I'm transferring this discussion between GDR and me to a new thread because it's off topic on the thread where I wanted to focus on issues in the justice system. The following is GDR's last post, which I intend to come back to.
Judging by your feelings versus by the facts/evidence. How often that happens and how often people who THINK they are judging by the facts and evidence are not.
OK Faith. Let's look at the facts and evidence. This is from Deuteronomy 7:
quote:1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nationsthe Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
Contrast this from Matthew 5 and the Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
quote:5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
How can you possibly contrast those two Biblical quotes and then claim that the nature of God can be seen in both quotes? And again in Deuteronomy 20
quote:16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy themthe Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusitesas the LORD your God has commanded you.
Contrast this again with the words of Jesus in Matthew 5
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 children 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.
Once again. The views of the nature of God that we sometimes, but not usually, see in the OT are completely at the opposite ends of the spectrum. In Deuteronomy we are shown a cruel vengeful deity, very similar to the deities of their pagan neighbours, as opposed to the loving merciful God in the NT. Here are some quotes from the book of Joshua.
quote:Joshua 6 21 They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in itmen and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. 27 So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the land.
quote:Joshua 8 1 Then the LORD said to Joshua, Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. 2 You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city. 24 When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. 25 Twelve thousand men and women fell that dayall the people of Ai. 26 For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai.
Again contrast this from Luke 6
quote:Luke 6 27 But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.
This is again the words of Jesus who was a 1st century Jew living in a 1st century Jewish world under the brutal and total dominance of the Romans. They were in the promised land but still in excile. This is from Leviticus 24
quote:19 Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury.
What does Jesus tell us in Matthew 5
quote:38 You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
Jesus actually says, as He does in other places that the early prophets got it wrong. This from Numbers 15
quote:32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp. 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.
What goes Jesus say in Luke 6
quote:37 Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Jesus even tells us to pray to be forgiven as we forgive others. I could go on but that is certainly enough. I am afraid Faith that I do not understand how your idea of God’s justice can be so different from one period to the next. I believe in the God as personified in Jesus who is the same yesterday today and tomorrow. The belief that you can harmonize beliefs in an inerrant Bible with the life and teaching of Jesus is just plainly obviously wrong. I’ll go with Jesus.
quote:1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nationsthe Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
Contrast this from Matthew 5 and the Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
quote:5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
How can you possibly contrast those two Biblical quotes and then claim that the nature of God can be seen in both quotes?
God is both a God of vengeance against wickedness and a God of mercy to the meek. There is no contradiction at all. Jesus came the first time as the Savior and Redeemer, but He is to come again to take vengeance on the wicked. Isaiah 61 I think, the passage He reads in the synagogue that defines His mission as the Messiah. He reads the whole section about coming to comfort and set the captives free etc., and stops just before the line about vengeance, because although that is also His mission it is not His mission on His first coming. It will be His mission on His second coming. n Jesus is God, He has the complete nature of God, mercy to the meek and vengeance to the wicked.
God as He is shown in such Old Testament passages is demonstrating how He uses other tribes in this case, but also natural phenomena, to execute His punishment of the wicked. Many exegetes also read the passage about driving out the wicked tribes to refer to the sins, and in some cases even demons, that must be driven out of souls that are to be saved.
Who is being ordered to enact the punishment in the Old Testament? Answer: The whole tribe of Israel, God's army on earth. Who is being taught the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount? Individual believers, no tribe, no nation, no army, but individuals. The same was required of the individuals in the Old Testament too. You quote the one about doing justice and loving mercy. That is individuals being addressed, not an army.
Meekness is often misunderstood by the way. Moses was called the meekest man who ever lived. It is understood to refer to the disposition of obeying God, not being some kind of superwimp who is nicey nice. The toughest ruler of a people can also be the meekest because of his heart to obey God, love righteousness and so on.
And if you are inclined to think nobody could follow the Beatitudes who was actually in God's army enacting those commends you despise, I have no trouble saying they were. Meekness is obediencde to the commands of God. Mercy is something God defines, not us. You may not be able to see the mercy in God's acts of vengeance but I have no problem knowing it is there, most likely a mercy to those who would be seduced by the wicked if they were allowed to live. It's perhaps a logic similar to that which supports the death penalty.
I'm already tired just trying to make this much of a case. I know it's futility with you for one thing, but for another I need to get some sleep so I'll have to come back to it later.
In the times we are in, we will be judged by how we treat others more than how we interpret the Logos interpretations of "traditional Protestanism". The pandemic is not Gods method of executing justice either on the "demonic Left" nor the "Authoritarian Right"...although leaders may be judged or held responsible. It is the daily tasks of each of us that are important. Will we hoard the toilet paper or will we cooperate and share what we have with others? Will we become selfish and clannish or will we help the least of these? As Christians, you GDR and I shouldnt even be arguing. We should lead by example. I try my best at work. Hopefully my comment is not off topic. Do get some rest Faith. And we might be judged by how we present scripture to others. Just a thought.
The only way I know to drive out evil from the country is by the constructive method of filling it with good.Calvin Coolidge
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.-RC Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
- You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. Anne Lamott
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.~Andre Gide
No idea why you felt that belonged on this thread but of course it's always true that what we do is the important thing --- if we're born again, otherwise it counts for nothing. Well, not nothing, I'm sure the LORD judges between the unbelievers too, but that's a completely different judgment than for the believers. Or am I missing your point?
I would have preferred this in Faith and Belief or Bible Study as I think that would narrow the whole thing down. Maybe you could move it there Phat.
Faith writes:
Your God is Too Simple and a Wimp Besides
Interesting. I suppose Jesus was a wimp when He went to the cross. I suppose He was a wimp when He stood up against every power group in His culture with His message of love, forgiveness and peace.
I suggest that a deity that would sacrifice his follower in order to get revenge on those that don't follow him, while he remains safe and sound, would be a wimp.
There are IMHO several problems with your scriptural understandings. You seem to draw a line between what is done by individuals and what is done by nations. I would simply point out that the nations are made up of individuals. When it was commanded supposedly by Yahweh that all men, women, children and all living things be killed it would be done by individuals.
The Bible is a narrative of individual stories strung together as the Israelites worked out God’s nature, what He was doing and how this was to impact their lives. The whole narrative is a progressive understanding of God in the people of Israel that comes to climax or a fulfillment in the Jesus of the Gospels.
The Israel story grew out of a world that was very war like, xenophobic and did not hold the value in human life in very high regard. The Israelis represented a smaller tribe that was continually battling for survival, and their whole idea of god was that their god would be stronger than the gods of their neighbours and that this god would lead them in battle in defeating their enemies. Gradually they became monotheistic but were still looking for a god that would give them victory. We can even see in the NT that this is what the disciples essentially expected Jesus to do.
However we can see through the entire sweep of Jesus’ life and teaching that He was making it clear that He was editing and revising the OT Scriptures in a way that gave a different way of thinking about God. I would add though, that in doing that He did comb through the Hebrew texts to draw out the loving merciful God that He embodied.
There aren’t only discrepancies between the OT and the NT. Let’s look at the OT. This quote is from 2 Kings 9:
quote:5 When he arrived, he found the army officers sitting together. I have a message for you, commander, he said. For which of us? asked Jehu. For you, commander, he replied. 6 Jehu got up and went into the house. Then the prophet poured the oil on Jehu’s head and declared, This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anoint you king over the LORD’s people Israel. 7 You are to destroy the house of Ahab your master, and I will avenge the blood of my servants the prophets and the blood of all the LORD’s servants shed by Jezebel. 8 The whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab every last male in Israelslave or free. 9 I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah. 10 As for Jezebel, dogs will devour her on the plot of ground at Jezreel, and no one will bury her.’ Then he opened the door and ran.
OK, so here we see Jehu being commanded by Yahweh to destroy the house of Ahab in Jezreel. Later in chapter 10 we are told that Jehu faithfully carried out what he was told that Yahweh had commanded.
quote:11 So Jehu killed everyone in Jezreel who remained of the house of Ahab, as well as all his chief men, his close friends and his priests, leaving him no survivor.
So Jehu has followed God’s command and slaughtered everyone in the house of Ahab so God is pleased with him, and Jehu is made king. But wait. When we go to the book of Hosea chap 4.
quote:4 Then the LORD said to Hosea, Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5 In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.
So which is it? The OT claims that Jehu was told by God to slaughter all of the house of Ahab but then later by a different prophet we are told by God that Jehu will be punished for doing what he was supposedly told to do. Let’s look at another example, starting in 2 Samuel 24.
quote:1 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. 2 So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.
Interestingly enough, later in the same chapter after obeying the word of the Lord, David is having trouble with his conscience.
quote:9 Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king: In Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand. 10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the LORD, I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, LORD, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.
It then gets even more complicated when we see later, still in 2 Samuel 24 that David repents from what the Lord told him to do and then the whole thing becomes totally inexplicable. God supposedly gives David 3 choices including 2 which would punish the people of Israel and 1 that would punish David. David chooses not to accept the punishment himself but agrees that God take it out on the people of Israel.
quote:11 Before David got up the next morning, the word of the LORD had come to Gad the prophet, David’s seer: 12 Go and tell David, ‘This is what the LORD says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’ 13 So Gad went to David and said to him, Shall there come on you three years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me. 14 David said to Gad, I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands. 15 So the LORD sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. 16 When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the LORD relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, Enough! Withdraw your hand. The angel of the LORD was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
We the can now go back to what I said earlier that this was a progressive understanding of the nature and intent of Yahweh. The Hebrews were becoming more aware of this dark side of their understanding of Yahweh. They then came with a different take on things and started to transfer the blame away from Yahweh, and on to satan. They had begun to understand that Yahweh was not this angry, vindictive and war like deity that they had perceived Him to be. This is from 1 Chronicles 21.
quote:1 Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. 2 So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.
What was in 2 Samuel an order from God is now in 1 Chronicles attributed to Satan. Their understanding of God was evolving and will continue to evolve through the Scriptures, as in the suffering servant in Isaiah, and through the latter prophets. As I said earlier, we can then see the fulfillment of all of that in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is all in the Bible.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Just the same old Do-Si-Do between God's Love and human "love."
We've been through this so many times I don't think I can even concentrate on it long enough to answer you rightly. But here goes the second attempt:
quote:16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy themthe Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusitesas the LORD your God has commanded you.
A believer in Bible inerrancy, just as horrified as you at the scorched-earth judgment of these peoples, yet doesn't judge God for it by our limited perspective as you do despite the horror of it, but wants to know why the punishment is so dire so we can understand the mind of God. And what the theologians have put together is about how the heathen nations would have seduced Israel into their idolatrous sins if they had been allowed to live. For instance, they had all kinds of sexual rituals, both heterosexual and homosexual, as part of their worship of their demon gods, and at least one worshipped the god Molech by burning their babies alive in sacrifice. We know this because Israel DID NOT completely wipe out these peoples as commanded and their descendants DID seduce Israel into worshipping their demon gods and committing those sins.
Another thing we learn from the theologians who have studied the stories in far greater detail than either you or I, is that God had allowed the sins of theise peoples to accumulate for hundreds of years before bringing judgment against them, all during the years when Israel was a slave in Egypt at least. God waits to bring judgment until their sins are "full," which is a principle related to the working of the Moral Law, which we also can learn about if we accept that the Bible is God's words, and otherwise can't learn anything except whatever our fallen little minds can tell us.
If you trust the Bible to be God's word you might learn this sort of thing, might learn what wickedness is and why God abhors it, and what He wanted from His own people in contrast. Otherwise all you have is your own limited thoughts. Not that this will persuade you of course, you will still think your own thoughts superior to God's even if what I'm saying is true.
Contrast this again with the words of Jesus in Matthew 5
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 children 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.
Once again. The views of the nature of God that we sometimes, but not usually, see in the OT are completely at the opposite ends of the spectrum. In Deuteronomy we are shown a cruel vengeful deity, very similar to the deities of their pagan neighbours, as opposed to the loving merciful God in the NT.
Once a person judges God by his own paltry human feelings he's going to go on and on and on with the same judgment and there's no point in answering. You really think your thoughts are the righteous thoughts and mine are not and what can I possibly say to you about that? Nothing. I just have to accept the profane worldly judgment such a perspective dumps on me, cuz to the profane worldly mind you are right and I am wrong. Well I'm used to it by now.
Jesus IS the God of the Old Testament, not God the Father but God the Son, but there is no difference between their point of view. God the Father is as merciful and loving as Jesus is, and Jesus hates sin as much as the Father does, but Jesus came to save us from the consequences of the sins that are hated by God, AT THE COMMAND OF THE FATHER by the way, that God you hate, by dying for us in our place. You continue to refuse to believe or even understand what Jesus did on the cross for us, you trivialize it, put it beneath your merely human understanding of love, so you miss the greatness of God's love to us in that sacrifice. The Reformation brought out the singularity and fundamental importance of the meaning of the CROSS over all else, as the foundation for all else, for that love that in your hands is a puny counterfeit of God's. The Cross is the center of Christianity and you denigrate it. Well, again, you can't hear this, can you? I'm speaking into the void.
You are just going to go on in this same vein, judging God by your little human feelings and thinking those superior to Him. But I guess I'll come back later and go through the futile theological dance yet another time.
Re: Just the same old Do-Si-Do between God's Love and human "love."
Faith writes:
You are just going to go on in this same vein, judging God by your little human feelings and thinking those superior to Him. But I guess I'll come back later and go through the futile theological dance yet another time.
I'm not though Faith. My whole post was that I am judging the belief in an inerrant Bible by the words of the Bible. I am not judging God at all.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Re: Just the same old Do-Si-Do between God's Love and human "love."
If it so clear then you have yet to tell me how you rationalize any of the clearly contradicting parts between the NT and the OT as well as within the OT itself.
I'd suggest that in understanding Scripture the way you do you are clearly judging Jesus and have found Him wanting.
Edited by GDR, : typo
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Re: Just the same old Do-Si-Do between God's Love and human "love."
GDR I already answered some of the contradictions. The God of both Old and New Testaments is the same God with different emphases and missions for the context. You won't accept that, there's nothing more to be said. We could go on into the familiar territory of what Jesus fulfilled in the OT that is no longer applicable to believers or we could get into the semantics of certain words, but what's the point? We've been here before and I'm sorry I'm so impatient but after years of arguing this I'm tired. If I get a second wind I'll come back to it and that sometimes happens. For now I'm sorry. I'm a believer in Biblical inerrancy and it serves me very very well. I love the God of both Testaments, He is the same God, not the one you have invented. My God is a fearsome Judge who sent His Son out of the deepest mercy and love, to save us from His own judgments, The God whose judgments you despise and therefore whose mercy of the Cross you also must despise though you fail to see this point. Again, I'm sorry. Maybe Tangle or Phat will come along to argue with you.
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