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Old 2008-07-27, 15:19   Link #1125
monster
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Originally Posted by WanderingKnight View Post
Okay, let's clear something up, and pronto:

The Bible was written by men. Anyone who doubts that is instantly barred from any kind of discussion possible.
I don't think anybody has ever disputed that, WanderingKnight. It's just that Christians believe that those men were inspired by God.

But I do not see why that should bar people from having a discussion.
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Likewise, even if you are a Christian, and even if you do believe in God over every other thing in this planet, you should realize that the Bible was written a long, long time ago, for people who had a very different set of values and tools with which understand and interpret the world.
Isn't that all the more reason to carefully study the Bible?
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Though I'm wary of thinking that the main purpose of writing the book was simply "spreading the word of God" (isn't it too much of a coincidence that the word of God is spread by those in power?),
Are you calling a tent maker and fishermen, men in power?
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either way, it's a book that was meant to be read and understood a very long time ago.
While the people of that time may posses the knowledge to understand the Scriptures more easily, it does not mean that today's people are hopeless in understanding it at all.
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Now, let's go back to Israelites raping women in Canaan (I believe I was the one who mentioned that in the first place). If only you used your head, even for a bit, to think in historic terms, rape is something extremely common throughout several (if not all) ancient people. Thinking that there wasn't even a single rape committed during the invasion of Canaan is, at the very best, terribly naive. But, whether God or not had "ordered" it is completely irrelevant: such acts were automatically justified by the Bible in the idea that pursuing such a war was a God-given right.
There are many acts told in the Bible that God permits to happen. That does not mean God justifies them. But even if God did, the implication to the readers today is still the same: we are not them, we were not told to go wage war and settle in Canaan, just because they did it does not mean we can do it too, etc.
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Think, people, think. This is not about denying that God exists, this is about using your damn head for a moment. You're trying to literally accept the words of a book that was written by men more than 2000 years ago! Do you realize just how much has society changed since then? How difficult it is to understand how people of that era thought?
Society may have change, but that does not mean we are totally disconnected from the people in the past. Like when God told Abram to go out of his country to a place God will show him. Do we really need to be people living at that time to understand that? I mean, sure, we may not appreciate the full cultural significance of that one command (isn't that why there's people who study ancient cultures?). But we can understand it, as well as its theological significance, well enough.
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As someone said already, how would you know none of the current wars are divinely justified? How would you know that Bush was actually right and that the invasion of Iraq (with all its civilian casualties, and all the tortured Iraqi and American soldiers) was his God-given right?
I don't know about you, but for me, the fact that neither Jesus nor any of his apostles spoke about planning a physical war is a telltale sign that war is no longer an active part of God's plan (at least, not until the end).

It does not mean that God could not justify a war, but since he did not specifically mention a war, it is not a concern for me to ponder whether a war is divinely justified or not. So whether or not Bush's war (or the Crusades, or any other conflict) is divinely justified is irrelevant. Jesus told us to love each other. But wars happen and there are other justifications people can use for them. Did God let it happen? Yes, otherwise, it would not happen. Did God justify it? I would not know for sure until I meet him in Heaven, although I'm leaning on the answer being no for most wars based on the teachings of Jesus.
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