Unbelievers talked about in the Bible

That is a matter of belief. Humans wrote the scriptures but I believe that the Spirit of God inspired the writers and that the prophets of God got messages from God. Everything in the biblical scriptures is not from God, as the scriptures report comments made by unbelievers, historical events, etc.

1 Corinthians lists the ability to distinguish the spirits as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Some have that gift but most believers not. Scriptures in the New Testament teach that, for most believers, it is mainly a matter of experience, confirmed by the Holy Spirit in/with us. Believers living in a close relationship with God learn something of the nature of God. It is like living with a spouse decades, you learn the way how she/he usually responds and reacts. With God, there is also the expectation that what He says matches what He has told in the biblical scriptures - if the message is in conflict with the biblical scriptures, it is very likely that it is not from God.

Edit:
In many cases, we need to be humbly enough to say ‘I don’t know’. None of us has perfect knowledge. If unsure, better wait for increased understanding or confirmation than do something stupid.

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I think @T_aquaticus has raised an excellent point that the believer’s appeal to an absolute foundation of morality (God) has not then removed the danger of that morality (at least as it’s perceived and received) being arbitrary. And in fact, given our history of using religious language to justify morality that any reasonable person is forced to agree has been “nearly all over the map”, his observation that to say “God commanded it” actually makes the problem worse carries quite a bit of historical weight.

Here would be a test of our convictions - answer this question.
Who would you rather share a large continent (or planet) with: a large and powerful group of people who …
1> believes that the moral codes they follow should be strictly prescribed by the mediated understandings a religious group that claims to have a direct line to absolute Deity?
2> believes that, even while “squishy, subjective, and changing”, the codes followed ought to just be discerned by the cultures at large, subject mainly to over-all concerns for long-term fluorishing?

Even as a Christian here, I’m not eager to sign on to #1 - especially seeing what so many Christians (even Christian leaders) here in the U.S. can be duped into believing and therefore promulgating as “from God”.

But for me, this isn’t so much an “either-or”. I don’t see #1 as “the Christian” option and #2 as “the secular” option. Scriptures are replete with concerns that we be so much more than just obedient automatons. We are urged to understand (and appreciate!) our Lord’s business and overarching agenda. We are given a Spirit and a conscience to know and receive these things for ourselves. It is a spiritual pauper who wishes to trade that entirely in for a statically codified set of rules.

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Indeed. Secular rule came from Christians as much as it did from atheists if not more so because of the conflict of opinions between many different Christian groups and denominations. It does guarantee a freedom from religion as the atheists want but it was far more motivated by a need of freedom FOR religion, because religious people don’t agree on many many different things.

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Truth be told, proportionally, there are probably as many secular as religious looking for (or believing they already posses) some sort of morality for the complete idiot which justify their actions.

Indeed. I had thought about adding to my post that neither of the options I gave have proven adequate to keep us all above the most abhorrent kinds of behavior. We do need something. The main difference perhaps being where we all insist “that something” ultimately comes from - from within or from without (transcendent to) human culture.

We all do play the idiot in our own seasons too - so it isn’t like we never have need a lot of codified stuff (in our youth for sure, but even as a society I suppose).

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It’s magic* – God’s more sophisticated technology of communication (very much related in effect to his providential interventions, undetectable except through preternaturally coordinated meaning). Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutic comes to mind, yet again (forgive me, all who have seen it these several times):
 

 
 


*“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C Clarke.

(God’s ‘technology’ is way more advanced and above, ‘super-’, the natural, and “indistinguishable from magic.” Just because we do not understand it does not mean that it is not real.)

Right now I’m reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s “Holy Envy”. The following excerpt just seems apropos to this thread.

Religions are treasure chests of stories, songs, rituals, and ways of life that have been handed down for millennia - not covered in dust but evolving all the way - so that each new generation has something to choose from when it is time to ask the big questions about life. Where did we come from? Why do bad things happen to good people? Who is my neighbor? Where do we go from here? No one should have to start from scratch with questions like those.

And I would also add my own thought in here, dovetailing from the above thought: Nor should anyone be made to feel that the last word has already been given in answer to all the big questions such that any new generation is forever relieved of the need to address the all the same for themselves.

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Shooting myself in the foot would not conserve any resources to lessen climate change. :slightly_smiling_face: I was talking hypothetically about volunteering to go [H]ome early to help save the planet. It’s not unlike a sinking ship, where some sacrifice their spot on the lifeboat to save someone else. Christians more than most have reason to be ‘brave’ in such circumstances – to die is gain.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:21

 
And this, of course:

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
John 15:13

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Since the ‘Patriarch’ of the family is still eternally alive, each new generation has the opportunity to get to know him and his love, and the principles and realities involved in that haven’t changed much lately. The relationships are existential and dynamic, though.

Very well said and agreed on all points. I think this final one goes to the inadequacy of the representational world of words to fully encompass the world we encounter directly or our immediate experience. When we realize we’re bickering over how to represent something that cannot adequately be, it’s time to let it go.

Edited to add I think it was you who shared that wonderful video of a Barbara Brown Taylor talk. I take it you’d recommend the book?

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And that is why inerrancy and harder forms of Biblical inspiration are dead in the water. I couldn’t agree with you more. Noah’s flood is routinely told to children like it’s some great story. And kids, here is where God caused the mass drowning of millions of people including babies and children. Can you imagine sitting around and telling children tales of Jewish concentration camps? I don’t take the story literally but even still I doubt the author of it would have had any problem with a God who punished sinners in such a fashion! Progressive revelation for me.

Vinnie

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yeah need a story rewrite…

And the thoughts of men were only evil continually. And for those who don’t understand what that means… innocent women and children were nothing but toys to abuse and torture for amusement until they prayed that God would kill them. But knowing that atheists and 20th century self-righteous liberals would judge Him harshly if He did such a thing, God ignored their suffering and told them life sucks and then you die so get used to it.

God killed the women and the children too in your fictional story. Not to mention, it’s a bit amusing to watch people who think the universal language in Genesis can be understood to describe a localized flood but then jump on a wooden literalist interpretation where every single person killed by the flood was a Hitler based on the same story.

So all that universal language is not universal but the one bit that actually looks hyperbolic is universal. Have any sea side property for sale in Vegas to go along with that exegesis?

Vinnie

I find it more amusing to see people so naïve that they cannot conceive of the possibility that human civilization can get so bad. History tells a different story. It tells us that one Hitler can be quite bad enough and with a few to follow him a hell on earth can be very much a reality.

Is the way you ignore and contradict what I said intentional?

What is the opposite end of the spectrum from “wooden literalism?” Gaseous metaphoricalism? I generally find that extremists are blind to anything in the middle of a spectrum and see anything but agreement with their extreme to be the opposite extreme no matter how far it is from the reality. Such is the black and white distortion of honesty and reality among extremists.

I find it tiresome to watch people use the corrections required by scientific realities as an excuse to simply discard and dismiss everything the Bible says. Thus they endorse the attitude that taking science seriously mean throwing the Bible and Christianity in the garbage.

By all means create your own religion if you must. But I see no reason to follow it.

So God kills the Germans, the Jewish prisoners and all the soldiers fighting the Nazis? That is your justification? Being Christmas now is the time to get that angry deity a scalpel to replace his cleaver. “The pharaoh is acting up, let me harden his heart even more then murder a bunch of Egyptian babies. That will show him!” Your flood exegesis is wrong. The flood is universal and fictional and god acts similarly during the Exodus narrative. At least during the flood there is some regret at the end. God vows never to do it again. Does that happen because God saw the flood was good and was the necessary due to his divine justice? I think not. It’s a primitive element stemming from the other stories where there was sadness at the destruction.

Whatever the opposite end of the spectrum is of God murdering millions of babies and innocent people, and then reinterpreting it, you will find me there. Anyone who defends the cruelty of the Genesis flood is the extremist. You have allowed yourself falsely to believe you are the moderate here as you justify the murder of babies in the Hebrew Scriptures. People defending fictional stories and the murder of babies are the extremists in the world. They are wearing blinders.

We read the Bible in context and follow the evidence where it takes us. Flood stories are extremely common throughout the world. Not because of a universal deluge, but because people needed to live near water. Was every inclination of all the Chinese killed in the 1931 floods towards evil as well? I’m interpreting the flood story in its original context, in light of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis. I’ll take that over a blind, concordant reading that poorly reimagines scripture and strips everything scientifically problematic out of the flood but retains the murder of babies. I’ll never understand how the lack of preexisting water to flood the whole globe is more of a problem to some Christians than God murdering babies. Your fictional rewrite doesn’t work here and it doesn’t work for things like the tenth plague either.

Neither the flood nor the Exodus actually happened. The latter may have a tiny historical core that prompted a bunch of creative fiction. You are already believing in fictional details of a created religion. I just follow Jesus.

Vinnie

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You talking about the God who created life AND death, with vicious predators and nasty diseases, all evolving according to survival and extinction. Because that is the God I am talking about. Yes I believe in the God of the Bible who will do a reset and start things over and NOT in the socialist God who will take over our lives to make sure everybody has everything they need delivered to their door and nobody has any hard times but where people only smile continuously.

Then you are talking about an author of children bedtime stories – far more mythological and disconnected from real life than anything in the Bible.

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There is a big difference between a socialist garden of Eden and God intentionally and willfully murdering babies. You are advocating the latter whereas it is plain to me Eden or any situation like it never actually existed. Being perfectly healthy and always smiling does not appear to be the goal of creation. The tenth plague wasn’t a reset. Straight up child murder. We have straight up rape and land grabs in the OT as well. Maybe you think evolution occurring can be used to justify slavery and rape as well? Maybe the god that made death and disease, mass extinctions, natural disasters, predators and prey, is okay with the social survival of the fittest??? Maybe we should kill retarded children and euthanize the old? I prefer to look at God through the lens of the incarnation rather than make him out to be a monster because I think evolution requires it. Evolution isn’t a get out of genocide free card.

The Genesis flood is cast as a complete reset but only when you take the hyperbolic language as a universal and make all the universal language hyperbolic or limited from the author’s perspective. A fickle hermeneutic bordering on the absurd. I would sooner join the atheists before worshipping a fickle, repentant, baby murderer.

Vinnie

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What I deny is that there is a difference between the flood and evolution. I don’t think either is the same as genocide and murder any more than the work of a surgeon would be. Both are saving the patient from a fatal disease, and God bringing people home to Him is certainly not murder. I find the way you ignore the cruel character of evolution to be as peculiar as the way creationists ignore the inhumanity of God’s actions in the Bible. Both are equally ruthless. The aim is certainly the improve of our physical, mental, social, and moral capabilities. And I don’t believe that is accomplished without facing some very harsh realities of life.

But that is God in the role of a human being and NOT in the role of creator. There is a VAST difference between the two, like the difference between a surgeon and a mugger with a knife. They have very different responsibilities. To be sure Jesus is an important lens through which to understand the heart and character of God and particularly to understand what God expects of us. But you go too far when you make that the measure of what is good for God to do as the creator of the universe – it is impossible and absurd to do this.

You really want to play this game?

I guess you think we should let all the people in all the prisons go free and show more concern for their self esteem than their mistakes. You probably think Christian women and children should volunteer to be raped and abused in order to make the rapists and pedophiles more happy and comfortable. Maybe we should damage the brains of other infants so that life will not be so unfair for the retarded children. Human morality is not a get out of evolution free card.

I can certainly sympathize with this sort of reasoning. I have used the same with regards to many other aspects of different portions of the Christian theological spectrum. Nor will agree with the fundamentalist notion that God can do whatever He pleases and none of the standards of human morality apply to Him. But there is a balance between extremes. God is the author of life and evolution which is filled with many unpleasant realities. God still does nothing to stop neither natural tragedies and human evil. Looks to me, by your “standards” there is no room for any theism whatsoever. But these are understandable according to the vastly different responsibilities involved. It is a fact of human existence that responsibilities and expertise DOES change how morality is applied. But if you understand that there are justifications for evolution and God’s inaction in the face of tragedy and evil, then the problems of God’s actions and commands in the Biblical version of history are frankly insignificant by comparison.

Yet we all have to decide what is the “measure of what is good for God to do as the creator.” I start with Jesus, the only divine truth i feel intellectually confident to begin with. I can’t start with a mythological narrative sharing overlaps and details with other flood myths found thousands of years prior in the extant surviving record.

That text to me, does not present a reliable “measure of what is good for God to do as the creator” because I do not adopt plenary inspiration, concordism or Biblical inerrancy. There are competing theologies on what God would and wouldn’t do, what he would and wouldn’t command in the Bible. I progressively interpret it in light of Jesus.

I also do not deny that God can or will punish sin. His justice is part of what makes the Christian worldview attractive to me. I take that for granted. What I don’t take for granted is that if a mythological narrative says God murdered a million people including babies, children, pregnant women, the old and infirm, that I need to believe this. The flood is not portrayed as a regular flood in nature is. Yes, “God is the author of life and evolution which is filled with many unpleasant realities” but that doesn’t necessitate a special miracle to make reality even more unpleasant for many. The terms show God undoing the created order he established earlier in Genesis. The waters he separated now cause chaos to return and this is a resetting of the human race. Genetics and the existence of people around the world both show this to be completely incorrect. The story is fiction. It can speak to all floods and simply be a response to the problem of evil. Yet we know many people die to nature where every inclination of their thought is not towards evil.

You are correct that the world can be cruel. Millions of children die a year because they are poorly suited to their environments. There are floods and natural disasters, diseases causing untold suffering and death each year. That is the problem of natural evil and the single greatest argument for atheism there is. That doesn’t justify God going above and beyond the nature He created to specifically murder babies or command genocide. That only exacerbates the theological problem. The incarnation gives us hope that no matter how effed up things look in the world around us, God loves us and has a plan and purpose for humans. The incarnation shows us that God is not so indifferent that he doesn’t understand our plight. There is no valid religion outside the incarnation for me. While I think they all catch glimpses of the divine in their own way to me, without Jesus and God becoming man, I would dispense with religious views completely and join the atheists! Natural evil isn’t a good excuse for justifying Biblical atrocities unless we want to claim God is not good.

And yes, evolution in my view makes believing the “goodness” of God very difficult. I tend to fuzzily think that possibly in order to create beings with free will the universe must have had limits in how it could have been created. Sort of has issues with traditional models of heaven but I’m not tradition and without belief in an afterlife I do not believe the goodness of God as i understand it could be sustained.

Vinnie

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