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Religious/Bible question
noir_blood
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Okay, I don't want to turn this into an argument, or a discussion whether religion is good or not. I'm hoping to get an honest answer from a Christian or someone that knows religion.
Basically, I'm just curious how people explain the silly/weird/bad stuff in the Bible- Stuff like the whole "menstruating women need to stay away from the house", slavery, and how women should behave.
Someone mentioned to me that those need to be put in historical context, which I would understand, except at the same time the guy is talking how the bible is the Word of God and is very black and white(not surprisingly, he was defending his stance against homosexuality)
So again, I don't want this to be an argument about the dude's beliefs or anything. Maybe the dude was being a hypocrite and that's it, but at the same time, I have to imagine that question is asked a lot, so I'm wondering how churches/religious people square it away.
Basically, I'm just curious how people explain the silly/weird/bad stuff in the Bible- Stuff like the whole "menstruating women need to stay away from the house", slavery, and how women should behave.
Someone mentioned to me that those need to be put in historical context, which I would understand, except at the same time the guy is talking how the bible is the Word of God and is very black and white(not surprisingly, he was defending his stance against homosexuality)
So again, I don't want this to be an argument about the dude's beliefs or anything. Maybe the dude was being a hypocrite and that's it, but at the same time, I have to imagine that question is asked a lot, so I'm wondering how churches/religious people square it away.
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I am a Christian so perhaps this will be the sort of opinion you're looking for, but I'm not an expert and I certainly haven't been given authority to speak for God so I suggest you do some reading and decide for yourself whether or not any of this makes sense.
There are three points I would throw out here. One, C. S. Lewis wrote that the things that seem most strange or even repellent about scripture are the things which we most need to examine. That some things seem off is an indication that our understanding is incomplete.
Two, on at least two issues that I can recall Jesus said that the laws that the Jews followed were not entirely the laws that God had given them. It seems clear to me that God gave revelations to people but that these people were not specially equipped to explain their revelations, and no magical protection was given to their writings or speech to prevent other people from misunderstanding them. Moreover, if there is any reoccurring theme in the Bible it is that people are flawed and will make mistakes. Jesus said of Moses' rules about divorce that God never intended divorce to exist in the first place and Moses had included this as a concession to the people. Ergo, at least some of the Mosaic law is, by Jesus' own words, a construct of man rather than the law of God. I really don't want to tread any further into my on conclusions and speculation, particularly if you haven't read this stuff yourself.
Three, Jesus said that the two most important commandments are to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. He further said that the whole of the law followed from these two commandments. It is also the case that Jesus offers forgiveness for all our sins and that we cannot avoid sinning. In light of this, I think that if we ask whether something shows love for God or love for our neighbors and act in accordance with that we will be doing as well as man can.
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I do think your question would be better answered in D&D forum because there really is no single answer to this question, just what each of us think is the answer.
As far as your "historical context" part, I have heard that alot. My mother swears the whole "no pork" thing was to keep followers safe from food based illness from eating undercooked pork. Kind'a makes sense given the lack of knowledge about food based illness back then - "don't eat pig, you can die" would be a good reason to have kosher practices in place.
Not what I believe but what I've understood from others who do:
Kosher/Bleeding/Gross: Some of the dietary laws made a good deal of sense in the middle of a bronze age desert. Avoiding pork if you can't be sure it doesn't have trichinosis is a good idea. A lot of this is probably written off as cultural now. This, except for a mention by (s)Paul, is where the anti-gay stuff comes from. Jesus doesn't mention it and did a lot of things that violated "normal" concerns like hanging with hookers.
Slavery: In the context of the time this is the only viable alternative to just murdering all the males of a certain age. In the time period the single most important factor of military strength was how many dudes you could bring to the field.
Women as commodity: Yeah, I don't fucking get this either. It's all cultural/bullshit from that time period. The bible shows women with quite a bit more agency than you'd expect at times but the OT is still horrible. Once again, carried into the New Testament chiefly by (s)Paul, who was a pretty big dick on some things.
Two things, translations are not what you really need to look out for, paraphrases are the big thing. One is somebody changing it from one language to another as best they can, the other is one telling you what they think it means.
Second, uh, the New Testament is pretty much accepted as part of the "Bible", the Book of Mormon, even to Mormon's, isn't part of that. There are extra books kicking around, the Apocrypha, of varying degrees of....use, I guess. Most people who aren't professionals in religion don't read them.
Basically he said that there's really no correct way these are just two path leader toward the same way and that no matter which way you choose, it'll lead you into the God's ways. Furthermore as you keep reading into the bible you'll start to understand more and more about the Religion and God itself.
Keep in mind that the church is Anglican and different sects within the church, or even across Christianity will have different views in this debate as they take different liberties and different interpretation itself into fitting in with their idea of Christianity. For example, Christians takes major focus on the New Testament, avoiding the outdated text in the Old books unless it is used to support ideas in the new testament.
Also if you take it across the historical context, the church has been slowly letting up in enforcing certain beliefs that's written in the bible and depending on the sect of the church you are in, they allow certain room for interpretation, while stingingly holding on to certain values like opposing Homosexuality. Again the Anglican Church actually allows homosexuality, which most other sects, including Roman Catholic frowns upon.
However they'll most likely avoid some of the more 'strange' passage in the text, for example:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_stone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_stone_your_whole_family/dt13_06-08.html
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/rape/dt22_23a.html
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/following_your_own_moral_compass/dt29_19.html
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/brawling/dt25_11a.html
Bizarre views of women's sexuality or reproduction was not in any way unique to Jews or early Christians in the ancient world, it ought to be noted. The origins of the word "hysteria" comes from Ancient Greece, where it was regarded as a syndrome of a wandering womb in a female as a result of imbalanced humors, all of which resulted in a woman acting crazy, irrational, or emotional. The Greeks also put a heavy cultural emphasis on a woman's role as a Baby Maker, to the point where they had three different words for women -- khurae, a maiden or adolescent girl who had begun to menstruate but was not yet betrothed; parthenona, which meant either a virgin or (more usually) a woman who hadn't yet born her first child; and gunae, an older woman who had born children. I would imagine that part of the reason the women-specific aspects of the Old and New Testament managed to catch on and take hold with the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire was that everyone in the ancient Western World was already treating women like chattel out of habit.
And as Tarnok pointed out, Jesus was asked in Matthew what the most important rule was in all of the Torah and Talmud, and he answered that the two most important commandments were to love your God, and to love your neighbor. I think a lot of us 21st century Christians don't spend a lot of time trying to rationalize the weirder shit about the Red Tent or why you shouldn't wear cloth spun from two different kinds of fabric; honestly, trying to love your neighbors unconditionally even while some of them say or do some truly hateful things is enough of a spiritual challenge to keep me occupied for an entire lifetime, so I'm not going to sweat whatever it was that Moses claims God had against polyblends.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_the_old_covenant
Just read the NT and then try to imagine what Jesus would have to say about the Catholic Church, or any of the other shows currently running.
Organized religions are bending and sometimes breaking the rules and do not adhere(and in some cases don't even try) to the message of their scripture.
So some clearly outdated concepts and laws will be recognized and marked as such, while others are kept and still others are added without even being mentioned in the books.
This is why women are getting more recognition by the church(as long as they don't want to be priests, god forbid!), but being gay is still superevil.
I say this because you really only have two options; one, attempt to break the person away from Christianity altogether, a course which I don't recommend for many reasons, or two, work within the belief system which he adheres to in order to show him that he is mistaken. Nothing else is going to work because any argument from outside the belief system is weighed against a divine decree and will ultimately fall short.
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Orthodox jewish women still have to go to the mikvah after their menstrual cycle to 'cleanse' themselves before they're allowed to engage in sexual activity with their husbands. But that's in some ways just good additional hygiene. Even if you take a regular bath/shower whatever, a little extra cleaning, even if only in the mystical sense, can make a woman feel better after menstruation.
Women being treated as property? yeah, that happened. But it was everywhere. Also, jewish women were allowed to own property themselves, had their say in community events, and pretty much ruled the home. yes, there was a marriage contract where her husband essentially 'bought' her, but the money/ring/prize was given to the bride, not the bride's family in a good portion of cases. There is also the clause for divorce in the contract, stating that the marriage price from the bride's family will be paid back by the husband. women were not the towering source of power that we sometimes are now, but women were not treated completely horribly by ancient jews either.
Sexual relations between a man and wife are actually proscribed in Judaism. Every Friday night, when she's not menstruating, the husband is required to not only have sex with his wife in celebration of the sabbath, but to ensure that his wife also enjoys the sex. Sex is a good thing in judaism.
I have no real defense for slavery and other things that in this day and age are considered to be absolutely abhorrent, other than "that's the way society was".
For my Rabbi, most of my congregation, and myself included Judaism was not just some static bunch of teachings. It was living, changing, evolving. We held our basic moral principles close and our traditions, and we look at everything in the world through those lenses and then adjust accordingly.
But, my congregation was fairly liberal, even for being a bunch of old ashkenazi jews.
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The Bible is the Word of God as written down by people who, especially (so Christians believe) in the Old Testament, had only a partial understanding of God. The Bible is not literal, nor is it historical; not every fact in there is true, and sometimes the Bible contradicts itself. The Bible is, however, completely true and complete as it pertains to God and how we as Christians (for Catholics, especially we as a Church), we as neighbors, and I as an individual related to God. However, it must be interpreted correctly -- ay, there's the rub. Because when the Jews wrote down something like, "And then God caused fire to rain down upon Sodom," while some Christians believe that is literally what happened, most Catholics (or at least the ones I interact with) say that there was some event and that the Jews attributed it to God. Or when God said, "Thou shalt not lie with a manly one as thou dost with a womanly one" (a literal translation from the Greek), was it really God? Some would say yes. My Church itself would say yes. I'd say no; that the Jews and, later, the Christians, took a tradition and said, "Well God said that."
Does that mean that everything in the Bible is false? No! And how do we know? Well, that's not an easy answer, and I don't want this post to take up a whole page. Suffice it to say, though, that in the person of Jesus is the WHOLE revelation of God (at least as far as most Christians are concerned), and while an ephemeral God might be misunderstood, it is not so easy to misinterpret His Son, because Jesus was a person and chilled with the Apostles. When Jesus spoke, He used a mouth, spoke in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and people could see Him do normal, human things. Jesus was sent because it's impossible to fully understand Divinity, but it's nowhere near as hard to understand a person. It is He (whom John 1:1-14 calls the Word of God) who lets us evaluated the Bible.
Sure, people and churches disagree on what's literal and what's not, and how to interpret things. It's confusing, no doubt. I have what I believe is a consistent understanding of Scripture. The Church's own understanding is different. I bet if you read the whole Bible, yours would be too.
tl;dr: It's hard to say what the Bible really says. If you ask 3 churches, you'll get 4 answers, and if you ask 7 people, you'll get 13 answers!
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This is how my rabbi/congregation is. The text is meant to be looked at critically, and even in the orthodoxy you can see that. You should be able to find things that you have a problem with, and voice those problems, because it's always a learning process. This is all pretty off-topic in a thread specifically about Christianity, but I think it is worth noting that many Christian teachers think they understand the Torah and Jewish thought, but they don't at all. Even when speaking to an educated non-Jew about Judaism, the entire religion and all its writings and teachings tend to be looked at through a lens of Christianity, and this is simply inappropriate.
I think the bottom line is that you can twist anything to justify your point of view if you try hard enough. Personally I think it's far better to be honest with one's beliefs.. to say "Yeah, I know this isn't exactly what it says, but this is what I can live with and so I'll accept the consequences," rather than try to make the pages fit what you want to hear.
Incidentally, I've been told that the historical justification for pork not being kosher is that pigs take far, far too many resources to keep, and even one person keeping a bunch of pigs is far too much demand to put on a community with limited food and water.
That being said: Romans 1 does talk about God's wrath being poured out on those that suppress the truth: and the example he gives is men sleeping with men and women sleeping with women. So yes, I do believe the act of Homosexuality is a sin. I hope people don't take that personally, but I can understand why they would: if somebody said that my sleeping with my wife was a sin, I would be pretty pissed about it, too. However: although I believe that it is a sin, I don't believe that that is what the Church's message to the world should be... Christ's message was one of love and acceptance. The only time the Bible talks about him getting angry was at the religious people of the day, he did not get angry at: "sinners", prostitutes, or greedy liars (this is the connotation of the "tax collectors" in the Bible). Jesus showed love and compassion first and foremost.
Now if somebody isn't even a Christian, what do I care if they're gay/lesbian and have sex with their partner? The Bible never tells unbelievers to stop sinning it tells Christians to. All of the talk of rebuking people or showing people their sin? Yeah, that's to fellow believers. I think if you want to convince this friend of yours that he's in the wrong: it should be about the fact that Jesus was a person that loved other people, he wasn't a person that spread messages of hate or anger.
This is from the King James bible, but I read the same passage in my German Luther bible when I was a kid.
Now I didn't study theology, but when I read the bible as a teenager I got the impression that this part here says that there are people worth saving from all ways of life and even back then I interpreted the bolded passage as referring to homosexual partners and that being gay is not a sin and that a sinner is not a sinner because of who he is grinding with :winky:
I am not gay, but even then when I was still in the folds of the Catholic church I thought that a lot of their views were just weird and plain wrong and this part of the bible is something that really got me thinking.
Maybe there is some better interpretation of this passage someone would care to explain, also in that case please explain why in later editions "men" was changed into "people" and the women are grinding meal now.
Not to derail this thread, OP, I just wanted to point out that this is just another case of picking something from the bible and turning it into something that you believe in, while disregarding the stuff you don't deem neccessary anymore, like beating your wife or not eating pork, etc.
That is the thing about "official" interpretations, they do not even make sense a lot of times and the Christian churches and devout followers have a hard time adapting to change, so it is pretty pointless to try to get them to change their views.
And if you want to, you better read up on that bible and come to your own conclusions :P
I see where you're coming from but I don't think the argument will find much traction. Although it may be rare now I have the impression that it was not at all uncommon for people to share sleeping accommodations in the past, particularly in cold weather. It seems to me at least, and certainly to someone who's trying to preserve his beliefs, that this is more likely the intended meaning.
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Because someone mentioned it-No, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I know that's not going to happen, just like it wouldn't happen if someone was trying to change my mind.
RadicalTurnip kinda brings up the reason for my question in the first place. Once again, I'm not attacking RadicalTurnip or trying to turn this into a anti/pro religion, but I'm curious
I apologize if this sounds like I'm attacking you Radical, but this strikes me as basically someone saying "we get to pick and choose what we like". That's sort of what I'm wanting to wrap my head around, how and who is the context decided? Does it come from what's in the old testament vs. new testament, the whole new covenant thing, or more?
If this has strayed too much from a Help and Advice thread, please feel free to move it to D&D
I did some shallow research on slavery and some parts were laid out that people had to give themselves to a master, not be kidnapped. They had to do it for 6-7 years and the master had to house him, but the courtship sounded kinds off. That he can set the man up and the master gets to keep the child and the mother.
Maybe it was bad research...
Edit:
Here's a little back story.
I joined a Christian Group on campus, and some of the messages fell short with me. The Hypocrisy in the room, and the overall feeling. Hearing the stories of how drunk people were last weekend, the gossip, the hate, and I just got completely turned off and stopped going.
I'm around gay men and women all the time. (That's pretty much what you get when majoring in theatre.) And every few week we get someone off our campus coming from a local church armed with signs. The signs are full of scripture or just context that has this real negative impact. There is even one outlining things such as gambling, drinking, adultery, ect. And I start to get to thinking...
My father drinks, but he is a great man and sacrifices a lot.
My mother Gambles, but she loved me every day
My brother had pre-marital sex, but he's married and loves his wife.
My sisters I know have committed a few sins.
And I know that I have done these things.
The thing is, I'm not sure what is going to happen when my family passes on and lingering on the thought brings up terrible anxiety.
But one thing comes to mind is that how is it that no matter how great I know these people are, know how great of an upbringing they have had, How much of a good person they became...
That someone trumps in and tells me that they are all going to hell before even getting the chance to know them?
The Truth is I keep going back to agnostic. I believe there is a God. I believe Jesus existed, because how can you not feel that presence when reading his teachings?
What I do know is, that when I'm up for judgement, I know I tried try my hardest to live a great life and be a decent/kind human being.
I love this speech... Random, but it relates to the present.
Does this make the Constitution arbitrary? Do the Justices just pick and choose whatever they like, just like Christians pick and choose whatever they like from the Bible and so on? Well, from one point of view, yes, you can get almost any answer out of a question depending on how you look at it. You might also say that at least most people look at things from a consistent point of view (i.e. each Justice picks one view of how to interpret the Constitution, each Christian picks one view of how to interpret the Bible), but it's extremely rare that one type of interpretive style is going to force you into specific answers on any given question. With things that are open to interpretation in the first place (like the Bible or the Constitution), even if you have a consistent way of going about interpretation, because the question is open when you start, there are almost always going to be good arguments for any given outcome no matter what method of interpretation you use.
From there it's just a matter of querying each individual person and asking how they go about their interpretation. Presumably Radical has reasons for reading that passage of the Bible in one way and other passages in another way. His way of sorting out weird stuff in the Bible is going to be different than someone else's, though. There's not really one answer to your original question, which is "what do religious people do about the fact that God seems particularly interested in how much shellfish they eat."
There is a principle in the Talmud "eilu v'eilu" ("these and these") saying that two contradicting legal opinions can both be equally valid and sound.
How often this realistically stands depends on your community and how liberal you are, though. My rabbi is extremely versed in Talmud (it's her main hobby), and she says there is absolutely no legal basis whatsoever for the treatment of proselytes being what it is in many very Orthodox communities. In Israel I believe the ultra-orthodoxy requires you to be three generations Jewish or converted by the orthodoxy before they'll accept you as a citizen to Israel, for example, but there's really nothing in the Talmud to indicate that there should be anything but a welcome with open arms once conversion is complete.
Context of scriptures pulled from the Bible depends entirely on what denomination of Christianity you choose. Generally, what's used during sermons/lessons is to promote the general beliefs that are held by that churches population/body. Some Christian denominations cherry-pick sections of the Bible to offer what can be seen as black and white, tends to be your group that believe the Bible is the perfect word of God. There are those that use a good majority of the scripture where its required to explain the chapters and versus because the text isn't explicit... it needs to be interpreted.
Trying to stay on-topic with your question is tough, tends to bring out more discussions and debate like others mention rather than straight-forward answers.
If you want an example of context. Look at this...
Of the 10 commandments (even though their are 603 other commandments/laws of the old testament), the one would focus on is to have no other idols before God.
Why would Numbers 21:6-9 describe God instructing Moses to build an idol (a banner with a snake) to force people to have to view in order to save their lives?
The image I always compare this to is finding a function to fit a collection of points. Some of the points appear not to fit because you've got the wrong function. In a similar way, each story or passage in the Bible has to inform the context of the others. If they are indeed the result of divine inspiration then surely they all form a coherent message when each is set in the correct context.
As a side note; hypocrisy is one of the few sins (perhaps the only, I can't recall any others right now anyway) which Jesus roundly condemned.
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