Fundamentalism and the True Christian

This topic is a spinoff of the 'creo/evo creative movies/books/plays' thread. The current discussion there has evolved from the mention of the play and movie Inherit The Wind, via a few posts on the nature of Christian fundamentalism, into a descant over what type of person is a "true Christian".I want to respond to this from Columbo:

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Christ is our example, not events in the OT. Christians follow God's example of how to live (he himself lived in Christ ). Are you saying I should ignore Christs teachings " love your enemy " e.t.c. Because of events in the OT?
And what will be my excuse on judgement day? - When a perfectly sinless life was lead by God - BEING a person.

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Using the OT will not change anything. For 1. I don't even believe you are capable of understanding, that's not an insult, but are you reading it without wiz's wager?
A lot of people use "events" in the OT, but ignore the "teachings" directly aimed at ALL people by Christ, not solely jews.

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But the whole point is that Christ IS God, and as docpotato pointed out God's behavior in the OT is reprehensible to put it mildly. He could almost be called pure evil. The OT is riddled with examples of God's malevolence, they've been mentioned on this message board repeatedly and should be well known to anyone who's been paying attention. It is not enough to say that Christ brought a "new covenent", or that in those ancient times God saw it necessary to rid the world of the enemies of Israel, or some other such nonsense. There can be no justification for ordering rape, pillage, enslavement, torture or murder of whole societies of innocent people, but that's how God behaves if we accept the OT as "inerrant". If this is God, and Jesus is God, then why the hell are we supposed to be so scared of Satan?As I see it, the true Christian, if that is a good thing, would have to be one who rejects the OT outright (except perhaps for the 10 Commandments since Jesus mentioned those), rejects at least those NT passages that rely on the OT, places the greatest emphasis on the Gospels and tries to conduct his or her life as he or she truly believes that the Christ therein represented would have them do. This person would not be a fundamentalist, at least not as we understand that term here in the US South.[This message has been edited by berberry, 01-16-2004]

Well what this Christian does is to suggest that wherever the OT concept of God and God as revealed in Jesus are in conflict, it is the latter that wins.This is because, it is my contention, revelation is progressive. On my website I wrote:

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The Bible is not the Word of God

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No. The Bible talks about the Word of God. It says that Jesus is the Word of God. It never makes that claim for itself. What does it say about itself? Well, very little, actually! There is Paul's statement that all Scripture is "God breathed" and goes on about it being "useful". How that has been turned into 'inerrant, infallible' and all the rest I really don't know. Perhaps it's because it is easier that way. If you start with the axiom that Scripture is infallible, then everything follows. But tidiness is no indicator of truth; in fact, truth is rarely tidy.

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Is the Bible special then? Yes, I think so. It is a unique record of God's people over the centuries and His revelation of Himself to them. But it is a human artefact. When things happen, people put interpretations to those things. The Bible contains a lot of such interpretations. Let me give you an example. Back when David was King of Israel, he decided to take a census of his kingdom. There followed some natural disasters. The people and prophets put an interpretation on those events, that God was punishing David for taking the census, and some pretext as to why that was wrong was put in place. So far, so good. Now, as it happens, this event was recorded twice in the Bible. Once, either in about 900BC if you believe the conservative scholars, or about 500 if you believe the more liberal ones, in the book of Samuel, and once again, around 450-400BC, in the book of Chronicles. So, let's have a look at the opening verses in each of these two accounts:

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2 Samuel 24

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Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go and take a census of Israel and Judah."

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1 Chronicles 21

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Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.

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Who did it? God or Satan? An interesting feature here is that, whoever you believe about authorship and date, between the two accounts an important event took place - the Jews were taken into exile into Babylon. This national disaster had affected their theology. Before, they had seen God as the author of both good and evil; now, they had come across Zoroastrian dualism, and the concept of an evil anti-God had crept into their theology. So when the Chronicler was writing his work, using the Book of Samuel as one of his sources, he took the opportunity to 'correct' the earlier 'defective' theology.

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The Bible shows, it seems to me, a progressive revelation. It starts imperfect; God is seen as a narrow tribal god, even with a physical body, the back of which Moses sees. But later we are told that no-one has ever seen God (John 1:18). Early on He is seen as jealous and judgemental, even to the point of being petty and unjust:

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Exodus 20 v. 5

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...punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those that hate me,

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although something of God's great love also shines through even at this stage (verse 6):

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but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me...

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But then the prophets, writing later, do not agree with this idea of God's judgement:

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Ezekiel 18 1-2 & 20

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The word of the LORD came to me. "What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel.

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'The fathers eat sour grapes
and the children's teeth are set on edge'?

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"As surely as I live," declares the Sovereign LORD, "you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel...The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the huilt of the son"

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Clearly ideas about justice have moved on. Yes, I know you can 'get round' these and make the different bits of the bible harmonise, but isn't it much easier, and more obvious, and more engaging with the text as it is, to accept that the texts are saying different things?

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No webpage found at provided URL: http://freespace.virgin.net/karl_and.gnome/believe.htmAs you say, God as taken literally in the OT can be a complete ogre at times.

Thread copied to the Fundamentalism and the True Christian thread in the Faith and Belief forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.