This is a good summary. I face the same issues, yet I have faith in Jesus.
Having read your replies I think we will have to agree to disagree.
Slavery - a solution to starvation and genocide.
It’s God’s chosen reality, surely? He didn’t have to make the world like this. Evolution paints a different picture to the Garden of Eden story. For me, the only moral answer that one can give to the question “Is it ever moral to own another human being as property?” is a firm “No!”
Genocide - a community so corrupted and disease ridden the only solution is elimination
What about the women who Moses’ army took as their unwilling wives in Numbers 31? What’s described is basically War Crime:
15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them.
16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people.
17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,
18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”
For me, the only moral answer that one can give to the question “Is it ever moral to commit genocide?” is a firm “No!” I suppose the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” only applies to Jewish people? Or Midianite virgins? I find it indefensible.
Homosexuality - sex is to produce kids and faithfulness to protect from disease.
I assume here you mean “heterosexuality”? I personally don’t think sexual intercourse is just about producing children. Do you not accept that there is a pleasure element to sex, which all mammals experience? Without it, mammalian life would not have evolved on this planet. Do you believe in contraception or not? What if a man is “firing blanks” - are they not allowed to have sex just in case they enjoy it?
Homosexuality is sexual behaviour for
gratification alone, and very vulnerable to std's.
As long as it’s consenting I don’t have a problem with a bit of gratification. If you had a child who was gay, how would you handle that? I have seen so much damage done to young people who have come out as gay in unaccepting households.
Sexism - womens role in child birth and looking after kids is a full time commitment.
What about the man’s role? This is very old-fashioned. Tradition is basically just peer pressure from dead people.
Farming, hunting going to war is a full time commitment. This is not sexism, this is reality of our roles.
In the past, maybe, but not now. And we should avoid going to war at all costs.
Hell - a place where God is not, which is outside creation. Reject God, reject existence.
God is everything, its focus, its direction, its essence. If one is at war with who one is, this is just self destruction.
If that’s true, and a Christian ends up in Heaven, but people or animals they have loved are not there (because they are in Hell), how could it be Heaven for them? God would have to completely change their personality, identity and memory in order for it to work and at that moment they would cease to be who they were.
Testimonies are always inconsistent. But the writers wrote down what they were told.
The truth is the incidents, not the details precisely but how people are reacting to the relationships involved.
Scripture is a book of perceptions and interactions, both historical, metaphorical and allegorical.
The fact it demonstrates this underlines its authenticity, rather than denies it.
Are you saying that God cannot look after his own book? That’s easy for him surely?
Yahweh is justice and righteousness in action, Jesus is friendship and intimacy in action.
Both exist in harmony, you cannot approach God without both. Jesus opens the door to
the intimate in God, heaven come to earth in the believer, which was not possible until
He had come and died upon the cross.
They read like different Gods to me. Although they both have a degree of brutality. Yahweh is more physically brutal, and Jesus could be psychologically brutal in what he was saying. Some of this arguably inspired The Spanish Inquisition, which was an appalling moment in history.
Claims of miracles are nothing, they are testimonies of what took place, in historical time, eye witnesses.
Noahs ark is pre-history, which is a story written by God. As such He has His reasons. I just praise Him for
declaring the overview.
It seems like an unlikely event. There’s no scientific evidence of a global flood.
What all of this entails is mystery. And I know in my life I live in mystery. So if I accept Jesus is God, and
He rose from the dead, transforming fearful fishermen into men and women of God, I am prepared to accept
the rest suspending my disbelief. The beauty is, this is history, and what affects me is tomorrow and how
I view it. With Jesus I know the next step, and I praise Him for this. Amen
We were getting on so well. But I disagree with a lot of what you’ve written here. Thanks for taking the time to respond though. More poetry please and less apologetics!
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