[Basilissa]

Re: Does the Bible really say so many mean things?

God really did command His servant, Abraham, to tie down his son to an altar and raise a knife over the boy's body with the intent of slitting the child's throat. God stopped Abraham in the nick of time, but I'm sure that both Abraham and Issac were dealing with some serious stress just before the knife plunged downward.

Indeed Sister - and, God did not bother to intervene in the other instance of human sacrifice:

Judges 11: 30-40
30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,
31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.
(So Jephthah wins and...)
34 And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.
35 And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.
36 And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.
37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.
38 And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.
39 And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,
40 That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

I mean, knowing Jephthah's vow, God could have sent his dog to greet him. Bun no, He wanted a girl to be sacrificed, not some animal!

[thegrimmreaper]

Re: Does the Bible really say so many mean things?

jeb:

P.S. protip: (picture of a shift key)

i apologize for my lack of capitalization, my laptop is over 10 years old, and the caps lock and shift keys are irreversibly damaged. i could use the on-screen keyboard option, but then i'd have to point and click on each letter with my mouse, and i'd rather not waste the time.


basilissa:

So, in your opinion, the Bible lies when it says we are free of sin? Here is a thread that addresses this issue in more detail

to some extent, yes. i believe you can be forgiven sin, by baptism and confession, but i do not believe you are exempt from ever committing a sin thereafter. say you, sir/madam, got into a fight with your spouse (not sure of your relationship status, but let's just assume you're married for this example) over something trivial and you murder them in the heat of the moment. this is an extreme example, i know, but bare with me. murdering your spouse is a sin. it doesn't matter that you've been "saved" and forgiven your past sins, committing murder is a sin (i realize there may some contexts in the bible where murder is acceptable, but in this case it would not be justified), and that would mean you are capable of sinning.

Well, Jesus yelled a lot, too. Have you checked out the thread I linked to in my previous post?

yes, i did. i'm aware jesus yelled a lot, but i don't recall him ever laying a hand on someone to hit or beat them, although i could be wrong.

Don't worry, we're not the Jehowa's witness type, we don't go knocking on anyone's doors. However, those who sign up on these forums come to our virtual home. Not vice versa.

nor did i claim you did go around knocking on people's doors. it has just been my own experience that, once they find out i'm not religious or that i'm gay/do something else they consider wrong, that the christians i have met in person have tried to lecture and convert me when i didn't ask them to and it wasn't relevant to our conversation.


i also didn't imply you were doing so to me, as i chose to come here of my own accord, and that was my own choice. i am speaking of times where this has occurred to me in person and completely unwarranted.

Or not. Which is why a lot of interventions end up in a lot of yelling and a lot of crying.

yes, i understand that, but i don't think that should be your immediate go-to in such a scenario if it could be avoided. if a calm, yet stern and rational discussion doesn't work, then more force could be used.


but brutal honesty is still different than, say, punching this hypothetical addict in the face. an odd example, perhaps, but hopefully i'm making some sort of sense. i fear i am not always the best at putting my thoughts into words.

Please note that when God commands genocide, He even wants children and pregnant women to be slaughtered:

why would young children and babies be included in a religious genocide, though? would it not make more sense to raise them as your own, with your own beliefs? such young children would not have committed any acts against you or your faith, at least not knowingly, so i don't see why such innocent lives would be involved.


i still don't believe genocide is ok, for any reason, and this is something i simply cannot budge from. even if it does say that genocide is acceptable in the bible, i still don't really believe everything the bible says to be fact or that it should be taken seriously. even if you were to prove to me, undeniably, that god existed and everything the bible said was true, i still would not be able to budge on my own personal morals. the same goes for abuse, rape, and equal rights.

Like I said - it really doesn't matter what I think. I'm just citing you straight from the Bible, this is what God thinks. For Christians, His is the only opinion that matters. (there are three other quotes similar to this, but i didn't include them because they basically stated the same thing)

you're citing the bible. this is what you believe god thinks. in christians opinion, what god thinks is all that matters. therefore, if you agree that everything god says is correct, then it is what you think, you do agree with it, and it does matter.

I looked it up, specifically his explanations of Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 - the translation provided by that dude simply does not make sense, can we agree on that? Back then, most people didn't tend to have much space nor furniture, so often the whole family slept in a single bed. Even if adult singles had separate sleeping arrangements (like a bench or something), the scarcity of resources meant that these places were used and reused by people of both sexes. However, even in this contorted translation, the dude who wrote this could not escape the fact that God does not want two men to sleep together in one bed. Period.

yes, i can agree with that, at least to some extent. however, i do not believe this includes the beds of women (or anyone else, of any gender, for that matter) who are single. i don't think anyone should be having sex in someone else's bed, regardless of who they're sleeping with, simply because that's rude, but i believe this is more in reference of cheating on one's spouse than anything else.

Regarding this dude's analysis of New Testament quotes against homosexuality, I was mildly amused, as he quite struggled to support the argument that is usually used, which is that these verses condemn temple prostitution (that argument is based on the fact that the popular Near Eastern religions back then had bordellos in the temples, combining prayer with pleasure). Now, Paul did not help us by using the word ἀρσενοκοῖται here, and I would defer to Brothers Elmer G. White or Pim Pendergrast who have much better knowledge of ancient Greek. With that in mind, I submit in this case - as ἀρσενοκοῖται is used only twice in the Bible and only by Paul, I'm not sure what he meant by it except that it was sinful. (Post ScriptumEDIT: here's a link to Elmer's discussion about ἀρσενοκοῖται and homosexuality in general).

i read through the page of the discussion you linked, as well as the page before and after it for added context, and it was very interesting, i must say. elmer made some good points, and he seems quite educated. a fascinating read, indeed, and it seems to be fairly neutral in stance (or, at least, acknowledges the ambiguity of certain words/passages/etc).

However, this dude's tirade in relation to Romans 1:26-27 is just dumb - you can see it, right? He doesn't even try to argue that these verses prohibit homosexual/lesbian behaviors, because that would be a completely impossible position to defend. His argument that this verse applies only to ancient Rome and nobody else is laughable. If these verses weren't meant for all people of all times, why would they be included in the Bible?

yes, i quite agree with you there. it would be an impossible position to defend, simply because of how much ambiguity there is. and, yes, i agree that him saying it only applies to ancient rome is also quite off, for the most part.


i do think he has a point, however, in saying that the sin discussed in the passage was about trying to change the way you were created to be. i'm not saying this is what it means, exactly, i just think it was a fairly decent point, especially in the case of the ancient romans and their forced bisexuality.

Nitpicking side note: Hebrew is only one of the languages of the Bible, the others include Aramaic and Greek.

i'm aware, i just didn't feel the need to list each one, as he includes that in the about us page.

Maybe that's why they refused his daughters? Maybe he thought they were bisexual but they were gay?

if the men of sodom were all exclusively gay, though (the only exception mentioned, as far as i remember, being lot), i'd expect lot would've known quite well that that was not the case. or, at least, that it was mostly not the case. i admit, i'm not sure.

Well, the Bible doesn't say anything about Jesus beating His mother, but He certainly wasn't too kind to her - there are quite a few instances where He dismisses her as less important than His disciples:

Mark 3:31-34
31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him.
32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.
33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?
34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!

in what way is he regarding her as less important than his disciples in this verse? the way it's worded is a bit confusing to me, so i'd greatly appreciate if you could explain it to me further.


i appreciate you taking the time to discuss these things with me, and that you've remained calm and respectful about it. i must say, most of the christians i have met have not offered me that same amount of respect or thorough explanation, so i appreciate that we can have this discussion.


handmaiden:

Essentially, every human being born deserves to go to a fiery place of damnation. No matter how minor the infraction, the death and burning sentence is leveled upon us all. The only escape from this punishment is offered to us by God for which He allowed His Only Son to die a prolonged, public death.

i have some questions about this, and i'd appreciate if anyone could perhaps shed some light on this. god offered his son to die for sinners, so the gates of heaven could be opened, correct? but then he came back to life three days later. how exactly is this a big deal?


i mean, i get that he died for sinners and so that he could open heaven's gates, but if god is all powerful and can do anything he wants, why not just open the gates without having to sacrifice jesus? and why would jesus dying for us be seen as this big deal if he's immortal and can come back to life whenever he pleases? that would be comparable to you or i breaking a bone and it healing. less than that, actually, because a broken bone takes months to heal, whereas jesus resurrected in three days.


also, none of that would be necessary if sin were not a thing, so why allow sin to be a thing in the first place? you believe god knows everything, past, present and future, correct? and the only reason sin exists is because of satan turning against god, right? so why would he create satan if he knew he'd turn to evil? isn't that counter intuitive?


and if god can do anything he pleases, why not just refuse to allow satan to turn evil in the first place? could he not have controlled lucifer's thought process or restricted his right to make choices and have free will? do angels even have free will? and how would satan turn evil if evil did not exist until he chose to turn against god? did god create evil, because that doesn't make any sense to me.


i apologize for all the questions, i'm just quite curious about these things, as nobody ever clarified them to me growing up. more of a "don't question it" attitude.

[Basilissa]

Re: Does the Bible really say so many mean things?

I'll have to be brief this time, so no colorful quotes, but:

jeb:
to some extent, yes. i believe you can be forgiven sin, by baptism and confession, but i do not believe you are exempt from ever committing a sin thereafter. say you, sir/madam,

Miss, actually.

got into a fight with your spouse (not sure of your relationship status, but let's just assume you're married for this example) over something trivial and you murder them in the heat of the moment. this is an extreme example, i know, but bare with me. murdering your spouse is a sin. it doesn't matter that you've been "saved" and forgiven your past sins, committing murder is a sin (i realize there may some contexts in the bible where murder is acceptable, but in this case it would not be justified), and that would mean you are capable of sinning.

Well, first of all, even before I was Born Again, I don't think I was capable of murder. I'm your Perfect Hypocrite™ - I'll eat dead things but I wouldn't kill it - seriously, I cannot even harm a spider! (Mosquitoes and aphids are the exception which confirm the rule, though).

yes, i did. i'm aware jesus yelled a lot, but i don't recall him ever laying a hand on someone to hit or beat them, although i could be wrong.

You are wrong - think of the case when Jesus beat the crap out of the vendors in the temple...

why would young children and babies be included in a religious genocide, though? would it not make more sense to raise them as your own, with your own beliefs? such young children would not have committed any acts against you or your faith, at least not knowingly, so i don't see why such innocent lives would be involved.

That is a good question. However, God clearly hates everyone who does not believe in Him (John 3:18), which means little children who die before being able to accept Jesus as their Savior, are destined to Hell.

i still don't believe genocide is ok, for any reason, and this is something i simply cannot budge from. even if it does say that genocide is acceptable in the bible, i still don't really believe everything the bible says to be fact or that it should be taken seriously.

That's the thing: if parts of the Bible are unacceptable, then the whole structure falls apart. If the bits about genocide are wrong, how are we to know that the bits about Jesus are correct?

you're citing the bible. this is what you believe god thinks. in christians opinion, what god thinks is all that matters. therefore, if you agree that everything god says is correct, then it is what you think, you do agree with it, and it does matter.

Well, if I don't agree, then God will send me to Hell. That's the beauty of the free will: we either willingly submit to God's Will, or we have the free choice of going to Hell.

yes, i can agree with that, at least to some extent. however, i do not believe this includes the beds of women (or anyone else, of any gender, for that matter) who are single. i don't think anyone should be having sex in someone else's bed, regardless of who they're sleeping with, simply because that's rude,

Well, these days, we have guest rooms in our houses, but in the past, people would receive their guests in their own beds (either everyone sleeping together or the house owners moving to the floor). So again, people would be breaking that rule each time they receive guests in their houses.

but i believe this is more in reference of cheating on one's spouse than anything else.

That is your interpretation of that highly confusing translation, and you are entitled to it.

Or, you could try to come up with your own translation based on the links I provided.

elmer made some good points, and he seems quite educated.

He certainly is!

i do think he has a point, however, in saying that the sin discussed in the passage was about trying to change the way you were created to be. i'm not saying this is what it means, exactly, i just think it was a fairly decent point, especially in the case of the ancient romans and their forced bisexuality.

Why would it be forced? I mean, sure, it certainly would have been forced on part of the boys who were on the "receiving end," but the same can be said of rapes of female slaves. Which would circle us back to the statement that rape of a male is worse than rape of a female.

if the men of sodom were all exclusively gay, though (the only exception mentioned, as far as i remember, being lot), i'd expect lot would've known quite well that that was not the case. or, at least, that it was mostly not the case. i admit, i'm not sure.

That doesn't really matter, as what God abhors is the homosexual act - so whether these people were bi or gay, the fact that they would consider engaging in homosexual behavior made them disgusting in the eyes of the Lord.

in what way is he regarding her as less important than his disciples in this verse? the way it's worded is a bit confusing to me, so i'd greatly appreciate if you could explain it to me further.

He preferred to spend time with His disciples than with His own mother, basically telling her to wait her turn. Is that something you would say to your mother, when she comes to visit after you haven't seen her for a while?

Plus, there are the verses in which Jesus tells us to hate our own mothers.

i have some questions about this, and i'd appreciate if anyone could perhaps shed some light on this. god offered his son to die for sinners, so the gates of heaven could be opened, correct? but then he came back to life three days later. how exactly is this a big deal?

You are not the first person here to ask this question. I'll just say this: this world is God's creation, His world, His rules. Who are we to question Him?

whereas jesus resurrected in three days.

One and a half day if we want to be 100% correct (He died Friday evening, was dead the whole Saturday, and revived Sunday morning).

so why would he create satan if he knew he'd turn to evil? isn't that counter intuitive?

Isaiah 45:7. The evil was part of God's plan from the get-go.

[Ezekiel Bathfire]

Re: Does the Bible really say so many mean things?

is... is this for real?

Landover is as real as the Fires of Hell, and we are but Servants of the Most High God who has tasked us, and all mankind, to follow His Laws that His Kingdom might come and that we may regain Paradise, which was lost at the Fall of Adam.

The Bible is God's Word and only God's Word. It is inerrant. All that is required is that you open your mind and heart, and you too may have Eternal Life with Jesus in Heaven.

[Brother Gonzalez]

Re: Does the Bible really say so many mean things?

thegrimmreaper, you are a racist. You write such long walls of text so the non-americans like myself cannot read them.

But I can have a lot of use for you, if instead of walls of text you want to build real walls.

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

Re: Does the Bible really say so many mean things?

is... is this for real? like, not only this article, but all the other weird ass articles, this whole website, all of y'all... is this for real?

I think it's hilarious that liberals are still saying this after 62,979,879 Americans voted for Donald Trump.

Of course, they are also claiming that didn't happen, and was all a prank pulled by Russian bots. О нет, товарищи, они нашли наш секрет! (Лол)

[MitzaLizalor]

Re: Does the Bible really say so many mean things?

Not only that but they're claiming that The Bible does not teach what it so obviously does and twisting themselves into knots to get the interpretation they want. I looked at another of those links.

At the heart of the claim that the Bible is clear "that homosexuality is forbidden by God" is poor biblical scholarship and a cultural bias read into the Bible.

What cultural bias? That prevailing at the time the Masoretic text was compiled? Maybe the cultural bias of 1st century Jewry was at work? Better not mention the Alexandrians. What would they know about classical Hebrew? Even if they'd learned it by rote they could hardly produce a reliable translation. And yet their effort was good enough for Matthew – but what would Matthew know? Amateurs, the lot of them, is about what the first sentence amounts to. Moving on:

The Bible says nothing about "homosexuality" as an innate dimension of personality. Sexual orientation was not understood in biblical times. There are references in the Bible to same-gender sexual behavior………

I can't let that pass. According to the secular agenda—not all secularists agree with this but I'm responding to a narrow claim here—concepts of gender have nothing to do with biology. Therefore a boy who thinks he's a girl is regarded as a real girl and presumably grows up to be a real woman. As a consequence, he could (as a woman) engage in "same-gender sexual behavior" with someone else who identifies as a woman but who is actually female and not contravene the Biblical prohibition in this respect.

………references in the Bible to same-gender sexual behavior and all of them are undeniably negative. But what is condemned in these passages is the violence, idolatry and exploitation related to the behavior, not the same-gender nature of the behavior.

No it's not. But is this author really equating homosexuality with violence, idolatry and exploitation? Why? Idolatry is condemned in its own right without elaboration unless a specific idol is mentioned or a grove or a high place or some such detail. For example the Exodus prohibition of interspecies erotica falls between two verses addressing witches and sacrifice to other gods; would this be claimed as acceptable for people who weren't idolators or witches?

There are references in the Bible to different-gender sexual behavior that are just as condemning for the same reasons. But no one claims that the condemnation is because the behavior was between a man and a woman.

That's because it's not. Again, taking temple prostitutes as an example, are we expected to accept them if there aren't any idols involved? Of course not! This is explicit in Deuteronomy 23:17.

Sexuality is a wonderful gift from God. It is more than genital behavior.

And yet that's what God condemns. It doesn't matter what you call it, why you do it, whether you enjoy it or charge for it or treat it as performance art, as far as God's concerned it's an abomination. The idea that no-one had a word for it is equally ridiculous. They didn't have a word for boomerang either, but if Euclid saw one and wrote a description I'm quite sure that Archimedes could have made one. There are, however, a number of words available and if the concept of "sexual orientation" was unknown to God that's because it doesn't exist. Given the detail He went into it's hardly something He'd forget to include.

These mental contortions—necessary to make The Bible mean something no-one ever thought it meant for thousands of years including the people whose culture preserved the text and produced a standard collation over approx. a millennium with reference to the Greek from Alexandria as well as the knowledge they had of their own language—are more than obsessions or neuroses. They are insanity. The particular source in this case:

https://www.hrc.org/resources/what-does-the-bible-say-about-homosexuality

A rational person would look at something they disagreed with and think, "What a load of rubbish! I don't agree with that," and discard the ideas altogether. For instance, I've read the koran and the communist manifesto: utter, utter garbage! Not only do I disagree, I think such ideas should be eradicated. So strong an opinion requires more investigation than a superficial reading of texts alone. Maybe visit some places where the ideas inform laws or talk to people about the ideas (after all I might have misunderstood) or see what changes occur when the ideas are imported to somewhere they never were before. And I've done those things. My conclusion is that far from mere rubbish, the literature in both cases—together with the societies and cultures they bring into being—are despicable. Could some other interpretation be wrought from the text? Probably, by changing the meanings of words and tying oneself up in knots. But I don't do that. I reject the tenets of both equally based on what they are in fact, not what they could possibly be if they meant something they don't mean or were implemented in a way neither the founders nor their minions across decades and centuries ever envisaged. Because then they'd be something else.

If you want something other than The Bible, with which you disagree, why not say so?