Seriously, what is wrong with Christians?

The big picture is that God counts souls. God counts sheep, not wolves. Sometimes He chooses to put the wolves to death for the sheep. He destroys bodies He considers as useless in order to save those (His sheep) He considers useful. Planet earth is such a field of harvest for the qualified souls. He might choose to kill everything on it if this purpose of harvesting good souls is lost. That's His morality.

So when you take the bodies of the wolves (or the wannabes) and say that , "see, you have killed many". He might answer, more of my sheep will be lost if they aren't killed.

 

That's a pretty pessimistic outlook if you don't think anyone is more or less good than they are.

As the mythological Jesus allegedly said, "The tree is known by the fruit it bears."

 

Not pessimistic, just fair. Are Christians any more or less moral or well-meaning than anyone else?

 

So all the people you love are going to heaven?
God does not love the people that go to hell? They can't be loved?
You sure you have thought this through?

 

God is love. That is without God there will be no love. Love is simply absent in a place isolated from God. The kinds of love a human perceive will remain here on earth only. When one dies, his spirit is said to be returned to God, the earthly kind of love may go with it.

As in Heaven, tears will be wiped out. The only kind of love is between sisters and brothers, beside the love of God. Other kind of love may not exist. We humans don't understand what love actually is, in terms of biology and chemistry. We know even less in terms of spirit.

 

Storge, phileo, eros and agape.
But what does C.S. Lewis know anyway, right?

 

Wrong. Sexual slavery was permissible, including slavery of your own daughter (Exodus 21:7-11), as was buying non-Israelite slaves (Leviticus 25:44-46). You seriously need to go through your Bible.

Of course I admit a conflict, the Bible is full of vague and contradictory passages.

So, you admit that the Bible should be looked at in a historical context and not a divine one?

 

Wrong ? Easy there quick draw,I am answering your question about why I mentioned POWs. I am not wrong,one thing does not negate the other.

Lets get back on topic and deal with what you actually said "abided by the Golden Rule and still had slaves."

That makes no sense and they are your words that are at conflict here. I suppose a slave owner would love to be a slave .. lol

I'm saying that God changes people's minds over time.

 

I think he was saying that if your goal is to actually change minds that this is the wrong way to do it.

You can be as right as you like, but if you walk into a Nazi rally and start calling them all evil bastards you're not going to get anywhere. Instead try to empathize with their perspective, acknowledge it, then respectfully say why you think it's wrong.

Or kill them because they're Nazis. Whatever works.

 

And god made man in his own image... I sometimes have to believe that if god did create man he sure did create him in his own image as in places throughout what is referred to as the good book it refers to god as a vengeful god and also a jealous god and man sure can be both vengeful and jealous.

Raised in a home as close to pentacostal as one can get without actually being totally pentecostal (my hair got cut and daddy wore short sleeves) I was told over and over that when we get to heaven all will be well, we would want for nothing walking streets of gold singing his praises. Yet daddy nor any preacher I dared to ask could explain if heaven is so perfect then why was Lucifer thrown out along with his followers for misdeeds. Apparently even in heaven there is free will where one can chose not to follow god.

All throughout the OT god told men to go to war with others even telling them exactly what to do. There is one story that tells of killing off a whole group and then taking young girls for their own. Sorry too many years have gone by since I read the story so I don't remember the exact book. The more I read the bible the more contradictory it became so I let it go.

I was told god never changes yet in the OT he said the Jews were his chosen ones but after Jesus came to earth all others could come to him (through Jesus of course). Once Jesus came and left there is no more god speaking to men.
Back when I was still involved with the whole god thing when someone would ask who I prayed to I would say god and was told that I was wrong to do that, we can only pray to Jesus.

If one goes back through the ages at what happened concerning translations of the bible one finds that often MEN translated according to their own time and what suited their needs at that particular time and there are even books left out. The books are stories told by word of mouth down through the ages most not written for hundreds of years after the fact of the incident being told about. We know for a fact that several people can see the same car accident yet tell a slightly different story about what happened. There are ancient words that cannot be translated to our modern world.

I'm ask how can you have morals if you are not close to god? Seriously? One does not need a god nor old book to know what is right and wrong, good or evil. knowing not to hurt others as being right is easy, knowing that hurting others is wrong is easy.

I do believe that there was a man called Jesus, I do like the teachings they say he taught. Whether he rose from a tomb or not I do not know for sure. It is only less than a handful of women that claimed to see him rise. There are men that claim he showed himself to them after his death. Were they dreaming? WIll never know for sure.

There is just too much in the 'good book' that doesn't make logical sense and too many translations down through the ages for me to take it word for word. There is some good there to live one's life by. I like the ten commandments as a guide. And there is some really sad, horrible things there that supposedly god led men to do.

I know, I know, We are not to know all that is in gods mind until the day Jesus (not god) comes to take the faithful off to the promised land.

I will say that the night I stood in my doorway and watched hurricane Ike race down my street yet barely felt a breeze and the rain was going straight sideways down the street my husband ask me what I was doing and for lack of a better answer I said watching god. Anything as powerful as wind and water is plenty god like to me because it makes me feel so small. Mother earth is a dangerously beautiful thing. I can see why the Indians had such reverence for such things.

Anyway that's enough of y rambling... Carry on and Namaste.

 

The Old Testament being a group of writings created thousands of years before the New Testament shows us how ancient man thought about what a GOD would be.

By the time the books and the Gospels comprising the New Testament were written...we can now see an evolving ideology of what ancient man now thought what a GOD would be.

Still....these are just STORIES.

AboveAlpha

 

I apologize, I thought you meant THE one time it was permissable.

Because enslavement was mostly done to "outsiders". It makes perfect sense if you consider a certain race or ethnic group to be inferior to your own. They aren't your neighbors or even worthy of being called humans, so you can do whatever you want to them.

So... indistinguishable from non-divine societal progress. If slavery is always wrong morally, it makes asbolutely no sense for a supposedly moral God to sit back and abide by historical or cultural context. I mean, what the hell would be the purpose of relying on a God to give you morals if he simply parrots what society is already saying?

 

I believe the Right still has more problems with human sexuality in modern Information Age times, than they do with a more timeless form of immorality such as the abomination of hypocrisy, in these same, modern Information Age times.

 

According to the biblical fairy tale the only entity people will love in heaven (the golden cube) will be God. There are no marriages in the golden cube so there will be no meaningful personal relationships. Love as we know it will no longer exist.+

 

As it happens I was at the Nazi rally in Skokie Illinois in 1978. The protestors had the Nazis outnumbered about 10 to 1. I got there pretty late but I remember one thing. It was actually pretty funny. One of them came up to the microphone and started talking. People started swarming around him. He got nervous of being attacked and jumped into the lake behind the stage. The only other memory I have of the event was all the massive blonde haired blue eyed Chicago police lined up on horses beside the stage to "keep the peace".

Nazis and the like are NOT deserving of empathy or respect. And it is NOT my intent to change them. They cannot be changed at this point. They are too far gone. My intent is to REVEAL them or rather to let them reveal themselves. Which they have done REPEATEDLY.

In America every person is entitled to hold any stupid opinion they want. They are NOT entitled to have others respect their stupid opinions. And never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

 

Was I talking about the Bible in toto, or just a specific few verses?

Couldn't tell you.

No, they go to Hell because they can't tolerate His love.

Because they won't be loved.

No need for that when the underlying principle is sound.

Sure it is, if you have some way of knowing that - which, absent God, you don't.

 

So you cherry pick the parts you don't want to apply to you. I get it.
Convenient.
You called the people in hell "unlovable". Now they are unloving?
You don't think things through at all.
Very poor thinking skills.

 

You you have no problem with the killing of unborn children. We killed lots of innocents at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden. Ancient Israel didn't have that same right to defend herself?

 

According to the story ancient Israel was wiped out too.

 

Now you are backing off your previous explanation -"cognitive dissonance."

Who are you to put God on your time table ?

 

So your best defence is basically "other people commit murder too"? Not impressed at all.

- - - Updated - - -

Did you really just say that it's not possible to know right and wrong without god? With a straight face? As if any sensible person would even consider taking such a thing seriously?

Lol.

 

No, it is still cognitive dissonance. The idea that you should treat others in the same manner that you would like to be treated is the most admirable position. How do you reconcile that with extreme xenophobia? Obviously make up an excuse that those that you enslave aren't people at all, but rather purely property. There is a reason why God forbade the Israelites from enslaving their own, but was fine with enslaving Israel's neighbors. It's still cognitive dissonance, it is just cognitive dissonance with an excuse.

Um, I wasn't the one that said God was indistinguishable from non-divine progressiveness. That was you, remember? You were the one that claimed God's morals were relative to our human progress.

 

I do find it laughable that someone would tell me (who doesn't know me) that i wouldn't know right from wrong unless I know god. You can teach a two year old right from wrong and they have no concept of a God.

 

Honestly, its so ethnocentric.

My ancestors were writing poems and discussing morality
many centuries ago, long before the europeans had decided to
adapt some middle eastern sky god cult to their purposes.

 

No, just pointing out your hypocrisy.