Imputation is fiction. The one christian writer who actually got close to something practical was James 'feed and care for orphans and widows'.
The Bible
by N.drew 19 Replies latest watchtower bible
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N.drew
I think holiness has something to do with praying "let YOUR will be done". Matthew 6:9,10.
Of course no one can be perfectly holy except ONE.
Phizzy lol! In what way (without an s) are you fallen, imperfect and disfunctional? I don't know. But please don't yell at me because I wasn't the one who said it, he did.
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N.drew
OTWO, I think you might find some historical truth in Gone With The Wind. The war was real.
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WTWizard
It is a collection of stories, plagiarized from other religions and corrupted. The original stories were allegories that helped one grow spiritually, once the codes were cracked. The LIE-ble, on the other hand, has had them corrupted to the extent that it is worthless for this.
About the only value I have seen with the LIE-ble is to rebut any Christian religion. (Or Jewish.) The confusion, murder, enslavement, and homophobia contained in the LIE-ble are reprehensible. As is putting down women--this is done to create imbalance to prevent real spiritual growth. Sex is so highly regulated--the creative energy it unleashes (which is mentioned in original sources but not the LIE-ble) helps you grow spiritually. Yet, there is no mention of that.
Use it to bash Jewish or Christian religions (for the above practices). Use it for entertainment. Or, use it if you really want to find out what a tyrant Jehovah actually is, and that Satan risked much to try and liberate us (yes, including you) from Jehovah's tyranny. But, do not use it for guidance--and, whatever you do, don't waste any money tithing a church (unless you wish to support your own damnation and help support world enslavement).
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OnTheWayOut
OTWO, I think you might find some historical truth in Gone With The Wind. The war was real.
But GONE W/ The WIND is not the source of historical truth. It merely uses some historical truth in developing the fiction.
Bible believers go to the Bible for their truths and say it trumps other sources. If archaeologists prove the exodus didn't happen, believers say their proof is faulty- automatically.If some historians prove that GONE W/ The WIND has factual errors in it, I don't think anyone will be ready to go to blows over it.
The Bible, while containing some accurate history, is not about that history. The historical errors are fictions but believers won't believe that. There's more harm than good when millions (even billions) believe that fictions are historical documents.
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OldGenerationDude
As a believer in the Bible, I am more apt to agree with OnTheWayOut.
My entire family line on both sides of my family is ethnically Jewish. They do not subscribe to the Scriptures as fitting the "purely historical" mold that so many Christian "believers" seem to want to shove it into.
Gone With the Wind is not about what really happened in history, but what history meant to its main character, Scarlett O'Hara. It's the same with the Scriptures. It's not about history per se as much as it is about what history means to those whose story it is.
The problem with many religions is that they want to read the Bible in a vacuum. They want it to be the book for their religion, the standard on which to base all things. You can't do that. It would be like trying to read Gone With the Wind while being ignorant of the rest of human history before and after the book.
To illustrate: the Psalms are not history. They are prayers, liturgical ones at that. These are still chanted and prayed as they are by Jews, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians several times a day. Why? Because that is why they were written, collected, and how they've been used since they came into existence. They are like the "songbook" and "prayer book" for my people. Yes, some history is there, some prophecy, but none of it explicitly literal.
Okay, you say, I don't read the Psalms as literal history either. So what's the point?
The point is that the other books have reasons for why they exist and what they're doing as part of the collection. Judaism didn't come after the books were written. My people and their history and their religion came first.
Same thing about Christianity. The religion comes first. The books had to measure up with what the believers already believed or practiced (which is what "canonized" means). If you don't already belong to the religion, why are you taking its book and trying to make something out of it that wasn't intended.
While a historical take is included, they aren't implied or necessary for expressing the truths central to the Jewish or Christian religions. These so-called "truths" or beliefs came first. They molded how these people saw history, and their response (which was often fictionalized into parables--like Jesus used) was meant to carry moral lessons not historical ones. Trying to make the generation of the universe and the earth fit into some sort of "six-day" set up to match Genesis 1 is therefore ridiculous. That's not the moral of the story.
If all you get out of reading the story of Noah and the flood is that there was a real big boat that saved this man, his family, and his animals during a historical world-destroying flood, then you've missed the point.
If you think the story of Abraham being told to offer Isaac is a story of God trying to get Abraham to literally place his son on an altar, you just don't understand. And why not?
Go back to the Psalms. Would you, if you held different convictions, run into another religion's house of worship and take its hymn and prayer book and use it in your worship or to base your personal convictions on? Of course not! The hymn and prayer book are specifically for that religion or group, and it only has real meaning to them, to those who assembled it in the first place. If you take it out from its world and you never go into it, then you never really understand it.
But people do that with the Bible all the time. "Religion has to be based on the Bible," when in reality religions came first, and members within wrote and edited and collected their books for their own purposes. Some of the books are novellas, some hymns, some for liturgical purposes, some for catechesis or training. Some have a place in shul or in a church, others are meant for different settings.
Because so many try to read it outside the vacuum, they make it seem to have "historical errors" in the eyes of very open-minded individuals. Of course they would be "historical errors," because often the books weren't meant to be read that way.
You can't use books of one religion and then take it to create your own. These books weren't meant to be the basis of any faiths or the central pot from which "truths" were to spring. Like that hymn book, it's not intended for you if you don't belong.
I know people don't like to hear that, but that's why someone like OnTheWayOut sees what he does. He's only being honest. He's also correct.
If you don't want to understand these books outside of the way they are meant to be used and understood, then don't stand outside of the religions that created them. If you are, stop trying to create a religion based on someone else's book. (Again if you want to belong to the religion, just join it...but I can say for the Jews at least, you can't really be that which you aren't or don't want or don't have the courage to be).
You make the Bible look silly because any worship book taken from its proper place would equally make as much sense if used in the same manner.
I don't see people running around with a copy of Dianetics and trying to foretell the future with it or start a religion with it.
Stop making the book of my people look stupid because of your inept ability and stubbornness to accept it on its own terms. You go get your own religion and make up your own book like everyone else and stopping trying to shove ours down the throats of others that don't want it (I don't even want it "shoved down my throat" because it wasn't meant for that).
Besides, people who take hymn/prayer books from other religions without their authority are thieves. And who would trust a thief in the first place?
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N.drew
Are you talking to me OldGenerationDude?
I believed in Christ first then I took up the Bible.
Do you not believe that there are true historical accounts in it?
As you can see by my first sentence at the top I do not believe it is literal history. But I can't believe that there is NOTHING that really happened in it.
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usualusername
Ooh this is juicy.
In all honesty whether N.Drew is right or not will it change my life? Not a chance.
But since I like them I will agree with them until further notice, whatever they say!
Go go! -
N.drew
But since I like them I will agree with them until further notice, whatever they say!
You have piqued my interest usualusername.
Who is the "they"?
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mP
@perry
can u explain the porno that is the book, song of solomon, or why god isnever mentioned in name or reference in esther?