When you go to a salad bar, you take the things you like, and everything else - you leave it on the table. I do the same thing with the ideas I come across from various philosophers. If a Philosopher has a lot of ideas, but only one or two seem to have merit, I treat his philosophy like a salad bar, taking what I want, and leaving the rest. I see no moral or ethical issues with this.
However, is it OK to do the same with “The Word of God”.
How is it OK to say “I shall remember the sabbath and keep it holy” but I’ll pass on that whole “Thou shall not covet” thing. I mean, have you seem my neighbor’s plasma TV. I definitely covet it!
How about “I’ll ignore god’s commandment forbidding graven images, so I can show my respect for god by wearing a cross?”
Or “I’ll do as Jesus said, and turn the other cheeck - unless someone says we should worship false idols. I just don’t feel like following Deuteronomy, and burning their village to the ground”
Or those who choose to throw out the entire Old Testament, because god realized he was wrong, and gave us the better, improved, new testament?
If The Bible really is the word of God - what justification is there for treating it like a salad bar, and choosing what you like, and leaving the rest behind?
The Belief is that there is an on going revelation and that God is not static. From one book to the next in the Bible, there were changes which were embarrassing only to a Greek audience.
There is what I call “struggling with scripture”. The Bible is the word of God…filtered by man. The Bible speaks of this struggle in the pages of Isaiah, Jeremiah and others, books written by religious outsiders criticizing what was at the time the uncontroversial word of God. And yet they were approached by God to struggle against “His” institution. Jesus was crucified by the accepted version of the word of God.
So, my answer is that the word of God is better alive in your heart than dead in dried ink. When it goes against what is in your heart a struggle ensues against the proclaimed meaning of the scripture. Yet tradition has it that this struggle is not new and that God works within but also outside the religious institution.
The book of genesis, as a foundation, should be debated before anything else. Most people want to discuss the “how to live” part not the “why we exist” part. Essentially, these people are ignoring the explanation of creation which would be acceptable with proof or maybe even God’s intentions, but none of that present. So I don’t skip to the middle and make points here and there. People who do that have personal agendas. Including war.
It’s funny … keeping the Sabbath is one of the 10 commands, yet to the majority of Christians the Sabbath isn’t even on the buffet bar. So every Sunday Christians break one of the 10 commandments … even the most stout Sola scriptura Christian breaks the 10 commandments every Sunday. Good thing Jesus died for their sins. And they can sin with impunity.
And prayer. At a Church of Christ church I was attending a married man with two children was told by a doctor that he had a bad heart valve. He had no symptoms of any heart problem. So a heart operation, and valve replacement, was scheduled.
Everyone knew how serious this operation was. So Sunday before the operation in Sunday school class we got in a circle, held hands, and each person said a prayer for the operation to go well. This brother, and his family, was well know in the Church of Christ community. So there was more than a thousand Christians praying for the operation to go well.
But it didn’t go well. He walked into the hospital feeling like a healthy man. He came out with a toe tag. He died.
So did all those Christians admit that prayer doesn’t work, and quit praying? NO!
Like Nietzsche said : “Faith is not wanting to know what’s true.”
I think it is a natural human behavior to take what they like and identify with it. I think the act of Christians doing this with the bible is a good sign that they are evolving past the bindings of the past.
Yea, James, Jesus wants to be reminded of how his all powerfull daddy let him die. I always thought the use of the cross demented.You wear the thing that cruelly killed Jesus then pray to have him help you. That is just twisted.
What you think of it couldn’t be less relevant.
And I don’t think they ever took up the practice of wearing Jews twisted around their neck.
I’m sure we would have heard about it… for-ever.
To just address this simple point: I find the Bible to be “the word of God” insofar as the “the word of God” and “truth” share the same referent. I do not think the Bible is infallible, and I do not think the Bible is the only source for “the word of God.”
James, If they did wear that around their necks It would be just as twisted and demented. Jesus was Jewish and spoke of love, tolerance and acceptance. It would be an insult to Jesus.
It symbolized his courage and willingness to give even to death, “sacrificed for the cause of saving Man from his past mistakes”. If you look at any veteran’s cemetery, you see the same thing merely for a different cause.
There wouldn’t be one, except, for example, if one considers Jesus to have rightfully reformed the OT, updated it as it were. That would allow one to not follow all of the OT. But if you believe the Bible is the word of God, no distortions by the ‘writers’, than it would seem one should have to follow everything. On the other hand if you believe it was divinely inspired but not infallible, then you would not be inconsistent picking and choosing.
Kris, I’m not really a christian any more but to a ‘real’ and ‘faithful’ christian, the cross is not a demented, twisted ignominious thing. It does represent great love and sacrifice on the part of the one who they take to be the son of god and who died for them. In certain terms, if the resurrection is believed in, one can take the cross as a symbol of transcendence, spiritual freedom and the victory of life over death. Each to his own belief!
Wearing a cross to a christian who wears it for that reason is really not much different than you or I wearing a heart with our children’s picture in it. It’s a reminder that we keep close (not that we nor the christian need that kind of a reminder).
That is not to say that [some] christians do not wear the cross as a talisman, in a superstitious way, as a way to protect themselves which to me is totally irrational given that they might get into their car drunk as a skunk and expect the cross around their neck or dangling from their mirror to protect them.
It all comes down to our own perspective - how we view things - what we believe in - what we hold as sacred. Unless we have swam in those waters or walked in those mocassins, we cannot begin to understand where they are coming from. And if viewed from their perspective, it might come to be seen as more natural, at least from their point of view, if not from ours.