loki09789 said:
1) God is a god of peace and love yet he spoke to Prophets (I believe Samual) who advised that Jewish troops were to commit genecide on an enemy to the last goat/sheep/cattle... 2) he also wiped the race of man from the planet in a flood saving only Noah. 3) God also destroyed all but one family in Soddom and Gomorrha... 4) One of the most celebrated heros of the old testament (David) was, in essence, a guerrila warrior and (in some eyes) a terrorist... 5) Mosaic law that started with the ten commandments (Godly communicated or written depending on who you talk to) and expanded well beyond that count to include justified murder of a wife guilty of adultery by stoning.
6) Jesus satisified the Messianic 'signs' with things like riding into Bethelehem on a mule (though the different new testament books will dispute how this event exactly happened) and such yet he didn't meet the expectations of the day that the Messiah was an old school Jewish war hero like old king David. 7) Jesus, in comparing the different gospels, is either the son of man or the son of God. 8) Jesus also at times will tell people that xyz is the way to God and that all will be forgiven with things like deeds being like "unclean rags", yet in another gospel or scene he will say that repentent behavior and reconsiliation is the way to salvation....Jesus' recognition as the true messiah was partly based on the presence of the three magi (read astrologists/pagan/false idol worshippers) with their gifts and divinations/stargazings that predicted Jesus' birth. 9) Moses used his 'works' to duel against the Pharoahs magi but Jesus says essentially that Miracles are not to be done as parlor tricks to satisfy the whims of unbelievers....
10) Please don't confuse my 'contradiction' statement to mean that I don't think it is divine or inspirational. It is a mystery for each person to unlock in their own way and devotion can be seen as a demonstration of how seriously a person wants to 'get closer to God' by truly understanding what is or is not there to see, either in the Bible or people....
11) Too many times people who put faith above all only parrot what they have been pointed to read/understand OR only search/see things that justify what they do....
I say that like the many faces of the Buddhist mountain koan or the various experiences of the Plato's blind men explaining an elephant, we have to explore and explore to really understand.
My favorite quote about this subject comes from "Shadowlands" about C.S.Lewis (Played by Anthony Hopkins): "I don't pray to change God, I pray to change myself...", I would say the same for really reading/knowing the text of the bible and understanding the transliteration history of it.
Paul
Thanks for the response, I added numbers to your post to address them. On the surface I agree these items seem like contradictions however I'll try and explain some of them for you.
If you look at the bible from one end to another as a whole not parts then these things fall into place and are not contradictory. I don't want to hijak the thread so once again if you disagree with me, find me in error etc. etc. if you want we can take this off line.
1) On the committing genocide issue/God being a God of peace and love. God is a holy and rightoues god who knows not sin, we are sinners (this is covered in Romans). God when he sent the Jews/children of Isreal out into the desert he told them to take the promise land by force, driving everyone out before them, basically killing every living thing. They didn't obey and within a short time what happened, they reverted back to idol worship (Bael), the OT repeatedly gives examples of God telling Isreal to do this and they instead did that, leading them astray. This was the reason for the extermenation, to remove the influenece of the other cultures.
2) Same point as above. Man had become very sinful so much it grieved God, therefore He sent judgement. And before anyone says well He shouldn't have done that, He had Noah build an ark that some scholars (I understand) say took well over 100 years to build. Now rain wasn't around then and no one but his family believed that anything was going to happen, life went on as usual till the day the floodgates opened and the rain came. God was patient He waited and still no one came. Again this is an example of how great man's sin was and his rejection of God.
3) God sent the angles to Lot in Soddom, possibly due to Lot being a decent man (he was an elder or some sort of judge/ruler/man of influence in the city), but I think it was to show Abraham that life was precious to Him (this is where Abraham's discourse with God comes in What about 50 good men, 40 good men, 30 good men all the way down to 5 I think) Out of a city/region (S&G) of 250,000 (aprox. figure I read somewhere) only five were saved. And actually when you look at what Lot did by offering up his virgin daughters to be raped by the men of the city instead of the angles. Then I have to wonder how rightoues he really was. In fact due to his wife wanting to turn around and look back and his daughters later on getting Lot drunk and sleeping with him, I really think it was God shiowing compassion for Abraham than Lot being rightoues.
4) David: when was he a terrorist? He was a king who screwed up, he was a king who turned away from God for a time and lost his kingdom to his son who raped his women/wives up on top of his palace to show the contempt he had for his father the king. Absoloam was so prideful that God judged him by having the source of his pride catch on or get caught on a tree branch so that one of David's generals could find him and kill him and put an end to the war. But David was so blinded by the love he had for his son he didn't want him harmed, which is why the general killed him because they knew David wouldn't.
5) Again the adultry issue is one of wipeing out the sinful influenece. The person who would end up stoning the women would be the man whom she sinned against. Think about the message that would send to everyone as well as the person throwing the first stone. Jesus brought forth the misunderstanding of this issue with the woman "let he who has no sin cast the first stone" He showed His/God's compassion by His next phrase "Go and sin no more". The same concept/punishment was given for a habitual unruly child as well. That man used this to allow for him to commit adultry but yet punish women is not God's fault.
6) The gospels are written from four different points of view for four different groups of people with four different emphasises. This does not mean they are false, or they did not happen. If you take an car accident and four different people saw it from different vantage points the stories might seem different but they all describe the same event. In this case it's the life of Jesus. He didn't meet the expetations of the Jewish people because they were looking for a different king, one that would set up the kingdom here on earth. Jesus came to offer a spiritual kingdom at this point in His life.
7) Again why Jesus has different names is because different people were describing Him, and in different times He was describing Himself. For instance John's gospel is meant to show that Jesus was the Son of God therefore he calls Him the Word "and the Word was God" Jhn.1:1 and John goes on to describe Jesus as diety.
8) It is rependant behaviour. It is faith in who Christ is (Peter and the early disciples, the thief on the cross), it is obeying God (Noah, Abraham, Moses) and loving God (David, Joseph) etc. etc. It's all one in the same fatih = action. It is knowing that we need the saviour and that we can't get there on our own, through good works, baptism, circumcison, keeping the law, etc. etc.
9) Now who called Moses out? God. Who didn't want to go? Moses. God told Moses to go and show pharoah these things. It wasn't a simple duel. God showed the pharoah these things to 1) demonstrate His power to an unbelieving country 2) demonstrate to the Isrealites that His power is real and He had come for His chosen people 3) This also helped Moses to have faith in God and in himself as the leader of the people in the days to come out in the wilderness. need I go on. These weren't "parlor tricks" The crossing of the Red Sea, the eating of mana, water from the rock, God residing in the tent and leading them out in the desert all lead up to them taking the promised land. And even then the people/Isrealites still grumbled and complained and were afraid of taking the land. And when they did take the land they still disobeyed and fell away.
10) Coming from my world view as a Christian I can't really agree here. But that's my opinon.
11) While I somewhat agree here on the parroting issue, I do agree that to often people only say something and don't really look into the true meaning behind what goes on. However while I have looked into and studied to a small degree other religions, Islam, Morrmonism, JW, 7th Day Adventists, Catholism, Freemasonary, different protesterant faiths, etc. etc. I have found that what I needed more study in was in my basic beliefs in the Christian faith. I've looked at these other religions through a Christian faith world view (so to speak, I was a Christian first so I know my view is biased on that belief system).
Anyway I don't want to hijak this thread. I offer up my apoligies if I've offened anyone. I was wanting to answer Paul's post here and I knew if I didn't do it tonight I wouldn't get back to it. It's late please forgive any misspellings as I've been typing here by the light of the monitor screen while my wife sleeps.
With respect
Mark