And BTW- I don’t mean one quote.
I mean the WHOLE BIBLE.

The message of Christianity is “love one another, as you love God”.

Not “stone the sinner”, and “I’m better than you.”

Thanks again.

Comment by sirrutherfordj — December 3, 2007 @ 6:58 pm

It’s not clear to me what you mean by your first sentence.

In the main I have no disagreement with this post.

Matthew 22

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I’ve quoted the scripture to which you alluded in your post. I wanted you to seem them because I believe there are implications in Christ’s words that are not obvious, and I want to draw them out.

The first implication is in the order of the commands. “….Love your God ….” is quoted first then followed by “…Love your neighbor…”

This says to me that you can’t do the second without doing the first. In other words, to really “Love your neighbors” you have to “Love your God.” This is not usually a problem with Christians.

The second implications is what Christ says about the “All the Law and the Prophets.” “All the Law and the Prophets…” are based on the first greatest command and the second greatest command. I believe this is difficult for many Christians because these laws include death for certain violations of the law. Christ says that “All the Law and the Prophets” are based on these two commands.

Some teachings in the Old Testament are difficult to a modern mind – especially the harshness of some punishments. Apparently the harshness is to insure that sin is removed from the presents of God’s people as quickly and surely as possible and to establish certain deterrence.

Does this mean that the harshness of punishment in the Old Testament is based on first and second greatest command? I take this to be the case.

The message of Christianity is “love one another, as you love God”.

Not “stone the sinner”, and “I’m better than you.”

Thanks again.

Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”. And yes, the woman the pagans called a sinner, walked away, ALIVE.

http://www.bartleby.com/59/1/lethimwhoisw.html

Anyone who believes in the death penalty is not a real Christian.
They are a heretic, and should be ashamed.

Read the bible yourself. That’s why God’s law was written down.

Comment by Bluestocking — December 2, 2007 @ 12:09 pm

I believe the idea of justice is strongly tied to Christianity. God is described as just, as being able to render perfect justice. The Old Testament makes a huge deal of judges – the ones responsible for rendering judgments – being corrupt.

All people desire justice but are happy to accept God’s mercy – expressed through Christ, who, the Apostles Paul says, was the perfect sacrifice. Christ was the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world. This is why Christ is worthy of glory – he submitted to the Father’s will that an innocent die for sins, and this is why Christians don’t do animal sacrifice.

There’s another twist on the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery. This is speculation but the idea is that justice was not being applied. That is, where is the man with whom the woman committed adultery? Was he one of the men getting ready to hurl the stones? Was he one of her accusers?

As I said it’s speculation, but there’s a possibility that Christ stopped the execution because of the injustice of the unequal treatment under the law.

From Leviticus 20:10:

10 ” ‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

Christ didn’t give the woman a pass on sin. He told her to not do it again, and this is from the teacher who said adultery was not just in the act but in the thought, and from the teacher who said the Creator intended that a man and a woman be one flesh.

I’ve been creating this new page, check it out:

http://debates.redlasso.com/dbt/

If memory serves he asks Dog to take this test from in front of him, or some such.

Prof.

the world would be a far better place!

GHW Bush: No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Pretty much answers that question now doesn’t it?

Supporting the death penalty does not clash with Christian values. When someone commits first-degree murder, the have forfeited their right to live in society among us.

Comment by O. Bigfoot — December 2, 2007 @ 11:39 am

Ok. If someone commits murder, it’s ok for Society to commit murder in revenge. Sounds kind of Old Testament to me. I guess Christ came here to enforce that old eye for an eye thing after all.

Something to think about: every time a woman has a spontaneous miscarriage, God just murdered her baby.

I respect your opinion.

I realize that Bush 43 watered down the Separation of Church and State and turned all political discussions around the bible. May I assume we Atheists are no longer wanted as voters and residents of America?

To me, the GOP turned away many fiscal conservatives in 2000 allowing the religious right to divide the party in half. We cannot win any election without a party that includes all Americans who want liberty and freedom. Must we pledge to a God that does not exist?

it is completely true that the death penalty does not conflict with so-called Christian values because Christian values are any old effing thing the any self-proclaimed Christian wants them to be: state sponsored murder, war, oppression of the poor, oppression of women, …all A-OK in Christiandom because its what the plutocrats and theocrats want. The only problem with it all is the proclaimed Christian hero, idol, and leader Jesus would never under any circumstances support the death penalty (or war, or oppression of anyone, or not redistributing wealth to help the needy, or anything other than universal human rights), at least if we are to believe the testimonies of his teachings. In short, Jesus today would have nothing to do with what passes today for “Christian values” or the pompous asses that proclaim to know what Christian values are.
.
.

Aparantly it was not in the oldest greek manuscripts. It later appeared, but in slightly different locations, before settling in the current area. It also has a different writing style from the text surrounding it. I guess the main theory is that it was a popular story of the time and was written in the margins of the text as an aside, but eventually got incorporated in.

This isn’t to say that the story is necessarily untrue, but it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more skeptical of it. Something like the King James Edition is known to be pretty inaccurate at this point (based on the history of translations used for it) and aparantly there are a lot of newere editions out there that based on the latest translations and research. I haven’t had a chance to look much further as of yet, but I think anyone serious about these issues should at least get familiar with these issues. — Silverthorn

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With all due respect, Silverthorn, I think you’re somewhat missing the point. The point is that conservative Christians like Huckabee (and some of the people on this thread who’ve tried to defend his position) believe that the Bible — and even more specifically, the King James Edition — was not intended to be allegorical and not only can but must be taken literally because it is not subject to interpretation. People like you and I, who are aware that there is actually a great deal of room for doubt on the question of whether various segments of the Bible are even remotely accurate, know better. However, coming from that perspective isn’t likely to be terribly effective when contesting a point of New Testament theology with someone who is a Biblical literalist such as Huckabee. You might as well attempt to have a debate on lunar geology with someone who still thinks that the moon is made of green cheese — they won’t even be able to comprehend what you’re talking about. In order to have any hope whatsoever of getting them to perceive the contradiction in their own argument (and even then it’s often like arguing with a brick wall), you have to be able to debate it from their perspective. Regardless of whether the story of the woman taken in adultery actually happened or not, the Biblical literalist like Huckabee accepts that it did — yet even under this assumption, this incident as depicted in the gospel conflicts with the premise that Jesus was in favor of capital punishment. If Jesus had been in favor of capital punishment, one suspects that he would have no objection to the crowd stoning the woman especially since that was the punishment which the law of that society demanded as the proper penalty for adultery.

Comment by O. Bigfoot — December 2, 2007 @ 11:39 am

What if that individual was falsely convicted. Would their death clash with Christian values?

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Read my previous comment with reference to the woman taken in adultery — with all due respect, what part of “adultery was a capital offense” do you not understand?!?! For someone who seems to be defending the conservative Christian perspective, you don’t seem to know your Bible all that well! Good grief…I’m an agnostic but as far as I can tell, I remember more about it than you do! Not exactly a point in favor of your argument, my friend.

The circumstances which you dismiss as a “mob situation” was exactly the way in which capital punishment was meted out in that society. There was very little in the way of an “official court of law” in that society comparable to what we have today — since this was a civilization in which religion and politics were virtually one and the same, a lot of what might be considered legal decisions were handed down from the priests especially since it was believed that the Levitican laws were the laws of God and not of man. If there was any code of justice in that society at that time which could be described as secular, it was probably Roman justice rather than Hebrew justice. When people in that society wanted to put you to death, they gathered a crowd together who escorted you outside the city and threw stones at you until you died from the injuries they inflicted — exactly what did you think “stoning” referred to?!?

It’s worth looking into the field of textual criticism, which is a form of biblical scholarship. Many of those people may believe that the original words that got incorporated into the bible were inspired, but that errors in transcription and translation (and occasionally purposeful changes) over the years have muddled things. So, the effort is to study all the various manuscripts and come up with the most accurate picture of the original words as possible.

One book I read related to this was Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman, who seems to be a pretty respected scholar in the field. One thing that he brought up was that adultress story is questionable.

Aparantly it was not in the oldest greek manuscripts. It later appeared, but in slightly different locations, before settling in the current area. It also has a different writing style from the text surrounding it. I guess the main theory is that it was a popular story of the time and was written in the margins of the text as an aside, but eventually got incorporated in.

This isn’t to say that the story is necessarily untrue, but it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more skeptical of it. Something like the King James Edition is known to be pretty inaccurate at this point (based on the history of translations used for it) and aparantly there are a lot of newere editions out there that based on the latest translations and research. I haven’t had a chance to look much further as of yet, but I think anyone serious about these issues should at least get familiar with these issues.

Actually, if I was to pick someone for my president I would go with someone whose decisions are based on a proponderance of the evidence, coupled with logic and compassion, rather then what their imaginary friend has to say.

Particularly when that imaginary friend isn’t particularly opposed to slavery.

The theme that would disturb me with Huckabee, is that he is, in essence, advocating decision making based on his faith as opposed to based on his reasoning.