Here you go Kid, about His followers not being of this world:KCKID said:In the above scripture account we have a God who instructs the Israelites to kill everyone else but to keep the virgin girls for themselves. We don't have to elaborate any further, do we? Is this an example of the right of God to be God and to tell us what is good for us? Really?
Am I rejecting the above account because I'm too stupid to understand why God would demonstrate 'what is good for us' in the form of such cruelty and immorality? If I'm wrong for questioning how such tales of attrocities can possibly come from a holy source then maybe you can help me understand ...?
I know you don't realize this but it's YOU that is asking this question of me as though YOU are speaking for God.
Again, you've made yourself the mouth-piece for God. You KNOW that God will be displeased with my questioning His actions as described by the authors of the Bible. Some people don't even bother to question. They just reject the entire Bible as a myth. At least I'm still here.
On what basis am I 'right' and God 'wrong'? Well, using the above presented scripture as a case in point I believe that I'm right to condemn the author's account of the tyrannical and immoral actions of God on the basis THAT such actions ARE tyrannical and immoral! Do you never stop to consider that such scriptures do not describe God at all but are simply the author's fanciful account of an imagined deity? I realize that my saying that immediately raises red flags within the 'fundy' mind. "This man cannot possibly be a Christian and yet he's on a Christian forum ...ban him!"
There are so many questions to which I have no answers. And yet, I can still relate to Jesus ...a man who, evidently, came to save mankind from the wrath of the God of the Torah. I cannot relate to the OT God at all! Another red flag for the 'fundies'. And yet, as said, there is something very special about Jesus. How DOES one reconcile Jesus with God? After all, both the OT and the NT were written by human authors. Well, that's what I'm still trying to work out.
I don't require scripture to tell me what is immoral and what is not immoral. The pillaging of one's tribe, the brutal killing of its occupants, the raping of young girls as okayed by God as being WRONG is NOT simply my personal opinion ...whether popular or otherwise. I also don't require scripture to support my 'opinion' that gay people should not be subject to vicious condemnation by some who REALLY seem to believe that they are 'the mouth-piece for God'.
<sigh> I call myself a Christian for the sole purpose of irritating you, meshak.
By the way, where does Jesus tell His followers that they are not of this world? Perhaps He does but I can't recall. Chapter and verse would be nice.
I ask the same - chapter and verse - of Jesus having scolded his followers for 'advocating GLBT' in their profile.
John 15:19
If you belonged to the
world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
John 17:9
I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have
given me, for they are yours.
John 17:14
I have given them your word and the world has
hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.
John 17:15
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect
them from the evil one.
.John 17:16
They are not of the world,
even as I am not of it.
.John 18:36
Jesus said, "My
kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my
arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."