Those who know the good, do the good. - Socrates
Do you see the paradox here?
How the TRINITY covers up the murder of Jehovah
by Terry 146 Replies latest watchtower bible
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PSacramento
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PSacramento
I am saying, Jesus would be apalled, and he would rebel against it.
The OT and NT are best understood against the social/cultural backdrop of their final redation.
Agreed on both accounts.
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tec
You follow Christ. Where did you "meet" Christ? In person? No. Did you hear a voice? I doubt it. Did you hear somebody else say there was such a person. Undoubtedly. Did you read it in a book? Sure. Did it sound great? Yep.
Yes, I heard about Jesus from someone else. (didn't read the bible till a few years ago, though) Learned a lot about Jesus from the JW's, then learned a lot of falsehoods about him too.
No, I didn't 'hear' a voice.
Yes, I did 'feel' Him. I know what you think about that, but there it is. I believe every word He said. I truly believe in the things He taught - and so I also believe in Him.
So, you defend it with all your might.
As best as I am able, yes.
When something "does not mesh with the things of love and mercy that Jesus 'showed us'---------What does Tammy do?
Tammy takes Christ's word over anything else - with the understanding that I also simply might not understand some of the things that I think don't mesh.
Truth can have no contradictions.
Yes.
Contradiction is a red flag. Intellectualy honesty tells Jeffrey Dahmer's mom that a good boy doesn't eat people. Should she simply not believe it?
She should believe her son, unless someone shows/proves otherwise to her. Perhaps she already had a bad feeling about her son - many mothers do and ignore it.
I do not have such a feeling of malignancy about Christ.
You have the very same book that gives you Jesus telling you God drowned old ladies, children, pregnant women and little bunny rabbits. How does that square with your "things of love and mercy"? It DOESN'T---so you ignore it.
I don't know. That is not the same as ignoring it. But I trust God - because of what I know about his Son.
The writer---the HUMAN writer who gave us the Flood Story couldn't think of a way (nor did he care to) for Almighty God to destroy the wicked without using an analog method like rain. A real genius would have said, "Almighty God snapped his fingers and all the bad people dropped dead...but, no animals were harmed in this episode!"
Unless it happened and he simply told the truth. (For the record, while I don't deny the possibility of a literal flood account, I think this was a localized event that was considered the world by the writer)
God tells a man (a prophet, no less) to lie down on his side and lay seige to a brick. Tammy believes this story. God turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt because she turned around and looked at a city. Tammy believes this story. Angels screwed women and produced GIANTS! Tammy believes this story. A serpent and an ass spoke to people. Tammy believes these stories. When the ark of the covenant was about to tip over and fall a nice fellow named Uzzah stopped it with his hand. God struck him dead. But, when the Philistines capture the same ark--they simply got lose bowels. Tammy believes this story.
I believe you are mistaking me for an inerrantist. (is that the word?) I think the bible is made up of myths and/or parables, histories, and inspired scriptures from prophets.
I also think that some stories were exaggerated, as does happen with great tales. Such as Sampson's long hair giving him the strength as the story claims - though, again, I would be lying if I said that I don't believe in the possibility. There is a lot I don't know, and so I don't claim to know it all.
You have to abandon your mind to these things to have belief and faith and hope and trust in them.
I don't have to do anything. I only have to follow Christ.
Once you commit to utter puerile nonsense the defending of them becomes automatic. But, you lose your rational mind and your soul in so doing and become the host of a kind of virus.
What soul, Terry, are you talking about, that could be lost by believing in God and Christ?
Tammy---come back to Earth. We need you here. Bring your mind with you, please. I'm sure you are a wonderful person and the world needs thinking people who are wonderful who can talk sanity to the others.
Terry, my friend, I love you. But I cannot make myself disbelieve what I believe to be truth. Not any more than you could make yourself believe what you believe to be a lie. We are at two opposite ends (though we have on occasion agreed on something) But my faith and love for Christ is part of me. It drives me, motivates and guides my actions - every day.
I was always a pretty nice person - (though there are plenty of nice people in this world, and I could certainly be not so nice on occasion as well - selfish mostly, though not maliciously so; just ignorant I think) But I did not have the peace and love within myself that I have now and can show others, since coming to know and love Christ.
I have no reason to even want to give that up.
Tammy
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Terry
I also think that some stories were exaggerated, as does happen with great tales. Such as Sampson's long hair giving him the strength as the story claims - though, again, I would be lying if I said that I don't believe in the possibility. There is a lot I don't know, and so I don't claim to know it all.
Welcome to a very slippery slope,Tammy!
If YOU are the one judging what is exaggerated and what is true, what is nonsense/fable/myth and what is fact----you are already walking where there is quicksand.
The key word to describe what Tammy is doing is INTERPRETATION.
You have joined the crowd of "I'll figure out what sounds good and do it" already.
The only devout plan to follow is the extreme one of becoming an inerrantist.
Muslims are devout. Some of them have enormous faith. They strap on explosives and blow up people. They TRUST it is the right thing!
The next problem (besides interpretation) is TRANSMISSION.
Your Doctor in the sky has written a perscription of the medicine that will cure you.
It is in Latin.
You take it to your Pharmacist and he "interprets" the handwriting of the Doctor and makes the pills.
Now if the pills turn out to be slow poison-----who do you blame? The Doctor or the Pharmacist?
What if we wedge a few hundred years between the Doctor and the Pharmacist, Tammy?
What if the perscription wasn't written down right away and was SPOKEN ORALLY and passed from person to person BEFORE IT WAS WRITTEN DOWN?
What if the Pharmacist THINKS he knows the Doctor probably MEANT TO SAY X instead of Y?
Are you beginning to see that you are the person who has to take the pills and suffer the RESULT of the TRANSMISSION???
Faith doesn't mean doodly squat IF what you are believing has been accidentally TRANSMITTED in error.
Your splippery slope statement indicates you are at least aware that there is some kind of problem in the text!!
You just dont know HOW MUCH!
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tec
Terry, even if I became an inerrantist of the bible - I would still have to take Jesus' words over anything else written - in the OT or the NT. Jesus is the Word of God.
Please tell me how you think that my living by His words (whether some of them have been changed or mistranslated, etc... or not) is bad for me and others.
As for a slippery slope, what I believe to be myth or history or inspired all takes a backseat to the love and mercy and forgiveness that Jesus taught and that I follow. All it means is that I reconcile things with that, as I've said. I have to think and test and question. I don't just throw the whole thing away because that's easier to do.
Believe it or not, I am using my brain, Terry - just not in the way that you (and others) think is right.
Tammy
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Pistoff
Tec:
My position, like others, is that Jesus lived and died, but that Jesus as the Christ is a theological construct.
Consider looking at the Jesus' Seminar version of the gospels; they show what sayings of Jesus they consider likely, unlikely and not at all.
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tec
Pistoff - didn't want you to think I was ignoring you. Admittedly, I've only had a chance to skim over it, but I have to say that I don't see a foolproof method in their criteria for determining what is likely, unlikely, and not at all. (example: why would they think that anything Jesus said about himself was unlikely to have been said at all?) Or that their method of voting amongst themselves to determine such, is all that reliable. But I appreciate your bringing it to my attention. I had heard of the Jesus seminar, but never looked into them, or knew exactly what it was.
Tammy
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Pistoff
What Jesus said about himself, a very good question.
You take all that he said at face value; others toss the whole record.
If the answer is somewhere in the middle, the process is important.
Ask yourself, how did the Bible reach it's final state? True blue believers would say that God was responsible, but exhaustive, painstaking comparisons point to very human redaction, and final content (gospels) that reflects the community it came from.
Did Jesus really say a man must hate his family? Don't massage it; take it at face value.
NO divorce, really?
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maputo95
I have a misunderstood word on "prolepsis". Can anyone enlighten me with a contextually appropriate explanation/definition. Thank you.
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Terry
Terry, even if I became an inerrantist of the bible - I would still have to take Jesus' words over anything else written - in the OT or the NT. Jesus is the Word of God.
Please tell me how you think that my living by His words (whether some of them have been changed or mistranslated, etc... or not) is bad for me and others.
Tammy, you THINK you have Jesus' words. Do you? HOW?
These are oral stories. What are the odds anybody remembered Jesus' EXACT WORDS three hundred years later (when scriptures began to be written down.)
There are few purported quotations attributed to Jesus in the Aramaic. They stick out like a sore thumb--don't they? Just intermittent insertions of Aramaic quotes and all the rest of the time we have paraphrasing parading as actual dialogue!
There were thousands of Jesus sayings! Which is to say anybody who wanted to make some up could and did!
The same folks who provided us with the Catholic church, the crusades and Inquisition have given us which Jesus' sayings are "true" and which are (in their opinion) worthless crap.
And you trust THEM? Why?
Where are our original autograph manuscripts so we can see just how accurate our current prattle is compared to the 300 years later Jesus quotes? And why would THOSE (had they been preserved!) be any more trustworthy?
The problem with accepting the bible version of Jesus' sayings is that their "meaning" has been laid out for us by centuries (millennia!) of interpreters distilling it into theology. We all have no trouble "KNOWING" what he said and meant at all. And yet--amazingly--the very people he hung around with and spoke to every day really had little clue what he was talking about!!