to Christians in this forum...

Where do you get this idea from, that Paul feels marriage is an undesirable necessity? I Corinthians 7:7, I suppose. "For I would that all men were even as myself (unmarried)..." But you miss the rest of the verse, "But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that." That seems to say that both states, married or unmarried, are gifts from God.Regarding the subtitle of this thread, we should listen to both the Gospels and the Epistles of the Apostles because they are both God-breathed, and there are no contradictions.

From the way you throw verses around, it sounds like you at least have a partial knowledge of what is said in the Bible. I am surprised, then, that you cant' figure out the answers to these "contradictions" yourself. Jesus did not have an biological father. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary (Luke 1), and she conceived. However, since Mary did have a husband, Joseph, that husband would obviously be called the child's father, though not meant in a biological sense. Ask any child who was adopted at a young age who their father is, and I'm sure the name they give will not be the biological father. In a sense, that is what we have here. For one thing, the wine of Jesus' day was very watered-down, hardly the drink we have today. Secondly, the Romans passage speaks of not doing things which would cause a brother to stumble or fall into sin - it is not a direct command not to drink. "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak." Some early Christians thought that they needed to keep the law of the OT, which led them to not drink at all, but Paul teaches in Romans that we are not under the law, but under grace, so this is not necessary. However, if someone who thought it was important to keep the law saw a Christian "eating flesh or drinking" then that would be a stumbling block to their faith, so Paul said not to do it for that reason. The Romans passage speaks to the very nature of humans. Humans are sinners, no way around it. 1 John speaks to the practice of humans. Those who are not saved continue to practice sin. Those who are saved do not. This does not mean that they don't sin any more. It means that they do not continue in it with no signs of conscience or repentance. The word "hate" as used in this Romans passage does not mean what you are implying it to mean. Love and hate in this passage are used to identify a choosing. God loved (chose) Jacob and used him to be the father of the nation of His chosen people. God hated (did not chose) Esau.So these examples of contradictions you cite are merely taken out of context (sorry, I know you hate being "cursed" for that) or they are twisting of words.

Mnenth,I agree with you completely that Christians are not supposed to sin, and that Christ does provide the grace to overcome our temptations. The point of my post was not that God says it's ok to keep sinning - He clearly does not. My point was that when Christians do sin, they do not continue in that sin, but rather confess and receive forgiveness for it.

Poor choice of words, I apologize. It's not my intent to come off as preachy. You cited some contradictions. I defended them as not being contradictions. How else would you have me debate? I figured as much. But even though you've heard these answers before, you still choose not to give them any credence? Why do you disagree? Do you have some evidence to the contrary? And don't use an "every human has to have a biological father" argument - as you already noted, I believe Jesus was a "magic man." But an adopted child does. Yet you didn't even address that analogy. Please explain to me why don't think it's possible for more than one person to be called the father (not necessarily biological) of a child. There are plenty of things that are not necessarily sinful that people can consider as stumbling blocks to their faith. Another example from around the same time in history was meat that was offered to idols for a sacrifice (I Corinthians 8:7-13). There was nothing inherantly wrong with the meat, but some people thought it shouldn't be eaten because it was associated with idol worship. Paul teaches here that for the sake of those people, he would not eat that meat. The root of the Greek word used in this verse is "misew." The meaning of this word may not have carried the full force of the word "hate" that we use today. But even if it did, the word "hate" does have more than one meaning. For instance, I hate brussel sprouts. This does not mean that I despise the very core of what they are - it simply means I do not hold them in high regard, and I choose not to eat them. The meaning of the word "hate" as used here is meant to be comparative, i.e. the love that God had for Jacob made His regard for Esau seem like hate by comparison. This type of language is not without precedent in the Bible. See Luke 14:26 where we are told that if we don't hate our mother, father, brothers, sisters, wife, children, and even our own life, we can't be Jesus' disciples. Christ was not teaching that we need to hate our relatives in that sense of the word. Rather, that our love for Him should be so great that our love for others seems like hate by comparison. Context is the entirety of Scripture. You can quote me 100 verses that somehow say that good works is the way to get to heaven, but the entire message of the Bible is that Jesus is the only way, so your 100 verses then must have been taken out of the context of the entire message of the Bible. Retracing my steps, I see my fault in making a redefinition for that word. However, as you read above, there are many words that have been redefined of the course of history, and yet you are choosing to apply the one definition that suites your purposes to a word that has multiple meanings.

Of course not, but you're missing my point that the word may have had different implications in the time that it was written. So what God meant by it and what you're taking from it are two different things. No, that's not what I mean. You can specifically cite anything you want to from the Bible. My point is that when you do cite things, you need to make sure they jive with what the total message of the Bible is.But as you say, it looks like we're just going to have to agree to disagree. You could come up with a million contradictions and I could come up with a million answers, but you're never going to see any credence in any of them because the answers to your questions are spiritually discerned (I Corinthians 2:13-15).