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Phetaroi, you are completely out of your mind. Where do you get that? You have such a ant-Bible mentality that you can't even think straight.
You said: "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."
With all the Christians who are wiggle waggling around how their bible supports slavery, but "doesn't really mean it" is exactly why we need to cheer the decline of religiosity as the study shows.
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, who tries to justify the garbage that is in the bible, or the koran, or any other scripture, really needs to look at themselves and answer how could they? How could they try and justify rape, slavery, genocide, or any of the other horrors?
Just don't. Be a good person, and throw off the shackles of your former religion. It is not a good thing to continue to think that "Faith" is sacrosanct. It isn't.
It's not my fault if atheists stubbornly refuse to examine all the facts and realize that the Bible does not support slavery. I pointed out several scriptures where it flat out condemns the practice, but of course you have to ignore that because it doesn't fit your narrative. Just like distorting the truth that secular atheist nations historically have been EXTREMELY blood soaked violent and have high suicide rates.
Is any Bible believing Christian respected here? I've never seen it in any discussion. I've never seen an episode of The Atheist Experience where the hosts were not complete pricks to Christian callers.
Then you haven’t watched many episodes. Some of the hosts are pretty harsh towards Christians, but not all are.
The problem with the Atheist Experience show is similar to this forum. Christians are asked for evidence, and are repeatedly unable to provide any. Then some Christians view the request and subsequent failure as persecution.
I am perpetually saddened by Christians who attempt to defend slavery because their god implicitly endorses it. I can only hope that they have an internal twinge at the evil they support.
So we should disregard the Bible? Upon what then should we base our beliefs re: God and Jesus?
One of my favorite Christian philosophers, Soren Kierkegaard, put it this way:
Quote:
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly.
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:
Quote:
We have millions and millions of Christians who have had no experience of God, and the Church, for most part, prefers it that way. We can then supply beliefs and dogmas as a replacement for encountering a living God. This is part of the reason so many people cling to the Bible or their theological beliefs so firmly. Because, to them, it is the closest thing to God they have ever encountered.
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.
Quote:
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed (H5301) into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7
But conservatives also believe God "breathed" Scripture into existence.
Quote:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
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.
Quote:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
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.
2 SCOTUS judges tha5 seem to at least have read the Constitution. I see nothing that trump has done that is worth giving that up for Hillary. No telling who she’d have appointed. Nor is she any better morally.
The Constitution is like the Bible--subject to interpretation. It either grows morally as it has over the past two or three decades or it begins to die, like now. Same thing with the Bible. It either grows morally as it did with the ultimate rejection of slavery in the past two centuries, or it stays stuck in the early first millennia hating gays, women who preach, and blacks who have risen beyond their "station." All of it comes from treating the bible as a lawbook rather than a road map.
In Japanese Buddhism, there is a saying/prayer: Heaven and Earth, change!
And there was some Buddhism in Jesus who taught us to pray "Thy will be done on EARTH as it is in Heaven." That must certainly involve some change and transformation.
2 SCOTUS judges tha5 seem to at least have read the Constitution. I see nothing that trump has done that is worth giving that up for Hillary. No telling who she’d have appointed. Nor is she any better morally.
Moral relativism and what-about-ism. I expect no less. Do carry on. Enjoy your judges.
Is any Bible believing Christian respected here? I've never seen it in any discussion. I've never seen an episode of The Atheist Experience where the hosts were not complete pricks to Christian callers.
You ever wonder why this forum is so overwhelmingly one sided? Because your side ran off the Christians.
If you or any other "bible-believer" can be run off by a non-believer, what does that say about any life changing transformation that Jesus made in your life? It is less powerful than the critics?
How were Abraham and Sarah able to know God without a Bible---neither Old nor New Testaments? They knew through a relationship called "faith" not blind belief, but a "trust in goodness."
That same Bible you worship like an idol states that Jesus said:
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Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.
(Matt. 23:10)
Once Jesus is met, the bible becomes a roadmap of how others did (or did not) meet with God, but insight comes from the Holy Spirit. If you see Christianity as following Jesus, then being right is less important than the quality of your relationship with Him. Relationships are messy and not about correctness or accuracy. We gauge the health of our relationships based on how open our communication is, how honest we can be with one another, and how much time we spend together.
In the early church, there were three different views of the doctrine of hell. For over 300 years Christians held widely divergent views about the afterlife without feeling the need to convince everyone they were right and others were wrong. It was only after Constantine shifted the paradigm of Christianity from a focus on Christ-likeness (orthopraxy) to one of Correctness (orthodoxy) that Christians stated persecuting one another over differences of opinion in matters of doctrine.
Scripture doesn't instruct us to have correct information. Instead we are taught to have a transformational relationship with Jesus. And that impacts how we treat every one---even the "awful" unbelievers on this thread whom God put here to make us think long and hard about who WE are, not who they are.
One of my favorite quotes is from a letter written by a 15th century Bishop named Fenelon who provided some wonderful advice to his reader:
Quote:
If you stopped learning today you wouldn't live long enough to put into practice all that you already know.
Fenelon, Let Go
Until Jesus is alive in you--living and breathing within--you are not alive anyway. Jesus said "Apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5) Paul tells us that to this day a veil covers our eyes whenever we read the OT scriptures and that only in Christ is it taken away. jeff, that is why I know you haven't met Jesus any more than "non-believers" on here. You can't read the OT through the lens of Jesus. You see it as "perfect," in which case God wasted His time sending His Son to rescue you.
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