I have read the Bible. I’m even a Christian. I was trying to explain why these things are the way they are when I was attacked, but apparently you both prefer that people think Christians cherry pick from the Bible, which was the charge I was defending Christians against.

No, Zealot, you don’t understand me, because what you’re saying here is not at all what I was saying.

I’m done with this.

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 5:16 PM

I prefer that Christians embrace the entirety of God’s word, and that non-Christians understand that. It’s the cherry-picking (“don’t eat shellfish!”) taken out of context that makes it so easy for unbelievers to dismiss the validity of the Bible. The problem is when Christians are so unfamiliar with the text themselves that they are unable to defend it by presenting the truth. Believers should know the WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE & WHY of passages in the Bible so they can dispel the confusion.

That’s my point with the shrimp. It’s not that you believe you’re breaking a moral law. It’s that you believe it isn’t a moral law. That’s the whole point here.

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 12:44 PM

That’s because it ISN’T a moral law! It’s a ceremonial law. Big difference! That law wasn’t intended for you, it was intended for THEM.

Imagine you’re a 4 year old child with a 16 year old sister. Your father tells you not to go into the street, but your sister does so as she pleases. So I ask you is going into the street a sin?

The answer of course is NO. If you go into the street anyway, you are certainly sinning, but your sin is not going into the street. Your sister does it all the time and Daddy knows about it and doesn’t scold her. The sin isn’t going into the street; it’s disobeying your father.

Not going into the street is the “ceremonial law”; obeying your father is the moral law.

Samson wasn’t allowed to cut his hair because he took a Nazarite vow. Which was the moral law, the no-haircuts-rule, or the vow? Does that mean YOU can’t get a haircut? (Why would you think that?)

The dietary restrictions throughout the Pentateuch were intended for those to whom it was addressed. The moral laws were intended for everyone for all time. It’s VERY CLEAR which are which, if you actually read the Bible in context. You’d have to be intentionally obtuse in order to miss it.

I wish for once people would actually read the Bible and not take it out of context.

I have read the Bible. I’m even a Christian. I was trying to explain why these things are the way they are when I was attacked, but apparently you both prefer that people think Christians cherry pick from the Bible, which was the charge I was defending Christians against.

No, Zealot, you don’t understand me, because what you’re saying here is not at all what I was saying.

I’m done with this.

Yes, there are some things in the Old (and New!) Testaments that we struggle to understand. But that doesn’t mean we throw it all out.

It just means we try harder to understand it.

Religious_Zealot on December 10, 2008 at 11:40 AM

I wish for once people would actually read the Bible and not take it out of context. The dietary laws were given to the Israelites, not all mankind for all eternity. The command to wipe out a nation was given to the Israelites and specifically limited to the nations that God delineated – far from a carte blanche for “followers of God” to annihilate the enemy of their choosing whenever they deemed proper throughout all time.

Esthier: the excerpts you mention – completely out of context – were commands given to the Israelites at that time and place. How hard is this to understand? Just because God issued a command to someone in particular doesn’t necessarily mean it applies to you. So feel free to wear your cotton/polyesther blend T-shirt.

That’s as bad as telling somebody that the Bible says, “you must sleep with me.” (Genesis 30:16)

No, you don’t. If you did, you’d stop with the line of questioning you’re currently throwing at me.

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 3:28 PM

Sorry, but I DO get your point – and it’s an old, old point (hint: look up Marcion).

Time and again people have tried to throw the Hebrew Bible out of the Christian canon…

…and time and again such people were labeled as heretics since they could not/would not understand what was written in the New Testament.

Jesus did not come to write another Testament – He came to save us and to help us understand what was already written (as Paul wrote – “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”)

Most everything Christ taught either came directly from the OT or was a simple extrapolation from it.

In other words – everything necessary for salvation can be found in the OT.

BTW – how’s that search for ‘rape’ coming in the NT? Also, abortion and capital punishment aren’t really dealt with in the NT (there’s some oblique references, but nothing straight forward).

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 4:20 PM

I think I understand you better now.

Of course you don’t, but you do have control over what words you choose knowing what words are insulting.

Indeed. If I intended an insult, I could formulate something far more effective. This time, I was expressing an opinion.

If people want to take offense over such things, F ‘em. The world does not revolve around their feeble sensibilities.

I have no control over others’ capacity for taking offense,

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 3:43 PM

Of course you don’t, but you do have control over what words you choose knowing what words are insulting. Again, if that’s what you want to say, then say it.

I’m only acknowledging that it is indeed insulting to many people. Whether or not those people are currently offended or habitually offended is another discussion entirely.

So we shouldn’t wear clothing made out of two different types of cloth and we shouldn’t eat shellfish or pig?

Have you noticed the context where these restrictions were given? They were explicitly given to the nation of Israel as their civil laws. They were not stated as general principles for everyone to follow. They were part of Israel’s old covenant with God, a covenant which has been superseded.

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
(Jeremiah 31:31-32 NAS95S)

At the Last Supper, Jesus refers to this passage when He tells the disciples that His execution and resurrection will establish the new covenant:

And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
(Luke 22:20 NAS95S)

So laws which were part of the old covenant and not restated for as part of the new covenant are not ones we are required to obey:

When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
(Hebrews 8:13 NAS95S)

In fact, God gave Peter an explicit demonstration of this change:

But Peter began speaking and proceeded to explain to them in orderly sequence, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying; and in a trance I saw a vision, an object coming down like a great sheet lowered by four corners from the sky; and it came right down to me, and when I had fixed my gaze on it and was observing it I saw the four-footed animals of the earth and the wild beasts and the crawling creatures and the birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing unholy or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a voice from heaven answered a second time, ‘What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.’”
(Acts 11:4-9 NAS95S)

Yet even though God had showed Peter that the old covenant proscriptions were no longer in force, Peter still messed up and slipped back into his old ways.

When Peter came to Antioch, I [Paul] opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
(Galatians 2:11-14 NIV)

Put simply, Paul opposed Peter here because Peter was reverting to obeying those old Jewish laws which God had given only to Israel under the old covenant, and by doing so, he was messing others up.

Here’s another Jewish law you missed: circumcision. It’s also an explicit example of old covenant laws given only to Israel, and clearly not required of Christians:

Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
(Galatians 6:12-15 NAS95S)

On the other hand, the Bible does restate many of the same commands in the New Testament. For example:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators [sex between two unmarried people], nor idolaters, nor adulterers [someone married having sex with someone other than their spouse], nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
(1Corinthians 6:9-10 NAS95S)

So even though the old covenant laws given to Israel do not bind Christians, some commands such as this example, are given again in the New Testament showing that God still considers them to be sins we are to avoid.

The word translated as “homosexual” in this verse is “arsenokoites” (αρσενοκοιτης). It comes from two words, “arsen” (αρσεν) which means “man”, and “koite” (κοιτη) which means “bed”. It literally means “one who lies with a male as with a female, a sodomite.” (From Thayer’s Greek Lexicon).

BTW… Do you have any idea what the FDA regulations are on handling shellfish? Look them up sometime. They’re pretty extreme. It seems that shellfish tends to go bad fairly quickly and gets easily contaminated if not handled properly. If you eat bad shellfish, you can get very, very sick in a hurry.

It’s no wonder that God told a nation living in a hot climate, with no ice or other refrigeration available to avoid the stuff. In their circumstances, it would have been a major health hazard!

As for pig and other similar animals, they tend to have parasites which can only be killed by proper cooking. Again, it’s far easier for a nation in their circumstances to simply avoid meat likely to contain parasites than to require more advanced technologies for storage which they hadn’t figured out yet.

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 3:29 PM

I speak my mind (what little there is of it). I have no control over others’ capacity for taking offense, and I have even less inclination to care. The regular pantomime of people being “more offended than thou” is more an object of amusement, really.

Yeah. Everyone is offended. It should become an Olympic sport for whiners.

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 2:04 PM

I didn’t say I was offended, only that your statement was insulting. You’re welcome to be insulting if you choose.

However, let me simply be a little cynical about you having NEVER called your dad (or referred to him) as ‘father.”

So now you’re calling me a liar. I don’t call him father. It’s to weird and formal sounding.

Religious_Zealot on December 10, 2008 at 2:02 PM

So you won’t listen to me, but expect me to listen to you. Got it.

No, I get your point very well.

Religious_Zealot on December 10, 2008 at 2:03 PM

No, you don’t. If you did, you’d stop with the line of questioning you’re currently throwing at me.

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 3:16 PM

Double Plus 1

Count to 10 on December 10, 2008 at 2:43 PM

Or we could, y’know, mind our own business?

Condemning gays as “mentally ill” without credible scientific evidence sounds dangerously like the kind of voodoo touted throughout the dark ages.

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 1:40 PM

Why do you use the word “condemn”?
The idea is to encourage people to tackle their own problems rather than encouraging them to stew, or even revel, in them.

Yeah. Everyone is offended. It should become an Olympic sport for whiners.

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 2:04 PM

My bet is on Team Russia to win the 30-second bawl.

Fine. Prove me wrong. Show me some verse that Christians by a large agree that we should follow that isn’t validated in the New Testament and explain why we should follow it.

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 1:51 PM

Believe it or not, there is NOTHING in the New Testament about rape.

Thus, by your logic, since the NT doesn’t specifically “validate” the proscription against it, it then must be OK to rape people.

/sarc

I don’t want to misunderstand you, but are you saying you hope that the person who made up God and the Bible is sent to hell?

Yes. Thus the paradox.

That’s fairly insulting if so.

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 1:58 PM

Yeah. Everyone is offended. It should become an Olympic sport for whiners.

You’re missing my point, but I don’t know how else to explain it anymore than I have.

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 1:58 PM

No, I get your point very well.

You just don’t like being shown you are in error.

I already answered this one.

Sorry, in all of the back-and-forth I missed that one.

However, let me simply be a little cynical about you having NEVER called your dad (or referred to him) as ‘father.”

Can you stop asking questions you already know the answer two? Surely you understand what Jesus meant when he said that. He was preserving the law, that includes honoring parents.

I’ll keep asking them until you understand that it isn’t just the NT where there are sayings and ‘rules’ that are to be understood in a particular context.

One can’t make up all kinds of reasons not to take the NT literally and then say if you can’t take all of the OT literally you must not believe in it.

Not just that. It was also practice at the time. Mixing different types of clothe would make the clothing weaker.

I don’t know enough about ancient weaving to know if this is accurate or not. Obviously there WERE clothes made of multiple fabrics otherwise there wouldn’t have been anything said about it.

However, the ‘weakening’ simply underlies the more ‘lyrical’ nature of the rule.

And yet we take other parts literally. That’s inconsistent to others if there isn’t an explanation.

There’s ALWAYS an explanation, it’s just that not everyone agrees with them (and some are just plain wrong).

I mean, seriously, do you really think our salvation is based on what fabric is in our clothes? If not, then maybe that’s a clue to how to understand what was said.

Jesus Christ and his apostles.

And yet even the apostles got things wrong – and all of these are long dead.

Please, read the link I gave you. Long hair was not a disgrace for Jews at the time. As it points out, Paul himself had long hair when in Corinth, see Acts 18:18.

Please – listen to me.

Paul’s ministry was not to Jews, but to Gentiles.

In Corinth there was a large temple to one of the Greek gods (Aphrodite) that was full of both male and female prostitutes.

These prostitutes had a particular way of looking.

Paul wanted the Christians in Corinth to distinguish themselves from the temple prostitutes – and one of those ways was to wear your hair differently.

BTW – Acts 18:18 doesn’t say that Paul had long hair, only that he had it all cut off. One can have SHORT hair and still have it all cut off. Yes, it is supposed that the ‘vow’ he made was to be a Nazarite, but that would still further separate him from the local Corinthians and make his decision non-applicable to understanding his admonition.

But if someone were to answer those questions, then homosexuality could be legitimately called an illness without bigotry being involved?

Esthier on December 10, 2008 at 1:56 PM

Of course. Big “if”.

Religious_Zealot on December 10, 2008 at 1:52 PM

You’re missing my point, but I don’t know how else to explain it anymore than I have.

Paradoxically, I hope there is a special hell for the bastard(s) that originally fabricated all this “god” & bible gibberish.

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 1:55 PM

I don’t want to misunderstand you, but are you saying you hope that the person who made up God and the Bible is sent to hell?

That’s fairly insulting if so.

We don’t refer to Down Syndrome as a “mental illness”.

Don’t we? Either that or “mental handicap” or “mental deficiency.”

Either way the implication is that something is wrong with the person.

Lots of thorny questions with tough answers and tougher consequences…..too many to conclusively start discarding gays as “mentally ill” – hence my accusation of bigotry.

LimeyGeek on December 10, 2008 at 1:44 PM

But if someone were to answer those questions, then homosexuality could be legitimately called an illness without bigotry being involved?