It's the heart versus the Bible

townhall.com ^ | 3/16/04 | Dennis Prager

[LiteKeeper]

AMEN and AMEN!

[Skooz]

Oh for crying out loud.

The passages you quoted were directed strictly at the Jewish people for a specified amount of time: from the establishment of the Jews as God's chosen people until the day Jesus Christ fulfilled te law and did away with all such statutes.

Those laws have not been valid for over 2000 years.

[goldstategop]

The King James Version will always be a literary as well as spiritual classic to English speaking peoples, both as a translation and as a work of world literature. But it has its defects; its increasingly archaic language, four centuries removed from modern idiom along with new discoveries by scholars both about the original texts and the biblical world, has resulted in new translations of the Bible. The Revised Standard Version is based on the KJ and is a literal word for word translation of the original Greek and Hebrew. The Revised English Bible is more paraphrastic and free rendition of the sense rather than the words of the Scriptures. Other texts serve other concerns - the New Jerusalem Bible is directed at Catholics, the JPS Tanakh at Jews, and the New International Version serves conservative evangelical Christians. There has never been and will never be a true ecumenical Bible since different faith communities view the Word Of God and doctrines according to their own received understanding.

[Skooz]

Those who accept the Bible as the one and only true word of God are emotional centered people. They do not allow themselves to think.

LOL! That will come as news to CS Lewis, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Sir Isaac Newton, John Piper, William Buckley and many other brilliant thinkers.

[qam1]

Nice

But now that our troops are in Babylon if we are to follow the Bible instead of our hearts and minds we should let our soldiers in order to be happy "dasheth" the little Iraqis against the stones.

[Skooz]

Christianity ended the Western slave trade.

[Skooz]

You willfully twist one sentence of one Psalm to fit your agenda.

Psalm 137 is a lament offered by a captive Jew who was carried away into a foreign land (Babylon). He honestly confronts God with his bitter disappointment at his and his nation's captivity, and longs for Jerusalem. He ends his angry song by stating his hope that Babylon would same day go through the same torment that they had inflicted on the Jews.

This is an angry prayer offered up to God, not a command FROM God. God never endorses the sentiment.

[nmh]

It's a toss up if I were to use the term "heart" or emotions. I see it as the EMOTIONS becoming a person's arbitrary moral code instead of the Bible. It is our emotions that will get us in trouble ... not the Bible.

[nmh]

"The Bible says that "that the Heart is evil and desperately wicked above all things, who can know it?"

And the author is right! God is NEVER wrong.

[P.O.E.]

We'd be in sad shape if the lighthouse didn't feel like lighting up during a storm.

[CarryaBigStick]

I'll take mine four to five minutes on each side please, with a good dry cabernet.

[tdadams]

Christianity ended the Western slave trade.

Explain, please.

[chuckles]

The Bible must be read "In The Spirit", because it was written "In the Spirit". God is Spirit, and He is trying to communicate to "dead" people. Dead people can never "get" the Bible because they are dead. God is alive and we are dead, so how do we expect to understand a Being that is Higher than we can imagine in our dead, usless thinking. People that try to make their point by misquoting scripture prove that they don't "get" it. They are so smug, thinking that they have proven the Bible to be just tripe, but they know they are reading it out of context, but they do it anyway. This is that "desperately wicked" stuff already mentioned. When you become "born again", the Holy Spirit teaches the real meaning of the Bible and it becomes a light to you and you can't understand why someone else can't "get" it. But now you are on the other side looking back from God's point of veiw. Then you fall to your knees and thank God for choosing you and not passing you by when you see the "deadness" in the world. Trying to reason with dead people is useless.

One of the more humerous verses in the Bible(to me anyway), was when God says " I place before you cursing and blessing, death and Life." And then He has to tell us "Choose Life", because He knows we prefer death. Why would you have to tell a rational being to choose life.

Typical conversation between a Christian and Pagan:

Christian: "I know the way to eternal Life, do you want to hear?"

Pagan: "Screw you! get out a my face scumbag!"

Pagan to Pagan: "I know of a diet pill that really works!"

Other Pagan: "Will it make me live longer?"

They believe a diet pill is more effective than God.

I don't want to stone anybody, but God stoned the Sodomites. What will we think when our grandchildren are raped by sodomites and get HIV? Are the sodomites going to be so forgiving to Christians when they make the laws? Will we still be so keen to put down God's recomendation? Just ask some of the alter boys what they think a just punishment would be for some of the priests.

Flesh will never agree with God and see the wisdom of God, because Flesh has died to God. All Flesh is His enemy, until they are made alive by His Spirit.

[scarface367]

Christianity ended the Western slave trade.

Explain, please.

Christianity ended the slave trade by stressing its view of the sanctity of human life. While the bible did condone slavery, the bible also did not say that slavery was a requirement.

Also, popes as early as the 15th century had begun to speak out against slavery.

It was the Christian values that so shaped the U.S. and Britain that allowed the push for the end of slavery.

[philetus]

"But now that our troops are in Babylon if we are to follow the Bible instead of our hearts and minds we should let our soldiers in order to be happy "dasheth" the little Iraqis against the stones."


I don't know if any of our soldiers are in Babylon. Most of them are in Baghdad, Mosul,Kirkuk and spread out all over.
Even if ordered too, most of our soldiers would refuse to "dasheth babies heads on rocks"
The verse in question is not about a specific city or country.

Are you trying to convince yourself or just trying to turn people away from God?

[Old Professer]

I like the way my uncle puts it better, "Too many people want to keep God on a leash."

[Skooz]

Glad you asked. :0)

Virtually all of the abolitionist societies that sprung up in the mid-18th century were evangelical Christians who saw the abolition of slavery as a mandate from God. The earliest organized abolitionists (on both sides of the Atlantic) were the Society of Friends (Quakers)--devout Christians who weathered public scorn to fight for the freedom of slaves.

The pre-Civil War abolitionists were, almost exclusively, Christian churches who had established groups to agitate for the end of slavery.

The most influential English abolitionist, by far, was a deeply committed Christian and House of Commons MP named William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was the author of a widely read book, "A Practical View of Christianity" which espoused his Christian viewpoints.

Wilberforce almost singlehandedly took on the slave trade in England during the late 18th century. He authored a bill that eventually, after two decades of struggle, ended the legal slave traffic on the high seas in 1807, to be enforced by the Royal Navy.

But Wilberforce didn't stop there. He continued to fight not only slave trafficking, but the institution of slavery itself. Finally, due much to his efforts, Parliament abolished all slavery in the British empire in 1833, as Wilberforce lay on his deathbed.

So, Christians not only fought to end the slave trade (the bill was authored by a devout Christian), but also ended slavery in the most powerful and far-reaching (and influential) empire of the time.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Sentiment/emotionalism vs. reason, that's the real choice. Prager presents a false choice between sentiment derived from instincts and sentiment derived from spiritual beliefs - either of which can be wrong and deadly when misapplied. Hitler was just such a sentimentalist, and his heart told him that his poor, starving German landsers needed lebensraum, no matter how many Poles and Ukrainians were in the way. Today, PETA intends to save the animals no matter how many humans have to die. Anti-war protesters want "peace" no matter how many innocents get blown up. John Kerry wants to use the government to "do good" no matter how many small businesses he drives under through excessive taxation. Emotion is triumphing over reason.

[steve-b]

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.

One has assumed a responsibility for one's dog. Whether or not one has a responsibility for a stranger depends on the circumstances (e.g. one owes a certain allegiance to the police and soldiers who guard your peace).

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.

This is not because people who follow the Bible have become more moral, but because the rising tide of secularism has denied such people the political power to act on their darker impulses.

[Skooz]

This is not because people who follow the Bible have become more moral, but because the rising tide of secularism has denied such people the political power to act on their darker impulses.

That is one of the most breathtaking examples of spin I have ever seen.

It borders on brilliant.