Jesus, for whom the new (and old to a degree - telling of His coming and our need) testament was written, said He didn't come to do away with the law (the OT) but to fulfill it. What He was saying is that the OT was given to us to know the standard was something that we couldn't keep and needed a savior. How I would paraphrase this is that the OT law is a test for cancer. It will tell you that you are a sinner (you have cancer) and you will die because of it. You can keep trying to keep the law and retake the test but try as hard as you might (trying to keep the law), the test results are still the same. i.e. The test for cancer will never cure you - it wasn't meant to - it was meant to tell you that you have a critical problem. The test was given in love to show us the problem but again it cannot cure us and sometime the test results are painful to swallow. But God loves us too much to let us die when he knew of a cure. But the cure was a cheap one but it was the only one - a sinless sacrifice to take our place. That sacrifice was His only Son Jesus who left heaven to become man and be a sinless sacrifice for all who believed and trusted in Him. I don't trust in my works. I trust in Him. If there was another way to be cured, what kind of love would a father have to let his only son die on a cross when there was another way? But what kind of love would a father have to send his only son to die on a cross for those who had no other way?
Thanks for the responses so far and I apologize if this is a derail. What that sounds like you are saying is that the Bible is open to personal interpretaton or on the other hand can be treated as something like a Koan where meditation on seeming contradiction helps to raise spiritual enlightenment. This seems to me like a very individual view of Christianity but I am curious how you see that working with Christianity as an institution.
Interesting too and it sounds like a message for tolerance. I'm curious though how much this passage relates to the Christianity being a proselytizing religion where Apostles and other followers deliberately set out to convert gentiles. Food is a very important to cultures and it seems like that if Peter and Paul had stuck to the Judaic dietary restrictions they might've had a hard time convincing Romans.
Sorry for the rapid fire posts. Your response sounds similar to FB's that basically says that things like diet aren't really important but faith is. You seem to be though really drawing the fundamental distinction between Judaism and Christianity in regard to what defines the religion. A friend of mine in who is an Orthodox Jew once told me that you could still be a Jew if you didn't believe in God as long as you followed the rules. It sounds weird but what he was saying was that the Judaic rules were what made one a Jew and not so much the faith. It sounds like you are turning it completely over to say that rules are much less important than faith. I don't know if your background is Catholic but if not I would be curious to hear what the Catholic viewpoint is on that as isn't the central schism of Catholicism and Protestant whether you can be saved by acts or faith alone. Thanks for y'all's responses and I hope this doesn't sounds like I'm being disrespectful just curious.
True, and that might be part of the reason why it was allowed. I definitely see it as a message of tolerance and being non-judgmental. The whole chapter basically spells out the same message. I think it is saying don't let the little things detract from the bigger message of Christ. Those things each person does or doesn't do for a good reason. Leave that between them and God, and don't judge either way. I do think from a practical standpoint they had to make food allowances or their sect would have disappeared.
Apologize? The derail saved the thread! I'll start with the disclaimer I'm not a Christian. But, if I were, my view would be: The reality is whatever God intended it be. He communicated it through the Bible and you'd probably divine most of the truth by reading it. People obviously will be wrong here and there (they must since people disagree on so much), but it likely doesn't much matter if you have the Jesus-died-for-sins part. If eating pig was a sin and you misunderstood and ate it, you're forgiven anyway, just like murder, coveting, stealing, etc are forgiven. There's plenty of lattitude for screwing up. It is one's personal responsibility to interpret and understand the Bible, but your views on it are not going to bend reality. As for meditation on contradiction, this is my atheist observations on the religion creeping in. The brightest minds for most of 2,000 years have been thinking very hard about the Scriptures and seeming incongruencies found therein. And people have been able to come up with some interesting stuff to explain why a contradiction is not a contradiction. Maybe it's true and maybe it is rationalization. But, obviously sincere Christians will want to make the Bible make sense, and given the ingenuity of the human mind, can find logical ways of doing so. Maybe that increases enlightenment, or maybe it builds on a farce.
Here is your response from the Beck thread about the abortion question. This is a thread about abortion. If you are a man of your word you will stop avoiding the question and answer it. Thank you that is the nicest thing you have said and it is well appreciated.
Since you have jumped into the deep end feet first, maybe you should read the replies and see if you can redeem yourself and answer some of them. It gets intense in here, if you cant handle people responding to your topic, you might want to stay out of here, cause this topic WILL get you more replies than you are prepared to deal with.
The war was started by terrorist. Remember 9/11. You will respond with Iraq naturally to which I do not support that war but I will point out that almost all of the Democratic politicians who were bashing Bush about WMD's have all been on the record themselves saying they were there. (BTW- I was not big fan of Bush) Our country can't afford health care for all. We are about to go bankrupt. It is a wonderful idea, even better if the Democrats would have actually even made a small effort to make it bi-partisan, but it will bankrupt the country. Before you start quoting the savings that are touted by the Dems remember that the taxes go into effect immediately upon signing the bill while the actual benefits of the bill take place 4 years from now. So the magical 10 year savings that Obama talks about come from 10 years of taxes and only 6 years of service. That is a accounting trick to make the whole thing seam like it saves money when it will actually cost a lot more than advertised. Putting 30 million uninsured(or whatever the amount is since it has changed so much) on government healthcare is a noble idea but it is something we can't afford. Something needs to be done in an actual bi-partisan way because both sides have good ideas. Outlawing the killing of unborn babies is quite a bit cheaper. I vehemently oppose discrimination. All forms of it including Affirmative Action. I have never heard a single politician I support say anything to support discrimination. I already covered healthcare. I do follow the notion of "Love your neighbor as yourself". The war on terror is unfortunately necessary. Iraq wasn't however we have not been at war with the Iraqi people. If I have to rationalize the two then killing unborn babies is worse than killing terrorist. With healthcare, there is already Medicaide for the needy and I personally feel that universal healthcare will cause the collapse of the country under a monetary strain. If that happens nobody will have any healthcare. May god bless you my friend.
cml750, please stop. You're really not helping our cause as Christians at all. I feel as strongly about abortion as you do. But don't think for a second that all Christians are as narrow-sighted as you are on political issues. And for the love of God, please stop painting party platforms with a black and white brush. God is not a Republican, a Libertarian, a Democrat or a Communist. Again: The Republican Party manifesto is not biblical authority, not even close. Stop mixing politics with doctrine. It is not good for your spiritual health. Stop posting all these ridiculous things on the BBS and embarrassing the rest of us Christians. Just ... stop.
JeopardE I agree with you that God has no political affiliation. Neither do I, although I generally support Republican candidates I have voted for the other party many times. I started this thread mainly because one individual said he would answer this question if it was in it's on thread yet he still avoids answering it. I respect your opinion yet I am still waiting on him to answer even though I doubt he will. You sir are a gentleman and I respect that .
I personally think the Pope and other Christian leaders should commission a second Council of Nicea to rewrite the Bible. Let them only re-interpret what's already written and not add anything new. I wonder how many years they'd be fighting over every verse. When Martin Luther translated the Bible from Latin, he thought everyone would see it from is point of view. He was shocked that there were so many different interpretations.
This. After reading through both threads and deciding to not post in either, you sir have articulated my very thoughts. Cml (and all others), I would suggest reading a book entitled Jesus for President if you're interested in this whole Jesus and politics thing. It really challenges pretty much everyone's (myself definitely included) conceptions of how Christians are to live in society.
As I've stated before, this thread isn't about abortion: it's about your efforts to discredit "social justice" and smear Democrats and liberals under the guise of a discussion about abortion. If you really wanted to discuss the morality of abortion, you wouldn't have: 1.) mentioned "social justice", in effect duplicating your efforts to blur the issue as you did in the Glenn Beck thread. 2.) mentioned "liberals" and "Democrats", thereby making this a red-blue issue rather than a right-wrong issue. Why on earth would I want to play along with your efforts to smear the Democratic party and liberals in general? You're trying to set political policy by a religious belief, and that's almost always a very bad idea.
