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Post by everso on Jul 5, 2009 19:47:17 GMT
What's so wonderful is that God COULD HAVE made getting salvation complicated, time-consuming, etc. Instead, He made it very easy on us. That proves His love for us. ;D I for one find the Bible very complicated and time consuming. Neither does it answer all the moral questions we have to face in modern life; how could it? It can't. It is a book written, what, a thousand years ago or more! It was written when men believed the earth to be flat. How can it possibly be relevant today? Sorry guys. I admire your faith. I just don't share it.
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Post by Big Lin on Jul 5, 2009 23:21:33 GMT
I for one find the Bible very complicated and time consuming. Neither does it answer all the moral questions we have to face in modern life; how could it? It can't. It is a book written, what, a thousand years ago or more! It was written when men believed the earth to be flat. How can it possibly be relevant today? Sorry guys. I admire your faith. I just don't share it. Everso, as someone who is a Christian married to an agnostic I understand your doubts. If it comes to that I rebelled against my Christian upbringing as a teenager in just about the worst way possible. I have known Laura (Pumpkinette) for quite a long time now and she is one of my very best friends. I have only known Ron for less than a week but already we have become good friends. Both of them are kind, sincere, loving and true-hearted people. I know that Laura and I have many reasons for our faith but I also know that one thing we have in common is a shared experience of tragedy. Hers was a family tragedy which I know about but of course I will not share the details because it isn't my place to do so. Like hers, mine involved murder though at a much younger age. I was fifteen going on sixteen when the girl I loved (yes, we'd had a passionate lesbian relationship for three years) was murdered. In my grief I prayed to God for the first time in four years and to my astonishment I found that Jesus reached out and touched me. I found that He really WAS my Saviour. Since then I won't pretend I've been a saint but I've always tried to live how I know He wants me to. That's just how I feel in my heart and I always will. Jesus saved me when I was at the lowest ebb in my life and His love and His mercy towards a miserable sinner like me changed my life. I've spoken from the heart and feel much better sharing my faith in spite of the fact that I'm nervous about people laughing at me. Now I'm going to dearl with some of aspects of your post, Everso, on a rational basis. If you read the Bible carefully it's actually obvious that it was written by people who KNEW that the earth was round and NOT flat. You are confusing the Bible with the teachings for a certain point of its history of the Catholic Church. Even the Catholics did not ALWAYS believe the earth was flat. Most of that nonsense came about once the anti-intellectualism of Augustine of Hippo came to dominate the church. As for the moral teachings of the Bible, yes, they CAN be quite complicated if you WANT them to be. Jesus actually made it quite simple. It's all about loving people. If you do that you won't go far wrong.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 5, 2009 23:39:18 GMT
I don't suppose this helps but it's an answer I put on a board to a thread about just how to define 'Christian'.
A Christian has to be somebody who accepts the figure of Jesus as Ultimate Teacher, at the very minimum. All Christians agree on the Nicene Creed but that was formulated against Arians who believed Jesus the First Creation and not God or His Son. The three Oriental Orthodox and Nestorian churches (Coptic, Syriac, Armenian) do not accept the Council of Chalcedon that I think produced the Apostles' Creed, and the Eastern Orthodox (Greek, Russian etc) do not accept the Roman translation of the Creed from Greek to Latin adding to "The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father" and from the Son. The Anglicans and Lutherans in the strictest terms are probably more schismatic Catholics than true Protestants. Protestant churches don't accept all manner of things that the others do and do often deny freewill but they would agree on the Roman creed even if they interpret it slightly differently. Nobody knows what to make of the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, except that the JWs effectively go back to Arianism that JC was a created being - but I think they believe he is the Archangel Michael.
I don't know whether he actually existed or is a parable but they might do a lot better to pay more attention to what they say he said, than to arguing about what he was!
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Post by ronmorgen on Jul 6, 2009 0:53:54 GMT
You are truly a new creature in Christ Jesus Linda. What a beautiful testamony of your salvation.
Skylark, you said it doesn't answer all the moral questions of modern life. No, it is not intended to be a rule book. However, the gospel has power to change the heart. The promised Holy Spirit produces the fruit of love in us.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 6, 2009 0:56:07 GMT
And if The Christ is actually your own true divinity that your animal nature obscured?
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Post by ronmorgen on Jul 6, 2009 1:10:27 GMT
Sinful nature is crucified, human nature flourishes.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jul 6, 2009 2:09:04 GMT
It can't. It is a book written, what, a thousand years ago or more! It was written when men believed the earth to be flat. How can it possibly be relevant today? Sorry guys. I admire your faith. I just don't share it. Everso, as someone who is a Christian married to an agnostic I understand your doubts. If it comes to that I rebelled against my Christian upbringing as a teenager in just about the worst way possible. I have known Laura (Pumpkinette) for quite a long time now and she is one of my very best friends. I have only known Ron for less than a week but already we have become good friends. Both of them are kind, sincere, loving and true-hearted people. I know that Laura and I have many reasons for our faith but I also know that one thing we have in common is a shared experience of tragedy. Hers was a family tragedy which I know about but of course I will not share the details because it isn't my place to do so. Like hers, mine involved murder though at a much younger age. I was fifteen going on sixteen when the girl I loved (yes, we'd had a passionate lesbian relationship for three years) was murdered. In my grief I prayed to God for the first time in four years and to my astonishment I found that Jesus reached out and touched me. I found that He really WAS my Saviour. Since then I won't pretend I've been a saint but I've always tried to live how I know He wants me to. That's just how I feel in my heart and I always will. Jesus saved me when I was at the lowest ebb in my life and His love and His mercy towards a miserable sinner like me changed my life. I've spoken from the heart and feel much better sharing my faith in spite of the fact that I'm nervous about people laughing at me. Now I'm going to dearl with some of aspects of your post, Everso, on a rational basis. If you read the Bible carefully it's actually obvious that it was written by people who KNEW that the earth was round and NOT flat. You are confusing the Bible with the teachings for a certain point of its history of the Catholic Church. Even the Catholics did not ALWAYS believe the earth was flat. Most of that nonsense came about once the anti-intellectualism of Augustine of Hippo came to dominate the church. As for the moral teachings of the Bible, yes, they CAN be quite complicated if you WANT them to be. Jesus actually made it quite simple. It's all about loving people. If you do that you won't go far wrong. Thank you for sharing Lin.. I rebeled against a Catholic upbringing and went through wild life styles too.. Jesus looks at our hearts and not what we've been led or misled to believe. All we have to do is let Christ touch our hearts and it becomes a lot easier to go through a "Valley of Darkness"!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2009 7:25:30 GMT
But you don't have to be a Christian to "love people", and in any event I'm not sure how useful that is in determining a code of values. The ten commandments are pretty good starting point, but don't cover everything, and I dare say few people consider the worship of graven images a mortal sin any more, do they?
Christ imposed some pretty tough rules to follow by modern standards. For example, he decreed that men had only one ground for divorce, adultery. No mention was made of women, presumably because they were unable to divorce. The gospel puts this in context so we can see the logic behind the rule, but apply it today and you get the anomoly of being able to divorce for a one-off indiscretion but not for brutality.
Those who try to simplify the Bible are missing out the hard bits. Their choice, but it is often said that the Bible can be used to justify any position you choose.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 6, 2009 9:20:32 GMT
You have to put things in perspective. The moment historical points are taken out of context and made into eternal rules they go wrong. There should be no divorce except for adultery because there was no form of maintenance for divorced women and common for men to divorce older women in order to marry younger. There are also probably political overtones aimed at the Herods. Incidentally, Queen Berenike Herod did divorce her first husband.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2009 11:55:59 GMT
Exactly, ratarsed. The relevant gospel (sorry, forgotten which) explains that men were granting themselves divorce at the drop of a hat, which is why Jesus made that rule.
But the pastor of a nearby fundamentalist church takes every word of the Bible literally and has decreed that divorce except for adultery goes against Christian teaching.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 6, 2009 12:15:33 GMT
It does go against what became Christian teaching. For one thing, the original situation remained unchanged, so the prohibition continued to make sense. In reality, by the middle ages the nobility were annulling their marriages on technical grounds and the peasantry couldn't afford to get married anyway so there was never any reason to change it.
The traditional churches at least allow for changing conditions through and after Bible times but the fundamentalists of course do not. The danger with the traditional approach is introducing any new 'revelation' or recognising any superstition that happens to be convenient.
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Post by ronmorgen on Jul 6, 2009 21:43:30 GMT
If two people, obedient to God, and walking in love are joined together, they won't need a divorce. This problem occures when we are already out of God's will.
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Post by Big Lin on Jul 6, 2009 22:15:39 GMT
I agree absolutely, Ron. I've been lucky enough to find love and even though my husband is an agnostic I know we'll be together till death do us part.
The Lord has made me whole and I am eternally grateful to Him for His salvation.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 6, 2009 23:06:23 GMT
If two people, obedient to God, and walking in love are joined together, they won't need a divorce. This problem occures when we are already out of God's will. If they are walking in love then the God within them has joined them together and they don't need a man in a frock or a licence to say so. On Erasmus: I looked him up, because his name is behind a lot of the more liberal side of Catholicism. He spent some time in England and was a friend of Thomas Moore. His position was to recognise the corruption in the Church but to seek reform from within and to broaden what the Church would accept. He could not have been far off the Anglican position before Mary's excesses one way and Calvin the other made a reconciliation something like the Orthodox churches with their national leaderships possible. At that time, the more corrupt the Pope, the better, since it left the uncorrupt free to run their own affairs. Better one Pope that everybody ignored than today's ten thousand Popes throughout the Bible Belt each declaring himself Infallible on all occasions.
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Post by everso on Jul 7, 2009 23:12:29 GMT
I'm not a believer, but I live by the "do as you would be done by" rule, which serves me well.
Thanks for sharing that with me Lin. I've known you quite well for a while now, and I believe I did know some of what you said.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 7, 2009 23:35:15 GMT
I'm not a believer, but I live by the "do as you would be done by" rule, which serves me well. Do not to others what you would not have them do to you is preferable. If you have ever been treated to a young child's idea of the ideal meal you can guess why ;D
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Post by everso on Jul 8, 2009 17:26:59 GMT
I'm not a believer, but I live by the "do as you would be done by" rule, which serves me well. Do not to others what you would not have them do to you is preferable. If you have ever been treated to a young child's idea of the ideal meal you can guess why ;D But isn't "Do as you would be done by" (or "Do to others what you would have them do to you") essentially the same as "Do not to others what you would not have them do to you"? I.e. Be nice to others as you'd want them to be nice to you, or Don't be nasty to others as you'd want them not to be nasty to you.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 8, 2009 18:25:35 GMT
One is called the Golden Rule and the negative one the Silver. The simplest thing is that likes differ more than dislikes. It's pretty obvious what nobody would like but it can be dangerous to prescribe for people. You can think of headscarves. All the talk about them being repressive and so on but nobody says that about East and South European women and it edges over when somebody insists that she wants to wear one, to suggest that she doesn't know her own mind. Do you know the poem I am a cat that likes to do good? Sometimes doing unto others forgets what the others actually want done! You can be fairly sure that if you don't like it, you're not likely to go wrong refraining from doing it to anybody else either.
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Post by everso on Jul 8, 2009 22:32:09 GMT
One is called the Golden Rule and the negative one the Silver. The simplest thing is that likes differ more than dislikes. It's pretty obvious what nobody would like but it can be dangerous to prescribe for people. You can think of headscarves. All the talk about them being repressive and so on but nobody says that about East and South European women and it edges over when somebody insists that she wants to wear one, to suggest that she doesn't know her own mind. Do you know the poem I am a cat that likes to do good? Sometimes doing unto others forgets what the others actually want done! You can be fairly sure that if you don't like it, you're not likely to go wrong refraining from doing it to anybody else either. But, what if I don't like doughnuts but someone else does?
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Post by Big Lin on Jul 8, 2009 23:06:20 GMT
Thanks, Everso. I'm often a bit reluctant to talk about my faith but meeting Ron on a Christian board has helped me to be more open about my beliefs.
I know you have always been a good person.
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