2nd Peter 3:3-4ff

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Sometimes, once you become a religious authority, it could just be very difficult to stop making others believe it without getting embarrassed or defenestrated in the process. The absence of defenestration could be benefit enough.

Meh. I watched a video. This one:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY0x_YNlhz8[/youtube]

Well said.

I think if you read the OT carefully, you find that it wasn't really written for any one person or any group of people to have any kind of control. The Law simply says "obey and receive blessing, disobey and be cursed." The Law also predicts that people will turn away from God but that also God is merciful to return if His people wholeheartedly repent. That seems to be a recurring theme throughout the OT.

One might guess that the Levites, that is, Moses' and Aaron's "brothers" stood to benefit. But if that were so, why didn't they have an inheritance among the other tribes? They were allowed to live wherever they wanted and had certain cities and other properties throughout the land, but it only helped them exercise their responsibilities as the priest class among the tribes. In their capacity of priests, they had MORE responsibilities than anyone else and were forced, really from birth, to live as close to a human standard of perfection as one could get. These people were under a microscope, virtually living in glass houses. The Bible records that priests that took advantage of the people and did not carry out their duties properly did not fare well in the end, e.g. Eli and his sons as recorded in the book of 1 Samuel. While the Levites were the chief administers of justice, they had nothing to gain from corruption.

The rise of kings in Israel had nothing to gain, either, and the anointing of kings was initiated by people, not anyone in any real position of power. The book of Judges on at least two occasions says "There were no kings in Israel in those days. Everyone did what they wanted." Samuel even pleaded with the people NOT to appoint a king, yet still carried out their wishes in accordance with God's direction and the Law's procedure. Samuel warned the people of the demands a king would place on them. They didn't care. The books of the kings generally act as report cards on how the kings did upholding the Law, serving the people, and acting according to God's will.

We do know from the NT that the priests treated the people horribly. Jesus refers to them OFTEN as self-righteous hypocrites. They did use the Law as a means of control and suppression. But the Law itself was a means to administer justice, codes of proper conduct, and religious ceremony (atonement for sin and other sacrifices). The OT shows us that purpose of the Law is that everyone "love God." The priests couldn't see past the Law to it's real meaning; they only saw what was due them.

No one stands to gain anything from NT teaching, either. The Gospels inform us that Jesus was crucified for His teachings. The book of Acts reports the first persecutions of Christians. Jesus even predicted this when He said, "If they treat me this way," pointing to His divinity, "think about how much worse they'll treat you." The book of Revelation speaks of relentlessly cruel treatment of believers. The book of Revelation, in fact, was penned by a man who was deported because the Jewish religious leaders began to see that putting Christians to death only strengthened their cause.

History shows us that Christianity at varying times throughout its early years was literally an underground religion. These people had nothing to gain, nor were many of them even in a position to gain anything. Christians who were either open about their faith or somehow became known were turned into cat food.

Martin Luther had nothing to gain by addressing the injustices of the Roman Catholic Church.

Christians today who practice secretly in countries unfriendly to the faith have nothing to gain when their homes are raided and they "disappear." Christian missionaries to certain ex-Soviet states are under the intense scrutiny of state police.

There is nothing of this world to gain through Christian faith.

Does that mean all people claiming to be Christians are nice, well-behaved, well-meaning, exemplars of Christ? Obviously not, because we see examples of that all the time. Proponents of so-called "Prosperity Gospel" are among the fake Christians I personally despise the most. Apparently "Prosperity Gospel" only works for those who preach it. Their followers are made up of people who will give their last penny for a chance at getting out of debt or for healing a disability or incurable disease (miracle DO happen all the time, but they cannot be purchased with money). When that money doesn't come, when that healing doesn't come, these desperate people suffer unimaginable psychological trauma because now even faith itself is in question (you aren't giving enough, you aren't believing enough).

I could go on and on about that, but there are other things. I also can't stand certain evangelicals who promise that life will be better "if you just buy my latest book/CD/DVD/subscribe to my podcast/RFF feed/send a donation to support my radio/television/internet ministry." These guys might not ever crack open a Bible or even QUOTE scripture. They aren't preachers. They're motivational speakers running a self-help racket that pulls in so thousands of people into their mega-churches--excuse me, SUPPORT GROUPS. All they do is turn on the personality to garner popular appeal, bring in huge crowds that just want their weekly warm-and-fuzzies, and count their profits. They like to ignore key issues in the Bible--like EVERYONE has sinned and is in need of God's forgiveness. Jesus' atonement for sinners? Why would anyone want to hear about that? No, let's just talk about how God is love and we just all need to love each other. And keep smiling. And smiling... Feel the love. If these guys taught what was actually IN the Bible, their crowds would evaporate. Why? Because there is NOTHING in THIS world to gain from Biblical teaching!

But there is a LOT to gain from twisting scripture around and using God's name to win people over for yourself.

I won't get into the Roman Catholic Church right now, but I'm sure it's plain that even they are guilty of corruption in their own way. Likewise, I'm not singling out each and every Catholic, but only the ones who we know have historically been badly mistaken in their policies, abused their power, and, of course, those we hear about today who have been exposed as to their lack of morality.

Any time you hear God's name, the Law, or Jesus' teachings used as a means of controlling/manipulating others as I have mentioned, you are not hearing the true spirit and intent of God's message. You can easily judge certain false teachers and false Christians this way. But please don't categorize ALL Christians by the behavior of a comparatively few bad ones, i.e. don't judge all Christians only by the ones you hear about. Even many true Christians get taken in by these false teachers and teachings, but they can be convinced otherwise if another Christian gently corrects them and shows them how such things are contrary to the Bible.

Interesting that in the days when the Pope had power over the masses, the reading of scriptures was forbidden for non-clergy on pain of death. Its contents were strictly controlled. It was considered heresy to read it and think for oneself. To translate it out of Latin was also heresy and people who did as such were excommunicated and often killed.

The history of Christianity is replete with the use of the religion to control the populace and to justify the actions of kings and emperors in domination of their own people and subjugate other nations. The brutal actions of the Spanish in their operations in the New World clearly testify to this and to ignore it is, if nothing else, quite odd.

It is sad and ironic that the Vulgate was first translated to put the Scriptures into the common language of its time. Due to Rome's previous conquests, Latin had become a dominant language and the Vulgate was written for the common people. Instead of using the classical Latin of Cicero, Jerome used the form of Latin known more widely, Vulgar Latin. However, due to this the Vulgate became the "official" translation of the Roman Catholic Church, even beyond when Latin was in public usage.

I agree. I was kind of appalled by the beginning of this thread because it seemed deliberately antogonistic and needlessly so. There are people here who have enough reason to dislike christians without having a red flag waved at them, but I really liked your comments here. My Dad once emailled me to say that he thought I was too intelligent to be manipulated by religion "the most dangerous form of mind control there is," and your comments here would be a good answer to his assertion. I too cannot see who had anything to gain from this and I don't feel manipulated.

Sorry about starting out the thread in a needlessly antagonistic way. I have been stressed out lately, and having implied insults thrown at me by Sand here and by another called "Norwegian_Shooter" on another blog haven't helped. I get tired of people throwing out blanket statements, not reading posts and asserting that I meant something that I did not, just so that they can feel better about themselves. Every time I try to say something, it seems like somebody has to nitpick and find some random error, or just gloss their eyes over everything and then start name calling. I am just so tired of it all.

Politics... and apparently from what I understand, during the Inquisition, clergy did not do the torturing themselves, they hired secular groups to do that.
A lot of the "heretics" who were tortured and burned at the stake, garroted, etc. were people who were reading the Bible and encouraging others to do the same.

My statement wasn't intended to deliberately ignore the actions of the Spanish in the name of the church or in the name of God. Quite the contrary, if anything, they are CERTAINLY included among the unspeakable acts of those that either claimed to be Christians to justify their actions or those that mistakenly believed wholeheartedly they were doing the right thing based on misunderstanding the scripture.

Genocide and other displacement of people from their homeland is supported in the OT ONLY in the context that God used His people to punish the idolatrous people of Canaan. If you continue to explore the Bible and its history of God's people, you'll also know that God brought in (or passively allowed, meaning He didn't prevent it) Godless nations to massacre, deport, and enslave the Israelites when they became guilty of the same crimes for which God used them to punish the nations of Canaan.

Because Christians are called to be witnesses for Christ, our mission is to persuade people in favor of acceptance of our beliefs, not to destroy those who reject Christ. God's purpose in the OT was strictly as a means of punishing those who were depraved in their devotion to other gods and to restore Israel's inheritance to the descendants of Jacob. The Spanish, by contrast, were not seeking new converts in the New World. They were seeking wealth. Coming in the name of God under the veil of converting primitive people was just a way of getting the Church to approve one group's desire to satisfy their greed. The OT cannot be used in support Christian "holy wars." I think MAYBE (maybe might be a stretch) history shows that the success of the initial near eastern Crusade was a genuine testimony of the kinds of wars God does sanction in modern Christian times. I repeat "MAYBE." The failures of successive Crusades are certainly indicative of the kinds of greed and other false motives behind "holy wars" that God, consistent with OT and NT teachings, would never favor.

I think it took the Roman Catholic Church a LONG time to figure this out. I belong to a Protestant church, by the way. We all had to learn our lessons, too, as in the Salem Witch Trials. Incidentally, I composed music for a production of The Crucible and even played the part of Thomas Putnam. The Salem fiasco did more to immediately prove the fallibility of any church group and the tendency of certain people to use the name of God to further their own personal agenda for property, monetary, and political gain, and the lessons learned from that went further to correct the philosophy and behavior of Protestant Christians than anything the Catholic church did, as its hold on power prevented change from happening quite so rapidly.

I also think our perception of the present day RC Church are shaped by its shaky, questionable middle history. The guilt of comparatively few is heaped on the heads of the innocent. Think about it logically: Let's say I was a Bible-believing, Mass-going, family man who didn't have any trouble with anyone in or out of the Church. If the Inquisitions and witch hunts, even if I privately disagree with those tactics, are going on, they're happening to "those" people. I'm already in the Church. I'm not going out with torches and pitchforks like those people I secretly think are a bunch of crazy idiots. But it doesn't affect me, so why bother challenging the status quo? Of course, years later after all that is over, I'm judged because I'm Catholic, just as though I were one of those people carrying torches and pitchforks and burning witches at the stake. Guilt by association.

The church no longer holds that kind of political ground, otherwise a certain group of people would still be used as firewood (what's the word for that, again?) to burn the witches. The only way the church was able to get away with this kind of egregious behavior was by twisting scripture to mean whatever they wanted it to mean to get rid of people they didn't like, rather than ministering to them and their needs and leaving the state of their souls in their own hands. The Bible speaks out against violent, cruel, vengeful behavior, misusing God's name (for example to make empty oaths or justifying selfish motives), and greed. The guilt that has historically been heaped on the RC church as well as protestant churches has come about as a result of using the Bible to justify the very sins that it condemns. Many Christians today recognize that and seek to avoid the kind of behavior that has caused so much trouble in the past.

Last edited by AngelRho on 12 Apr 2010, 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

I see. They hired experts the way Bush set up Guantanamo. That way Bush is entirely innocent of all that brutality. It seems Bush read up on and appreciated the history of Christianity. " Those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it" type of thing. So those religious officials who were well versed in the Bible decided the best policy was to kill all those who would see it for themselves. They must have been very scared people would spot the contradictions and inconsistencies and the best thing to do is to torture and murder them. So much for the efficacy of religion in teaching morality.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FTTFo6mcug[/youtube]

'Well versed' doesn't mean obedient, or even faithful. There are plenty of Bible scholars who are not believers, for various reasons of their own. Not to say the faithful shouldn't fully understand what they believe in.

Most of what has been put forth as inconsistency and/or contradiction was more a problem with the reader's pre-conceived idea of the Bible's role, and often a language translation error. Newer translations have cleared up some of those problems, when they referred back to the original language of the texts. Also problems arise when people try to work the Bible to fit their own world view, rather than emptying themselves and humbly accepting the Word's direction.
Yet in Acts 17, there's an example of how Paul worked. I don't see much in the way of blind acceptance. Paul was speaking with intelligent, educated people, just as he was. In Philippians 3:1-11 he tells of how he gave up all his academic knowledge, credentials and status so as to simply preach Christ crucified.

Either way, it doesn't matter to some people. There are those who are faithful in spite of limited resources and there will always be unbelievers, no matter how much evidence one can present to them.

If people didn't believe in Jesus when they saw him face to face and experienced his miracles, they aren't going to believe some story about him. Paul and the other apostles faced the same frustrations when they spoke about the gospel to others. People were the same back then as they are today.

By well versed I indicated that these were the people who spent their lives not only being biblical scholars but, more importantly, directing Christian policy. If they were unresponsive to the essence of Christianity as you seem to comprehend it, who in the world would be? And you and I are well aware that these are not singular and unique instances of the way top Christians behave. Christianity itself must take some responsibility in the matter.

It is a common theme of yours Sand to point out crimes that have been committed in the name of Christ and lay the character of those who committed them on all who identify with that name. Yet many crimes have been committed in the name of America and I think you still consider yourself to be an American; so are you willing to accept the judgment that that makes you the moral equivalent to G.W.Bush?

The people I mentioned were trained officials of the Christian hierarchy in control of official Christian policy. Insofar as I am aware I never had G.W.Bush's ear on proper US policy.

Even the Roman Catholic Church recognized the corruption that it had within itself, and during the time of the Reformation, when Protestantism was beginning, the Catholic Church also sought to reform itself. A lot of the corruption IS just people using their authority in a terrible manner, which happens in all organizations. You claim that these Church leaders should have been effected by what they knew, but so also did this happen with the Sadducees and Pharisees in Jesus' time.

When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.