Posted on 03/15/2004 9:57:21 PM PST by kattracks
I recently interviewed a 26-year-old Swedish student about her views on life. I asked her if she believed in God or in any religion."No, that's silly," she replied.
"Then how do you know what is right and wrong?" I asked.
"My heart tells me," she responded.
In a nutshell, that's the major reason for the great divide within America and between America and much of Europe. The majority of people use their heart -- stirred by their eyes -- to determine what is right and wrong. A minority uses their mind and/or the Bible to make that determination.
Pick almost any issue and these opposing ways of determining right and wrong become apparent.
Here are three examples.
Same-sex marriage: The heart favors it. You have to have a hard heart not to be moved when you see many of the loving same-sex couples who want to commit their lives to one another in marriage. The eye sees the couples; the heart is moved to redefine marriage.
Animal rights: The heart favors them. It is the rare person, for example, whose heart is not moved by the sight of an animal used for medical research. The eye sees the cuddly animal; the heart then equates animal and human life.
Abortion: How can you look at a sad 18-year-old who had unprotected sex and not be moved? What kind of heartless person is going to tell her she shouldn't have an abortion and should give birth?
The eyes and the heart form an extraordinarily powerful force. They can only be overcome when formulating policies by a mind and a value system that are stronger than the heart-eye duo.
With the decline of Judeo-Christian religions, the heart, shaped by what the eye sees (hence the power of television), has become the source of people's moral decisions.
This is a potentially fatal problem for our civilization. As beautiful as the heart might be, it is neither intellectually nor morally profound.
It is therefore frightening that hundreds of millions of people find no problem in acknowledging that their heart is the source of their values. Their heart knows better than thousands of years of accumulated wisdom; better than religions shaped by most of the finest thinkers of our civilization (and, to the believer, by God); and better than the book that has guided our society -- from the Founders of our uniquely successful society to the foes of slavery to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and most of the leaders of the struggle for racial equality.
This elevation of one's heart is well beyond self-confidence -- it is self-deification.
One of the first things you learn in Judaism and Christianity is that the eyes and heart are usually terrible guides to the good and the holy. " . . . (D)o not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after" (Numbers 15:39); "the heart is deceitful above all things . . . " (Jeremiah 17:9).
Supporters of same-sex marriage see the loving gay couple, and therefore do not interest themselves in the effects of changing marriage and family on the children they do not see. And since they venerate their hearts, the biblical ideal of male-female love, marriage and family is of no significance to them.
Animal rights supporters' hearts are deeply moved by the animals they see experimented on, not by the millions of people they do not see who will suffer and die if we stop such experiments.
Likewise, the hearts of the people who support PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are so moved by the plight of slaughtered chickens that the organization has a campaign titled "Holocaust on your plate," which equates our slaughtering of chickens with the Nazi slaughtering of Jews.For 25 years I have been asking high school seniors across America if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority has nearly always voted against the person. Why? Because, they say with no self-doubt, they love their dog, not the stranger. An entire generation has been raised with no reference to any moral code above their heart's feelings. They do not know, and would not care if they did know, that the Bible teaches that human beings, not animals, are created in God's image.
So, too, those who cannot call any abortion immoral are moved by what they see -- the forlorn woman who wants an abortion, not by the human fetus they do not see. That is why abortion rights groups are so opposed to showing photos of fetuses that have been aborted -- such pictures might move the eye and the heart of viewers to judge the morality of many abortions differently.
It is undeniable that many people have used their minds and many have used the Bible in ways that have led to evil. And some of these people have been truly heartless. But not one of the great cruelties of the 20th century -- the Gulag, Auschwitz, Cambodia, North Korea, Mao's Cultural Revolution -- came from those who took their values from the Bible. And the great evil of the 21st century, though religion-based, doesn't come from the Bible either.
Meanwhile, the combination of mind, Judeo-Christian values and heart has produced over centuries the unique success known as America. Reliance on the heart will destroy this painstaking achievement in a generation.
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
See, I can take your words out of context too and construe them to mean something you didn't.
You could of read what God says His intent is for yourself if you weren't intent on plucking verses out of context to make God look bad and discredit the Bible.
The verses you quoted are a punishment on Israel for their sins. What you failed to post was...
In the book of Hosea, God tells his prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. She leaves Hosea several times and goes and sells herself back into a life of prostitution. Each time God tells Hosea to go buy her back and love her as his wife. It is an allegory of the way God loves Israel and the way Israel treats God.
But God is a God of both Mercy and Judgement. He will not let unrepentant sin go unpunished. But He will extend mercy to those who are repentant.
As I stated in a previous post, Biblical law was made up of three types: civil, ceremonial, and moral. The laws regulating slavery in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy were applicable solely to ancient Israel, a nation whose political existence ended in 70 AD. These were civil laws not mandatory for other nations, but were for ancient Israel only. (Virtually all nations on earth had slavery during the time ancient Israel existed as a physical, geographically defined nation. Most of their systems were crueler to the slaves than was the case in the Holy Land.) In the case of ancient Israel, slavery was permitted. However, its existence at that place (the Holy Land) in that time (about 1400 B.C. to 70 AD) does not mean that it was necessarily to be permitted at all times for all nations.
Additionally, slavery in ancient Israel characteristically involved a person surrendering his freedom for the allotted seven year period. In his book, The Sinai Strategy, Christian historian and economist Gary North notes this situation. "Permanent or household slavery in the Old Testament was a vow taken voluntarily. The slave who wished to remain in his master’s house beyond the sixth year, or beyond the jubilee year, could do so. The master drove an awl through the slave’s ear and into the door (Deut. 15:17). It was a bloody symbol of a permanent relationship, even as the blood on the doorpost at the Passover was a sign of a family’s permanent relationship with God (Ex. 12:7). The slave was no longer a chattel slave but an adopted son of the house."
To the extent that the civil law of ancient Israel could serve as a guideline for governments in the church age, it is clear that the institution of slavery as it existed in the United States and in the British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Spanish Empires did not comport with the Biblical guidelines.
* Exodus 21:2 provided a maximum limit of seven years for bondage. Enslavement was for life in the European colonies and the antebellum South (unless the slave bought his freedom).
* There was no provision for multigenerational slavery in ancient Israel. The children of slave women were slaves in the systems of the 16th through 19th Centuries.
* Masters could be punished for killing their slaves in ancient Israel (Exodus 21:20) and would lose their ownership for severely injuring their slaves (Exodus 21: 26-27). American and European colonial slavery lacked this degree of protection.
* There was punishment inflicted if a master had sexual relations with a female slave (Leviticus 19:20). The fact that a majority of African Americans have some white ancestry testifies to the fact that laws prohibiting sexual relations between masters and slaves existed on the books of the British colonies or the Southern states were hardly enforced.
The institution of slavery, as it existed in the European colonies and the United States, more resembled the Graeco-Roman model than the Biblical one. Graeco-Roman law permitted all the abuses (lifetime slavery, multigenerational slavery, little possibility for redress of the physical or sexual abuse of slaves) characterized the practices of the Roman Empire and not those of the commonwealth of ancient Israel. All the colonial powers, save England, which was governed by common law, were subject to laws derived from the Code of Justinian, named after the 6th Century Eastern Roman emperor. England, a relative latecomer to colonial expansion, simply adopted the slavery system the other European powers used to their New World possessions, including those colonies that became the United States.
Scripture does not necessarily permit slavery universally. The slavery that existed in the United States and the European colonial empires from the 16th to the 19th Centuries was derived from Graeco-Roman models and lacked the protective legislation found in the Pentateuch that benefited slaves in ancient Israel. The question must then arise as to whether Biblical principles, at least under the New Covenant, prohibit human bondage.
Firstly, slavery is in itself theft - the uncompensated taking of labor services by force, in contravention of the Eighth Commandment. In the New Covenant, the barriers that previously existed between slave and freeman, Jew and Gentile were lifted. "For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility." (Eph. 2:14) The possibility of unity among all believers, irrespective of race, class, or other status is recognized. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28) In I Timothy 1:10, Paul condemns slave traders (rendered in the KJV as manstealers) as unworthy of being sinful. In the book of Philemon, he pleads for the freedom of Oneismus on the basis of a common brotherhood among believers.
Active opposition to slavery could be found among several Christian groups in early America, including the Quakers, the Mennonites, and the Scottish Covenanters. Among Christian leaders and spokesmen who actively opposed slavery were John Wesley (founder of Methodism), William Wilburforce (responsible for abolishing slavery in the British Empire), John Newton (author of Amazing Grace, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), Jonathan Edwards (the first great American revivalist), and Theodore Dwight. (There were also Unitarians and other non-Christians prominent in the American antislavery movement.) I believe all of these individuals drew their opposition to slavery from their understanding of Scripture and not from humanistic sources.
There are areas of liberty where the Bible does not directly address an issue, such as the use of human stem cells from aborted fetuses in medical research. However, in many instance, what the Westminster Standards refer to as the "good and necessary consequences" of direct Biblical teachings lead to answers in many moral matters. Christian theologians have long held to the position of progressive revelation, that is, later statements in the New Testament, such as Peter's vision in Acts 10 declaring all animal flesh as clean, overrule previous standards in the Old Testament, specifically, the dietary laws. Furthermore, the principle of Scripture interpreting itself in terms of the grammatical and historical background of the statements therein was a major development of the Protestant Reformers. Edwards, Wilburforce, and the other Christian opponents of slavery, as heirs to the concepts of progressive revelation and the grammatical-historical method of Bible interpretation, drew their opposition to slavery from the good and necessary consequences of the propositions in Scripture.
Really? Then I apologize. I reread your posts, and I still don't see it. I'm still not sure what point you were trying to make. And obviously I'm not the only one who thought you were attempting to discredit the Bible.
Usually when I see a post like that, it's from an atheist who is seriously trying to make the case the that the Bible is evil and condones all sorts of sins, just because the Bible mentions it somewhere in a verse. And that's the way your's read.
The Bible is clear on homosexuality. Both the Old and New Testaments condemns the act. But like all sin, it warns of the consequences of sin, but it also expresses God's love for us despite our sin and extends mercy to the repentant.
The Bible is explicit when it points out which parts of the Bible "don't really apply." These are spelled out in the New Testament books of Galatians, Hebrews and, to a lesser extent, Acts and Romans.
It isn't up to anyone to determine which parts of the Bible with which we agree or disagree. The Bible states everything in that regard.
For instance, the Old Testament Mosaic Law required a High Priest to go into the Holy of Holies once a year to give an offering for the people. The book of Hebrews says that we no longer have an earthly high priest, because Jesus, by his sacrifice, has become our eternal high priest and his one-time offering is sufficient.
So, if you were to post something about a human high priest, a Christian would be correct in pointing out that we no longer have need of one.
If you sincerely want to learn more, you can read the requirements of the Mosaic Law in Exodus-Deuteronomy; then read Galatians and Hebrews. That would clear everything up.
I'll repeat, my original poist was not because I literally take ever word out of the old testament. It was meant as a point to those who do.
The evangelical position of Biblical inerrancy is rather different than a wooden literality. This concept was outlined by Calvinist theologian John Gerstner in his book, Biblical Inerrancy:
"There is a God.
The mainstream evangelical view of Biblical authority also recognizes the existence of progressive revelation, that is, passages in the New Testament may be used to clarify passages in the Old Testament. "The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy," a 1978 document approved by conservative Protestant scholars from different traditions, states that position: "We affirm that God's revelation within the Holy Scriptures was progressive. We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it." That same statement also indicates that propositions in the Bible must be taken within the context of the time and place of the original authors. "We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture."
The fact that some so-called fundamentalists or cultists may engage in bad Biblical exegesis on issues like racial segregation, alcohol consumption, and polygamy does not mean that the mainstream of evangelical theologians hold to contradictory positions or reject "embarrassing" parts of the Bible. To say otherwise would be like claiming that the ridiculous statements of Abe Foxman regarding The Passion of the Christ are representative of American Jews in general.
The positions of evangelical scholars regarding Biblical interpretation, from Luther and Calvin in the 16th Century to John Gerstner, Gordon Clark, and Dwight Pentecost in the 20th Century, are clear and have been stated numerous times. The burden is on the opponents of evangelical Christianity to demonstrate if and where they are in error. The correction cannot be accomplished through a parody of their position and the use of discredited statements from 19th Century "higher criticism" of the Bible.
My understanding is that the Bible is interpreted. If you'll forgive me, I won't accept your interpretation that it condones and justifies slavery. One can understand the Jews escaping from Egyptian slavery as representing the universal desire of man to be free.
This moral basis [to oppose slavery] must have been extra-Biblical, but you can't get some here to admit that morality is based on more than the Bible. It must cause a lot of cognitive dissonance for them.
I don't know whether Christians who believe that the Bible is the basis of all morality have more or less cognitive dissonance than others regarding morality's first principles. The problem of slavery being "condoned" (in your interpretation) seems easy enough to reconcile.
That's why Atheist are more moral then the fundamentalist. Fundamentalist will justify/excuse any atrocity as long as it is done in the name of God.
For example,
Committing genocide (Which of course includes killing little boys and pregnant women), human sacrifice, and taking little virgin girls as sex slaves as done in the book of Numbers chapter 31, Same with summoning the power of God to summon 2 bears to maul 42 children like Elisha did just because they called him "baldhead" in 2nd Kings chapter 2 or killing 70,000 people because the king took a census of the army in 2nd Samuel 24 and the stuff that is just so vile and evil in 2nd Samuel 11 and Judges chapters 19-21 it is beyond my ability to describe it. And I am sure you know that's only the tip of the iceberg I could go on and I bet you already have built in justifications for all of them.
I look at all that and find it disgusting, The killing of innocent children, Genocide, Human sacrifice, etc. are not justified under any circumstance, I don't care what your God says, They are EVIL and people who do them are not to be praised and/or made excuses for.
I meant this post.
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