What does "Not Peace but the sword" mean?

[Ray the atheist]

Very often, Christians will argue about context.. so maybe the context of the verse I will be quoting isn't a call to violence, after all.

Matthew 10:34 (KJV)

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

2 Questions:

1. How does this verse accurately represent a message of harmony, mutual love and non-violence that I am told that Jesus was promoting?

2. How does the imagery of a sword suggest "peace"?

[Ray the atheist]

[Replying to tam in post #133]

God also provided a way to survive the flood (the ark) if one had the faith to listen. By his faith (believing and obeying), Noah saved himself and his household.

I think that God only commanded one person to build a boat. Let me know what verses say that God commanded more people

[Ray the atheist]

[Replying to BruceLeiter in post #134]

Evil is that which is morally wrong, sinful, or wicked, as the Bible describes it. It is anything contrary to the holy nature and will of God.

Nature and will aren't moral principles.
What moral principles does your God promote and adhere to?

[Ray the atheist]

[Replying to BruceLeiter in post #134]

God may allow but not cause disasters, but He never commits moral evil. Satan directly tempts humans to do evil, not God.

Of course you need to define "The Flood" in such as way as to make it appear as NOT a calamity.

I say that it was pretty darn calamitous for all the people and babies and fetuses to slowly drown to death.

I also say that the victims of God's commands to kill innocent people by other humans is calamitous for the innocent people, as well.

[tam]

Peace to you Bruce,

[Replying to tam in post #133]

Here is a good, biblical definition of the word "evil," @tam:

Evil is that which is morally wrong, sinful, or wicked, as the Bible describes it. It is anything contrary to the holy nature and will of God. However, some biblical words translated as “evil,” particularly in older English such as in the King James Version, can also mean calamity, disaster, adversity, or harm. In those contexts, “evil” does not refer to moral wickedness. God may allow but not cause disasters, but He never commits moral evil. Satan directly tempts humans to do evil, not God.

I agree that Satan directly tempts humans to do evil. God permits us to answer for ourselves, to prove Satan's accusation against us wrong, as with Job.

However, I believe it was Ray who was asking you for a definition of evil.

As to the definition of evil... I don't know how much I've considered it. But God is love - that is His nature. He is and acts from, love. Love is also the law (all other laws hang from the two greatest commandments - love God and love neighbor, to which Christ expounded upon: love also your enemies.) Against love, there is no law - so that one can ALWAYS show mercy, which comes from love. Instead of picking up a stone and casting it. Love also covers over a multitude of sins.


Peace again to you.

[tam]

Peace to you,

[Replying to tam in post #133]

However, I think we can go as far as to say that the flood did protect the lives of the drowned babies... because of the resurrection. What they missed out on was a terrifying world (filled with a kind of psychopath- nephilm and offspring; and where the thoughts of the heart was only evil all the time.)

I don't see any empathy for the drowning grandmothers, aunties, moms, dads, children, babies, fetuses.

Ray, did you not read this part:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

Grandmothers, aunties, moms, dads... are these not human?

If you are going only by the story, Ray, then don't you have to stick to the story as it is written?

God didn't have to drown them.
He could have blinked his eyes, and rebooted them, no problem, no pain, no suffering, no filling lungs with water.

How do you know that people can be 'rebooted' like that? Do you have any evidence for this? Do you know how the spiritual world works? How water works on spiritual beings?

Because from everything I can see, God always gives us the freedom to choose.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.

Our choices have consequences, yes, but we are free to choose. How many people do you know who would want to give up their freedom to choose for themselves (and for their children, at least until their children are old enough to choose for themselves)?

**


Here is the thing with your argument that God could have or should have done it another way (and this is not a new argument; in fact, I'm having a little deja vu responding):

You have no way of knowing that what you are saying is true. You - a non-powerful and non-'all knowing' being - are claiming to know better than the Being who is all powerful and all knowing. You are claiming that God should deal with evil (or the Nephilm and their offspring) a different way, without having any idea what is actually needed - and without any idea where your personal ideas would lead.

God is not that limited. He also knows already how it all turns out: no more death, mourning or suffering.

I value human life.

I don't disbelieve you.

But what God did was FOR life, and it was done from LOVE. You simply do not know Him. If you want to know Him, you need to know His Son - who shows us the Father as the Father truly is.

**

The purpose of the flood was not to "drown a baby." But there was an evil that needed to be restrained, or no one would survive. Can you imagine a world in which the humans (and other) on it had hearts that were only evil all the time? What do you think would happen to those babies in that world? To anyone born innocent into such a world?

Is that the kind of world you would want to live in? That you would want your children to live in?

We don't live in that world, Ray. We also do not have the Nephilm or their offspring running around, without conscience, doing whatever to humans.

You and your children don't have to see that world, because God ensured that world did not happen.

God destroys human life in mass killings and also commands mass killings.

No human life was destroyed here. The people died, yes (and so, they sleep, awaiting the resurrection, and perhaps also judgment.) But no people were destroyed (as in annihilated, body and spirit) in the flood.

Do you consider people who perpetrate mass killings morally good people?

Let me ask you a question:

If a scientist/military person needed to say, flood, an isolated lab containing a deadly virus that had been unleashed (accidentally or on purpose) - is he a mass murderer for letting the water flood in (causing the death of the people in the lab), or should he have let that virus out to destroy every living thing in the world, present and future?

What if that person could later return life to those people who died as casualties in that flood?

What if that person even managed to provide a way for the people inside the lab to escape the flood (and also the virus), but only one person chose to listen?

This is theoretical of course because a human cannot return life to anyone. Humans also use fire which can destroy completely (even dna.) But I suspect you might empathize with the person who made that decision - because it was done to save lives, even though some lives were lost in the process.


Peace again.

[tam]

Peace still,

[Replying to Ray the atheist in post #138]

Meanwhile, Satan, the celestial scapegoat never killed anyone

And this is false.

Satan is the bad guy. Even if he had never killed anyone (though he most certainly has), he hates us. He wants us to die, especially anyone who belongs to Christ and God.

He was supposed to be a guardian in the Garden of Eden, and instead he DECEIVED Eve, causing her to question that she heard God right that they would die if they ate from the tree of knowing good and bad.

"Did God really say..."


Satan is also the one who caused harm to Job, even killing Job's children.

Then [The LORD] said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

9 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

12 [The LORD] said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

Satan then goes ahead and has Job's servants killed, as well as Job's own children.


**

I'm not saying this is you, Ray. But I am always amazed when people defend Satan (or others) as long as it means criticizing God or His Son. It is the same when it comes to Christ overturning tables of the money changers. Some people use that as an excuse to find fault with Christ, but ignore the fact that those 'moneychangers' were thieves inside His Father's house, stealing from his Father - AND - from the poor people in that house who just wanted to worship their God.

Then [Jesus] entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. 13And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” 14The blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them.

If you loved your father, and people entered his house, disrespecting him, stealing from him and/or his children, are you saying you wouldn't kick them out?

It is the same when it comes to Christ speaking to the Pharisees and calling them hypocrites or the offspring of vipers, or saying 'woe to you' to them. These men were like many religious leaders today, loading burdens on the people, not helping them, judging them, holding themselves as righteous and others as beneath them. Yet there are some people who will find fault with Christ for calling the Pharisees out on this - all the while ignoring all the people the Pharisees were harming (rather than serving those people, helping them.)

Not only that, but if a person has ever spoken similarly of religious leaders today, then that person is being hypocritical to call Christ out for doing something that they, themselves, do. Especially when He simply spoke the truth.


**

I'm not judging. I just don't think some of these people are thinking things through.


Peace again.

[Ray the atheist]

[Replying to tam in post #145]

Ray, did you not read this part:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

Grandmothers, aunties, moms, dads... are these not human?

If you are going only by the story, Ray, then don't you have to stick to the story as it is written?

__________________________________________

Of course, the two of us go by the stories:


1. Your god created humans so that they could ALL BE completely and utterly evil.
2. Humans ALL became utterly evil, from the grand moms to the fetuses.
3. That's no surprise.


4. THEN, your god drowns everyone because he couldn't think of a way to stop the evil he allowed them to be so freely. He wasn't all knowing, or not all powerful or just wanted to drown everyone for fun.

5. Do we presume that it was a shock to your god that people behaved the way that they were created by your god?
6. Do we presume that god had no say in if people would want to be evil?
7. Do we presume that your god didn't plan everyone to be so wicked as to need drowning, from the grandmas to the fetuses and ALSO all the other living creatures?

What do we have to presume, Tam?

[Ray the atheist]

[Replying to tam in post #145]

But what God did was FOR life, and it was done from LOVE. You simply do not know Him. If you want to know Him, you need to know His Son - who shows us the Father as the Father truly is.

I think what god did was for his own glory.
Not for the people he killed, not for the people he commanded to kill others.

For himself.
To show off his own power, which was a lot of power.

The bible often says to fear the lord.
I think that theirs a good reason to fear it.

It commits genocide, and commands genocide from his chosen people.
It also loves to drown people.. like in the Great flood and when he drowned those Egyptian warriors.. all drowned.

His chosen people commit genocide for God. They had no choice really.

It was do as he said or die.
So, they did as he said.

I say that genocide is probably the worst sin that I can think of.
You seem to be saying that genocide is "life preserving", instead.

Hitler also justified genocide.. and commanded genocide from people who really didn't have much choice, either.
It was do or die.

Do or die isn't what I consider love, or what I call "life preserving".
It's a death threat.

[tam]

Peace again,

[Replying to tam in post #145]

But what God did was FOR life, and it was done from LOVE. You simply do not know Him. If you want to know Him, you need to know His Son - who shows us the Father as the Father truly is.

I think what god did was for his own glory.

Really? And here I thought you were an atheist.

Not for the people he killed, not for the people he commanded to kill others.

For himself.
To show off his own power, which was a lot of power.

Are you just passing your opinion off as evidence?

Because there is absolutely NO evidence that God sent the flood to 'show off his own power'. There are actual reasons given for the flood in the story itself. Reasons you are ignoring.

If He had done it to show (not show off) His power, than that would have been for the benefit of the people.

It also loves to drown people..

Opinion, and against the evidence.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. Genesis 6

like in the Great flood

Opinion, against the evidence.

and when he drowned those Egyptian warriors.. all drowned.

Are you referring to the Egyptians warriors that were chasing down people who had been enslaved, beaten, tortured, raped? To either kill them or force them back into the same - if not worse - slavery?

[Ray the atheist]

[Replying to tam in post #149]

But what God did was FOR life, and it was done from LOVE. You simply do not know Him. If you want to know Him, you need to know His Son - who shows us the Father as the Father truly is.

I think what god did was for his own glory.

Really? And here I thought you were an atheist.

_____________________________

You thought correctly.

I'm an agnostic atheist and I don't believe in the supernatural or superstitions.

When I criticize a work of fiction, I never need to think that the characters are real. I do an internal criticism for many criteria, one being logical consistency. When as story makes no sense, I think it's more poorly written than a story that does.

Just because I talk about the story doesn't mean that I believe everything that I read.
I concluded about oh..... 50 years ago that the bible is a collection of mostly fictional stories with fictional characters and magic.

I don't take the bible as if were a historical textbook.. I take it as historical fiction.
Hope that clarifies.