Letters to the Editor
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Jim C
Again I must ask if you are a Christian, then if you believe me to not be a Christian, then you should seek to have me accept Christ and not turn me away as the Pharisees did.
Would you wish to join a group which treated you the way I was treated by "Christians"?
Would you wish to become a liberal after the way you have been treated here by liberals?
I am an agnostic weak atheist, which means that I do not believe in God but acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not.
Strong atheists believe there is no God, they can be either agnostic or not.
As for homosexuality being a sin, so what? I do not believe in the concept of sin therefore it matters not one jot or tittle to me whether or not someone is a homosexual.
I believe in doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do, not because I fear some horrible punishment in the afterlife.
If one acts in a moral manner out of fear, one is less worthy than one who acts in a moral manner out of a desire to do so for the sake of being moral.
Have you ever played the game of "rumor", where you get a number of people together and the first one whispers a message in the second person's ear and the second person then whispers the same thing in the third person's ear and so on? What you will find after the whispering goes through a number of people is that the last person gets a message that is greatly different from what the first person whispered to the second person.
That is the way the Bible came to be, the earliest Gospels were not written until nearly fifty years after the crucifixion. That is plenty of time for any story to have become warped beyond all recognition.
You are basing your entire faith upon a story which must be greatly different than the actual events, it is a fact of human behavior that our memory is not reliable. Ask a dozen people who watched a given event to describe that event and you will get a dozen different stories. Eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable.
Who is the father of Joseph?
MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli.
Who was at the Empty Tomb? Is it:
MAT 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
MAR 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.
JOH 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
Is Jesus equal to or lesser than?
JOH 10:30 I and my Father are one.
JOH 14:28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
Is it folly to be wise or not?
PRO 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
ECC 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
1 Cor.1:19: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and wil bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
The sins of the father
ISA 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.
DEU 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
Jesus' first sermon plain or mount?
Matt.5:1,2: "And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying...."
Luke6:17,20: "And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people...came to hear him.. And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said..."
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RE: Jim can't read
You've really misread me, Jim. I wasn't trying to destroy the Bible. (Your anihilation fantasies are signs of psychological ill-health. You really ought to see someone about them.) I was pointing out the dangers of taking the Bible literally. I said so quite clearly.
Actually no I didn’t, I expanded your example by showing how arguments like the Flat Earth, geocentric beliefs, etc. are born out of lack of knowledge of the full Word. Quite simple actually. I understand that you were showing how taking some verses on face value literally, cause problems logically. However, I believe all verses are literally truth, except some have meaning that cannot be taken out of context or without deeper study.
The idea of slavery in the bible, the moral laws, and the laws of obedience for the Jews, have to be studied verse by verse and then compared with the whole. We live under grace so as NT believers, we are not bound to the OT law, but God doesn’t change but we can still look to the OT for God’s character and find moral basis and what He desires of us. There things in the Bible that are examples of what not to do as well as examples of things that at the time were reality. The Bible does not endorse slavery as we know it from history of slaves in America. A study of a servant in Bible times will reveal that people would sell themselves to become servants in order to be provided for by their master. There were doctors, lawyers, etc. who were “owned” servants. Slavery in the Bible was not based on racism but on need. So trying to paint the Bible as endorsing slavery is deceiving. The bans on things that we find odd, like blended fabrics do not apply to us. They were laws of obedience to the Jews. It is clearly so. Like I said before, NT believers are not bound by those laws of the OT because Jesus became the fulfillment of the Law forever. The OT is profitable though to see the character of God and what sin is…