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One of my favorite Christian philosophers, Soren Kierkegaard, put it this way:
For ultra conservative Christians the gospel is about having the right information--hence you get jeffbase40--and being "right" is everything. But if the gospel is about transformation--which I know it is---then being Christ like is everything.
The jeffs of the world honestly believe having the right information about God is essential for salvation. For them, the greatest heresy would be to believe the wrong things about God. This is also why they can't bear to be around others who hold different beliefs than they do. If having the right information is what the Christian faith is all about, then having wrong information becomes the worst sin of all.
Mark Van Steenwyck, founder of the Mennonite Worker organization once wrote:
But I met Jesus. I've tried to run from Him, prayed for Him to leave me be and let me burn in hell, but once Jesus gets a hold of a person because they once surrendered their life to Him, He will not let go.
Now I came out of that muddy mess jeff is in. I was once there myself with all the "right" ideas about God and the Bible. Yet morality grows or it dies. It grew within me and that "faith" such as it was, was nothing more than the husk of an ugly caterpillar from which a butterfly would emerge (and continues to emerge decades later).
The Bible was "God-breathed" according to conservative Christians, but so were we.
Genesis 2:7
But conservatives also believe God "breathed" Scripture into existence.
2 Tim. 3:16
Yet those same conservatives hold that Scripture is inerrant and infallible while people are not. I hold that neither are. The Bible is a roadmap for us to each find out own journey by looking at how others used it. It doesn't mean we discard our own sense of conscience or our intellect.
The jeffs of the world, and perhaps you, too, petunia, are either insisting the Bible must be "100% factual" or that it is discarded. But the Bible is an ancient, ambiguous and diverse book that leads us to wisdom, not answers. And that is the Good News. God can speak to any or all of us individually. The way we know it has occurred is by the spiritual truth that is borne by those who listen.
Gal. 5:22-23
The jeffs are the enemies of the gospel message and wisdom found in Christ. You are but part of the harvest in the field. Not my job to "argue" you or anyone else into believing, but it is my job to display that fruit of the Spirit of God.
So basically, personal perception of how Jesus is interacting with one?
God says to Moses, scrap all slavery immediately. Oh I don't care that the slaves will now have no shelter, no source of income or barter. I don't care that it will destroy the entire society and kill most of your people. End it now!
It is arrogant when you don't even know all the facts. We don't know the ramifications that would occur if you suddenly ripped out a social economical system in that culture. Look at what happened to the US economy in the 2000s. Banks were acting immoral by giving out home loans to people who didn't even have a job. In a economic system where everything is so tied together, the end result is the entire thing comes crashing down and everyone suffers. There may simply have not been any possible way to destroy the practice in that particular time and place.
It is arrogant to think that your brain could come up with a better solution than the Creator who is infinitely more intelligent than we are.
The verses are not supporting slavery. They are only permitting it to exist under strict regulation.
If God created everything and everyone and is all poerful why not make the rule against slavery at the very beginning. Did your country continue slavery after the Civil War in order that the slaves would still have food and shelter? Slavery was outlawed in many civilizations by the men who ruled those civilizations. If those humans could find ways to end slavery surely your God could have too if he exists.
Was there any regulations prohibiting sexually abusing or raping of slaves? Was the regulation that you could beat a slave so badly as long as he didn't die in the first day or two moral? Slavery is one of the greatest problems for folks such as yourself why believes that every word of the Bible. You need to defend and justify that your God did not ban or outlaw slavery even though you find slavery immoral. Hence you make your God appear very weak and with little power or advanced knowledge. So either he isn't all that powerful or didn't mind slavery. As long as he was much more concern about us not eating bacon or shellfish than he was about slavery or treating women as property then Bible Believers have little rights to claim superior morality over non believers. I don't think that my grandmother ever knowingly ate a bite of pork.
By the way Canadian banks did not suffer through that economic crash, in deed all of them made profits during those years due to the refusal of our government to relax banking regulations. There is much that humans can do to protect others. I have both a federal and a provincial elections to vote in this year and I will not support a party that weakens regulations to help the greedy or the uncaring.
Your argument sounds much like claiming that humans can make errors or be selfish and greedy and it is wrong to think that God also is not sometimes wrong or selfish and greedy. Man ended slavery in many places and at different times. Slavery ended in Ancient Greece and Rome and in more modern times Britain did it in 1807. Although not common in Canada slavery was abolished here in 1834. If you do a search through history you may find that slavery was neither universal nor continual and was stopped by either economic or political changes. Your excuses for your God makes him seem either weak or uncaring. I didn't expected him to have done anything to end slavery as I don't think he exists but at least I don't have to make excuses for him.
That's because they want to discuss (the joys of) atheism and there's not much interest in it over on the A/A forum, especially with the blending of the agnosticism with atheism.
It's so cool how you know what other people are thinking.
Then it stands to reason that the slavery of that time was not the kind that we think of today, if it was such a big part of society. Jacob was a slave for 14 years wasn't he? Then he became a big-time property owner.
You seem to be looking at the Bible as an all-encompassing description of the ancient world. It's not.
Slavery is clearly outlined and described in the very Bibliolatry. It doesn't need any reasoning what type of slavery they had besides reading skills. Jews were to enslave Jews for only 7 years unless they married them to another Jewish slave, but foreigners and their children could be enslaved indefinitely. Were these religious pro-slavery laws always followed by Jews, no.
Romans, Babylonians, Egyptians, etc had different types of slavery depending on the areas within their "very federalist" empires and the times/zeitgeist of those local areas.
I was looking at the Jewish Bible as a description of the Jewish religious world.
A supposedly "Heavenly" Constitutional document, let's call it.
Like I mentioned, China was the first to explicitly ban slavery.
Iran was the first to explicitly ban building statues and figurines, and ancient Jews followed suit.
Yet ancient Jews did not ban slavery, but only cemented it and outlined some curtails such as "you can beat your slave until just before he dies" while Babylon's Hammurabi had a law such as "if you damage the eye of a salve that is 5 silver to the slave, if you damage the eye of another free citizen that is an eye from you, or 20 silver."
God says to Moses, scrap all slavery immediately. Oh I don't care that the slaves will now have no shelter, no source of income or barter. I don't care that it will destroy the entire society and kill most of your people. End it now!
It is arrogant when you don't even know all the facts. We don't know the ramifications that would occur if you suddenly ripped out a social economical system in that culture. Look at what happened to the US economy in the 2000s. Banks were acting immoral by giving out home loans to people who didn't even have a job. In a economic system where everything is so tied together, the end result is the entire thing comes crashing down and everyone suffers. There may simply have not been any possible way to destroy the practice in that particular time and place.
It is arrogant to think that your brain could come up with a better solution than the Creator who is infinitely more intelligent than we are.
The verses are not supporting slavery. They are only permitting it to exist under strict regulation.
Did God create people before or after slavery existed? Couldn't God have told Adam and Eve that slavery was strictly forbidden? Or Noah and his family?
The verses "only" permit slavery. God is not shy about forbidding things He doesn't want, right?
Yea, that's right. Ignore the entire Bible, ignore language, ignore cultural context. Ignore the fact that many people chose to sell themselves as slaves as a means out of poverty. Ignore the fact that many foreign slaves were prisoners of war. Other nations would have just murdered them on the spot.
The reality is that slavery was the engine of the entire ancient world. Man created the engine, not God.
You don't take a piece off of an engine and expect it to immediately function on its own. That would be like the US economy telling the world that we are immediately going to stop using currency and just trade in produce. You think that would work? There would be mass chaos and suffering.
Just because you find a single clobber verse that gives instruction doesn't mean that God approved of it.
God gave Moses laws regarding divorce yet the Bible plainly says that God hates divorce. Same thing. God hated slavery. Permitting is not supporting.
The true dishonesty is a stubborn refusal to examine all the facts instead of focusing on one single verse.
Do you honestly not see how wrong it is to defend slavery?
The U.S. is already an irreligious nation. You are targeting aging out senior citizens. I think some may mention God here and there just so that others will not think they are completely sold-out to hedonism and/or capitalism.
How many of your elected leaders are not claiming to be very religious? What percentage of your population believes in Creation rather than evolution? What percentage of your population claim to being themselves religious?
Compared to the rest of the developed world, the United States is a religious country. Capitalism is an economic system and can coexist with both a religious and non religious society. Do you think that the anti abortion laws are not being driven by the religious? Or by the elderly?
Compare the 69% important to Americans to 42% important to Canadians and much lower importance of religion to the Japanese and most European.
Maybe religion is just not as dominant in the States as you would like it but if over two thirds feel it is important and the elderly are more likely to vote than the young how can you say that religion doesn't affect your politics? Pay more attention to the rest of the World.
If God created everything and everyone and is all poerful why not make the rule against slavery at the very beginning. Did your country continue slavery after the Civil War in order that the slaves would still have food and shelter? Slavery was outlawed in many civilizations by the men who ruled those civilizations. If those humans could find ways to end slavery surely your God could have too if he exists.
God also created free will. Sure He could command us to only do good things to each other. And then atheists would be belly aching how they are just slaves without true freedom.
Quote:
Originally Posted by badlander
Was there any regulations prohibiting sexually abusing or raping of slaves? Was the regulation that you could beat a slave so badly as long as he didn't die in the first day or two moral? Slavery is one of the greatest problems for folks such as yourself why believes that every word of the Bible. You need to defend and justify that your God did not ban or outlaw slavery even though you find slavery immoral. Hence you make your God appear very weak and with little power or advanced knowledge. So either he isn't all that powerful or didn't mind slavery. As long as he was much more concern about us not eating bacon or shellfish than he was about slavery or treating women as property then Bible Believers have little rights to claim superior morality over non believers. I don't think that my grandmother ever knowingly ate a bite of pork.
Our faith isn't going to crumble because of a few verses that were applicable only to an ancient people.
All you are doing is demonstrating limited human rational. Black and white. If God is all powerful then He can do ANYTHING. But God doesn't operate that way. He isn't going to do anything that is contrary against His will. He isn't going to do anything that is sinful. He isn't going to violate free will. That doesn't make Him weak. That makes Him reliable and never changing. If there isn't a solution that doesn't violate free will then there isn't. I'm sorry if you are incapable of understanding that. The problem with your position is that you must ignore the NT scriptures that are anti-slavery, support your position on limited knowledge of the facts and even go against the logic of why God would approve of slavery. If God is evil why does He do loving things to man? Why did He take a part of Himself and endure hours of extreme physical torture just to save our sorry behinds? That is highly uncharacteristic of a God who does not love all of mankind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by badlander
By the way Canadian banks did not suffer through that economic crash, in deed all of them made profits during those years due to the refusal of our government to relax banking regulations. There is much that humans can do to protect others. I have both a federal and a provincial elections to vote in this year and I will not support a party that weakens regulations to help the greedy or the uncaring.
Was that a counter argument?
Quote:
Originally Posted by badlander
Your argument sounds much like claiming that humans can make errors or be selfish and greedy and it is wrong to think that God also is not sometimes wrong or selfish and greedy. Man ended slavery in many places and at different times. Slavery ended in Ancient Greece and Rome and in more modern times Britain did it in 1807. Although not common in Canada slavery was abolished here in 1834. If you do a search through history you may find that slavery was neither universal nor continual and was stopped by either economic or political changes. Your excuses for your God makes him seem either weak or uncaring. I didn't expected him to have done anything to end slavery as I don't think he exists but at least I don't have to make excuses for him.
I don't have to make excuses. I know God is real and loving. An immoral God would not have given us many gifts like the ability to share laughter. Again, man created slavery. Why is it God's responsibility to clean up our messes? If He outlaws one thing then you would complain about the next. Then it will be why doesn't God force everyone to drive the speed limit? Then you will complain about the lack of free will.
Permitting is not approving. I made a completely valid point. God permitted divorced. He hated it. Slavery is not the will of God and everyone will be equal in the next life as it should be.
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God is not shy about forbidding things He doesn't want, right?