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I hesitate to answer the OP as my answer is specifically Quaker and a lot of people don't think we qualify as "Christian" and I certainly don't speak for the "Christian" community, but to most of us (at least the Christ centered ones) the New Testament or the teachings of Jesus is simply the most complete and best articulated description of "The Way" that informs the best of faith traditions in the world. SO, the Middle East because that is the culture that Jesus was born into and the OT is the history of the growing perception about the nature of God within that culture. As has been pointed out, that was a good choice for the dissemination of the message about relating to God and man in love.
See, this outlooks makes more sense to me. If God is a universal deity, it makes sense that He would not limit His presence to a specific region and culture. I think there are quite a few people under the Christian" umbrella who feel similarly, and while many of the Evangelicals around here may not think you count as a Christian, I think it is important that you continue to be a visible example that not all of Christianity is like that.
Since God is omniscient, he knew that a new religion would spring up and eventually reach people across the world. Yet he inspired a book that seems to have no knowledge of the world outside a tiny region in the Middle East.
Because the Jewish Bible is the story of the Jewish people and their relationship with their Creator and His laws for them.
Everyone else can write their own book.
But, since I'm a Jew and this is a Jewish explanation rather than a Christian one, feel free to ignore it.
Because the Jewish Bible is the story of the Jewish people and their relationship with their Creator and His laws for them.
Everyone else can write their own book.
But, since I'm a Jew and this is a Jewish explanation rather than a Christian one, feel free to ignore it.
You know, I was going to write that this is the Jews' book and that's why it takes place in the Middle East...and that Christians commandeered someone else's religion, but how could the ancient Jews have imagined that would happen...but I could not think of a non-snarky way to say it. This still sounds snarky but it is what it is.
Of course the Torah/Bible takes place in the Middle East. And no, I doubt they envisioned that it would apply "to all" eventually, but then again, with the throwing out of so much of what Christians call the OT "because Jesus changed things" or "because Jesus fulfilled things", it's hardly the same religious origin any more anyway. That still sounds snarky. I'm just going to close off this post now, this is how I have always felt about Christians taking over a religion, then changing it retroactively.
Since God is omniscient, he knew that a new religion would spring up and eventually reach people across the world. Yet he inspired a book that seems to have no knowledge of the world outside a tiny region in the Middle East.
See, I don't subscribe to this idea.
In the Torah/Bible, God says over and over and over again that his words are specifically for the Jews, his chosen. Even Jesus himself in the NT says several times that his words are only for the Jews.
Things don't go "global" until Paul takes over and until John gets written pretty much as an apologetics piece. Neither the Jews of the OT, nor the God of the OT, nor Jesus, until retroactively as a way to pull non-Jews in, say the Bible is for anybody but the Jews.
Yes, the ideas Jesus is said to have espoused could apply to anyone, but not all the laws and rules of the Bible as a whole (many of which Christians throw out anyway, so I suppose that's moot). There were and are plenty of non-Jewish religions that espouse the same ideas. Christians are free to follow the ideas of the Torah or the ideas of Jesus, of course. But why does the Bible take place in the Middle East? Well duh.
Since God is omniscient, he knew that a new religion would spring up and eventually reach people across the world. Yet he inspired a book that seems to have no knowledge of the world outside a tiny region in the Middle East.
The world-wide destruction in Genesis 1:2 where the earth became chaos and vacan was not limited to the Middle East.
The world-wide flood in Noah's day was not limited to the Middle East.
I think your premise is incorrect that God didn't know of the world outside the Middle East. He told Paul to go to the nations. In Revelation the kings of the earth come to the city Jerusalem. In Revelation the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations. In Revelation Christ will come back and fight with the kings of the earth. I could go on and on.
But does that "tenacity" now include the culturally acceptable action that the story depicts Lot taking? That is part of the point, the original has the value of hospitality elevated to a place that we no longer believe it should be given. This is a cultural phenomenon, specifically related to the time and place in which the story is set. Why if you are trying to reveal universal truths to all mankind for all of history, would you do so with something that is laden with cultural baggage that must be discarded?
The point is: "Wow, protecting a guest is really serious business." The issue of the extent of its seriousness is, yes, going to depend on the culture one is in and the specific circumstances involved. The old pseudo-conundrum of "Is it okay to lie to the Nazis that Anne Frank is hiding in your attic?" is an example. Lying may be reprehensible in some situations, but acceptable in the circumstance of protecting a guest (a specific scriptural example of that very situation is that of Rahab).
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And that doesn't even begin to cover the original point, that the passage was not originally a polemic against homosexuality, yet most flavors of Christianity see it that way. They have imposed their own cultural baggage on the story.
I don't think that was his original point, but I already addressed the fact that some people get it wrong. Some people get even simple arithmetic wrong.
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How could an omnipotent, loving God possibly think this was the best way of ensuring that people come faith in Him? It looks more like the kind of thing one would do if you wanted to set humanity up for failure...
Again, you're only saying "If I were God, I'd do it differently." Considering all circumstances--which you can't know if you're not an "omnipotent, loving God,"--your way may or may not be superior if all the circumstances are known.
Last edited by Ralph_Kirk; 04-11-2014 at 12:48 PM..
If God's objective is to "save" as much of humankind as possible, then the way he has chosen to go about it is incredibly inneficient, almost counterproductive
It is IMPOSSIBLE for the following to all be true:
(1) God is all-powerful and all-knowing
(2) God wants to save as much of humankind ad possible
(3) The amount of people saved is directly related to whether they've read or heard the contents of a book that was very slow to make itself out of the Middle East and, by the way, is so cryptic that the only people who can understand it have to go to seminary school
The entire point of this thread is the fact that scripture does not speak of people outside our span of communication and knowledge, therefore we--that is, those of us who are Christians--do not know what the end situation is for people we have not spoken to...and we don't really know what the end situation is for people we have spoken to.
So we can't speak definitively whether those we haven't spoken to can be saved or not. There is tantalizing scriptural evidence that God does not destroy the ignorant, and that even those we have not spoken to have sufficient information about God to seek Him and perhaps find Him.
But we Christians have no need to know about what happens outside our sphere, so scripture need not speak of it. Scripture provides us with sufficient information to perform the task it charges to us. It need not do anything more.
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