first name basis

[marshwiggle]

Physicists who understand all of them know which situations can be adequately dealt with by the simpler one and which ones reflect situations requiring one of the newer ones.

Marshman: master of the analogy.

But you've essentially said that we are back to picking-and-choosing which Biblical laws we abide by. 

In various countries, bodies like a Supreme Court often have to decide whether a given law violates the constitution. In other words, moral principles (embodied in the constitution), don't automatically translate into perfect "laws". This is because the situations that occur vary widely, and so a law which may clearly embody an important moral principle in many situations may be less helpful (and possibly even counter-productive) at doing so under some very specific situations.

It's why it's common to talk about the difference between "the letter" and "the spirit" of a law.

[Wahoo Redux]

Physicists who understand all of them know which situations can be adequately dealt with by the simpler one and which ones reflect situations requiring one of the newer ones.

Marshman: master of the analogy.

But you've essentially said that we are back to picking-and-choosing which Biblical laws we abide by. 

In various countries, bodies like a Supreme Court often have to decide whether a given law violates the constitution. In other words, moral principles (embodied in the constitution), don't automatically translate into perfect "laws". This is because the situations that occur vary widely, and so a law which may clearly embody an important moral principle in many situations may be less helpful (and possibly even counter-productive) at doing so under some very specific situations.

It's why it's common to talk about the difference between "the letter" and "the spirit" of a law.

I think you need a title: the Apologist Analogist.

How do you determine what is the letter and what is the spirit?

I ask because

"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination"

is as clearly stated as

"Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse."

Which one is "letter" and which one is "spirit?"

[marshwiggle]

"Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse."

Yeah, I guess that one would be better as "Slaves, rise up and fight your masters, especially the nasty ones; take no thought for whether it will get you flogged or killed."

[Kron3007]

Physicists who understand all of them know which situations can be adequately dealt with by the simpler one and which ones reflect situations requiring one of the newer ones.

Marshman: master of the analogy.

But you've essentially said that we are back to picking-and-choosing which Biblical laws we abide by. 

In various countries, bodies like a Supreme Court often have to decide whether a given law violates the constitution. In other words, moral principles (embodied in the constitution), don't automatically translate into perfect "laws". This is because the situations that occur vary widely, and so a law which may clearly embody an important moral principle in many situations may be less helpful (and possibly even counter-productive) at doing so under some very specific situations.

It's why it's common to talk about the difference between "the letter" and "the spirit" of a law.

The big difference is that the constitution and all national laws were developed by humans and can be interpreted and amended as required.  If you subscribe to the belief that the bible is the word of god, and it says something explicitly, how can you argue that it was not the spirit of what god intended?  Talk about hubris.

Of course, the bible does contradict itself, so no matter what your beliefs are, you are forced into a weird position of discarding gods word at some point.

 

[Kron3007]

Well, then the issue is solved by "grace"--those "dark" parts of Old Testament law that do not apply to followers of Jesus. But man, just try to suss out when grace applies and when it doesn't--to paraphrase Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire," present the rules to a budding biblical scholar with a bottle of aspirin. For example, Jesus gets into the issue of supposedly unclean food with his disciples, and starts a rant on eating and pooping--it's not one of His best or most logical parables (my personal interpretation is that Jesus just liked Him some shrimp).

But to bring things back (more or less) to how the issues of "first name basis" are or can be biblical, there are some general admonitions to treat elders with respect (including slaves respecting their masters, as was discussed on another thread), so yes, a younger person is encouraged (commanded?) to be deferential, even if the elder is not especially pleasant. None of this changes what has already been noted about changing social norms of course.

This has to be one of the weirdest parts.  Christians acknowledge that the old testament is the word of god, yet it does not apply to them?  Why would God release a false document, only to go on to correct it?  I would think that even a moderately competent god would be able to release a single edition without needing a rewrite. 

It takes some major mental gymnastics to make this work.

On the off chance that there's some honest curiosity in this question, and not just invective about how "Christians are stupid and hypocritical," I'll try to answer this.

The Old Testament and New Testament are in a sense like two different courses in a major.  The latter is meant to build on the former, like a prerequisite course.  Broadly speaking, the Old Testament teaches that God created the Earth and its people.  God has standards.  People failed to meet those standards.  In the Mosaic Law, God chose one specific people, Israel, and gave them a codified set of rules to follow and codified rituals to keep--which is how people have usually tried to pacify whatever divine forces they believed in. 

Israel's subsequent history demonstrated that they couldn't keep the laws.  Even the Old Testament's greatest figures of faith were deeply flawed individuals who messed up a lot.  Both Christians and Jews have long understood that a lot of the descriptions of the conduct of OT figures were often meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive.  The Old Testament in effect establishes that human beings are too fundamentally bent toward sin to fix themselves.

In the New Testament, we get the second course for the major.  Jesus is born.  A man who is in some way that can't really be explained both a human being and God.  He taught that, since human beings couldn't fix themselves, as established by Old Testament history, they must instead rely on God to fix them.  And how does God do that?  By sending Jesus, who was both God and human, to suffer and die for sins that he himself did not commit.  He paid the just penalty for sin so that we don't have to.

How do we gain the forgiveness of sin that Jesus offers?  By admitting that we, ourselves, are sinners in the sight of God, and asking for God's forgiveness based on Jesus' sacrifice.  And then devoting the rest of our lives to serving God by following Jesus' teachings.  New Testament teachings preserve the essence of the Old Testament's ethics and morality, but don't insist on Mosaic Law's various ritual and dietary laws.  Many early Christians who were also Jews continued to practice these laws (and some Jewish Christians still do).  But Gentile Christians weren't forced to follow all of those rules.  The New Testament explicitly says as much.  There are no mental gymnastics about it.

I am quite curious about this, but your explanation really dosn't make much sense to me.  Is the old testament the word of God or not?  How can you just discard the whole thing.

The deeper question in my mind though, is that god would have known we couldn't keep to those laws in advance so why did it bother with the old testament in the first place?  Why make so many people suffer so much?  OT god did a lot of pretty nasty things no?

It all just seems far to human.   

[apl68]

I am quite curious about this, but your explanation really dosn't make much sense to me.  Is the old testament the word of God or not?  How can you just discard the whole thing.

The deeper question in my mind though, is that god would have known we couldn't keep to those laws in advance so why did it bother with the old testament in the first place?  Why make so many people suffer so much?  OT god did a lot of pretty nasty things no?

It all just seems far to human.   

But the Old Testament hasn't been discarded.  It supplies the background to the New Testament.  Read the New Testament, and you'll see that it draws a great deal from the Old Testament.

Why God presented the revelation of the Old and New Testaments across a wide stretch of history, I don't pretend to know.  Why God allowed sin and evil to come into the world in the first place I don't know.  What I do know is that the Bible taken as a whole diagnoses humanity's greatest problem as stemming from rebellion against God.  We live in a world of humanity that is fundamentally in rebellion against God.  It's because we don't want to serve God that we treat each other so badly, even though we are all made in the image of God, and are thus valuable.  Along with this diagnosis, the Bible presents the solution to the problem, which is accepting Jesus' sacrifice and following him.

Jesus didn't try to force everybody to follow him.  He leaves whether we do so up to us.  Most don't follow Jesus' actual teachings, although many more claim to do so.  To those who do follow him, Jesus gives the strength to live for him in an evil and broken world.  He told his followers to follow his teachings and tell others about him until he comes back.  When he does, he will put a stop to the evil of the world and restore it to what it should be.  Everybody who has lived will be restored to life and judged on the basis of whether they followed Jesus or refused to do so.  Those who didn't will be destroyed in a second death, and those who did will spend eternity with God.

I can't explain all of the above, or make it make sense to anybody else.  I'm only responsible for telling people about it so that they can make their own decisions.  And also for trying to live as the best example in life that I can be of following Jesus' teachings.  Why Jesus entrusted that message and example to people who often make a botch of it, as I and my fellow Christians do, is another thing I can't explain. 

I do know that I'm glad that I was given the chance to follow Jesus, and that I took it.  It has made my life a lot better, and has made me into a much less fearful and self-centered person than I would have been otherwise.  I've seen first-hand examples of how encounters with Jesus have made some quite radical transformations for the better of other people as well.  I know of people who used to hate each other who love each other and worship Jesus together now.  I know people who love their own worst enemies enough to pray for them to come to Jesus to.  It's what Jesus enables us to do.  So even though I don't know the answers to all the questions, I do know that believing the Bible and following Jesus works.

[Wahoo Redux]

"Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse."

Yeah, I guess that one would be better as "Slaves, rise up and fight your masters, especially the nasty ones; take no thought for whether it will get you flogged or killed."

So, God in His benevolence is protecting the slaves from further unjust punishment rather than simply telling His believers not to be slave owners?

Hmmmmm...not sure your sarcasm is making a good point there, buddy...

[Wahoo Redux]

But the Old Testament hasn't been discarded.  It supplies the background to the New Testament.  Read the New Testament, and you'll see that it draws a great deal from the Old Testament.

So even though I don't know the answers to all the questions, I do know that believing the Bible and following Jesus works.

My friend, this is what I said: no one wants to deal with the indefensible parts of the Bible, there is simply a swerving away.

If one looks at history with a certain angle, it is also possible to argue that following Jesus does not work unless one negates the role of Christianity in the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust, and the Branch Davidian, among many other examples. 

[kaysixteen]

The Bible says some things that offend 21st c secular liberals.   So what's your point?

[Wahoo Redux]

The Bible says some things that offend 21st c secular liberals.   So what's your point?

I think the point is pretty clear.

Some Christians are unable to deal directly with the inhumane contradictions found in the Bible that brings into question the rationale of the religion.

That's just exactly what you did above.

[marshwiggle]

"Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse."

Yeah, I guess that one would be better as "Slaves, rise up and fight your masters, especially the nasty ones; take no thought for whether it will get you flogged or killed."

So, God in His benevolence is protecting the slaves from further unjust punishment rather than simply telling His believers not to be slave owners?

Slaves and owners are two different groups of people. Whether one of them listens (or follows) moral principles cannot be assumed when advising the other. There are all kinds of laws regarding how slaves should be treated, including when they had to be released, and with what provisions.

It's fascinating how easily offended some are that instructions given to people 3000 years ago on the other side of the world don't fit our current sensibilities. How much advice given today do you think will make sense to people 3000 years in the future (and to every generation between now and then)????

I don't pretend to understand all of the instructions in the Old Testament, but also, from reading all kinds of history, I'm aware that the world and civilization then was so vastly different in all kinds of ways that much of what we take for granted would be totally incomprehensible for people then.

[Caracal]

The Bible says some things that offend 21st c secular liberals.   So what's your point?

I think the point is pretty clear.

Some Christians are unable to deal directly with the inhumane contradictions found in the Bible that brings into question the rationale of the religion.

That's just exactly what you did above.

These arguments always get rather silly, mostly because people seem to think that someone woke up the 1700s and made these arguments and they have never been addressed. This is convenient, because then you just get to make really simplistic arguments to people on internet forums without any sense of shame. Usually, people who do this justify this with a belief that theology is dumb.

I'm sympathetic to this kind of thing. I sort of think much of the stuff economists say sounds made up. I could investigate this further, but to do that I'd probably have to admit that the the Micro Econ 101 I took in college combined with stuff I read in the newspaper isn't really a sufficient basis to make any particular judgements. But I don't want to spend my time learning economics because it doesn't interest me. Which is fine, I'm allowed to have lots of partially examined prejudices. However, if I don't want to seem like a doofus, I should probably not go around loudly proclaiming my half baked ideas based on straw men and a total lack of knowledge of a complicated and extensive discipline.

[ciao_yall]

The Bible says some things that offend 21st c secular liberals.  So what's your point?

I think the point is pretty clear.

Some Christians are unable to deal directly with the inhumane contradictions found in the Bible that brings into question the rationale of the religion.

That's just exactly what you did above.

These arguments always get rather silly, mostly because people seem to think that someone woke up the 1700s and made these arguments and they have never been addressed. This is convenient, because then you just get to make really simplistic arguments to people on internet forums without any sense of shame. Usually, people who do this justify this with a belief that theology is dumb.

I'm sympathetic to this kind of thing. I sort of think much of the stuff economists say sounds made up. I could investigate this further, but to do that I'd probably have to admit that the the Micro Econ 101 I took in college combined with stuff I read in the newspaper isn't really a sufficient basis to make any particular judgements. But I don't want to spend my time learning economics because it doesn't interest me. Which is fine, I'm allowed to have lots of partially examined prejudices. However, if I don't want to seem like a doofus, I should probably not go around loudly proclaiming my half baked ideas based on straw men and a total lack of knowledge of a complicated and extensive discipline.

Reminds me of my Fox-News loving butcher, a number of years ago, who asked me if I had been listening to Glenn Beck's take on the economy.

"No, but have you read Paul Krugman in the New York Times?"

He snorted. "Glenn Beck totally takes down Paul Krugman."

"Paul Krugman did win a Nobel Prize for Economics, so he does make some good points."

"Oh."

[apl68]

But the Old Testament hasn't been discarded.  It supplies the background to the New Testament.  Read the New Testament, and you'll see that it draws a great deal from the Old Testament.

So even though I don't know the answers to all the questions, I do know that believing the Bible and following Jesus works.

My friend, this is what I said: no one wants to deal with the indefensible parts of the Bible, there is simply a swerving away.

If one looks at history with a certain angle, it is also possible to argue that following Jesus does not work unless one negates the role of Christianity in the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust, and the Branch Davidian, among many other examples. 

But were they following Jesus?  Sure, they SAID that did, but their lives and actions made it pretty clear that they weren't living lives that followed Jesus' teachings.  Jesus said right from the start that not everybody who claimed to follow him actually would do so.  He also said that in the final judgement some would come to him saying "Didn't we follow you?  Didn't we do things in your name?"  And he will tell him to depart from him, he never knew them, they were workers of evil.

The "Christianity" you have in mind is a huge mass of religious traditions that invoke Jesus and the New Testament, but in most cases have very little to do with actual New Testament teaching.  Somewhere in the middle of all of that have been history's actual followers of Jesus.  As dismaying as the decline in religious observance is to those of us who care about it, I don't know that there are really any fewer honest-to-goodness followers of Jesus in the world than there ever have been. 

Joining a church isn't that hard, if that's what you want to do.  Actually living for Jesus is more of a challenge.  I know people who actually do, though, and it has made all the difference in their lives.

[Wahoo Redux]

But were they following Jesus? 

I expected this response.

Yeah, I'm sorry, but they did follow Jesus. They were Christian from birth and followed their understanding of scripture as you follow your understanding.  They were church members. They believed in the Trinity.  They prayed and looked to the Bible for guidance----and they found passages which they believed gave them sanction to do what they did.  And they felt righteous about their decisions and actions.

It's painful, I know, but there is not way to realistically say they were not Christians because, yeah, they were in the same way that the terrorists who flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were Muslims----the message may have been perverted, but they were acting on religious faith, like it or not.