Christians, are violent old testament verses relevant to your beliefs today?

Christians, are violent old testament verses relevant to your beliefs today?

Nope. Not one bit.
You'll find that Christianity is evolving in a positive direction.

Can I ask you a silly question?

Are you also going to ask the Jews? After all, the OT IS Torah and Tanakh.

Hmm, I would think you would as the people who had the Bible in the first place.

a reply to: windword

Christians like to brag about America being a Christian nation founded on Christian values, yet look at what those values have brought to our country and government. When was the last president who wasn't Christian in office? It's been a while.

Politicians pander to the majority, which are Christian. Religion is a political tool more than anything.

a reply to: rokkuman

Christians use the book not only as a guide on how to behave and live theirs lives, but as a guide on how not to behave.

The Bible says, "Thou shalt not murder," yet God says to Joshua, "Go in and clean house, and don't leave anything breathing! Don't leave a donkey, child, woman, old man or old woman breathing. Wipe out Jericho."

My answer to that is that there is a point in history, a season in history, where God is the immediate king of a people, Israel, different than the way he is the king over the church, which is from all the peoples of Israel and does not have a political, ethnic dimension to it.

With Joshua there was a political, ethnic dimension, God was immediate king, and he uses this people as his instrument to accomplish his judgment in the world at that time. And God, it says, let the sins of the Amorites accumulate for 400 years so that they would be full (Genesis 15:16), and then sends his own people in as instruments of judgment.

So I would vindicate Joshua by saying that in that setting, with that relationship between God and his people, it was right for Joshua to do what God told him to do, which was to annihilate the people.

But that's much more complex morally than saying that God does it. He can cause a flood and kill everybody on the planet except 8 people and not do a single one of them any wrong. But he didn't ask anybody else to do that. It gets difficult when he uses others.

An example of this right now is that God has given the sword to the government (Romans 13:4). Therefore I believe the government has a right to take a rapist and a murderer and to put him in jail. Or to kill him.

I think capital punishment is consistent with Genesis 9 and consistent with God's character, because of the value of man: "The blood of a man shall be shed for taking the blood of a man" (Genesis 9:6) But that's very different than saying that anybody can go around killing people.

So God has his times and seasons for when he shares his authority to take and give life. And the church today is not Israel, and we are not a political entity. Therefore the word we have from the Lord today is, "Love your enemy. Pray for those who abuse you. Lay your life down for the world. Don't kill in order to spread the gospel, but die to spread it."

link

Just like any father punishing his children he stated the wages of sin is death how much more clear do you want it???

originally posted by: FlyersFan

Christianity is evolving



That can't be, Christians don't believe in evolution.

originally posted by: ATF1886
Just like any father punishing his children he stated the wages of sin is death how much more clear do you want it???

So what was the sin of the infants and babies that were slaughtered? Oh wait let me guess they inherited the sin from eating the fruit? give me a break.

Like I said in the op i expected that christians are going to justify it. Christians have no qualms with violence as long its their side doing it. The ultimate hypocrisy.

originally posted by: FlyersFan

Christians, are violent old testament verses relevant to your beliefs today?

Nope. Not one bit.
You'll find that Christianity is evolving in a positive direction.

It seems there is a huge disconnect with some people. They ask Christians this question when it wasn't Christians who made the OT to begin with.

But here is the deal, even if we went by the NT only as Christians, the Gideons did publish the NT handbook, so we have to wonder, are the Christians even obligated to the OT as Christians? The Jews don't think so, no Christian is obligated to the laws of Moses, therefore not obligated to the OT.

But since Jesus WAS an Orthodox Jew and did preach from the OT, then perhaps we are kind of through osmosis. However as Jesus did preach primarily to Jews about the OT and wasn't trying to remove it, rather He was trying to get them to see they needed to change their ideas about things, Jesus DID show the greater parts of Torah that include mercy and grace and forgiveness, that are indeed in the Torah and Tanakh.

I think therefore that the obligation the Christian would have is the mercy, grace and forgiveness, that Jesus did teach.

originally posted by: Shakawkaw
That can't be, Christians don't believe in evolution.

Last I saw, something like 40% of American Christians believe in creationism.
That's a whole lot different from the 100% of years gone by.
Like I said ... evolving ...

a reply to: ATF1886

So why make the Israelites break his commandments when he could have poofed them out of existence a lot quicker and easier? Why risk the suffering and lives of his chosen people when he could have done it himself much quicker? There is no logic in it, the long article you posted is just an example of trying to complicate things to make the contradiction look logical. He struck Ananias and Sapphira dead in the NT, why not with his "enemies" in the OT as well? Does he just enjoy watching his creation fight to the death?

a reply to: Shakawkaw

Christians don't know what they believe any more than any other organised religious order. They simply believe whatever there priest cast tell them to. That being said it's not Christianity that has a problem regarding intolerance toward others these days or so it seems to me anyway.

originally posted by: FlyersFan

originally posted by: Shakawkaw
That can't be, Christians don't believe in evolution.

Last I saw, something like 40% of American Christians believe in creationism.
That's a whole lot different from the 100% of years gone by.
Like I said ... evolving ...

Nvm, my bad

originally posted by: rokkuman

originally posted by: ATF1886
Just like any father punishing his children he stated the wages of sin is death how much more clear do you want it???

So what was the sin of the infants and babies that were slaughtered? Oh wait let me guess they inherited the sin from eating the fruit? give me a break.

Like I said in the op i expected that christians are going to justify it. Christians have no qualms with violence as long its their side doing it. The ultimate hypocrisy.

What sin does a baby commit for it to get the death sentence of abortion?

Why should a baby be punished for the crime of rape or incest?

Justification now in your corner, please hit the ball back.

I think the OP is somewhat of a troll. That being said, if you're only following the parts of a religion that you like, and not the whole of the "word of God", why follow at all.

originally posted by: WarminIndy

What sin does a baby commit for it to get the death sentence of abortion?

Why should a baby be punished for the crime of rape or incest?

Justification now in your corner, please hit the ball back.

Well flip that argument to god in the OT when he killed plenty of newborns and pregnant women. Why would a baby have to pay for the sins of its parents in the context of the Amalekites and other genocides in the name of Yahweh? What did those babies do to deserve to die.

Maybe getting an abortion is to save that baby from a miserable life, I see that argument used when the OT is brought up, the babies were "saved" somehow.

originally posted by: WarminIndy
Can I ask you a silly question?

Are you also going to ask the Jews? After all, the OT IS Torah and Tanakh.

Hmm, I would think you would as the people who had the Bible in the first place.

passing the buck, I see.

No, I'm asking christians specifically since you have chosen to include the Old testament in your holy book. And its you guys go around passing tracts talking about how God is loving etc. when in reality the God of the Bible had people slaughter infants and babies.

originally posted by: WarminIndy

originally posted by: rokkuman

originally posted by: ATF1886
Just like any father punishing his children he stated the wages of sin is death how much more clear do you want it???

So what was the sin of the infants and babies that were slaughtered? Oh wait let me guess they inherited the sin from eating the fruit? give me a break.

Like I said in the op i expected that christians are going to justify it. Christians have no qualms with violence as long its their side doing it. The ultimate hypocrisy.

What sin does a baby commit for it to get the death sentence of abortion?

Why should a baby be punished for the crime of rape or incest?

Justification now in your corner, please hit the ball back.

Abortion is not the same as killing babies and children.

hey wait weren't you the one pointing fingers at Islam because little girls were burned in that other thread??? and you are here now justifying the killings of children in the bible?

my gosh what a hypocrite.

Well I'm an atheist but I know many christians.
You can ask them to change their holy book, you have the right to ask. But I have a feeling that most of them are going to tell you to stick it where the monkey put the peanut.

a reply to: WarminIndy

What sin does a baby commit for it to get the death sentence of abortion?

Don't worry, the Old Testament God orders plenty of abortions too!