OT equivalent of militant Islam?

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Jepne
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Jepne » Thu Jul 04, 2013 10:54 pm

Earlier today, I was reading the posts of Steve and Paidion, and as Paidion left for town, I sat here thinking that if 'anything happens' to him on the highway, it could be interpreted to mean that it happened because he doubted the inerrancy of the Bible.

This reminded me of my earlier years as a Christian when we believed that God in his sovereignty was responsible for everything that happened, and whenever tragedy came to anyone, we all knew the reason and made judgments as to what may have brought it on them.

But, since I was a Christian, why didn't He take out those who were destroying my life? Then, as I would pray for them, I would find myself weeping for them! We watched many blatant wrongdoers, Christian and non-Christian alike, going through life seemingly unscathed, but why, in the judgments such as hurricanes, did good innocent Christian people die right alongside the rest of fallen humanity?

This way of thinking encouraged me to blame God when my life fell apart and when tragedy came to my grandson - and blame myself as well!! Was it not God's judgment on me?!?! I finally had to acknowledge that if it is true that God loves and cares for His people, I know nothing about why these things happen.

Then I read part of “Is God to Blame?” by Gregory Boyd, and I was very relieved. Very relieved.

Now I see that we live in a fallen world and Jesus came to rescue us. I see God as all-loving, and weeping with us when our lives and hearts get shattered to bits. It is not His judgment on us, and for once, I live in peace

Our view of God rules how we live our lives - how we love others, value life, and comfort others in times of tragedy – and whether we can welcome God's comfort to us.

What about God's correction? One Sunday night I was trying to enter into the worship at our church, but something was holding me back until I briefly felt an arm around my shoulders, even though no one was close to me. It was He. I knew I had been angry, but now it left and I was free to worship Him. I have never known Him to be harsh.

I re-read Acts 5 and it does look to me like the deaths were some sort of divine appointment, but cannot see the nurse's puncturing my grandson's lung with the feeding tube and the awful things that followed leading to his death as the work of my Father.

Jesus said in John 10:10 the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
"Anything you think you know about God that you can't find in the person of Jesus, you have reason to question.” - anonymous

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steve
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Fri Jul 05, 2013 12:37 pm

Hi Jepne,

It seems that you and Don misunderstand the position of those who take the view that all scripture—including the parts describing severe judgments—is a reliable record of God's revelation. Don thinks that someone who accepts the scriptures would have no reason to oppose abortion, and you fear that if something were to happen to Don, this would lead some to see it as God's judgment on him for doubting inerrancy. These are very extreme parodies of the biblical teaching.

Even if Don were to deny the whole Bible, I would not expect the judgment of God to fall on him while he drives to town. I believe that God's supernatural intervention to judge the wicked is very rare. The flood only happened once, and no other city has suffered the like fate of Sodom and the cities of the plain. The Bible calls direct judgment God's "strange act" (Isa.28:21), because it is so unusual. But the same Bible insists that there are times when God judges.

I am, myself, a very even-tempered man, and very sympathetic to my children. Once some of the teenaged kids in the church asked my teenaged kids, "Doesn't your father ever get angry?" Their reply, as reported to me, was, "Not very often." Should those inquiring children then have thought, "Well, if he sometimes gets angry, he apparently isn't the loving father we took him to be!"? It is absurd to suggest that a loving man (or a loving God) would never find occasion to be angry, or to discipline, or even to physically injure or kill someone who is endangering his family. It might be argued that killing an attacker would not be the Christian's preferred response, but it would be ridiculous to say that his doing so would be in contrast to his being a loving man.

I am glad that you know God to be loving and gracious, since He is clearly all that and more. However, unless we accept everything God has revealed about Himself, we will be worshipping a misshapen deity made in our own image.

Blessings!

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steve
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Fri Jul 05, 2013 12:37 pm

Hi Paidion,

You wrote:
The following seems to be your position. If we kill people we are wicked and must be imprisoned for life, or even executed. If God kills people it is right and good.
There would be a more accurate way to state my position: If I kill someone, I am overstepping my domain, and taking God’s prerogatives upon myself. If He kills someone (as both testaments clearly affirm that He does), or if He authorizes governments to do so, He is not overstepping His domain, but is exercising His just rule over society.

For me to imprison my neighbor because I see him as a lawbreaker would be a criminal act on my part. However, if the police arrest him, and consign him to prison, they have not committed a wrong, but have exercised their duties. I would think that someone without an agenda could see this clearly.
The condition seems to be that if a man forces a virgin, that is rapes her, she must become his wife for life. No thought is given to the needs of the young woman. How many young women would WANT to become the wife of the man who raped her? Would you be okay with this, if it were your daughter who was raped? After all, you'd get 50 shekels of silver out of the deal!
When seeking to make a case against the righteousness of one of God’s laws, one ought at least to represent the law accurately. You have not done so. It is true that the first obligation of a man who deflowers a virgin is to marry her, since, in ancient societies, his doing so has greatly reduced her chances of finding a husband otherwise. However, this obligation could be cancelled by in the girl’s interests by her father.

Would I be okay with my daughter being forced to marry a man she did not wish to marry? Absolutely not, so I would forbid the marriage, which is what the law permits a father to do. It is disingenuous to say that the law does not take into consideration the girl’s wishes. Wouldn’t most fathers see it as their duty to protect their daughters against unhappy marriages?

You might be surprised, though, if you lived in ancient Near East, instead of modern Canada, how many a woman would have preferred to marry and have a family with a man toward whom she felt no romantic interest, rather than to be consigned to permanent singleness and childlessness. We have at least one historical case on record where a raped woman desired this very thing (2 Samuel 13:12-16).

Your concerns are far more culturally provincial than you seem to be willing to recognize.
But I suppose the girl would accept the marriage cheerfully once she came to know that it was God's command, and that He would command only the best for everyone concerned.
Absolutely! I was in a miserable marriage for years, but knowing it was the will of God for me to stay in it, I gladly complied, and would have done so for the rest of my life. That is one characteristic of people who love and trust God. They embrace what they believe to be His will, rather than their own. You might remember someone in the Garden of Gethsemane that modeled this attitude.
But then again, I suppose the man would punished a little, too, in that he would not permitted to divorce her.
True again.
Oh, I must post another well-known one that's brought up quite frequently:

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall put away the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear. (Deut. 21:17-21)
You almost successfully dodged every point I have made against your position in my last post, but you accidentally succumbed to the main one by bringing up this example. You treat this law as if it is one with which Jesus would not agree. Yet, as I pointed out in my last post, the law that said, “He that curses father or mother must be put to death” (very similar to this one) is a statement that Christ specifically identified as a command of God (Matt.15:4). If Jesus recognized God as the author of the command requiring the killing of a rebellious son in one case, how can an argument be made that He did not recognize the divine origin of an almost identical command?

I challenged you on this in my previous post. And how do you answer the point? Only with mockery. Because it goes against you grain, you will not allow Jesus even to speak His own mind. He can’t possibly mean what He said, if it doesn't conform to your man-made limitations on what God is allowed to reveal about Himself.

I would encourage you, in your next post, to actually do one of two things, rather than simply mocking the scriptures that Christ endorsed:

1) Admit that you are wrong and stand corrected; or
2) Answer the points that seem to indicate that you should do #1.

Yet again, I suppose you can be thankful that you live under a different administration than that of the Hebrews of the Old Testament. You don't have to kill your rebellious son.
You are so right about this. I am very thankful not to live under an order that requires circumcision, dietary restrictions, all the rituals and sacrifices, etc. (But then, I am also happy to be living in a land with indoor plumbing and electric lights). However, my thankfulness about these things does not incline me to reconstruct history, as if to pretend that no one in the past was ever required to do these things.


You can accept that God is now kind to evil and ungrateful (and rebellious) people, instead of ordering their deaths as he used to do.
I guess it’s a lot easier to ignore unanswerable arguments than to acknowledge and deal with them. Your statement indicates that you ignored my pointing out your false dichotomy. This is that false dichotomy naked and unvarnished. Maybe you can explain why this is not a false dichotomy. A judge who sentences a criminal to just penalties for his crimes is doing a loving thing to society (and even to the criminal, if he can’t otherwise control his criminal tendencies). How can he be said not to be kind?

Perhaps we can make some progress if you take even one of the arguments I raised above and demonstrate it not to be fatal to your view. Neither Moses, David, the prophets, Jesus, nor the apostles had any difficulty recognizing that God is a God of great mercy and of severe judgments. Why is it so difficult for you, when it was no problem to them? And if they were all wrong, why couldn't God find more competent spokesmen for His cause? Heck, He even put His words directly into their mouths, and they still couldn't spit them out accurately.
It seems that God Himself has changed in His behaviour toward His people.


I can find no significant evidence of this in the Old and New Testaments.
Did He learn something from His experience with the consequences of the former administration so that He now changed it, and through His Son told people to do good, kind, and helpful acts towards all people, especially those who hate his people?
Did God learn something? I think not, though your openness theology at least allows for that possibility. There is no place to suggest this, though, since the Old Testament, as well as the New tells us to love our enemies, and the Old Testament as well as the New tells us that God is the Judge of the whole earth. The most graphic revelation of God’s character to Moses recorded in scripture was when God declared both things about Himself:

“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin [the point you affirm], by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation [the point you deny].” (Ex.34:6-7)

In our former dialogues on this subject, I have accused your view of God of being "one-dimensional." You have always denied that this is the case. Your present comments prove my criticism correct. You cannot see all facets of God that He has sought to reveal about Himself, because to you, that sounds “schizophrenic” and you can’t see your way around the error of a false dichotomy. Your words are,
I think it simpler to accept…
Yes, many things are “simpler to accept” than biblical theology. That doesn’t mean that we are at liberty to take the path of least resistance and ignore complexities in what God has revealed.

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Paidion
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Paidion » Fri Jul 05, 2013 2:29 pm

Well Steve, I don't agree that I should "stand corrected". I don't think I have been corrected, and don't intend to get into the position of self-justification.

However, I would ask one more explanation from you, which (if you should have a rational answer) would go a long way toward convincing me of your position.

In your response to Jepne, you compared God's occasional and "very rare" judgments of the wicked with a loving father such as yourself:
I am, myself, a very even-tempered man, and very sympathetic to my children. Once some of the teenaged kids in the church asked my teenaged kids, "Doesn't your father ever get angry?" Their reply, as reported to me, was, "Not very often." Should those inquiring children then have thought, "Well, if he sometimes gets angry, he apparently isn't the loving father we took him to be!"? It is absurd to suggest that a loving man (or a loving God) would never find occasion to be angry, or to discipline, or even to physically injure or kill someone who is endangering his family. It might be argued that killing an attacker would not be the Christian's preferred response, but it would be ridiculous to say that his doing so would be in contrast to his being a loving man.
It is absurd to suggest that a loving man (or a loving God) would never find occasion to be angry, or to discipline, or even to physically injure or kill someone who is endangering his family.
It is indeed absurd "that a loving man (or a loving God) would never find occasion to be angry, or to discipline..;" And that has never been my position. I fully agree with the writer of Hebrews who said:

In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons? —"My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrew 12:4-11))

But "to physically injure or kill someone" does not describe a loving action. To kill someone even in order to protect someone else is wrong, and against the spirit of our Lord's teachings. From some of the things you have said, I thought you were sympathetic with the Anabaptist position concering the taking of human life. The historic Anabaptist position is that it wrong to take the life of another human being under any circumstances. That is why they refused to participate in wars, even if the wars were carried out only to protect their country, or in any kind of resistance. "I tell you not to resist an evil person."(Matt 5:39) Once before I was a pacifist, when I taught school at a Hutterite Community, I asked one man what he would do if an intruder were attacking his wife and family. He replied, "I don't know what I would do. But I know what I should do."

You sometimes get angry, but this in no way indicates that you are not a loving father. I certainly agree with this. But might you in a moment of anger spank one of your children, while later, one of your children committed a MUCH greater offence, but you would be likely restrain your hand because you didn't happen to be angry at the time? And if so, is that how God is?

If not, how do you explain (according to the OT) that God supposedly punished minor offences, even with death, while seemingly doing nothing about major atrocities which some people wreaked upon others?
And this continues to be the case right to the present day.

You believe that God sometimes kills individuals or nations in our day. Is this because He happens to be angry at the time? You say that "God's supernatural intervention to judge the wicked is very rare." If it the case that God's killing of people is rare, we would at least expect the killings He did implement, would be that of the wickest people. But no. It is recorded in the OT several times that He killed people almost on a whim, (such as the man who reached out his hand to steady the Ark). But in the book of Job, probably the oldest book of the Bible, when Job's friends were sure that God was punishing him for doing something evil such as witholding help for the needy, Job replied:

Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? Their children are established in their presence, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them. Their bull breeds without fail; their cow calves, and does not cast her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and the lyre, and rejoice to the sound of the pipe. They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to the grave. (Job 21:7-13)

In our day, too, wickedness seems greater than ever before. Atrocities continue throughout the world, tortures, torturous killings, rapes of little children. In my area, when I was a child, four men tortured a woman to death by holding her over a hot stove. If you are right, why does God often turn a blind eye to such atrocities, while supposedly bringing such a hurtful judgment on the Jews in A.D. 70, where many starved, and some killed their children and cooked them up for food? If God is like that, no wonder people blame Him when they suffer deeply or lose a loved one. If God is like that, He is unfair.

But the scriptures say that God is just (fair). He is fair to everyone. He loves everyone. He does not kill people. He does not kill people here on earth in order to punish them. All of His judgements are remedial. He disciplines His children. Ultimately, He will correct His enemies. There is no malice or wickedness in Him whatever.

Why does He "allow" all of the atrocites which have been continously been carried out throughout the history of man? He doesn't allow it, in the sense of giving His permission. The question must be rephrased to, "Why does He usually do nothing to prevent these atrocities?" I certainly don't have the full answer. But I do think I have a partial answer. God created man in his own image, with a free will. He wants man of his own free will to submit to Him, to place himself under His authority. "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." (2Pet. 3:9). If God interfered with man's choices on a regular basis, man would be deprived of his free will, and God's ultimate Plan of the Ages could not come about, that is, that each and every individual, through his own free choice, be reconciled to God. So God seldom interferes with man's free will.

So my question to you from your understanding, is how can God, who is just and fair, punish, even by death, some evildoers while seemingly ignoring most of them?
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

Avatar shows me at 75 years old. I am now 83.

steve7150
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve7150 » Fri Jul 05, 2013 2:53 pm

It seems that God Himself has changed in His behaviour toward His people.



I can find no significant evidence of this in the Old and New Testaments.

Did He learn something from His experience with the consequences of the former administration so that He now changed it, and through His Son told people to do good, kind, and helpful acts towards all people, especially those who hate his people?






Why can't God change his behavior toward his people? God has emotions, he has anger,love compassion mercy and many other emotions so why can't he change his behavior?
Additionally Paidion if you are right that God can't see the future because it doesn't exist now then why can't he learn from future events. If we really have true free will then God must be learning what free will choices we make as we make them, correct?

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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve7150 » Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:01 pm

So my question to you from your understanding, is how can God, who is just and fair, punish, even by death, some evildoers while seemingly ignoring most of them?










This is a simple answer but i may be a simple person so it seems appropriate. Don't we learn most things by contrasting it against something else? I think we are wired to learn this way so we must have evil to have real contrast and of course evil requires evildoers at least most of them to do what they do.

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steve
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Fri Jul 05, 2013 5:24 pm

Hi Paidion,

I will gladly respond to your question presently. However, you have not been very diligent in responding to my questions and challenges to you, including:

1. Why did Jesus say that "God commanded" the killing of a rebellious son, but you say God did not command this?

2. Who do you think sent the flood of Noah's day and who do you think rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah?

3. Why do you think Luke (companion of the apostles) knew less than you know about the character of God, when he thought the angel of the Lord stuck Herod?

4. Why would God say of Moses that he was "faithful in all my house," (striking even Moses' sister with leprosy for criticizing him), when in fact Moses very unfaithfully misrepresented to Israel what he claimed God had told him face-to-face?

5. If God does not kill people, who killed all the firstborn in Egypt, after sending nine hurtful, and even deadly, plagues?

6. Why did God, when declaring His name to Moses (Ex.34:6-7), describe Himself in terms that contradict your description of God?

7. Why did the psalmists and the prophets, who spoke more often of God's lovingkindness and mercy than Jesus did, fail to understand (as you do) that these things cannot be true of God if He remains the judge who settles scores with sinners?

8. Why did Jesus say that God would "destroy those vinedressers" (the Jews who killed His son) (Mark 12:9) and would "burn down their city" (Matt.22:7), while you say God wouldn't do that?

9. If it was not God who struck down Ananias and Sapphira, why did the whole church come under great fear at their death? What was it that they feared?

10. How do you explain the mass deaths caused, in the Book of Revelation, by the direct manifestations of "the wrath of the Lamb"?

These are a few for starters. If necessary, we can take more later.


I now come to your question to me:
How do you explain (according to the OT) that God supposedly punished minor offences, even with death, while seemingly doing nothing about major atrocities which some people wreaked upon others? And this continues to be the case right to the present day.
First, you are determining, without warrant, that the offenses which God punishes are "minor." I have read my Bible, too, and I would not be prepared to say that any willful disobedience against God is minor. If the wages of sin is death, then the death penalty cannot be excessive as a punishment for sin.

If your question is why God immediately executes the sentence on some sins, and waits to execute the sentence on others—including some whose sins seem to us to be more grievous, my answer would have several parts:

1. The fact is, both the Old Testament and the New Testament (and Jesus Himself) declare that God sometimes judges men by killing them—either through supernatural or governmental means. Since we are not at liberty to deny what Jesus (or His prophets and apostles) affirm to be true, we should do with this information the same thing that we do with other statements of scripture, viz., let them shape our thinking, so that we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

2. Since all men will be judged (some very severely) postmortem, there is no reason to believe that the punishment for "minor sins" will be as great as that for "major sins." God is just and will reward every man according to his works. Most men receive a portion of their judgment in this life and a portion in the next. We do not know that there is anything more desirable about reserving the majority of judgment for the next life. The man who suffers premature physical death can not be assumed to be ultimately punished more than sinners greater than himself, who live long, die peacefully, and face the wrath of God on the other side. Habakkuk complained that Israel was being punished prior to Babylon being punished, though Israel was (reportedly) less sinful than Babylon. Well, God judged Babylon too—just not as early.

3. The timing of God's judgment upon certain people is no doubt determined by factors known to God—often with a mind to protecting the lives or the sanctity of His people. There is a noticeable pattern (e.g., the Red Sea destruction of Egyptian armies, the deaths of Nadab, Abihu, Korah, Achan, Ananias and Sapphira) of God taking-out certain wicked folks—sometimes for what seem to us to be lesser offenses—in order to be setting a precedent as a warning to others. He sometimes makes an example of an offender at the outset of a new institution (Israel, the priesthood, the Church), while He seems not to move similarly against even more heinous offenses falling later in history. If He delays judgment in other cases, it does not mean that sinners have gotten away with their sinning and have ultimately escaped judgment. Whether we can appreciate His reasons or not, we can observe that God seems to think it wise to set a precedent as a warning. That's what we are told God did in destroying Sodom (2 Peter 2:6). Paul also said this was God's reason for judging the rebellious Israelites in the wilderness—namely, as an example to us all (1 Cor.10:5-6). Even if God were not to tell me His reasoning, I am on His side, and trust that His reasons for doing what He does are better than any reasons I could bring for objecting to His actions.

You are right that I have many sympathies with the Anabaptists—not only theologically, but also temperamentally. However, as with all other matters, I am obliged to correct even my Anabaptistic leanings, whenever scripture demands it of me. I do not identify with any movement, except the Jesus movement—which means my conscience is captive to the word of God, not to the papacy, or to the reformation, nor to the anabaptist leadership.


Now I have some responses to your comments:

"to physically injure or kill someone" does not describe a loving action."
Your definition of "a loving action" is....what?

If God only acts in love (which I believe to be the case) and yet finds it necessary to eliminate corrupting elements that threaten His people, then I am forced to conclude that such actions, on God's part, must fall within the realm of possible loving actions. On what authority do you exclude them?

You have said that all of God's judgments are remedial. I would not deny this (though I don't see specific scripture affirming this axiom, it seems reasonable enough to me, in the absence of scriptural denials). If this is so, then it would mean that even God's taking a sinner's life prematurely would be a remedial act. Why would something that serves as a corrective be regarded by you as "unloving"?

Actually taking a life may be very loving—if not to the criminal, then at least to his victims. If "loving" means that we never do to the criminal anything that hurts or displeases him (which, I suspect, may be your definition of love), then we must also object to his being arrested, fined, or imprisoned—or rebuked or resisted in any way—since this might displease him and seem to him not to be "loving treatment." These penalties differ from execution only in degree, not kind. If a man is not a criminal, it would be unloving and unjust to arrest, fine, imprison or execute him. If he is a criminal, and deserves these penalties, he has forfeited the life opportunities lost to him through the imposition of a just punishment. If criminal justice, per se, is unloving, then there is no place for human governments in God's world. This clearly is not what scripture teaches. Jesus told Peter to put away his sword, but Paul said that the government official does not bear the sword in vain, because he is the executioner of God's wrath on those who do evil. Your disregard for Paul's authority and insight has been duly noted. The problem is, Jesus chose him and commissioned him to speak for Him. To receive one whom Christ sends is to receive Christ (John 13:20). What then does it mean if one rejects the one that Christ sends?
To kill someone even in order to protect someone else is wrong, and against the spirit of our Lord's teachings.
This idea is not clearly taught in scripture. If God has commissioned the state to defend the innocent against violent attackers, and the state official fails to do so, I would say that the official has acted contrary to the teaching of the New Testament (and contrary to love). God loves the helpless victims at least as much as He loves their attackers. How is it loving to sacrifice the former for the latter—and where does the Bible support this choice?
"I tell you not to resist an evil person."(Matt 5:39) Once before I was a pacifist, when I taught school at a Hutterite Community, I asked one man what he would do if an intruder were attacking his wife and family. He replied, "I don't know what I would do. But I know what I should do."
It would be a shame if such a verse which, in its context, clearly says nothing to forbid the defense of the helpless (only forbidding self-defense), should become the cause of one's allowing innocent victims to be unnecessarily victimized. To bless the wicked and to curse the innocent seems to be standing the entire teaching of scripture on its head.
You sometimes get angry, but this in no way indicates that you are not a loving father. I certainly agree with this. But might you in a moment of anger spank one of your children, while later, one of your children committed a MUCH greater offence, but you would be likely restrain your hand because you didn't happen to be angry at the time? And if so, is that how God is?
Absolutely not. Even I am not like that. I never spanked a child in anger, and if I were obliged to do so, I would never decide on the severity of the punishment by appeal to how angry I felt. This would be monstrous. God does not punish harder because He is more angry at some sinners than others, but because justice demands different penalties for different crimes.
If you are right, why does God often turn a blind eye to such atrocities, while supposedly bringing such a hurtful judgment on the Jews in A.D. 70, where many starved, and some killed their children and cooked them up for food? If God is like that, no wonder people blame Him when they suffer deeply or lose a loved one. If God is like that, He is unfair.
If God does what the Bible says that God does, then God is unfair? How then did all the authors who describe God's doing these things also emphasize how good and just God is? Is it you or they who may be out of touch with what is or is not "unfair." And when you say, "No wonder people blame God when they suffer..." you make it sound as if they are justified in rebelling against God's righteous disposition of His creation. I am in the habit of taking God's side against His detractors. I'm not changing that policy.
But the scriptures say that God is just (fair). He is fair to everyone. He loves everyone. He does not kill people. He does not kill people here on earth in order to punish them. All of His judgements are remedial. He disciplines His children. Ultimately, He will correct His enemies. There is no malice or wickedness in Him whatever.
Most of this paragraph is true to scripture. The part where you say, "He does not kill people. He does not kill people here on earth in order to punish them," is, of course, a denial of many scriptural statements, which means that there is no reason to believe that this particular part of your statements tells us any reliable information about God. God spent 4000 years revealing His character to His worshippers prior to Christ's arrival. When Jesus came, I don't think He contradicted anything God had revealed about Himself to the prophets.

Also, if your affirmation that "God is fair to everyone," is supposed to reflect some reality about His distribution of earthly lots to individuals, I think Job and David, Joseph and Jesus, and many others would have to disagree with you. They were not treated fairly at all. If "fairness" means that He gives people in this present life only what is deserved, then Job's comforters were right, and Job was wrong. I agree that God is fair, but I believe that He is not limited to the present life to settle all scores and balance all the books.
So my question to you from your understanding, is how can God, who is just and fair, punish, even by death, some evildoers while seemingly ignoring most of them?
"For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, And He ponders all his paths." (Prov.5:21)

"The eyes of the LORD are in every place, Keeping watch on the evil and the good." (Prov.15:3)

God is not ignoring anyone.

SteveF

Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by SteveF » Fri Jul 05, 2013 7:54 pm

Steve Gregg wrote:
What I can’t understand is, if you can’t trust what Paul wrote, why your obsessive interest in parsing the Greek of his sentences? What a waste of time this is, if you already know intuitively more than Paul did about Jesus, God, and the scriptures?
Paidion, I’m puzzled by the exact same thing. It’s something that’s crossed my mind a number of times while reading your posts. I was kind of looking forward to hearing your answer

I realize it’s more of a personal question and doesn’t necessarily address the subject, so don’t feel a need give an answer. I’m just perplexed by what seems to be a contradiction.

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Paidion
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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by Paidion » Fri Jul 05, 2013 10:34 pm

Steve F, the operative phrase here is the conditional, "If you can’t trust what Paul wrote." I don't think I have given Steve any basis for that conditional assumption, nor for his further conditional assumption, "If you already know intuitively more than Paul did about Jesus, God, and the scriptures." These assumptions seem to be directed more against my person than against my beliefs. I thought the question was rhetorical because of these assumptions. So my intention was to let it pass quietly rather than address it.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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Re: OT equivalent of militant Islam?

Post by steve » Sat Jul 06, 2013 9:05 am

Paidion,

I haven't asked any questions just to add keystrokes to my day. I would appreciate your not letting so many of my questions "pass quietly" ("These are not the droids you are looking for..."). I'm attempting a dialogue here, and you avoid answering any of my questions. If you aren't interested in having a dialogue, you needn't keep it up, but be so kind to let me know that you only intended to fire a shot or two, and that you weren't interested in being cross-examined.

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