What is our church doing about this?

[there buster]

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I accept your opinion that churches should ignore such things. I happen to disagree with that opinion.

It is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of the wording of the church manual.

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Must accountability die that rebellion might live?

False dichotomy. Reveals much about assumptions.

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oppressive congregations are not helpful—equally so as apathetic congregations.

Another false dichotomy.

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Has Proverbs 6 replaced the 10 commandments? Or 1 Thessalonians 4?

Another false contrast.

YOur post repeats the mistake of considering sins of the flesh to be more serious than spiritual sins. Scripture is clear that God regards things otherwise.

The list of what God hates is what it is. We are not free to amend it as we choose.

[Dr. Shane]

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That's because you pick and choose.

Quite to the contrary. I do not isolate single verses or small passages and then interpret them through the lens of modern culture. I look at the Bible in its entirety and place it in the culture and time that it was written. Then what I see is a religion of peace, compassion, order, mercy, and patience like none other on Earth.

[olger]

Hi Ed.

Thanks for your terse reply. I agree with some things you communicated, in fact I don't believe we are as far apart as you might think. As to the Church manual, you could be correct.

I do take exegetic issue with your suggestion that God only hates the things itemized in Proverbs 6. He hates those things, yes, and there are many other things which the Lord hates. Proverbs 6 is hardly an exhaustive list.

* Proverbs 8 tells us that God hates: evil, pride, arrogancy, the evil behavior and the froward mouth. The mechanisim by which His dislikes become ours is a healthy "fear of the Lord (Prov. 8:13).

The Lord hates:

* Robbery. Isaiah 61:8.

* Iniquity. Isaiah 61:8

* Idolatry. Jeremiah 44:3-4

* Religious gatherings in hypocrisy (Amos 5:21-23)

* Hate evil Amos 5:15. (a directive)

* Imagining evil towards your neighbor (Zechariah 8:17)

* False oaths. (Zechariah 8:17).

* The doctrine of the Nicolaitanes (Rev. 2:15).

* Divorce. (Malachi 2:16).

* The wicked. Psalm 11:5

* Those who love violence. Psalm 11:5

* Israel's celebrations (while living in disobedience to God's Law) Isaiah 1:14. I guess I hate that kind of thing too..

You may see from these verses that your list of the things that our Father hates is but a partial one. My prayer is that He will reproduce in both of us a love for the things He loves, and a hatred for the things He hates.

Best wishes,

oG

[there buster]

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God only hates the things itemized in Proverbs 6.

I never made any such statement.

You raised the issue of:

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the 10 commandments? Or 1 Thessalonians 4?

Neither of which appears in your long list.

Oh, and I missed the sex listings.

And if we eliminated this:

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* Imagining evil towards your neighbor (Zechariah 8:17)

The number of posts here would be cut by at least 25%.

[cardw]

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Quite to the contrary. I do not isolate single verses or small passages and then interpret them through the lens of modern culture. I look at the Bible in its entirety and place it in the culture and time that it was written. Then what I see is a religion of peace, compassion, order, mercy, and patience like none other on Earth.

If you dismiss my list of texts as cultural, then why don't you dismiss the texts on homosexuality as cultural?

[cardw]

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That's because your focus is faulty. You ignore the cultural context into which they were spoken.

Alright, I will ask you to explain why you don't dismiss the texts on homosexuality in light of the culture context?

[there buster]

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Alright, I will ask you to explain why you don't dismiss the texts on homosexuality in light of the culture context?

It is a fair question. I should point out, however, that I was responding to the list of texts about which you commented, "not a pretty picture," and none of those dealt with homosexuality.

Those texts mainly dealt with the status of women. And when compared with the way we view the status of women today, those texts do not present a pretty picture. But the correct comparison is not between today and 3500 years ago, but between the texts you cited and the common treatment of women in that day.

This is called 'the chronological error' or better, 'the chronological prejudice.' Another form it commonly took was when medieval painters depicted Biblical scenes with everyone dressed as they would be in a medieval court.

I'll be glad to touch on the homosexuality issue later. I have an appointment I must leave for directly. As food for thought, I would point out that the OT texts and the NT texts are quite different. And that the rise of Greek culture affected this issue directly.

[Dr. Shane]

The treatment of women and the issue of homosexuality are two different issues for sure. One important point is that we do not believe homosexuality is a sin simply because it was condemned in the law of Moses. Nor do we believe unclean meats shouldn't be eaten because of the law of Moses. The law of Moses was nailed to the cross. Yet both the restriction of practicing homosexuality and the prohibition of eating unclean meats predate the law of Moses. The distinction of clean and unclean meat was made at the time of Noah. Sodom was destroyed in a large part because of homosexuality during the days of Lot. Both lived long before the ceremonial law was given to Moses.

[cardw]

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The treatment of women and the issue of homosexuality are two different issues for sure. One important point is that we do not believe homosexuality is a sin simply because it was condemned in the law of Moses. Nor do we believe unclean meats shouldn't be eaten because of the law of Moses. The law of Moses was nailed to the cross. Yet both the restriction of practicing homosexuality and the prohibition of eating unclean meats predate the law of Moses.

And because women were seen as property before the law of Moses we should still treat women as property?

[Dr. Shane]

Apples and oranges.

The color of a coal miner's shirt has nothing to do with the price of rice in China.

[there buster]

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And because women were seen as property before the law of Moses we should still treat women as property?

Please don't raise straw men. The only claim made was that the prohibition of homosexuality and the distinction of clean and unclean predated the giving of the law.

Besides, once Shane equated unclean meats with the ceremonial law (a position which is self-evidently correct) he opened the door to the irrational legalists to filibuster the whole topic, as they did several months ago. I can't wait for the 'Israelites as knowledgable nutritionists' stupidity advocated back then.

[cardw]

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Please don't raise straw men. The only claim made was that the prohibition of homosexuality and the distinction of clean and unclean predated the giving of the law.

This is not a straw man argument since I'm not the one knocking it over. I am simply applying the same rule that Shane advocated to retain the prohibitions of homosexuality and clean and unclean meats to the issue of women as property.

We either have to change the rule to something that works for every case or throw out the whole idea that the Bible has to make sense and is somehow the best book we have on the moral decisions or find a rule that works for every case and is still ethical.

This still looks like picking and choosing to me.

[cardw]

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Apples and oranges.

The color of a coal miner's shirt has nothing to do with the price of rice in China.

OK, lets look at slavery. It is not condemned at all in the Bible. If we had to wait for the Bible to condemn slavery we would have to wait a long time. In fact the Bible supports slavery as an acceptable practice. In some cases it condones the violence of slavery.

In the case of slavery the Bible has little to offer. The South was clearly on the biblical side. It required the enlightenment to bring out the condemnation of slavery in the western world.

[olger]

Jesus spoke clearly about God's ideals, providing us with the fullest expression of God's will. I see no need to look outside of Scripture for ultimate truth, in fact that will lead to darkness & bondage. One would be well to not get caught up in Bible culturalization too, as Gerhard Hasel pointed out.

`lo Ed. What do you think of Hans Diehl's excellent CHIP program?

Thanks for identifying the legalists for us. Who are these self-righteous ones?

`oG

[there buster]

the king is dead! long live the king!

[there buster]

the king is dead! long live the king!

[cardw]

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You keep shifting your ground. What do you want to discuss? Homosexuality? The treatment of women? Slavery?

The basis of what I see people using to condemn homosexuality, when applied to other ethical issues, becomes absurd.

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The Bible treats each of these quite differently.

No kidding

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And as regards slavery, the Bible is virtually the only source with anything to offer on slavery.

Really. Where does the Bible condemn slavery?

Jainism, one of the oldest religious systems in the world, condemned slavery long ago showing that ancient men were able to recognize the terrible nature of slavery.

[there buster]

the king is dead! long live the king!

[David Koot]

when you decide you're ready for actual discussion, let me know.

If you just want to rant, go ahead. I'll be spending my time in a useful fashion.

This is an example of rudeness. It is rude and demeaning. It is the kind of thing that can make a forum like this an unpleasant place. Civility, respect and courtesy are so important in this type of setting.

[Dr. Shane]

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The South was clearly on the biblical side.

Really? Have we forgotten those that got the slaves emancipated were Christians?

[cardw]

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Really? Have we forgotten those that got the slaves emancipated were Christians?

Granted, Christians, particularly Quakers, were involved. On the counter many Christians advocated the holding of slaves. What you seem to forget is that the Bible supports the practice of slavery. The Quakers clearly based their views on something other than a literal interpretation of the Bible.

[John317]

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What you seem to forget is that the Bible supports the practice of slavery.

It is true that some who kept slaves argued that the Bible "supports the practice of slavery." The same argument, and for the same reasons, can be given for believing the Bible supports polygamy. The Bible actually supports neither. It seems to support it, yes, on a superficial level, but when you look deeper into the Bible, you find that it doesn't support those things at all. Just because God did not say, "Thou shall not practice slavery," doesn't mean God says they should practice it.

If people truly understand the Bible and its message about God, they won't have slavery. God only takes people as fast as they are willing and able to go.

In his little book, Philemon, Paul appeals to the slave owner to welcome back his slave, Onesimus, "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (Philemon 16). I believe it is very likely that Onesimus wasn't kept as a slave very long after he delivered Paul's letter to Philemon.

The whole concept of agape love and the belief that people are made in God's image destroys the practice of slavery. Most of the abolitionists got their inspiration and hatred for slavery from the Bible. None should forget the stories in the Bible of God's freeing the slaves from Egypt and of Christ's coming here and giving his life in order to free us from slavery to sin.

[olger]

Originally Posted By: EDD

when you decide you're ready for actual discussion, let me know.

If you just want to rant, go ahead. I'll be spending my time in a useful fashion.

This is an example of rudeness. It is rude and demeaning. It is the kind of thing that can make a forum like this an unpleasant place. Civility, respect and courtesy are so important in this type of setting.

In-deed.

oG

[olger]

the king is dead! long live the king!

I think the judge tripped on his robes.

oG

[Dr. Shane]

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Granted, Christians, particularly Quakers, were involved.

Yes, Benjamin Lunday, a Quaker, started the anti-slave movement in the United States in 1821. William Wilberforce, an English evangelical Christian pretty much started the anti-slave movement in Brittan before that. The pope condemned slavery as a sin and great crime in 1435, 1462, 1537, 1741, 1815, 1839, 1888 and 1917. Congregationalists, Quakers, Mennonites, Methodists and Unitarians organized the "underground railway". In 1839 the Presbyterian church split over slavery. In 1840 American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention met. The Methodist church split in 1843 due to the slavery issue.

Slavery as practiced in the United States was not the same kind of slavery the Bible condones. While many Christians argued in favor of slavery, it was those Christians that disagreed with that view that led the abolition movement which ended slavery throughout the western world - Brazil being the last western nation to abolish it.

“When you buy a Hebrew slave, six years shall he serve; and in the seventh shall he go out free, for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and the children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the slave shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto God, and he shall bring him to the door or unto the door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.”

—Exodus 21:2-6.

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.”

—Ephesians 6:5-6.

If there is anything in the Bible that makes modern people nervous, it is its treatment of slavery. Slavery is humanely regulated in the legal portions of the Old Testament, and in the epistles of the New Testament slaveholders are exhorted to show kindness to slaves, but nowhere in the Bible is there anything which can be interpreted as a disapproval of the institution as such. People of our generation, Christians included, tend to have a very hard time with this, because it seems to amount to a tacit approval of the institution, and we balk at the idea that God did not consider the institution itself to be immoral.

Part of the problem is that we have false ideas about what slavery was really like. The life of a slave was not easy, but we get an exaggerated idea of the hardships of slavery from watching movies or reading historical material that is written on a popular level. Here the purpose is usually to dramatize the plight of slaves or to make some point about the evils of slavery in general, (1) but the historical reality was less dramatic. In most cases the life of a slave was not much different from the life of any lower-class worker. Those who have been in the military have experienced something like it — being legally bound to an employer and to a job that one cannot simply "quit" at will, not free to leave without permission, subject to discipline if one disobeys or is grossly negligent — all of this is familiar enough to those of us who have served in the military. And yet we know that the daily life of a good soldier is not especially hard. This is what it was like to be a slave.

Another problem is, when thinking about slavery we tend to have in mind the recent slavery of the black race in America, and so the whole subject of slavery gets mixed up with the issue of racism. But in ancient times, slavery was not associated with any particular race. By condoning slavery the Bible does not approve of racism.