Sorry...this god is not for me.
That explicitly states that not even a tiny part of the law is to be altered, "Till heaven and earth pass".
Have you actually studied or even read the Bible Krumple? There is a bit more to the context than you give it credit for when quote mining to make a point.
I refuse to get suckered into defending against a barrage of quote mining. There are dozens more verses you could toss out and I'm just not here to defend the Bible against ignorance. Whatever you pick out of scripture next should be weighed against the context of the situation for those people, in that violent arena, at that violent time. Quote mining only serves to deceive the minds of modernity.
You forget that God was answering 700 years of prayers against brutal enslavement and fulfilling prophecy of his own promise a thousand years beforehand.
Please describe what an acceptable God would be for xris. How should God have made the Universe and how should God have made Humans that would meet with your satisfaction?
In providing your preferred description, please be careful not to unwittingly describe Heaven or God himself in the process. You can describe your perfect Universe any way you like, as long as it doesn't sound like Heaven, and you can describe your perfect Human creation any way you like as long as it doesn't sound like God.
...I believe that there would be far fewer believers if they actually did read the bible.
I bet a majority of believers have never read it from cover to cover. They only know the parts that they hear in church.
Well I could have kept going with the whole chapter, it pretty much supports the whole thing that I stated... So feel free to keep saying I'm quote mining when you know that I'm not.
So if... some group decides to enslave you, say Americans, and to bring justice to the situation, you can kill the infants of those slavers? How is killing the children of someone a justice?
I know, because the bible writers believe that generations are accountable for the actions of their ancestors and should be held to the same tune as them.
Only a backward system would support such a claim and you are here defending it.
It is the ONLY way original sin works. Why should babies have to suffer for the crimes their great grandfathers committed? It is absurd.
Maybe we should kill off all Austrian babies to prevent another Hitler from growing up?
If I could do that then my searching would be at end.
I dont need a god to accept that life and death have more than we can imagine.
Why should I invent a god when there is no necessity.
If god makes himself known to me and he convinces me of his logical existence, I will let you know.
To me his invention ,by desire, has stopped many souls from searching for their spirituality and finding reason for life.
If I was pushed into describing god ,I would say he is everyone of us, we are good and the evil , our salvation will be when we rid ourselves of evil intent and become as one.
We can neither blame god nor praise him but we can condemn our evil and praise our goodness.
Seek god in your being don't look for him because he is within you, be a power of good and we will become god the benevolent.
If man was created by your god then he invented Hitler and all the other nasty souls that have existed or do you just select the saints to make god look good at creation?
You claim the good but not the bad , rather selective.
Hitler represented evil , without other evil men he had no more evil than any other sick barsteward.
My spirituality is not constructed by dogmatic scriptures, it accepts we need more than ancient words written by men to attain enlightenment.
But could it be that some teachings are not necessarily meant to be read at their face value? Aside from the Children's Picture Bible, the Old Testament is not easily digested without the guidance from one who has studied it against history and language evolution. It would be like looking through a Calculus book without first learning simple Addition. Some understandings must be guided. Deep understandings must evolve.
If I could do that then my searching would be at end. I dont need a god to accept that life and death have more than we can imagine. Why should I invent a god when there is no necessity. If god makes himself known to me and he convinces me of his logical existence, I will let you know. To me his invention ,by desire, has stopped many souls from searching for their spirituality and finding reason for life. If I was pushed into describing god ,I would say he is everyone of us, we are good and the evil , our salvation will be when we rid ourselves of evil intent and become as one. We can neither blame god nor praise him but we can condemn our evil and praise our goodness. Seek god in your being don't look for him because he is within you, be a power of good and we will become god the benevolent.
How about you guys actually reading some of my posts, especially in light of the fact that I am the initiator of this thread
I think evil, like fear exists for one purpose....to be conquered. To paraphrase a quote from Arjuna which I thought was very applicable, these trials(evils) merely serve as a medium by which greatness can become known. For it is through adversity that one truly learns what kind of person one is. And in the words of Thomas Paine, "the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."(4)Forth, back to the idea of progressive revelation is the fact that the reason things of this nature do not go on today is because God poured out His wrath and rejection of sin on Jesus.
Jesus bore the brunt of a large portion of God's judgment towards sin. He that was without sin, was made to become sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Through Christ we are no longer bound by the chains of the old law but we fall under a completely new covenant, and while the old law still exists, we understand that it is through faith that we establish that Law.
In fact, Paul says we were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that we might be joined to another, to Him who raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. The point is that Law brings us knowledge of sin, while Christ frees us from the burden of sin. So that we are no longer dead, but that we can have life, and have it more abundantly.
I only write this to say that we have to keep things in perspective and attempt to see the big picture as best we can. At the end of the day, God did exactly what was necessary to achieve His goal and only that which was just. And the lessons for us today are completely different in light of new revelations(ie Christ)
I never claimed God created Hitler or the Saints. God created Life, thus making both Hitler and the Saints possible. Hitler and the Saints created their own essence with every good and evil deed they pursued for themselves. God's not pulling their strings.
Not so Xris. Each man claims the good and bad for themselves. God has nothing to do with our individual choices.
To you... and me. But he represented good to the German people of his time. Good and Evil are not from God. Free Will is from God. Good and Evil are man made concepts. They are purely subjective. They are from the perspective of mankind and weighed against the given circumstances of the moments that are upon them.
That's great. Spirituality does not necessarily have to come from the scriptures. And you are right, we do need more than ancient words written by men. We need current hearts and minds cultivated by men. Why is it so unacceptable to weigh our current hearts and minds against ancient scripture though?
And lastly, please tell me what your personal spirituality tells you about the creation of the Universe and our fate in the Afterlife? If you are spiritual, then you must believe in Spirit. What is the source and end fate of the Spirit? If you don't believe in Spirit, then you cannot possibly be spiritual.
So what purpose is life to an orphan child dying of starvation before its reached three, Alan. What wondrous gift of life experiences has this child endured to find salvation. How long must humanity suffer these cruelties before it is worthy of gods presence? How many horrors must we view before we are capable of grace? It just dont make sense Alan.
The purpose may well be collective and not individual...
...unfortunattly HORROR instructs and teaches...
