How do you decide what is True in the Bible?

No, it is more like how there are certain things that any good parent insists that their kid do. Stealing is not an option. Lying is not good. Hurting other peoples feelings..etc etc..some things must be taught with discipline. God, knowing that there is no way for humanity to survive without Him, insists that the flow be open. We can choose to ignore it only to our detriment. If your kid ignored what you had to teach them, you would wanna make them listen if you had to. We need to believe in God for our own good...not for His ego.Its like obeying the law of gravity. You don't really have to acknowledge it, but the law will kill you if you ignore its impact.

so an infinite all-power god who exists at all times and in all places will be upset if in my blink of an eye existance I decided to swear or have it off with my neighbour's wife?I agree with what others say - has your god considered therapy for his low self-esteem problems? He sounds very needy.

We are all over the place here (me included).Can we just deal with the original topic and open other threads for the tangents?Faith, I have to go out for few hours, but when I come back I will propose a new topic on the 'Origins of Yahwhism'.Brian.

ON the subject of staying on topic, it's like pulling teeth to get anyone to say how they decide what they consider to be true in the Bible. Jar's views are finally more or less clear but it took forever to get to them, and it's still unclear if he believes anything in the Bible other than Mt 25:31-46 and the resurrection and maybe some things Jesus said (even if he never really said them) except of course anything he said about the necessity of belief.At least it's clear that he believes what he does believe for no good reason other than that he just likes it. Drat, no, that's not even true, is it? He believes in the resurrection because he thinks he has to in order to be a Christian. Why he wants to be a Christian at all considering how little of it he respects is a puzzle, but then that's another topic. Why? Seems to me I was pretty clear that the potsherd picture you posted confirms scripture. What more is there to say?

It doesn't make any sense to believe in only part of the bible.
II Timothy 3:16 All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, and training in righteousness

I tend to look at the whole picture and if a specific part of the Bible seems to go against this picture, then I have no problem in blaming it on the human and fallible recorders who wrote the part.I struggle to believe that God will condemn someone who sticks to the commandments, who lives a good life, who helps others, who causes no offense, who never hurts other people intentionally, but who, nevertheless, isn't a believer.I also struggle to believe that God will ignore pride, arrogance, condemnation of other people just because they believe in a different way, hurtfulness, adultery, lying, stealing, killing, just because the perpetrator believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and believes that every single word in the Bible is trueI'm very much like Jar in my beliefs. Its not what you proclaim from the rooftops such as the message that you believe in, or the good works that you trumpet, but those things which you do quietly in the background of everyday life, looking for no praise or acknowledgement, but doing it because it is right. I don't give a monkeys what other people think of what I do or what I believe in, its what I think of what I do or believe in that counts to me. If I do something wrong, I know it and I know its wrong. I don't need to find the exact passsage in the Bible to find that out. As Jar has always said, the Bible is the map, not the destination.

You are absolutely right, but here we are surrounded by people who think they can pick and choose the parts they like or think matter or whatever their basis for deciding is, which is what we are trying to find out.

YOu say some good and true things, but I think you miss the point. If anyone really really DID do all that, he would not be condemned. The problem is that our alienation from God is far deeper than anyone can see. All our righteousness is not righteousness compared with the righteousness we would have to have to deserve to be in God's company. But God doesn't ignore these things. Christians must daily repent of the sins we find in ourselves, which we will go on finding until we die. Some on your list, however, may not be sins (It is God who has determined how we are to believe for instance, and those who defend that are far from arrogant or condemning but in fact warning people so as to help them) but I won't go there beyond that. The ones that really are sins are not ignored at all. If someone commits adultery or murder or any other sin and never repents of it, that most likely means the person is not really a Christian but only thinks he is.

And no problem trusting your own judgment about these things over the judgment of the many writers and those who have learned from them for millennia. It's really funny that those who trust the Bible and preach its commands are called arrogant while those who trust their own fallible minds and reject the wisdom of the ages are not considered arrogant. Go figure.{Edit: Sorry I lost track of the topic here. OK, so you have given your criteria for picking and choosing.What would be good now is to tell us which parts of the Bible you think fit or don't fit what you call the "whole picture."This message has been edited by Faith, 05-15-2005 07:48 PM

HI Ifen,Sorry about the delay in replying. What could we put this down to though?Could it simply be conditioning?I think conditioning is a huge influence on what we 'feel right' about. Personally, I don't believe in God in any form, but there are so many things in my life that I just wouldn't do because it doesn't feel right. And it isn't because of having fear of breaking the law and being punished for it, I am talking about what many people may see as trivial things. For example, I play a lot of Scrabble and if I accidently take out say 4 new tiles instead of 3 i put the 4 tiles face down and ask my partner to put one back in the bag. It would be fairly easy to just pick out the 3 best tiles and put the other one back, but that feels wrong.I also have huge issues with telling what might be determined as 'white lies'. For example, my partner may phone me and ask if I have put the rubbish bin out for the refuse collection, now, if I hadn't, I could say 'yes, I put it out a few minutes ago' and then go and put it out after I come off the phone, but there is no way I could do that. I would have to say that I hadn't put it out and get my ear chewed off for not doing it. There is no way that she would know when I put it out, but it wouldn't feel right to say I had done something when I hadn't.There are so many things in life that I don't do because it feels wrong, yet according to some Christians we atheists should be out raping and pillaging and not giving a shit about anyone or anything, but we aren't, so something must be working away in the background somewhere.Perhaps it is the same thing with approaching the Bible, these people who are having difficulty accepting it as 100% literal may have difficulty in explaing exactly how they can determine what is true and what isn't, a bit like how there is no way I can put in to words how certain things just 'feel wrong' to me. This is where all the friction between believers and nonbelievers I think.I have thought about this a lot, and I do try to see the opponents point of view, I just find it difficult to accept. Then I think about it and I can see their frustration too.Sometimes I just have to give up on certain posters because they are never going to grasp something, but then I understand that some members may give up on me because I dont understand them. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for someone who is convinced that the universe is 6000 years old and suddenly they are talking to someone who shows them tons of evidence that suggests that the universe is far older. It must be so difficult to break out of that conditioned thinking, although some do of course.I suppose that believing something because it feels right is fine for the person but there is a big difficulty in trying to put this feeling into words that everyone can understand.At the end of the day, people are free to believe exactly what they want, but they shouldn't be surprised, or upset, when they start asking others to believe the same and then discover that what they take for granted just sounds like a fairystory to someone else.Brian.

Brian,Well I'm in general agreement with what you've written except wouldn't say "simply" because I don't think of conditioning as simple. Our brains our something we still poorly understand.Yesterday I read BABA: Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Yogi. I'm a bit uncertain as to the author's veracity but have no way at his time to verify his story or not. One theme that emerged was that in the course of his discipleship he was absorbing and learning to live another world view from the one he grew up in. That process was very complex and wide reaching and resulted in his experiencing the world and himself in some very different ways.Our human reality is conditioned by the group(s) we are part of as well as the physical world. Some people who post here live in a world where demons are active and possess folks they know, whereas others live in a world where complex neuronal disfunction result in bizarre behaviours. Both worlds are complex and maintained by complex brains. So I agree with you except I don't see it as being simple. I think of conditioning as being very complex.lfen

Hi Ifen,I don't think I explained what I meant very well in regard to the word 'simply'.I meant 'simply' as in not having to trudge our way through lots and lots of different theories, we would 'simply' look at conditioning, which I agree is a hugely complex subject.I did a bit on conditioning for my teaching diploma, it is amazing how easy it is to mess someone's mind up.Brian.

According to the chronicles, the martyrdom of St. Paul took place during the reign of Nero (they can't agree on which year, but all agree it was during his rule). Nero committed suicide in 68 A.D.What did "Scripture" mean in 68 A.D.? Certainly it did not mean the modern Bible: some of the books that are present in the modern Bible did not exist at that point. [1] Others didn't become considered canon by the Church until much later. [2]So what could it mean? The Gospels alone? Did Paul consider his epistles to be part of the Scripture under discussion here? He certainly was receiving guidance from God, but would he include epistles (like II Timothy itself) under the heading of Scripture?What about books like the Gospel of Thomas (Sayings or Infant, take your pick), the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, or many of the other Gospels now deemed non-canonical? Since this is before they are conclusively rejected, would he have considered them to be part of Scripture?[1] The generally accepted date for Revelations is ~90 A.D. as an example. Some argue that it was written in the late 60s, but they are a minority both of believers and scholars.[2] Revelations was rejected by the Council of Laodicea in 363 A.D., but accepted by the Council of Carthage in 397. The final choices for the Catholic Bible were made at that Council of Carthage. Luther, of course, removed some works of the Old Testament because they had been included in the Septugiant but not in the official Jewish canon (a different discussion for a different day). But other churches, that had broken away before the Council of Carthage use different scriptures.Chris

Apologies for not noticing this thread till just now, but I'm not sure it's appropriate here. This forum was intended to be more faith-based with the questions being more about how best to interpret Biblical passages rather than whether they're true. The underlying assumption in this forum should be that they *are* true and that the *are* the word of God. The focus here should be on uncovering their true meaning, not on uncovering whether they're true.That being said, it is often difficult to find the best place for a thread, and if no one is upset about this thread being here then I think it is fine that it stay here. But if some people don't think the Bible should be questioned in this way in this forum then I think it should be moved to [forum=-1]. Let me know.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This analogy breaks down at the most important point. The most rebellious of us are the ones that God doesn't seem to be interested in revealing himself to. Rebellious kids can at least see their parents. If it is for our own good, why doesn't He do anything until after we are dead? Bad parenting I think.The picking and choosing of Biblical Truths relies on some judgement that is different in all of us and is probably lacking as far as God is concerned. Even Biblical Inerrantists from different denominations can't agree on the interpretation of certain passages, even fundamental ones. Ex: Tongues = Holy Spirit (Assembly of God) or Tongues = deception by Satan (Southern Baptist)....I'm guessing that both can't be right. That one example shows that those who believe the Bible is literally true still pick out personal truths on an ad hoc basis.