Some of the above four categories (but especially the one you refer to here) are influenced by the recent holy post podcast (linked above in my response to Roy), where Skye Jethani is interviewing Jonathan Rauch. Among the ideas expressed were that American religion has had a “market-driven” model since at least the antebellum south; meaning, that we’ve privatized religion into a very individualistic form. It’s okay for religion to give me a moral compass for my private life, but let’s keep it out of civic life where it might cause me to be asking uncomfortable questions about institutional things like … say … slavery (or insert other societal things that may have become our current sacred cows - to be kept untouchable by any religious challenge.) And because the church has become very market driven, the customer is always king. It leads to the humorous (and somewhat stinging) observation: “Where are the people going? … I must follow them for I am their leader.” And that model has left our contemporary church situation here impotent to deal with what happens when their “customers” are captured and governed by fear - so that their expectations of their church are that it needs to validate their fear (not challenge it), and to issue the appropriate call to arms to make sure everybody is driven by the same fears. I inserted the word “ideology” as well since that also captures the flavor of fear-driven perspectives that then enlist religion / church / scriptures all to be the foot soldiers brought to heel and attend to their real concerns of the moment. Now - you can tell that I’m writing very critically of this (and I am) - considering myself to be an outsider to that. But before I end on such a harsh sounding note, I think we also need to consider that the criticism of just “testing the currently prevalent cultural whims” and then falling in line, is something that is very, very hard to avoid. It takes a lot of courage and often sacrifice to be the prophetic voice that will be ostracized - maybe even threatened and killed. Jesus and many of the prophets know a thing or two about that. I don’t have that kind of courage - or maybe on a rare ‘good’ day, I might if the Spirit enables. I would rather avoid conflict. So I can also understand those leaders who, in private exasperation, may watch their congregation flock off in droves to the latest political fear-mongerer in their intravenous news drip-feed. And in a bid to preserve relationships (and yes … their job too, there is that - but let’s try to be at least a little charitable here) - in that bid they tell themselves, “I’ll ride this out till they see the wolf for what it is, and then when they are ready to come back, I can try to be the adult in the room again for them” So there may be a fair amount of that going on too. The reason I put science mostly outside of their circle is that these aren’t people who claim to dismiss science. Indeed they enlist such parts of it as they might find convenient toward their real driving concerns. But (and this would be my experience in these very forums) they are forced to ignore or dismiss vast swaths of science that challenge their view of reality. While they would deny this, everbybody else can see it.
Yeah - from the labels I chose, the entire chart is my own polemic, since you can probably easily tell which of those four I personally endorse or want to promote / pursue for myself. As is true of anything that confronts reality, there would be much blur and messiness across the four categories as I displayed them - and a great many things it fails to capture. So it would be interesting to hear push back or see how others might frame it differently in response.
I think it can also be easily argued that the morality in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is viewed very differently in today’s culture than it was in generations past. For example, the Bible condones chattel slavery as long as the slaves are foreigners. Also, differences in morality between cultures can also trace back to theological and faith based beliefs that are considered just as objective as any other.
As to the rest, that leads to a whole huge conversation that probably isn’t appropriate for this thread. So to head this off at the past, I do recognize that these are tough questions and deal with long debated theological points. Ultimately, these are articles of faith which are difficult to even debate in the first place.
I have thought it would be interesting to have a similar Venn diagram, but have another field labeled “truth” to intercept those, from the standpoint of various positions.
And that’s where I am willing to leave it. It is a tough question, as is Euthyphro’s Dilemma and Epicurus’ Trilemma.
In ancient Carthage where Marduk was worshipped, child sacrifices were demanded by Marduk and thus viewed as good because Marduk was defined as good. This led to child sacrifices as Carthage was under siege from Rome and the Carthaginians were seeking favor from Marduk. I think this is why people are hesitant to use definitions as the ultimate reasoning because they don’t think morality is merely following definitions and following orders. This is why I am encouraged when Christians as yourself take these sort of questions seriously and look for more than definitions.
I do. When I was young, Oral Roberts always grabbed my attention because he had large ears like my grandfather.
I also remember his claim that God told him he would die unless people donated a lot of money. I also remember my parents and grandparents grumbling about it, and suddenly Oral Roberts wasn’t on the family TV anymore. The mid-1980’s had its run of “interesting” televangelists, such as the Bakkers who also come to mind.
I seem to remember seeing a short clip of one such TV evangelist personality - and I don’t remember much of his actual preaching. I just remember he was this oldish curmudgeonly fellow and the camera zoomed in real close to his cigar as he would light it up, … and then lay into the viewing audience for the needed money.
As I remember it, Oral Roberts “thing” was healing. People would walk onto the stage on crutches and after he prayed over them, they would drop the crutches and walk off the stage.
I also remember somebody who had visited ORU and it made an impression on them that as they approached a rather flashy building (gold-tinted windows) they encountered armed guards. That was the evangelism building! And that was maybe 30 or 40 years ago - I wonder what their security is like today.
Yes, scriptures in the Hebrew Bible (OT) have been written in a very different world. To some extent, that is true also with the NT texts. It is an interesting question why God accommodated His message to fit to the culture of the receivers, instead of proclaiming a fixed behavioural code through ages.
Having many wifes and concubines is an interesting example because Jesus commented that.
Most scriptures in the Hebrew Bible (OT) were written in a patriarchal society where rich men could have many wifes and additional concubines (women were not allowed to have many men), and the married could divorce from fairly selfish and shallow reasons. These scriptures do not usually criticize that situation directly, the cultural situation is taken as it is.
Jesus revealed that those practices were not the original will of God. He uses the creation story as a starting point to point towards a lifetime (until death separates) marriage between one man and one woman as the original will of God in these matters.
This example helps us to see that many practices described in the OT were just descriptions of the prevailing situation and guidelines to help people act in a somewhat justifiable way in a society having such practices. The descriptions do not mean that those practices were the will of God. That points to a need to dig deeper to the scriptures to understand the will of God through times and developing cultures. Simply reading what is written may be misleading.
These are interesting questions but I agree with you that this is a huge topic and this thread is not the place to have a lengthy discussion about these issues.
I think people have been over polite and accommodating to your abrasive and derogatory remarks.
My faith is not blind, but i do not look through you jaundice and blinkered eyes. What i will say is that you will never see proof of God with your attitude.
My faith may not be blind but the first step can be,
Well - the title is “Choosing between miracles and what’s in the Bible” from Clovis, and then also how fundamentalism and cosmology fits into scriptural understandings too. And several of us have riffed off that onto adjacent topics as well.
Vaguely familiar. I think the “riffing off” stuff is where I got lost.
Somewhere along the line I seem to remember the issue of morality coming up, didn’t it?
Ah well, never mind. I’ll save my own comments on “morality” for another time and thread. Since this thread has become a “riffing off” thread, I’ll throw this into the stream:
It’s a fact that, as a rule, I don’t especially enjoy anyone’s “take down” of Christianity, but what I did find interesting is Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “evangelistic zeal” in giving his “take down” attempt his best shot, particularly his citation of “numbers of elite scientists” who believe in God". Tyson finds that, in my word, stunning.
It comes in a negative version first: don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you (is that the contrapositive?), then flips to if you want others to respect your self-ownership, first respect theirs.
Just BTW, the Christian versions doesn’t say “what”, it says “as”. An example given by a Foursquare preacher once was that while to you a hug may seem compassionate, to someone else it could be offensive, and thus the point is to find out what communicates compassion to that other person and do that – even if it makes you uncomfortable. He emphasized it by saying that for those to whom a hug is uncomfortable, if that is what communicates compassion to someone else, you provide hugs.
The Christian version of the Golden Rule is hard because it requires setting aside your comfort zone in order to conform to what others would have done to/for them.
I read a libertarian argument for animal rights based on the self-ownership principle: given that many animals species show affection and loyalty, it must be assumed that they own themselves, and thus the Golden Rule applies to them as well.
Read Aquinas, among others: Christianity is not self-serving but other-serving.
And the second assertion is historically false.
So has every other ideology that humans have held.
BTW, it was Christianity that brought people to grasp that racism, racketeering, slavery, child abuse, and genocide were wrong. Today’s society holds to values derived from Christianity while forgetting the origin.
The early church was strongly against slavery, on the basis of the scriptures: given that every human is in the image of God, then claiming to own another person is blasphemous; and given that the blood of God Incarnate was shed for every person, claiming to own another person is even more blasphemous. With those conclusions, the claim that “the Bible condones chattel slavery” is erroneous – it rests on a “recipe book” approach to the scriptures rather than taking them as a whole.
Leviticus 25
44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
From Paul’s discourse and the prophets, one reason is that no “fixed behavioral code” can actually establish morality; principles are required.
And to nudge them towards something better. I forget the details, but in one lecture a professor showed that the rather minimal requirement for divorce given to Israel was a huge step forward for women.