Do you agree that, if there are errors in the bible, then it's all wrong?

by JH 59 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Terry

  There are those things that are necessary for salvation, which is a short list.

  Sit in a quiet corner and ask yourself if you aren't needing salvation from God because it is God who has decided to kill you and keep you dead. Ask yourself why God kills his children? They sin. Ask yourself why, if it is your NATURE to sin, you are still held accountable for it.

  Ask yourself why you pay the price for a crime you were born to commit.

  We are asked to hear a distorted messege (all religions have a different and contradictory messege) with our sinful, imperfect nature and yet determine the right way to go (proper orthodoxy) and be held accountable if we make the wrong choice even if our heart's desire is in the right place.

  What passes for God's justice is just a peculiarly hostile human nature projected outward and called divine.

  Think about it.
• 

  Brother Apostate

  Poor Terry,

  I feel so sorry for you, my brother:

  Loving your enemies makes no sense whatsoever.

  In order to create a warm, loving brotherhood of humanity, mature, intelligent people should set a good example for one another. If the example one sets is to strike out in hatred, the example, if copied by just one individual, results in one less loving, tolerant person in the brotherhood of humanity. The opposite is also true: if one forgives or turns the other cheek, if copied by just one individual, results in one more loving, tolerant person in the brotherhood of humanity.

  Where is the justice? Getting what you deserve is justice (and mirrors the basis of the law of the talon

  The “justice”? What we all deserve is death, plain and simple. It is only by way of Christ’s ransom sacrifice that we have the provision of salvation.

  Love is an appraisal of the worth of the object of your affection.

  A materialist would define it as you have. I prefer Paul’s description in 1 Cor 13:

  “1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.
  4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
  8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
  13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

  Jesus' teachings are not even mildly practical and that is why nobody seriously practices them

  Wrong again. You have many brothers and sisters in the brotherhood of humanity who find His teachings both practical and worth practicing.

  What does hating cancer, poverty, child molestation or war get you?

  Hating disease hardly equates to hating your brother or sisters.

  …understanding what benefits you and what destroys you…

  Hating your brother hurts/destroys humanity. Loving your brother benefits humanity, as explained above.

  Methinks if you put more energy into love and forgiveness you’d find both yourself and humanity more likeable. Incidentally, that short list of things necessary for salvation includes love, not hate.

  For some, what passes for their own dogma is really, when you strip away the verbosity and unceasing attack of other’s beliefs, just another selfish, narcissistic, Machievellian belief system projected outward.

  Think about it.

  BA
• 

  exjdub

  Brother Apostate:

  What we all deserve is death, plain and simple.

  And why would you say that? I don't deserve death and I always find it humorous when Christians say I do. You can't answer without pulling out a bible to back up your point. As has already been eloquently handled by Terry and others, the Bible is a shaky foundation on which to establish the thought that we all deserve death. A book that has been proven to have numerous mistakes, mistranslations, etc., is no place to put trust when determining anything, never mind trying to establish the "deserving death" angle.

  exjdub
• 

  Brother Apostate

  exjdub,

  In the realm of opinion, which realm we operate in on this board, yours is as good as mine.

  It's up to God to judge.

  Que sera, sera. (whatever will be, will be)
• 

  Navigator

  Terry

  While I agree with your post about the bible, I very much disagree with your views about the teachings of Jesus. They are very practical and make a great deal of sense when you consider that we are all connected to each other in ways we don't fully understand. As one Philosopher said "It is not so much that Christianity has been tried and failed, but that it has yet to be tried at all.". It has been demonstrated that hating, in the sense of wanting something bad to happen to that individual, lowers the immune system and makes one more subject to accidents and injury and disease. It takes energy to hate! The problem is that what we put out comes back to us, sometimes multiplied many times over. Jesus came to show us that death, the "big daddy rabbit" of the illusion we are all involved in, could be overcome. If death is an illusion, so is all the rest of it. If you want to know what Jesus really taught without all the Pauline slant, try reviewing the teachings of A Course in Miracles.
• 

  SilverNyte

  Good stuff, Terry.

  Silver
• 

  Abandoned

  What does hating cancer, poverty, child molestation or war get you? It properly calibrates your sense of values; that's what. Valuable energy, indeed!

  I guess I assumed we were talking about people, but the same thing applies here to. What benefit do I get from hating cancer? Does that cure it? If I sit at home every day upset over AIDS, is it going to get better? Nope. Hating is a waste of time. If there is something you can do to make a positive difference, do it. If not, let it go. Hate is just tossing away energy.
• 

  SilverNyte

  Courtesy of Wikipedia, here's some important criticism to consider before you get too far into your study of the Course in Miracles material: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles#_ref-sjd_1

  " Criticism

  • Author and Yogi, Joel Kramer, states that A Course in Miracles could be considered a classic authoritarian example of programming thought to change beliefs. [18]

  • Anton van Harskamp, a German scholar of religion, says that A Course in Miracles contains, "...endless variation on some universally meant insights in life..." that, "...brings readers of the book, [or] in any case this reader, [to] a mood in which bewilderment and boredom take turns". [19]

  • Long time teacher of A Course in Miracles, Hugh Prather, notes that ACIM students often become, "far more separate and egocentric," with many ultimately, "[losing] the ability to carry on a simple conversation". He admits that he and his wife Gayle, "...had ended up less flexible, less forgiving, and less generous than we were when we first started our path!" [8]

  • Long time teacher of "A Course in Miracles," Robert Perry, has recently published an extensive analysis of the editing changes made just prior to publication, noting especially the later editors' removal of specific terms and examples originally contained in the manuscript, a fact which has substantially scewed much of the early, foundational material toward the abstract, a fact which renders the serious student far more vulnerable to an extreme detatchment to the world and other people (and most likely contributing to the "bewilderment and boredom" mentioned above)."

  Silver
• 

  SilverNyte

  Don't miss the following critical information regarding the 'Course in Miracles.' Click on the link and it will take you there: http://www.bezinningscentrum.nl/teksten/anton_eng/mireng.htm

  Silver
• 

  Terry

  For a word to have meaning and be useful to people in conveying the sense of something actual there has to be Conceptual Identity.

  What a word represents needs to be described with enough specifics that it identifies that thing without confusion.

  Love is only a meaningful word within a context. It needs an OBJECT.

  Paul's recitation of what LOVE IS presents a wonderful example of a concept in search of an object without any object being given.

  There has to be a time and a place where LOVE IS. There has to be identity for who is doing the loving and who the object of that love is.

  Otherwise, this concept is like a balloon floating on the air tossed about by the wind heading nowhere in particular.

  Do we love the priest who molests little boys? Should we be patient and kind with serial killers and rapists? What would love possibly mean if it could be expressed about such vermin?

  If all of humanity is worthy of our love REGARDLESS of how they act towards us and others---then the love we express is what a lunatic would express.

  The fact that you can recite Paul's scripture about Love and not see it has no meaningful object only demonstrates that you are unwilling or unable to think about what language really is and how badly it can be abused.

  Money can be counterfeited. It looks like real money but it is not legal tender. So too with words that do not describe an IDENTITY and which have applicable context in which defining characteristics set things apart from one another usefully.

  The Bible is full of counterfeit money, so to speak. The people who read it think they are rich. But, when you try and spend it you are in for a rude awakening! It is not legal tender.

  LOVE is only meaningful when it is directed toward something or someone loveable which merits such an evaluation. Murderers, molesters and serial killers are not our "brothers and sisters", but, rather more like rabid animals that prey upon the innocent. To waste love upon them is to descrate the word and devalue everything else you apply it to.

  Would you spend the same amount of money on a bag of dog poop that you'd spend on groceries? Certainly not. And you'd never LOVE somebody whose mind and actions are the equivalent of dog poop either.