kbertsche writes:
Here we see a difference between a believer and an unbeliever. An unbeliever (like you two) will set himself as an authority above God, and will question and judge God at every step. A believer will trust and obey God. Abraham is uniformly praised in Scripture for his faith in God and his willingness to obey whatever God commanded. He did the right thing in obeying God.
What would I actually have done if I had been Abraham? I can't be sure. I hope I would have had the faith of Abraham, but I would probably have wondered very seriously whether or not I was hearing God correctly.
This is where most of the world's believers have such a problem with you and Faith. As Christians we both believe that we are made in the image of God. We have received the knowledge of the difference between good and evil. We know the difference and we choose between the two.
"Most of the world's believers?" I normally don't encounter "believers" who are not inerrantists and don't trust ALL the Bible as God's word unless I go way out of my way. Lots of those here of course but EvC IS way off the path of a Bible believer. Your frame of reference is extremely foreign to me.
You do NOT know the difference between good and evil, like everybody else here you are confusing them in many ways.
One of the choices that we make as theists is our understanding of the nature of god and then we choose to follow that god or not.
It takes a long time to get an understanding of the nature of God. We are by nature ourselves at "enmity" with the true God. When we become believers we believe enough to have a start in the right direction but that same mental set dogs us until we are well learned in the Bible through hearing preaching and our own reading. Anyone who starts out thinking you understand the nature of God doesn't.
You and I our getting our understanding of the nature of God from two different sources. Mine is from the words and wisdom of Jesus, who I believe perfectly embodied the Word and wisdom of God, and you gain your understanding from an inerrant Bible. The two natures are not compatible.
Not according to the large company of Bible inerrantists I'm aware of.
In your statement above you are agreeing that you would hope that you would have the faith to follow through with something evil because God told you to.
You are dismissing the whole history of Christianity as evil with that remark. I for one had to hear many sermons on Abraham's call to sacrifice his son before having any reasonable understanding of it. It then becomes a glorious part of the Plan of Redemption that runs through the Old Testament and leads to the revelation of Jesus Christ. Abraham was one of God's most faithful men, whose faith any Christian would want to have. Faith is extremely hard in such a circumstance wouldn't you say? Of course you aren't going to get even that far in thinking it through because you've dismissed God as evil and Abraham as a patsy who can't think for himself. One glaring instance of your inability to tell good from evil.
That is what the followers of ISIS hope that they will have the faith for as well.
Another glaring example of the same.
I humbly suggest that you are not following the God of Jesus Christ. You are following a religion that largely came out of the reformation where all of a sudden average people were finally able to access the Bible that had been kept from them for years. For some it became a virtual idol.
Ugh. Jesus of course refers to the God of the Old Testament as the Father He is being guided by. But there's no point in trying to persuade you of anything. I just hope you aren't misleading many others.
Things like the crusades were not about spreading Christianity but about gaining power in the same way that ISIS is now.
And that's because the Crusades were done by the Antichrist papacy for unchristian reasons.
Christianity is spread by reflecting the love of God into all of creation.
Actually it's spread by faithful preaching of the word of God.
The point is not to be a follower of any deity just because you believe that particular deity is god but because you believe that deity is always good and always just.
There's really no way to separate the two. I know my God is God and I believe He is always good and just and you are at fault for mposing your own alien standard on Him.
A good and just god does not slaughter innocents.
No, a good and just God enacts judgment against NONinnocents, which is what all these examples are about.
If I had to believe that god was genocidal or cruel depending on the circumstances then I won't follow Him.
And I don't believe God is "genocidal" because that refers to the killing of innocents; and I know God is not "cruel" because I know Him, I know His word, I know His character and I know that it takes a peculiarly twisted mind to think such things.
Just read the Sermon on the Mount and you can see the various places that Jesus corrects what is written in the OT. Jesus does not follow the god that you follow. Read the following two Biblical quotes. The first is from Deuteronomy 23 and the 2nd from Matthew 5.
quote:
3 No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation. 4 For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you.#cr 5 However, the LORD your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loves you. 6 Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.
quote:
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Jesus doesn't refer to what was written in the Hebrew Scriptures as being from God. He says simply that "you have heard it said". Jesus did not follow in an inerrant scripture. He then corrects what was written. Rather than succumbing to the evil in the world, with more evil as you are justifying Yahweh of doing, Jesus confronted it head on and went to the cross. God then confirmed Jesus by resurrecting Him.
As usual you fail miserably to grasp what Jesus is doing. The first scripture is the instructions to the NATION of Israel as a whole. You can't correct that with instructions to INDIVIDUALS, which is what Jesus is giving. This is an amazingly common misreading. He isn't correcting anything in the Sermon on the Mount anyway, He's showing how deep and exacting the commandments are, in the face of the Pharisees' superficial understanding of them as fulfilled by mere outward behavior/ Also, after the era of individual salvations is over, it will be Jesus Himself who comes as the Avenger, something I'm sure you can't begin to countenance. But I know He is the second person of the Trinity and all three are Jehovah and all three agreed on everything in the OT as well as the NT.
In the hypothetical case of Abraham and his son, I would hope that I would have the faith to protect the life of my son, from an evil god, even at the cost of my own life.
The very definition of self-righteousness: me against God. Utter faithlessness. Abraham knew God would save Isaac one way or another but you accuse Him of evil motives.
™ Version 4.2
(1)