I never thought of that.
Talk about gigantic, historic rivers
The Euphrates baby
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I have and I see nothing that leads me to believe what they left us, whoever they were, (makes no difference to me), by golly was anything other than sufficiently accurate information about what took place when God became a human being. I believe they got it right. In fact, I know they did because I followed their instructions and had and have the exact same kind of experiences they had and hundreds of millions of others have had.
Don’t you see? Try to picture of a filthy animal, the Gadarene, filled with hate and bitterness and sick attitudes, who with His touch instantly became a loving human being. And my experience is just like millions of others and He can set you free from the things which drag you down, too.
It does to the argument that you make.
So the experiences of millions of (insert other religion of your choice) makes that (religion from previous choice) just as valid as Christianity? You can’t use your experience to argue for the accuracy of the Biblical text.
We are instructed in multiple places to remember and share “the works of the Lord” and “the great things he has done”, however, striking personal experiences definitely among them.
So, yeah, we can, if they echo scripture and argue for God’s sovereignty and omnipotence, for instance, or demonstrate his care for his children and his ability to change lives.
I was referring to the accuracy of the Greek text, not the application of said text.
It makes a difference if we call them forgers, imposters, con men who tried to deceive their readers.
Sure I can. I invite you to locate the testimonies of people from other “faiths” and compare them. What Jesus does for us and in us is miraculous. God indwells us with himself. Try to find others who describe their relationship with God like Christians do. He lives inside believers. “And they have overcome him by reason of the blood of the Lamb, and by reason of the word of their testimony; and they have not loved their life unto death.”
Its always about Jesus and the Father with you. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Its like you love Him or something:)
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ALL WELCOME TO JOIN IN, PLEASE
He’s pretty amazing. How, How, did this guy create such a stir. Single-handedly, practically, with nothing going for him (as the world goes) He revolutionized the entire world. He still does. The greatest minds in the world don’t know what to do with Him. For 2,000 years no one has been capable of just ignoring the guy. Tens of thousands of books written about Him. Tens of thousands of songs written to and about him. Artwork, sculptures, hospitals, educational institutions dedicated to him and no one can explain him fully. No one completely understands him. Yet, men and women have dedicated their all to get a glimpse of the real man.
No money, no political connections, no education, not married, no status, never tried to achieve status, never sought power. Appealed mostly to the poor, the broken, the oppressed, the infirmed. Somehow, He convinced many while He was alive that there was something extraordinary about him; so much so that the old geezer Herod had wanted to meet him for some time. Didn’t have a place to lay his head. Blasted religious big shots who wanted him dead.
Easy to do when you are giving sight to the blind, making the lame walk, casting out demons, feeding 5,000 twice!, and to top it off raising the dead. And this is just a partial list of what He accomplished in 3 years. Makes you wonder why the entire nation of Israel didn’t fall down and worship Him given there was something extraordinary about him. And yet a few days later they were calling for Him to be cruicified.
If there is truth reflected in experience that echoes the text, though, that speaks to its validity, but maybe not its ‘accuracy’ in an academic sense.
To some, to you perhaps, the fact that he is presented as an astonishing God like man, should have led everyone back in the day to follow him. It did for a while but then many turned away.
I suppose you are adding another twist to the arguments denying his divinity. He either was a nobody, a part time God, or a total phoney which explains why most of his popular support faded away by the end of his ministry. Something like that.
I can tell you this: if you ever surrender to Him, watch out
I can relate to your questioning an overemphasis on intellect. I was just reading through the section on the nature of the two worlds given us by the two hemispheres which goes through the work of Western philosophers which relates in the McGilchrist book The Master and His Emissary that made me think of what you’d written here. Talking about Wittgenstein, he says
Despite his respect for the honourable business of the search for clarity, Wittgenstein was wary of the false clarity that scientific thinking, and sometimes the mere business of formulation in language, brings. … We need to struggle towards objectivity, and yet the reality we aim to reveal is itself not precise, so that the artificial precision of our language betrays us. Wittgenstein spoke disparagingly of the ‘irritation of the intellect’, the ‘tickling of intellect’, which he opposed to the religious impulse (he said he could not help ‘seeing every problem from a religious point of view’). He saw the business of philosophy as opposing the anaesthetic of self-complacent reason: 'Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples.
I’ve actually weeded out most of the dense stuff but it may still not be clear that he is exulting the religious impulse as interpreting what is elemental from the higher order perspective of values, rather than explaining what is higher based on an examination of what is lower.
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Love that McGilchrist quote. I’m no philosopher and I’ve never read Wittgenstein, but he certainly gets cited all the time in linguistics articles.
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Me neither though I majored in philosophy as an undergrad. Actually I did read his earlier Tractatus but at that stage he was pretty much embodying the worst tendencies he criticizes later. Well embodying is putting it lightly, he basically pushed it further than anyone else ever had.
And I never took a course in linguistics but I find the insights you share very illuminating. If only I could go back in time and advise myself on course selection. It would be great if someone made an anthology of your best posts. I’ve started doing that on Fb for some of the information I’ve gleaned about horticulture. I just cut and paste them into a “notes” document.
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I wish I didn’t have to mention this, but it’s true. It can make God look terrible. He isn’t. He’s just the opposite of terrible, if we can understand him from a perspective different than the one we often hold presently.
God is perfectly Holy. He cannot stand sin, mostly because ultimately sin harms us, people, human beings, and that makes him sick.
He deals with sin in ways some find unjust. His solution to the devastation caused by sin was and is Jesus Christ. If I were to try to summarize the entire message of the bible in a nutshell I would say something like: Sin separated us from God. Sin is more than bad behavior and attitudes. It is a condition found in the hearts of mankind. Jesus came to forgive our sins and to cleanse us of our sinful ways, our bent toward sinning which is engrained in us as a part of the human condition.
He sacrifices everything dear to him to buy us back from its terror. Christ, He Himself, became the ultimate and final means whereby we could be united with God. Christ bore our sins literally in His body to pay the price to make a way for us to find and know and worship God.
LOL. I have a feeling that would be embarrassing.
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Well lets see how the Greatest Posts collection goes and then perhaps another collection for bloopers? Humor can be therapeutic.
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I definitely believe that God isn’t terrible. He’s good, loving, just, merciful, etc. But I also really do think that Joshua and some of the other books present a picture of God that is less-than-perfect in a lot of ways. Tribal, unforgiving, unmerciful, injust, etc. Maybe I’m just missing something; but it seems a lot more reasonable to just admit that whoever wrote the book of Joshua got God a little wrong. Maybe they saw God through the lens of their own bronze age, tribal, violent culture, and that influenced their writings.
I agree with basically all of this. But I don’t think it justifies the stuff I brought up in my post to Paul, like killing the women and children and wiping out the entire civilization. I don’t know exactly what the real God would have done, obviously, but maybe He would have sent them a prophet and influenced their culture from the inside-out to bring transformation. You know, everything that Jesus accomplished – just earlier. As it is, I don’t think the conquest and mass killing described in Joshua actually happened. At least, I hope it didn’t really happen!
(P.S. What does it mean for Jesus to literally bear our sins? Isn’t sin an action?)
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Consider this:
The Agnus Dei rescues us with his blood and resurrection.
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He bore the penalty for our sins, and I love him for it (and a lot of other things! 
).
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