any christians here in this entire site please stand up
POSTED BY: leelu7777
UPDATED: Monday, September 22, 2025 14:45
VIEWED: 32293
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I'm not a Christian. I'm a Pagan.
But some years ago a Navy Chaplin gave me some excellent advice: "If you're going to be a non-Christian in America, you had better study the Bible."
So I bought a good red-letter edition (where the words of The Nazarine are printed in red ink), and studied the words of the Son of Man. And, to my surprise, found that he was exactly the sort of good neighbor a virtuous Pagan could live with. His basic message is "Clean up your own act before you judge anyone else; lead by example, and for God's sake, pray from the heart, not by rote."
And I came to realize that my argument wasn't with Christ, it was with those people who call themselves Christians without the slightest idea what he was talking about:
The sort of people who think Jesus was a voice of conformity--
The kind who substitute worship of their church for worship of God--
And worst, the kind who selectively quote the Old Testiment to support their own prejudices, while ignoring those laws inconvenient to them. (As a Jewish friend once told me, nobody has a right to quote Jewish law as binding who doesn't keep a kosher table.)
Sadly, those types are in the ascension right now. I fear that, if the Rapture occurs tomorrow, and all those who actually follow the teachings and example of Jesus vanish, the disappearance will constitute such a paper-thin percentage of those who call themselves Christian that it will hardly be noticed.
But I'll miss them. They're nice folks.
"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." -- Matthew 6:5-6
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god told abraham to sacrifice his so because issac became more important to him than god so god told him to sacrifice isasc to see if he loved god more than his son. well its my intrepolation.
greater is he who is in me than who is in the world.
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Quote:But Abraham did not sacrifice Isaac. That’s how the story ends.
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:Do you know your Bible? God stayed Abraham's hand... but Abraham was fully prepared to kill someone- his son- in order to please God. Because God regularly accepted sacrifices... and apparently even required them (o/wise Jesus' sacrifice wouldn't have been part of the plan).
It’s silly because it seems very overly simplistic interpretation. Abraham, afterall, did not sacrifice Isaac.
Your interpretation of Bronze Age society as being composed of lunatics is overly simplistic, and I think, silly, to use someone else’s word. There seem to be two implications in what you’re saying, either the Bronze Age was composed of criminally insane lunatics or we, in the modern age, are incapable of understanding Bronze Age history/religion/society. If either is true, then what’s the point of studying history? I don’t think either of those is necessarily true; there will always be the common human factor. This story ends with Abraham not sacrificing Isaac because otherwise the story would probably have offended the sensibility of Bronze Age society, in general, much as modern society would view killing without cause, murder. The Bronze Age was a very primitive and probably very difficult time to live, but it is shortsighted to attempt to package it as composed religious nuts.
This story of Abraham has very real world significant. It’s often said that there aren’t any atheists in foxholes. I’ve honestly never been in a foxhole, so I don’t know, but the point is that a belief in god is intertwined with our own perception of the certainty of our mortality. In much of the Bible, especially the Old Testament histories, the concept of god is, in part, a surrogate for the preservation of the people or the tribe. The tribe lives and dies at the mercy of god. Abraham was a leader of the tribe. People would have viewed Abraham as being responsible for the preservation of the tribe, which was synonymous with carrying out god's will. This is not a story of criminally insane fruitcakes murdering children because they heard voices, which is a terribly, terribly literal interpretation. The story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is a story of the responsibility of a leader and how sometimes the leader is call to make the difficult decision to put the preservation of the tribe above, even the livelihood of its most cherished sons, in this case represented by Isaac, the son Abraham loves and heir to the Abrahamic dynasty. Just as people today wish to live in a country, whose leaders are willing to commit troops to the defense of its borders against invaders (i.e. sacrificing sons to the survive of the nation), so the people in the Bronze Age would have found a certain degree of comfort in believing that their leader was prepared to defend the clan or tribe.
I think this story is not only very pragmatic but also very relevant to modern times. Ancient religions are only alien on the surface. Underneath, the mythology plays to the same human needs and desires that influence society today. We may not always understand what is going on, but we can be assured that there is a common human nature, and therefore, always, a common frame of reference.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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the Bronze Age was composed of criminally insane lunatics
Many cultures of the time practiced large-scale brutality as normal. Like most peoples, they had their reasons. For example, Greek and Roman predecessors believed in large-scale 'games' that were meant to be fatal. Their cultures (as far as one can know) believed that life was tough. Sympathy was for losers. The ultimate test was not whether or not one died, but how the contestants and spectators faced death. Thousands died every year that way.
Meso Americans took several hundred years but eventually worked their way up to sacrificing 40,000 people at a crack.
I think one can make a case that many cultures were mass-murdering machines, though not necessarily lunatics. They were just following the rationale of the day.
So are you trying to say that no cultures did that kind of thing? Or that the Israelites were advanced beyond their surrounding cultures?
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
When people talk about religions being more or less the same, I don't think they realize how truly alien some of the religions are.
Ok, you got me. I change religion to modern religion in my statement.
*sigh* I should have seen that.
----
"We're in a giant car heading into a brick wall at 100 miles/hr and everybody's arguing about where they want to sit."
-David Suzuki
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I actually don't view ancient societies as criminally insane lunatics. But OTOH if you think that sacrifices (human and otherwise) were "actually" metaphors, those metaphors left an awful lot of blood on the altars. I view those societies as different- VERY different. Although their goals were the same (group and individual survival) their means and rationalizations were quite different. Their ethical dilemnas were different, their values were different... it seems odd that on the one hand, people can argue about how fanatical and irrational and incomprehensible modern-day Muslims are and on the other hand they can embrace ancient religions as being easily enfolded into our own sensibilities.
But taking an example not related (directly) to human sacrifice.... I used to look at the pyramids and think.... what a waste. There was a society that expended hundreds of thousands if not millions of person-hours on homes and riches for their deceased leaders, presumably so that the leaders could continue to act as emissaries to the gods. The Egyptians were bread-eaters, which created all kinds of dietary deficiencies. It seemed to me that just about everyone would have been better fed if the Egyptians had turned some of those person-hours into more extensive irrigation ditches... grown grass for goats, or created fish ponds, or grown almonds or nurtured other valuable sources of protein and fat. They could have all been better-off had they turned their hands to less fanciful tasks.
And the picture isn't one of slaves groaning under the overseers lash. AT the time when the best weapon was (maybe) the spear, the elite actually had little military control of the population.
No, what they were all working for was an idea that took precedence over material improvement. And... it's late. I'll have to finish this tomorrow.
---------------------------------
Free as in freedom, not beer.
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Now how did THAT happen!!?!?
Double post- sorry!
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And taking that a little bit off track - I think of the millions of people past who sincerely practiced their religions. They prayed, made sacrifices, anxiously read the signs, and generally were looking for some small benefit from their gods.
No one worships Mithra anymore. Once he was a powerful force, today the bull-god is an embarassing concept all but forgotten. And the people who worshipped him, and their time, efforts, sincerity, hopes and beliefs, were blown away in the dust and into extinction. Though they were just as human, thoughtful, and emotional as anyone, ultimately what they did was empty, pointless, hollow, meaningless effort.
But people today can't see themselves from the viewpoint of 2,000 years from now, when their own individual beliefs, efforts, and time spent will have been forgotten. Further, that future culture will not even remember the meaning of what was once an eternal religion, practiced with all sincerity and fervor.
What a waste of mind and heart.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn Mac Cumhal:
So in other words, there is scientific evidence that supports the Bible?
Not exactly and you know it. There's scientific and historical evidence to suggest the sea could have been seen to part and backs the plagues of Egypt. The Bible is based on history, but like all works of man of it's type it has been embellished. The facts of the story have been warped to fit the theology.
But before we get over excited about science sort of backing up this one little bit maybe we should remember there's no historical or scientific evidence, at least that I know of, to say the Israelites were ever enslaved within Egypt. Even Egyptian documents of the time make no mention of the event. Did Egyptian scholars just forget about that huge number of slaves making to freedom? Did they forget that the Israelites even existed?
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
You should never give powers to a leader you like that you’d hate to have given to a leader you fear
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