The Glade 4.0

*sigh* No, no, no, a thousand times no. If all you want to do is toss out canned, preset responses, then let's not continue, shall we?

Then frankly Bery, you need to explain yourself better.

You admit to Christianity changing over time. And throughout all your posts you comment on how there is a singular truth and that the changes in society are due to this disease of not letting God rule.

When I bring up Lutheranism, you immediately agree that it's a change, and then say that you need to look at the why of the changes to find the disease. Indicating that Lutheranism is a symptom.

Explain to me then, how Luther nailing up a list of things that he felt the church was wrong on is a symptop of some un-named, un-defined disease.

You say it's easy, and that we're making this hard and don't need to, but yet you can't even seem to be able to articulate a coherant message on what exactly this disease is.

Doubly hilarious in light of the fact that Lutheranism is far closer, doctrinally, to early Christianity than anything American evangelical fundamentalism practices. The denominations that place the greatest emphasis on remaining true to the earliest forms of Christianity are Eastern Orthodox denominations.

The irony of watching people who are members of the most fractious form of Christianity in history complain that "change" is a symptom of "disease" gives new meaning to the term "comedy gold". It relies on a truely colossal level of conceit that a highly Americanized Christianity that's formed since 1830 or so is magically the same form of Christianity practiced prior to 1st Nicea, and that somehow social change in the United States over that time represents some sort of decay in our moral fiber... despite the fact that we have moved from trying to enforce morality (a major error of Christianity throughout history) to making people responsible for their own by decriminalizing sin.. which even more ironically would seem to fit with the "personal relationship with God" we hear so much about.

Of course, from the outside it's easy to see that there are thousands of different doctrines all claiming to "take the Bible literally" and "be true to the early Church" yet they still split over nonsense like the presence or absence of Adam's belly button.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The moral law of God existed for as long as God has existed. It was by that law that God threw Adam and Eve out of the garden. It was by that law that God condemned Cain for killing Abel. So prior to Judaism, man has been subject to that law. And man rebelled and still rebels.

Along came Judaism, and God used Moses to set down His moral law. But Judaism changed over the years to the point that when Jesus came He condemned the Jews for their practices, which on the outside looked so righteous but inside was corrupt and rotten. It served to prove that by the deeds of the law we are all guilty before God, because we all break His moral law.

Christ died and rose again to redeem us, and out of that act rose another religion, that changed over the centuries; Judaism did, and so has Christianity. The existance of denominations is a terrible condemnation of Christianity; Christ did not divide us so. But over time, people started deciding to do things their way, instead of God's way. Leaders of "this" church wanted to do "this", people could not agree, and splits occur. Sometimes the church leaders were at fault. Sometimes the people who decided to leave were at fault. But it still comes back to the same disease.

Aizle, people do not want to subject themselves to God's moral law. That is the disease that causes all the symptoms we see around us. Even Christians are guilty of this (actual Christians, not only the CINO's) at times. If that were not true, we would not see the divisions in the church that we see. A phrase you see in the OT occasionally is "And everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (paraphrased)and even today in Christianity you see that attitude: "We live under grace and the law no longer applies to us" is nothing more than a variant of "And everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

That's the disease. Non-believers will not yield to the moral law of God, and nowadays even Christians will not do so if the moral law conflicts with what they want.

But you see so many people who look at the symptoms and call it the disease, as I've said. It makes me think of people looking at a man with pneumonia and calling his fever the disease. Then they want to treat the fever, and debate the merits of aspirin or ibuprofen, and think that they're making the patient better. What they accomplish is to reduce his fever, temporarily making him more comfortable, but do nothing for the disease that may be killing him. The patient needs medicine for his fever, sure. But he also needs antibiotics to cure the infection, and I see people on this board who don't even consider that he needs antibiotics.

My stance on abortion is always the same; we as a nation shed innocent blood and God will take us to task for it. When He went to Cain, He told Cain: "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground." I tell you all, the voice of the blood of those innocent abortion victims cries out to God, and He hears.

So debate the merits of aspirin or ibuprofen if you must, but you're not curing anything.

And what is it that makes you so 100% sure that you are right, and all these other religious organizations are wrong?

Literally each major denomotation has hundreds of people, who's job it is to learn and interpret the Bible and their religions teachings. Why is it that they haven't come to understand what you have?

The problem with that entire approach is that the only purpose of God's moral law is to demonstrate that no one can follow it. The "disease" is a constant and nothing any of us can ever do can change that. It gets neither worse nor better.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not so. The disease, untreated, leads to death for those not saved by faith, and is detrimental even to those of faith. The law is good in many ways. By the law we can see into the heart of God, because God says to us through the law, "Don't do that, you'll hurt yourself." Those who are of faith who understand the law is still to be obeyed as best we can will stumble, occasionally, but it is not a defining characteristic of their lives, and repentance follows. A good example would be king David, who lived a life after God's own heart, yet stumbled sometimes.

You state one of the purposes of the law, to be sure, and an important purpose. My objection is with the "only purpose".

Then you're wrong, because that IS the only purpose. You even admit it: you acknowledge death for those not saved by faith and detriment to those saved. That condition is universal to all humans at all times in history following the Fall. The disease cannot be remedied by any action and claiming that anything is a symptom of it is purely superfluous; everything is a symptom of it. There's no reason to single any particualr events out.

God constructs some of the law around "don't do that, you'll hurt yourself" to keep His point relevant to all times and places, but a lot of it was simply not relevant beyond the time period and place it was given in.

The law forbade entering the Holy of Holies except in very specific circumstances. Aaron had to undergo a lengthy, complex purification to do so. Punishment for going in unbidden was severe. Yet where is the holy of holies today?

It doesn't exist, because, like much of the ancient law, it no longer pertains. Does your church have a holy of holies that only the priest may enter? No? Must be a sign of disease.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Wanna re-think this? I recommend it. The truth is that the Holy of Holies of the temple in Jerusalem does not exist, but if it did, I certainly would not enter it since I am not of the line of Aaron so far as I know. IMO, it very much pertains except for the fact that God allowed the temple to be destroyed. Are you going to just walk in there, should the day come in your lifetime that the Jerusalem temple is rebuilt?

I don't think I'll have any particular reason to walk in there, but I would have no fear of doing so:

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Your morality is NOT solely based in the Bible or the NT Bery.

Where is slavery condemned? Yet I think (hope) you would agree that slavery is morally wrong.

How about Genocide? God on several occasions in the bible demands the total annihilation of another people. Yet I challenge you to participate in such an act.

The very real fact that you are unwilling to accept is that morality is a necessary social evolution.

Those religions with moral codes that lend themselves to stable societies (such as Christianity, but also many others) reinforce a set of behaviors that allows them to prosper.

Those portions of morality get changed over time as society evolves and the zeitgeist leads some portions of religious doctrine to take greater prominence than others. For centuries Slavery was justified using Scripture.. then it was abolished by people arguing Scripture. It was society and economic pressures, and changing social values. It is the height of hubris to assume that the vision of Christianity you practice is the 'most pure' or 'most correct' Everyone makes this claim. You're still passing it through a moral filter that has been handed to you by society's norms.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

While your point is good your examples aren't so great. God did specifically command genocide against several specific nations, but he also sets down rules in the OT for trating foriegners properly. He doesn't give license for us to do things just because He commanded them in specific circumstances.

Slavery is also not really handled the same way in the OT as slavery was in America, or even serfdom in the middle ages.

Of course, that does highlight the hypocrisy of those who have justified such things with Scripture.

In any case, society social values pressure to change arose in part from people with different religious views. Society and social values are not independant of religious views. In fact, religious views are one of the main sources of societal values.

Economics, however, are an independant force, as you say.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."