as for the story of the canaanite woman that you mention, yes, christ did initially fail to treat her better than anyone else in his time would have (maybe we can expect more of him, maybe not, i'm not sure); the striking thing is that he changes his mind after listening to what she says back to him.
What does that mean? Folk who say that usually mean something like: "I believe and adore a nice God, who loves me and His people. So when I look at the Bible, I ignore or heavily re-interpret the horrible things and read the lovely things that I already agree with. This means that I can believe in my lovely God and still say that his morality is in the Bible, even though I am using my own -independent- morality to decide what is moral in the book, what is not, and what needs to be twisted to fit."
actually, i think that's closer to what you want me to believe than anything else. you are happy to endorse my christianity as long as it is essentially mediated by an independent, rational morality of my own - if i do this, then i am suitably non-religious and you put me in the category of "exceptional, non-loony christians".
what does it mean that the bible is god-breathed? that is a complex question that does need to be left open. it's very difficult to deal with the horrors in the bible; we always need to remember that, and not worship the bible itself. but neither do i ignore the whole thing; in faith i continue to read it and pray with it and try to listen to god through it. that's not a simple, deterministic, literal process by any means, and is just something you have to do as a person of faith, not as an intellectual project.
If the book is God-breathed, why didn't God breathe a little bit less genocide and torture and proclamations against women, homosexuals, non-Jews and unbelievers?
well, i agree that it would be nice if the bible was even more ahead of its time than it is in many ways; but it would be stretching it a bit to ask god to put in a few verses about how great it is to be gay in a section written thousands of years ago well before gay came to mean something other than happy...
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-03-14 03:12 am (UTC)as for the story of the canaanite woman that you mention, yes, christ did initially fail to treat her better than anyone else in his time would have (maybe we can expect more of him, maybe not, i'm not sure); the striking thing is that he changes his mind after listening to what she says back to him.
What does that mean? Folk who say that usually mean something like: "I believe and adore a nice God, who loves me and His people. So when I look at the Bible, I ignore or heavily re-interpret the horrible things and read the lovely things that I already agree with. This means that I can believe in my lovely God and still say that his morality is in the Bible, even though I am using my own -independent- morality to decide what is moral in the book, what is not, and what needs to be twisted to fit."
actually, i think that's closer to what you want me to believe than anything else. you are happy to endorse my christianity as long as it is essentially mediated by an independent, rational morality of my own - if i do this, then i am suitably non-religious and you put me in the category of "exceptional, non-loony christians".
what does it mean that the bible is god-breathed? that is a complex question that does need to be left open. it's very difficult to deal with the horrors in the bible; we always need to remember that, and not worship the bible itself. but neither do i ignore the whole thing; in faith i continue to read it and pray with it and try to listen to god through it. that's not a simple, deterministic, literal process by any means, and is just something you have to do as a person of faith, not as an intellectual project.
If the book is God-breathed, why didn't God breathe a little bit less genocide and torture and proclamations against women, homosexuals, non-Jews and unbelievers?
well, i agree that it would be nice if the bible was even more ahead of its time than it is in many ways; but it would be stretching it a bit to ask god to put in a few verses about how great it is to be gay in a section written thousands of years ago well before gay came to mean something other than happy...