*test post excuse me*

[ edit to add.. my previous post wasnt showing until I posted this test post ]

[edit on 8-5-2008 by P-a-r-a-d-o-X-2]

Originally posted by livingtorch
First let me say that I have not read all of the replies your original post has received thus far. So others may have already stated what I am about to say.

That having been said, you have a pre-supposition that Christianity is a religion of peace.

Jesus himself says in Matthew 10:34, "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword."

All who do not accept the free gift (i.e. Jesus) God has given to all people will be counted as enemies of God.

God is not ultimately going to decide who will enter heaven. YOU will. It's like playing a game of Chess. One person makes a move, and then the other person makes a move.

God sending His son Jesus to die on a cross for our sin, and then raising Him from the dead was HIS move.

All God asks of us is that we call on the name of His son Jesus, and we will be saved and live eternally in heaven with God.

In regards to the hypocrisy you mentioned, unfortunately whenever people are involved, many of them do NOT follow the whole Bible. Some Christians pick and choose those things they are going to believe, and toss out the rest.

Some factions state that miracles "died out with the apostles". I know this is false, man-made doctrine. I have seen many miracles performed right before my own eyes. Sometime God has used me, and sometimes God has used others I was with to perform His miracles.

But are you willing to damn your own spirit to hell because of a bunch of ill-informed, hypocritical people?

Sure, Christians make mistakes. We make LOTS of them. But we will not be here for the coming troubles. We are going to be supernaturally taken off the earth to a great 7 year feast with God. (Many Christians will also debate this point, but if you truly search the New Testament, you will find this to be true.)

Thank you livingtorch. We needed that.

As for the video I believe that the video is REPULSIVE too.

It is gross in its since of logic and understanding and the person who made the video was probably a flunkie in philosophy.

He is trying to philosophically prove that the bible is repulsive, but by doing so, he still forgets scripture that really does matter. For the Ten Commandments thing that he kept on bringing up, he said that the punishment was death, and this is true. It is punishable by death. Concerning Philosophy, one of the Goals of Philosophy is to understand religions. Yet, he still does not take into account John 3:16. Yes, those sins were punishable by death, but because of Jesus the world does not have to be brutal like that anymore.

As for the slavery and sexist stuff, parts of the Bible (well, in my opinion) have been false transcriptions of the word of God. Humans do mess up, and sometimes, the prophets who wrote the books messed up too.

livingtorch said above, and I quote "Sure, Christians make mistakes. We make LOTS of them." So who ever said that we were perfect? I know some major douches tried to make themselves look perfect in the middle ages, and some still do, but that is a mistake also. We all make mistakes and we are all sinners.

Jesus himself says in Matthew 10:34, "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword."

It was a metaphor. It meant that believing in him and trying to follow his teachings would split up members in the same house who disagreed. It would cause arguments based merely on the fact that it was so radically different than anything else being taught at the time.

Most religions taught "Eye for an eye."
Jesus didn't.
Most taught that women were worse than second class citizens.
Jesus didn't.
the list goes on and on.

the way i see it is its all a matter of opinion.

those who have not found what they beleive is the meaning of life will question everything that has.

christianity is there infront of you . The LORDS word is there for the reading if you choose to follow it that is up to you(god gave as all free will to do as we like)

but i make one point. If you do not beleive that is fine, us as christians can do our best to spread the good word but follow this if you will.

Treat your neighbour as you would want to be treated.

Its not about books. We need to seek the nature of God. How? Look within yourself and others. What is the purest nature of humans? Love. Even little children know love. Hate is something this material world creates within us. Religion is man made, it is not of God. God is all loving. God is not jealous or prideful. The Old Testament will mislead the masses because it causes people to justify their God in killings and consuming blood.

If a teaching is about self awareness, peace and love...there you will find God. If it is about revenge, hate, and pride...you will not find God. Its that simple.

I dont think its bad to claim yourself a follower of Christ if you understand, Christ offered a flesh body for the better of mankind, to learn the value of faith in life eternally. Christ was not a sacrifice for sins. Without these so called 'sins' we would not be able to value the good consciousness. Also, God would not be able to value the light from the dark.

You can be a follower of the peaceful Christ, but how can you claim such a wrathful God as his Father? Give the Prime Father of all things a little more credit in the nature of the Most High....Love. Its unbeatable. Love is the Highest Power, the highest vibration of all things. We come here, out of love, and we will return, only through love.

What really gets to me is that no one has yet to get to the real issue yet. Yes the bible is barbaric. From the point of Adam to the end of the Revelation it is barbaric. Sadly, so are people. Taking God, Jesus, and any other reference to a spiritual being out of the picture, We, as human beings nailed a guy to a tree for saying "Wouldn't it be great if we were nice to each other for a change." Oddly, we have yet to get any better. Our wars have gotten bloodier and more vast over the years. We have come up with many new and interesting ways to make sure our neighbor dies horrifically. Its not God that's barbaric, it's us. And to say that you follow a barbaric God because you are barbaric is just plain silly. And worse, saying that Christians are barbaric is even more so. If nothing else we are trying to live a life of tolerance and forgiveness, just like that guy doing an imitation of a scarecrow asked us to do 2000 years ago. And oddly, should anyone ask, I am a Christian, and even worse a Minister. I'm not trying to convert anyone, I just wish that others could view our religion with the same tolerance and openness as they do others.

You only have to read all the pro Christian rants on this thread to see how brainwashed religious people are. Organised religion is about control, it's about telling people what to think, rather than using ones own mind to think for themselves. I also take great offence at being called barbaric. I have committed no sins, I have no blood on my hands and if the bible is anything to go by, I'm a lot more spiritually evolved than this phony barbaric GOD that we are all supposed to worship. Take a hike GOD, get back to me when your half as evolved as I am. Fortunately I have enough common sense to know that the bible is not the word of GOD. It's nothing more than blasphemy.

According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus warned that no one should ever entrust their spiritual development and well being to others, be they priests, politicians or prophets. It's obvious where humanity went wrong. Ironically the Gospel of Thomas is banned from the bible by the Roman Catholic Church. Go figure!. Walk your own path and find your own truth. I also denounce those who claim to know what GOD is or what it represents. The truth is no one knows, you are just speculating.

[edit on 15-10-2008 by kindred]

This video is a shockingly sophomoric attempt to pass "argument by outrage" as legitimate discourse. I got as far as the first argument about the sabbath before stopping. Sabbath rules were written because those groups to which it applied were under a covenant relationship, at a time in history when such bonds were life and death matters. Also, if the producer were to bother to actually study the subject, he would have realized that the use of hyperbolic language is a common tactic in Semitic literature. It highlights how important the matter is being discussed.

However, the video did raise a legitimate question (although the producer was too caught up in his "gotcha" that he failed to realize he raised it): Does the NT contradict the Hebrew Scriptures in its treatment of the immutability of the Mosaic Law?

THe video makes the claim that the laws of God are not subject to change in any form. This is a clear misinterpretation of the Biblical meaning of immutability. As Glenn Miller points out:

1. No one [in this paradigm community, remember!] disputes that God's ethical principles of love, fairness, and integrity are part of His eternal character and therefore, ethically normative for creatures of will throughout all the ages. Such principles are inherent within His character, which is--fortunately for us--reliably 'immutable'.

2. Virtually no one [in this paradigm community…and I will stop adding that to each statement from now on--just remember it is implicit in this discussion] disputes that some of God's commandments were one-time-only, specific to one-individual at one time, and not binding on any other soul. Examples might be the commandment to Moses to climb the mountain to look at the Land and then die, or the command to Noah to build an ark in preparation for the Flood, or the command to Jeremiah to buy a specific field before the Captivity. These are imperatives and commands (mitzvoth), but they do not apply to everyone and to every time and to every situation (generally, they only applied once).

3. In between these two extremes is a very wide spectrum of 'commandments'. Consider some of these, and where they should be placed on the continuum between universally obligatory and 'disposable', 'once-use-only':

· The command to Abraham to circumcise himself, his descendents, and all the males in his household. Was this ethically binding on the Gentiles? On Terah, Nahor, and Laban? On Noah or Enoch?

· The command to "love your neighbor as yourself".

· The command for all Jewish males--WHEREVER THEY LIVED--to visit Jerusalem three times a year (and no less). During the Babylonian captivity? "Backward-obligatory?"--when enslaved in Egypt?

· The command for Isaiah to go around half-naked for several months, as a statement to Israel.

4. Notice from the above that the question of 'backward-compatibility' (or 'backwardly eternal'?) has bearing on our question. Through some 'curious' logic and a bit of semi-equivocation (i.e., equating Torah with the Mosaic Law), some in Rabbinic Israel made an argument that ran like this:

· Torah includes the Mosaic Law.

· Torah and Wisdom are identified (Prov 8.22ff, and constantly so in the Rabbinics).

· Wisdom was said to be present 'at the creation of the world' (Proverbs again).

· Therefore, the Mosaic Law was present before the Creation of the World.

With this understanding, we then ask the question of whether Eternal equates to Unchanging? But since Mosaic law changed withing the lifetime of Moses (ie. Passover laws in Ex 12 and Deut. 16), and others changed within the post-Mosaic period due to reaction to events (such as the changes necessitated by the destruction of the first Temple and the first diaspora), it is obvious that these Eternal laws were mutable under given circumstances. This is also noted by the use of the word olam,

which does not have the connotation of eternal when used to describe relationships. In these usages the word connotates no changes as long as the original conditions of the relationship are in place. Change those conditions and the rules change as well.

This is a fatal weakness in the video's argument. No, we should not kill those who work on the Sabbath, because our relationship to God has changed. New rules apply.

blackops

" Instead of deflecting and dancing around the questions and topics at hand, why not give an explanation about why it is that your "religion of peace" is clearly so blood thirsty and barbaric? "



Maybe the REAL problem lays , with an observer that cant tell the difference between a liar/fraud from the real!......

Maybe the problem lays in the fact the OP has never read The Book and only understands it from third party hearsay. And is therefore subject to more manipulations than I could shake a stick at.

I'm sorry OP, but Christianity was never supposed to be a religion, but instead, a way of life. And you can't understand that until it gets taught to you. And that won't happen if you are ignorant with a hard heart. If you are ignorant with a sincere heart, you CAN learn, but you'll have to try very very hard. Are you willing?

I can tell you right now, you've broad brushed Christians based on the fakes you've seen without even establishing who these people were.

And since you can't tell the difference between the real and the fake, I'm not sure I should spend a lot of time here until you are brought up to speed.

It is more then faith....for those who quote their scriptures and are awaiting God to show the 'wrong doers' just how wrong they are and oh they will pay the price.

The ONLY reason you say God is JUST is because in order to be a follower of the ENTIRE bible, one must come to that conclusion. It is the EXCUSE the bible gives for God loosing hope in the ones who were 'born of the wrong seed'.

If there are those born of a wrong seed>does this mean God loves them less...so he looses hope faster in them to kill them?

The ONLY reason you say God is JUST is because you have to when following the entire bible. How else would a follower of the bible justify such a wrathful God? There is no other way....you HAVE to say, thee is JUST.

So many people get caught up defending their scriptures, when they should be learning the true nature of our creator by looking within themselves. So many people get caught up defending a scripture that supposedly has the TRUE story of Adam and Eve...when there is no way a story of such things could survive without tamperment or destruction (the world flood). And the flood story says.....that God brought the flood to destroy this 'bad seed'...BUT then after the flood God says that some from this bad seed still remained on the earth. THIS IS JUST A STORY TAKEN FROM A ENTIRE DIFFERENT GENERATION AND ADDED TO THE HEBREWS AS THEY SAW FIT>

God is not awaiting to punish us! We are a part of Thee, Thee is waiting to only love us. God is going through our experiences with us, through our thoughts, feelings and and experiences. God loves us unconditionally. The story about 'doing wrong and burning in hell ' is created by man to explain the unexplained. I can think of MANY stories in the bible where Gods reasons for doing something was NOT just! Man chooses to ignore their inner voice over the scriptures and says 'because God says so'.

God does not work in ways without reasons! God does not do anything 'because he says so'. God is more perfect then that. God is more perfect then to kill people out of lose of hope. God is more perfect then to kill babies to prove a point of his power. The only thing that people who quote the bible is armed with is their bible. I would rather be armed with my nature, which is the Holy Spirit, the divine nature that flows through all life, the wisdom that can be saught through stillness and humble living. God placed thees secrets and mysteries in a place that can carry his divinity far longer then any book, which is the Adam, THE MANKIND. God placed Eve in mankind...God placed life in mankind. We are the carriers of the divine, we are the instruments that thee will shine through, we are THEE. WE ARE THE I AM. Ever single one of us, are a spark of God. We are all a self of God, experiencing ourselves and other selves as a divided experience.

Yes there can be wrong doings. There is the ability to do wrong in order to understand what we have. You must experience lose in order to be thankful for what you have. You must experience sorrow to truly understand the quality of happiness and contentment. You must experience through other selves, just as well as yourself, to know, we are all ONE of THEE.

NO WHERE IN ANY BOOK OR PROPHECY DID GOD SAY>HERE IS THE LIST OF BOOKS I WANT IN MY FINAL BOOK>NO WHERE DOES GOD SAY THIS>NO WHERE IS THERE ANY PROOF THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT STORIES ARE OF ONLY THE HISTORY OF THE HEBREW>THERE IS MORE PROOF THAT THESE STORIES HAVE BEEN REWRITTEN AFTER BEING BORROWED FROM CANNON, EGYPT and SUMERIAN HISTORY, THEN THERE IS THE STORIES ORIGINATING WITH ONLY HEBREWS.

I believe in Jesus, I believe Jesus was able to reach the highest purest purpose of life here on earth>THE PATH TO SERVE THE OTHER SELVES<

The religious fanatics took the story of Jesus and told it in a way that could be added to their history book. Which is to keep the masses believing God requires blood and God will cast you all in hell one day. HELL IS EARTH>IF YOU DONT GET THIS CONNECTION>THAT WE ARE ONE WITH THEE< UNCONDITIONALLY LOVED< YOU COME BACK TO THIS HELL HOLE OF SORROW ANS CHANCE YOUR SOULS DIMMING MORE AND MORE. Become humble in knowing, you are a part of God going through an experience of being separated into many selves, without KNOWING thee self.

If you do wrong to someone, satan didnt make you do it, your EGO made you do it. This is why the ancient monks, hindus, Buddhist...teach us to RID OUR EGO. Rid of the pride that you know you are right. Rid of the idea that you are a chosen one. Rid of the idea that scriptures make you wise. KNOW that only a fool knows himself to be wise! The gnashing of teeth, is being brought back to this world were humans DO GNASH THEIR TEETH. A world that God can not be seen, a world that can grind you and take your spirit, the true meaning of what God tells Adam and Eve...you will surely die. Its not the death of flesh, this world is THE world that can kill your soul.

Religious fanatics want you to think that God thinks of you as being evil, God thinks of you as being not worthy. YOU ARE WORTHY>BECAUSE YOU ARE A PART OF THEE. God did not require the blood of Jesus as a sacrifice.....JESUS OFFERED HIS BREAD AND WINE (body and spirit) TO TEACH US HOW TO NOT BE BORN INTO THIS WORLD AGAIN. BY LIVING A LIFE OF SERVING OTHERS MORE THEN OUR OWN SELF>

I think most of us think that its possible there is life in the universe other then ourselves. Think about this, masses and millions of possible life living somewhere else. Do they all need a Jesus? Do they all need a spiritual book>? What if they have figured that the nature of God, is within them, the purpose is to experience opportunities in these material worlds, its God experiences millions a pone millions of thoughts and feelings through his many manifestations>ALL AT ONCE. God is experiencing through his/her many trillions of selves, as a separate self.

EVERY SINGLE PATH HAS PURPOSE, EVEN THE PATH OF WRATH AND GREED AND PRIDE>THE PURPOSE IS GOD EXPERIENCING THROUGH THE VICTIM, THE SUFFERING ONE, THE HURT ONE< THE LONELY ONE. EVERY RELIGIOUS PATH HAS PURPOSE< THEY EACH BRING THEE A STEP CLOSER TO THEE>BUT, THERE IS A HIGHER PATH< OF BECOMING ONE WITH THEE< LETTING YOUR BODY BE AN INSTRUMENT FOR THEE> BEING WORTHY OF THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE THAT IS WAITING FOR THEE, WHICH IS all of us. A higher path awaits, its a path of serving others, living for your other selves, forgiving the wrongs of yourself and your other selves.

LV