| Tim, thanks for your e-mail. |
Yours is the the first critical
e-mail we have received. I suppose that is a good thing in itself.
Now.. I wonder
whether you really would want to live in a world that took its values entirely
from the Old Testament.? I suspect not. |
Is the
vengeful God of the Old Testament the one you serve, or is He a God of Love?
What of the murders, massacres, hatred, etc all done apparently in God's name
or, if you read the O.T. literally as you want to do, sometimes actually
instigated by Him?
Have you chosen to forget this? |
Look, I used to be
a conservative Evangelical Christian. I know all the arguments. I also know that
many Christians of good heart, great generosity and great love, take the bible
very literally, but that love forces them to do so selectively. They have to; if they are
to be civilized creatures. The barbarians of the Old Testament, are not the
people of this millennium. God clearly loved them as they were as he gradually
revealed himself to them, but if 'the law' is to be fulfilled, we can't go
backwards!
(Evangelicals also like to leave out bits in the NT such as the teachings
about women being
silent in Church and keeping their heads covered.)
But seriously, who
decides what is 'OK' in the Bible?
It is also especially dangerous and even
offensive to use such a 'DISNEY' version of the precious scriptures which I hold in great respect.
Translation is everything. Do you know the history of the Bible? Do
you know of the conferences, the corrupt Popes, and great many peoples who
decided at various points in history what would stay in The Bible and what would
not, and how key
passages were to be translated from the original languages? - 'THE BIBLE' has not existed
on 'tablets of stone' unchanged for centuries, you know! |
It has been a
flowing changing poetic work of great beauty, not some stilted rule-book.
Many evangelicals choose to forget this too.
I suspect you will tell me that we must have faith that 'THE BIBLE' as we
know it is in fact God's unchanging Word.
Well, 'by their fruits shall ye know
them' --- the judgemental attitudes, the lack of love, the torture,
the pain, the hatred, that all comes from such strict literal translations IS the 'fruit' There is
no love in that! |
Oh, yes! and
by the way, I assume that if your brother dies you will have sex with his wife
to ensure the blood-line??
(Good O.T. teaching there!)
And have a concubine?
How many did Saul and David have?
That's in the Old Testament too you know.
--- You have not thought this
through. |
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