Bible Questions?

Indeed.
I also didn't understand the relevance of the question and why it was specifically directed at you and Hoatzin, since asking questions of someone would seem to indicate a willingness to listen to the answers given.

 

Not always, the Scribes and Pharisees asked many questions of Jesus but they did not want to listen to the answers but only to try to entrap Jesus.

 

Interestingly, I have already answered many of your questions and I ask you to answer just one of mine before I go on but you seem to be unwilling to return the favor.

 

OK.
But is that what Okie and Hoatzin are doing?

 

Far be it from me, as a Christian, to try to entrap Jesus, but OWB flatters himself by making that comparison. I also don't consider his postings to be "pearls", nor do I think anyone who argues with him can fairly be characterized as "swine". The OP set up this site to deal with Bible questions. Here and elsewhere he has been advancing a view of the Bible and the Christian religion which I regard as unsound, harmful, and contributing to prevailing stereotypes of Christians that I have to live with. When I challenged him on another site, he told me to come to this one, so as not to "hijack" that one. Here I am. To my knowledge, neither I nor Hoatzin has claimed to be an expert on the Bible. How else can anyone deal with these claims except to bring up passages from the Bible that seem difficult to defend literally and see what he does with them?

I think I've addressed the "pearls and swine" question. I also gave my take on Jesus and the Sabbath. As for Elisha and the bears, I tend to favor Raymond Calkins' view in the Interpreter's Bible that the story is metaphorical: an exhortation to respect the prophets as holy men of God. The bears symbolize "the inevitable retribution which overtakes vicious behavior." Over to OWB.

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I think that it shows that 1) The prophets themselves miss the mark while at the same time revealing his personality. The only one that does not miss the mark is YHWH. Even prophets are humans. 2) Rebellious behavior contributes to destruction. (Just what you said).

As far as the curse goes, I think that it had nothing to do with the youths being mauled and everything to do with the energy they were carrying with them.

I think that it is a lot deeper than that, but I'll leave it there.

 

Interestingly, I merely asked you to explain one scripture. I did not say that it applied to anyone, I cited one scripture, no more and instead of just answering the question, you seem to have turned it into a personal attack. Why is that?

Since you have applied it to our conversation, who would you say has done the turning and ripping?

 

I dunno. You might check the seat of your pants.

 

Are you saying that you think that you might be the one turning and ripping?

 

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Moi? I thought you just bent over too quickly.

Seriously, I don't think you're helping yourself by the current line of inquiry. I don't want to rip you, or hurt you, or destroy you, man, and certainly don't want to do anything to shake your faith (which I sense would be hard to do, otherwise I'd be more gentle). I don't know you apart from what you disclose to us in these debates. Believe it or not, there are things I like and admire about you, and I've learned from you. You do know your Bible well, and I sense your deep conviction in your posts. You're an important voice in the dialogue, and without you Hip Forums (and the world) would be duller. Interacting with you has given me a deeper awareness and appreciation of our God, which is what it's all about. I think it's normal in the heat of debate to say things that could be taken personally, and I agree with Hoatzin that you do it plenty yourself, although you may not be aware of it. If I've wounded you, I apologize and I'll try to behave myself (but its so hard!) Mea culpa. Remember: It's only a forum!

 

Thank you very much!

I feel pretty much the same but probably not as eloquently.

And it is true, that if I've said things that have been taken personally, I did not intend it that way and was not aware of it. Although sometimes in frustration I will type personal attacks, I do so in a word processor and when I review it, I delete them, then when I cut and paste them to hip forums I review them again and try to remove anything else that seems personal and then after I post it, I reread it to see if anything else needs to be changed, so if something escapes or seems personal, I really have tried to avoid it. Sorry for the ones that got by.

As for the winks that seem to bother Hoatzin, I use them mostly when I think there may be a touch of humor in what I’ve said and since I had a good friend that liked to wink, I’ve always thought of winking as a more or less friendly gesture.

As for the line of inquiry; I was not trying to help my self, since there is no helping me, I was worried about pearls of wisdom being trampled on and not just mine; although mine may not be pearls, as you pointed out but other peoples as well.

I believe there is fun and great joy to be had in discussing the Scriptures and although the truth is serious business, the God of the Bible is a happy God and wants us to smile and laugh from time to time, as we learn about him and his word.

But the last posts that Hoatzin and you posted before my inquiry, brought me up short, I seemed to hear jeering. True or not, it just seemed like a good time to stop and take a breather and see if it was a good thing to go on or not or at least let the dust settle a bit.


PS You have not wounded me; I’m part rhino, so I’m pretty thick skinned but I appreciate the concern.

 

That's a good idea. I need to start doing that because I often let slip a lot of passive aggressive comments, especially towards Hoatzin and Rudenoodle.

I just want to say that I have a lot of respect for Hoatzin and his journey to look into the truth no matter where it leads him.

I like Rudenoodle and I think he has a great sense of humor. He seems like a pretty stand up guy and the type of dude you can hang out with...

Okiefreak, well, he sucks. Just kidding, you already know what I think through my pms with you.

 

It takes a little longer to get my post to the thread but it gives me time to cool off and it saves me from a lot of apologizing. :hat:

 

:hat:

 

Okay. Kumbaya time over. I'm takin' off the gloves and gettin' back into it again. Let me sum up where I think our recent discussion has been going. We've seen a literalist defense, on this and other threads, of Bible passages that, in my opinion, reject well-supported science (evolution), promote sexism and homophobia, and justify slavery and atrocities (stoning people for breaking the Sabbath; mauling youths for insulting prophets). The literalist argument seems to be: well that's what the Bible says, and if it seems wrong and harsh to you, that's because of your fallibility, inadequate understanding, rebellion against God's will, etc. My argumant is that the literalist interpretation is unnecessary and misguided, promotes insensitivity to real injustices, misunderstand's God's will, and has the potential for contributing to great misery and injustice in the world. God's will is written in our hearts, and tells us that these literalist interpretations are misguided. If someone could convince me that the literalist interpretation is what it means to be a Christian, I'd change my religion. And by the way, the literalist interpretation isn't really literalist. We saw that in Genesis it literally says that God put the sun, moon, and stars in the sky after He made vegetation. It says this in all of the leading translations and in the original Hebrew. And the response was, Oh, no. He made visible the sun, moon, and stars that were already there--even though the language of Genesis says differently. And how do we know He made those pre-existing bodies visible? By the "context". What context? The whole Bible, of course. No further explanation. Or did I get these arguments wrong?

 

My, I don’t know where to start. Just kidding.

A good summary but biased toward what you believe as would a summary by me would be.

But I’d like to touch on a few points; like when you say literalist are you talking about me? Because I don’t consider myself either a literalist or a fundamentalist.

As for the Bible supporting Homophobia; no, the Bible does not promote or condone fear or hatred of homosexuals, although it does seem to say that those who want to be Christian should not engage in homosexuality.

You say; God's will is written in our hearts, and tells us that these literalist interpretations are misguided. Perhaps you are thinking of Romans 2:15 which says; “They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, while their conscience is bearing witness with them and, between their own thoughts, they are being accused or even excused.” Which from the context does not seem to be talking about God’s will.

Interestingly the Bible says at Jeremiah 17:9; “The heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate. Who can know it?” and at Proverbs 28:26; “He that is trusting in his own heart is stupid, but he that is walking in wisdom is the one that will escape.” These scriptures seem to be saying that it might not be a good idea to let our heart guide us in determining what the Bible says or what God’s will is.

Also you say “God’s will“, I’m not sure I’ve heard you say what you consider to be God’s will. Would you mind sharing?

As for my saying one needs to understand the Bible in the context of the whole Bible and not just piece meal and there being no further explanation, actually I’ve explained it a number of times but here goes again. This goes hand in hand with my saying the Bible interprets itself, in others words if a person has an understanding or interpretation that is not in harmony with what the rest of the Bible says then that understanding or interpretation is incorrect and needs to be changed.

Such as in the previous discussion about how long the creative days in Genesis were. Just by what it says in Genesis one might think that the days were 24 hours long but by looking at the whole Bible, Paul points out that those days were thousands of years long not 24 hours.

So by using the whole Bible to understand what the Bible is saying and not just discarding or ignoring what we don’t like or doesn’t agree with what we want to believe, we can understand what God is saying to us in the Bible.

 

Hmmm. Just about everything you post seems to take the words of the Bible literally. That's what I mean by a literalist.

What ablot Leviticus, saying we should kill them?

No, I was thinking of my moral sense which is shared by lots of folks, that tells me slavery, sexism,stoning people to death for Sabbath violations, slaugthering and raping people on God's command, etc., are wrong, and that any Book that says they're right is either wrong or misinterpreted.

If the Bible is talking about raw emotionalism, I agree. If it's talking about moral conscience, I disagree--not with the bible, but with the interpretation.

What God wants.

 

"Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of this mother..."
Deuteronomy 27:22

"And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter...it is a wicked thing...."
Leviticus 20:17

Yet Abraham marries his father's daughter and remains God's favorite:

"And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife's sake. And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife."
Genesis 20:11-12

Along with the stories of Adam, Eve and Noah's ark the bible hints at more incest than an Alabama kegger.

Whats the deal?

 

I believe this has been covered before but anyway;

The two scriptures cited are from the law covenant and Abraham, Adam, Eve and Noah all predate the law covenant and the law was not retroactive.

Whereas as the Bible does not specifically state why, with the law covenant, incest was now being outlawed. One might assume that with the shortening life spans that mankind was getting farther and farther away from perfection and thus now needed the added protection against genetic damage that a law against incest would provide.