Nickman wrote:
Zetesis Apistia wrote:
If I tell another man I love him someone could interpret that as me being gay. People can spin things to say whatever they want things to say. That is just plain being dishonest when they do. Paul even warned against such the like......
Romans 16: 17 I urge you, Brothers, to be on your guard against people who, by disregarding the teaching which you received, cause divisions and create difficulties; dissociate yourselves from them.
18 For such persons are not serving Christ, our Master, but are slaves to their own appetites; and, by their smooth words and flattery, they deceive simple-minded people.
There is nothing wrong with the scriptures.
There is much wrong with self serving people that interpret scripture in order to support their own devices. Why is that so difficult?
How is it self serving when someone reads the bible and concludeds that Jesus is not god? Or vice versa? Many Christians believe that Jesus is God based on the scriptures, and many do not. How is this self serving? You believe Jesus is God, right? If so, is it self serving for you to use the Bible to support your conclusion? If not, then is it self serving for someone else to use the Bible to support their conclusion that Jesus is not God? If one is self serving and the other is not, you will need to show why that is.
Exactly.
To Zetesis Apistia,
If the Bible requires my own personal morality to be PUSHED onto it via my interpretations then from where does the SOURCE of morality arise?
Obviously is arises from me. There can be no doubt about that.
Anyone can PUSH their moral values onto the Bible and simply proclaim that everyone who doesn't agree with their moral interpretation is not interpreting the Bible correctly. But that doesn't hold water.
Either people get their moral values
from the Bible
without ambiguity or they don't. It cannot be required that the reader needs to place
their moral values onto the Bible via their choice of interpretations.
Moreover according to the New Testament Jesus said:
Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
What jots and tittles could Jesus have been referring to? Well, clearly Jesus himself did not write anything down, and the New Testament hadn't been written yet when Jesus was still alive. So clearly the only jots and tittles left in this religion is the OLD TESTAMENT.
Therefore I can take ANYTHING form the Old Testament couple it with Matthew 5:18 and I am justified in upholding that Old Testament LAW.
Surely you know that there are extremely immoral laws in the Old Testament. For example as a 64 man I could rape a young woman of say 18 or 21 years of age (so she's a legal adult) and then demand that she now has to marry according to the Old Testament Law.
I can justify this by Matthew 5:18. Jesus said not one jot or one tittle shall pass from law, so I'm good to go.
Now you may scream and kick and say, "Oh come on! Anyone knows that wouldn't be a moral thing to do".
But where's your proof? All you have to go by is YOUR interpretation of the Bible versus MINE.
Who's to say which interpretation is "Morally correct"? YOU?
That's hogwash.
The doctrine supports my interpretation so you have no business trying to push your personal interpretations on the Bible.
If it wasn't supposed to be like that Jesus should have never said what Matthew 5:18 has him saying.
Not one jot nor one tittle shall pass from law. It's right there in the Bible.
So ANYTHING from the Old Testament can be justified through Jesus.
There's the loophole right there in Matthew 5:18.
For you to argue against anyone who is making that interpretation to uphold the immoral garbage of the Old Testament is futile. All you can do is argue that they should embrace YOUR personal sense of morality.
But that is NOT the Biblical morality. That's your own personal views of what you think should be moral by whatever interpretations you PUSH onto the Bible.
So there is no way that you can complain about religious people who interpret the Bible differently from the way you do. You cannot claim that they are immoral, or devious, or dishonest, or anything like that.
The Bible cannot be used as a book of absolute morality because there is no absolute morality to be found in it. All the moral values that people take away from the Bible are of their own making. THEY are the SOURCE of their own morality. The Bible is not a source of morality at all.
