forum do not be upset if we strike back.
Some if the best posters on these forums are Christians and I learn from and appreciate their posts, Miss Hepburn is just one example. No I don't believe in the Bible nor your God but I certainly do not believe that your posts are examples of how most Christians believe or think. If you think a non believer of your religion must actually hate your religion and its believers is it safe to believe that you hate all those who either do not believe or believe in another religion?
I just know that a lot of folks on here get VERY angry anytime The Bible, Jesus or Christianity is mentioned in a positive tone. Some really appear to spend their day looking for opportunities to make fun of believers. I have blocked numerous folks that do so, but they keep responding to me with hate- not realizing that I don't reeieve their messages! I suspect that most of these people are very unhappy with their lives and themselves. It's easier to lash out at others than to look in the mirror.
pft... maybe some can add ... and realize Jesus is just one ..
but His spirit can be everyplace as once.. but how do we know it is His words we hear in our hearts or see in his creation , unless it first agree with his own written WORDS , even doubled and triple witnessed.. gee maybe we get it better than you think.
The sheep know their Shepherd's voice.
John 10:1-6
Quote:
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.
What, now if I don't comment on something you want me to, because I am not a mind reader,
you will discount things I say?
jimmie, I'm sorry, I must say good bye to you...I will only pass by your posts
if someone quotes them.
I just don't waste my time on mind games, hidden expectations, secrets needs laid on another
that someone must magically know about...I don't in real life either.
Best wishes to you.
From Rabbi David Wolpe in an article entitled Did God Write the Bible on the site My Jewish Learning:
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"Similarly, the slippery slope wreaks havoc with arguments about biblical authorship. If one word, just one word, of the Bible is in fact of human origin, then how can one defend the divinity of any of it? If one word, why not two, or 10, or the whole book?
So it is intellectually neater to hew to a hard line. If it is all from God, then that’s the end of it. For centuries, Jewish exegetes (those who interpret texts) argued that this was the simple truth.
Unfortunately, the evidence does not always cooperate with our intellectual convenience. Once various other academic disciplines began to be developed–literary criticism, comparative religion, archaeology, and so forth–the divinity of the Bible seemed less secure.
Over the past several hundred years, the convergence of a mountain of evidence points to the human component of the Bible. There are parallel texts from other traditions (the 22nd chapter of Proverbs for example, parallels almost exactly an Egyptian text written centuries before); there are mistakes, duplications, emendations–even in the Talmud itself, the same passages in the Bible are often quoted with minute differences, demonstrating that more than one manuscript tradition was in circulation.
Once all this evidence began to be accumulated, those who read the Bible were left with several choices. One could simply ignore the evidence, refuse to read the studies of biblical critics, and continue to believe that the traditional interpretations survived intact.
Alternatively, one could marshal one’s intellectual forces, as many have done, and attack the conclusions of the scholars with counter-arguments by believers. After all, many of the [issues] noted by biblical critics were noted and discussed centuries before.
Yet as time has passed, these arguments have seemed increasingly strained, because the accumulation of evidence is by now not merely formidable, but mountainous. Yet there is nothing so flexible and resourceful as human reason deployed in a cause, so many still seek to rebut the conclusions of biblical critics, and some do so with considerable skill and élan."
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The mountainous accumulation of evidence shows MightyQueen to be correct. Men who encountered God spiritually were inspired to write their own witness about God. The book is not a Sacred "How-To" book, it is as flawed as the men who wrote it and demands we bring the logic and reason God gave to most to understand it. Without logic and reason, the OT is nothing but a record of genocide (which we eschew when practiced by other religions), parental abuse, and punishment.
As Derek Flood writes in his wonderful book, Disarming Scripture----
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Religion so often gets stuck exactly here, thinking we’re defending “traditional values” or “historical faith” or “God’s Word” when really what we are doing is missing God because we have missed compassion. The take-away for us here is that when we cling to hurtful interpretations of the Bible—ignoring common sense, ignoring the damaging effects it is having in people’s lives, ignoring what the Spirit is doing right in front of us—this truly is blaspheming God’s Spirit, because the result is that God’s reputation is ruined by a stagnant and heartless religion and the deeply hurtful image of God this presents.
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People looking at Scripture as a "rule book" are willing to hurt others by ignoring what they might otherwise reject by using the common sense God gave [most of] them are blaspheming the Holy Spirit. They don't see themselves acting on their "sacred" book exactly as those Muslim extremists do with theirs.
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg
This is really, really good stuff, warden. Thank you
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