HalifaxTalk.com

[Blackcat]

[perspective]

[Blackcat]

I will show more respect for your opinion this time around, Perspective!

You have as much right to it as a Hindu, Muslum, Buddhist or Zoroastrian has to theirs.

So let me respond a little more generally this time.

I think there are a great many people whose personal beliefs sometimes are at odds with the Bible, for any number of reasons. They approach the Bible as they would a smorgasbord. They like to pick and choose what parts suit them from the parts they don't like. For instance, someone may support anti-homosexual legislation because homosexuality is supposedly condemned in scripture. But those very same books that condemn same-sex relations also, for example, require people to stone disobedient children to death or condemn someone who wears a shirt made of two kinds of fabric. No special emphasis is placed on one of these laws over the others---they are all equal in Biblical law. Yet, some people will outlaw gay relations while at the same time eating a ham sandwich on the Sabbath.

Other people will find that parts of the Bible simply don't match their own personal, idiosyncratic view of what their God must be like and their personal beliefs about what he may or may not do. For these people, it is important to pretend that the Bible says nothing that contradicts their own particular point of view, or they will go through convoluted arguments in an effort to explain that an uncomfortable passage actually means something entirely different. Or, like the cherry-pickers in the first example, they ferret out those parts of scripture that support their view and ignore the others. I might hesitantly suggest that the personal God of such people is actually one of their own invention.

To put this in the short form, what one would like to believe may be at complete odds with what the Bible actually says.

Obviously these approaches work for these individuals and if they are satisfied with them then there really isn't too much to say.

But what I would like to discuss is what the Bible actually says, not what people would prefer that it says or what they deny that it says.
_________________
"Those who have you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire.

[perspective]

[Blackcat]

[Blackcat]

[Ogy]

[Blackcat]

[1093ras]

Yeah, that's right. And usually a parent answers "Because" because they either have already answered the question/request or they are tired of the conversation or just because that is the correct answer.
_________________
Blessed are they who can give without remembering and take without forgetting
(Author unknown)

Posted by Bunny Propst

[Blackcat]