Subject:
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Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:27:58 GMT
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Viewed:
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4222 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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Thanks for indulging me, John.
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And what makes Jesus’s “revelations” about God trustworthy to the point
where you seem to have supreme confidence in that trustworthiness?
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That is a revelation to me which I cannot explain.
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OK, I guess that answers most of the questions from my post. So, if I
understand you correctly, when it comes right down to it, the reason you
believe wholheartedly that Jesus spoke eternal religious truths about God and
God’s nature and God’s concerns (while, for example, Moses or Muhammed did
not) is because you had a personal revelation that convinced you this is
true, one that you can’t otherwise explain.
That helps me understand where you’re coming from. But it also seems like
you could hardly expect anyone else to share that same view of Jesus or God
for any rational reasons. And maybe you don’t.
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Well, let’s say that it “rings true” to me; I find the wisdom valid for my life.
Why? I don’t know the reason. But it does. Why do you believe what you
believe? Upon what rational basis do you (presumably) deny the existence of
God? How do you explain the existence of the universe? What “revelation” leads
you to that conclusion?
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But from an on-and-off reading of your posts to ot.debate, it seems as though
you fairly regularly make statements about Jesus and God that seem to wholly
depend on such a personal, unexplainable revelataion.
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Eh, that is the nature of Religion, of faith. I seriously doubt that any two
believers of the same faith believe exactly the same things. It is how
peace-loving Muslims and butchering Islamo-fascists can pray to the same Allah.
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It leaves me wondering
why would you expect anyone else to take such statements seriously (unless
you assume they already share your views about Jesus and God because they
also had a personal revelation of their own to mirror yours).
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To me, it isn’t germane how one acquired one’s beliefs or really what what one
believes, but how one puts those beliefs into action in one’s personal life.
It’s what Jesus was saying to the Pharisees-- if your piety doesn’t translate
into a love of your neighbor, it is worthless.
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A person could potentially become convinced of any proposition or set of
propositions based on a personal revelation that can’t be explained. Somone
might become convinced that the Earth is flat, someone else might become
convinced that Karl Marx spoke eternal religious truths, and a third person
might become convinced that the number 3 is evil.
But in a public discussion, you would probably be surprised to see such
people bring such beliefs into play. If someone tried to make a valid point
in a discussion by pointing out that the Earth is flat (without even
bothering to explain why they believe this outlandish proposition in the face
of all the evidence to the contrary), you would probably laugh them off.
Even if they explained that they became sure of this fact through a personal
revelation that can’t be explained, you would still probably only snicker at
the silliness of it all. You might not bother to point out the foolishness
of it, but I am guessing you would still shake your head at the very idea
from the safety of behind your computer screen. (Though feel free to correct
me if I’m wrong about how you would react to such claims.)
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You are comparing apples and orbs. There are no “facts” (verifiable by science)
in religion.
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My point is that propositions that are believed in based on personal
revelation (and arguments that depend on such propositions being taken for
granted) have this same aura of silliness and/or irrelevance to anyone who
does not already share those beliefs.
So I guess what I’m saying is, you won’t have much success in a debate (be it
about ethics or public policy) if you expect other people to take seriously
statements or arguments based on personal revelation.
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I disagree. Arguments or ideas should be judged based on their merits, not
their origins. Anything other is simply intolerance. So you believe in magic.
Fine. But I don’t call you silly (at least to your face;-)
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Again, how or what
Now, again, I could be reading you wrong, and maybe your intent is not to
change anyone else’s mind, or even logically defend your own positions.
Maybe your posts to ot.debate are simply to state your positions.
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Of course. State your position and argue its merits. Change, retain, tweak as
needed. I participate in OT.debate for MY sake. If anyone finds the discourse
amusing, stimulating, engaging, whatever; great. It’s about sharing ideas.
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But
that’s not the impression I’ve gotten, and it would kind of go against the
whole spirit of ot.debate.
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First of all, I am not a Jew (meaning I am not bound by Jewish Law).
Jesus never expected AFAIK gentiles who followed him to be bound
by it, either.
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On my reading of The Gospels, Jesus doesn’t seem to have expected gentile
followers at all.
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Careful lumping them all together. Each has its own unique perspective.
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If you don’t think Jesus expected gentiles to follow the
Law of Moses, it seems equally likely that Jesus didn’t expect gentiles to
follow any of his other teachings.
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But see, revelation didn’t end with the Old Testament, either. Jesus, for
Christians, is the final revelation of God’s nature.
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I assume this is one of those propositions that you believe in based on a
personal revelation. So as an example of what I was trying to explain above,
your statement of this proposition comes across about as convincing as
someone simply stating “But see, the Earth is flat.”
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No. All Christians believe this, more or less. These are matters of faith, not
fact, as an “earth is flat” statement would be.
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I realize you are simply stating your beliefs about Jesus and God (and
doing so in this instance at my own request!), but by habitually posting in a
public discussion forum called .debate, it seems like you actually expect
that other people might in some way be convinced by such statements when I
don’t see how that is a realistic expectation in the least.
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I don’t expect it. But I don’t rule out the possibility, either. I mean, what
you do expect people to learn from reading the Brick Testament? That
Judaism/Christianity are, after all, silly? That Christians and Jews are going
to suddenly stop believing in their faiths because of it? That doesn’t seem
like a very realistic expectation. What it really is is mockery. And if you
don’t think so, try (if you dare) creating a “Brick Koran” in the same vein as
The Brick Testament. It would be perceived as mockery to the point that I
honestly wouldn’t be surprised if some mullah somewhere put out a fatwa calling
for your execution. Jeez, it’s chilling just to type it....
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Jesus correctly interprets the Torah (LAW)
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Again, I know this may simply be a proposition you believe from personal
revelation, but I don’t know I can even make sense of this. Sure, there is
some ambiguity in The Law (hence the Talmud in Judaism),
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Hence yeah!
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but it is very clear
in many regards. How exactly does Jesus correctly interpret it?
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Of course you realize that volumes have been written on this topic...
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and we find out that God is less interested in the
minutia of forms of worship than He is about human behavior, especially
towards one another.
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That is quite a revelation! Who’d have thunk that all along, the correct
interpretation of The Law is the exact opposite of its face-value meaning?
The correct interpretation of all those laws about the minutia of worship is
to ignore them! Brilliant!
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Not ignore them, but not to lose sight of their purpose in the first place.
Boiled down: to love God is to love one another.
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This idea even appears in the OT as well.
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True, there are a few bits in the OT which contradict the vast bulk of the
rest of the OT in suggesting that God doesn’t really care about animal
sacrifices and the other minutia of worship. But is choosing to take
seriously .0001% of the OT over the other 99.9999% of it the “correct
interpretation” of the OT? That seems entirely preposterous.
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Shrug. It’s not an issue of validity via voluminosity. Remember, the OT is an
ongoing story of the relationship between The People of God and Yahweh. The
understanding of Yahweh goes through profound changes from Genesis to, say,
Ecclesiates, for example. There isn’t one set understanding at all.
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EXCEPT for the fact that Jesus FULFILLED the Law! He didn’t abolish it, but
He completed it; His being was the Law brought to fruition. All of Judaism
came to completion with the person of Jesus Christ.
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For the life of me, I cannot understand this interpretation of the word
“fulfill” in this passage. It seems to force a meaning on to “fulfill” here
that makes this into a gibberish statement instead of one with a clear
meaning.
I do not deny that the word “fulfill” has different meanings in English, and
from what I understand the Greek word pleroo has very similar multiple
meanings. But which meaning makes sense in context here? I would say that
the most obvious meaning of fulfill in Mt 5:17 would be “to fully carry out”.
This would be like someone saying, “I have come to fulfill the requirements
of jury duty.” You would hardly expect an interpretation of that sentence to
be “I have come to bring the requirements of jury duty to fruition; I will
complete the judicial system” because that simply makes no sense.
A second possible interpretation is that Jesus is saying he came to perfect
The Law. This is plausible, since several of Jesus’s teachings take elements
of The Law of Moses and make them even stricter (ie, not just murder is a
sin, but anger; not just adultery is a sin, but extramarital lust). But in
light of the fact that Jesus’s very next sentence is stating that not even
the smallest stroke of The Law will pass away before the end of heaven and
Earth, I think it is far, far more likely that Jesus means that he came to
“fully carry out” the Law of Moses to the letter.
The one meaning of fulfill that makes no sense here is “to complete” or
“bring to an end”. What sense does it make to “complete” a set of laws?
Could someone “complete” the US Constitution in whatever sense Jesus is
supposed to complete the Law of Moses?
Furthermore, any interpretation of this passage that has the net result of
making The Law of Moses no longer valid would fly in the face of Jesus saying
“I have not come to abolish The Law” right before this and “not even the
smallest stroke will pass away” right afterward.
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Well, at the very least, the subject is debatable. And one could say that one’s
personal understanding could be the result of a “revelation”. How else would
you describe it?
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Well, remember, Jesus was VERY critical of the keepers of the Law
(Pharisees)
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I agree that Jesus criticized Pharisees for following the letter of the Law
and not the spirit. It would be something like me criticizing someone who
pays their taxes to the US government but looks for every last possible
loophole to pay far less than their fair share.
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hehe Like this?
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In both cases, we’re trying
to get the other to follow the laws in a less “legalistic” sense.
But he also implies that the Pharisees are exceedingly righteous, warning his
non-Pharisee listeners, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the
scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
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Heck, why not just cut to the chase: Verse 48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your
heavenly Father is perfect”. That’s rather a high bar, even for the Pharisees.
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He broke the Sabbath on more than one occasion to exemplify religious
hypocrisy.
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Jesus does have, in my opinion, a strained interpretation of the sabbath law,
but seems to have thought he was within the law rather than breaking it, and
appealed to David’s similar God-approved (non)violation of the Sabbath to
support his own actions.
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This exemplifies to me how the Law can be twisted by our understanding to
produce behavior that is contrary to the intentions of the Law in the first
place.
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Jesus was far less concerned by the letter of the Law than how we
treat each other.
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I get this sense in certain passages from The Gospels, but in others
(particularly the Gospel of John) Jesus seems more obsessed with people
holding certain beliefs about him than how they treat their fellow man. And
throughout the Gospels is the overriding concern with the imminent
end-of-times judgment.
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Now John is an interesting Gospel. We haven’t even begun to talk about the
writer’s POV as it affects his presentation of Jesus’ story. I wouldn’t have
pegged you as a literalist, Brendan. Or do you prefer to simply skewer
literalists’ interpretations?
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The Law was good, but the Law became the object of
Israel’s affection, not God Himself (via the treatment of others).
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When did The Law become the object of Israel’s affections? That seems
ironic, since so very much of the OT is dedicated to describing how the
Israelites continuously failed to follow The Law properly, and were therefore
relentlessly and brutally punished time after time after time after time by
God.
If there’s one message the OT gives more clearly than anything else, it’s
FOLLOW THE LAW OR GOD WILL DESTROY YOU. For Jesus to come along after all
that and say “Hey, you know what? Don’t sweat The Law too much. God just
wants you to be nice to each other,” is just insane.
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To you perhaps. I think it makes perfect sense. I brought the Law into the
world, and I can take it out! (apologizes to Bill Cosby)
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I think we are using different definitions of “immolate”. I was referring
to it specifically as a sacrifice to God, such as a burnt offering, not just
torching somebody.
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Well, then you were using a different sense of immolate than Dave! who made
the comment you were replying to in the first place. Dave! was referencing
Leviticus 10:1-2 in which Yahweh himself kills Aaron’s two sons Nadab and
Abihu by shooting fire at them, burning them to death. Their crime?
Worshiping Yaweh incorrectly, seemingly as Dave! suggests, by using the wrong
incense.
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Okay, a misunderstanding. I’ll take it up with Dave!
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It is just this very sort of minutia and insanely-harsh punishment for
failure to exactly follow such minutia that gives The Law of Moses its
reputation. The thing is, when Jesus was around, his fellow Jews believed
that God himself had personally given them all these laws to follow on pain
of death and destruction for their families. If Jesus thought it was
important to correct this incredibly huge misunderstanding about what it is
God really wants, it seems like it would have been incumbent upon him to
state in the clearest possible terms that The Law is not what God really
wants, and also explain why they have all been miseld for the past 1,500
years into thinking that that was exactly what God wanted, and that it was
their failure to follow every last bit of God’s obsessive minutia which was
the reasons the Jews had suffered all kinds of horrible invasions,
oppression, slavery, pestilence, etc.
I know if I were Jesus, and that was the message I needed to get across, I
would not have wasted time criticizing Pharisees and speaking in parables. I
would have just said over and over to anyone who would listen, “Oh, man!
You’re never going to believe this, but we’ve been TOTALLY WRONG about God
and what God wants for the past 1,500 years! There’s been some terrible,
terrible, terrible mistake! I suppose I’m partly to blame because I’m kind
of God myself, but let’s set the record straight once and for all! All our
people’s holy scriptures are totally wrong. Throw them out! Well, keep a
couple of copies around as historical curiosities, but SERIOUSLY, God is
totally not like that (even though everything up to this point in history has
lead you to believe he is)! Aren’t you glad I’m here to set you straight?
Oh, and by the way, the world is about to end and you’ll spend eternity in
hell if you don’t believe I’m God’s son and everything I say is true!”
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Well, second-guessing God as a sort of Monday Morning Messiah is fine and all,
but it isn’t really a valid argument to the contrary.
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But don’t be too surprised if others don’t see it
with the same clarity or think that the Bible supports that view.
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They would, if put this way: God is perfect.
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While I agree that many modern believers conceive of God as somehow being
“perfect”, perfect is a subjective term and I think you’d find much
disagreemnet on what it means for God to be perfect. As far as I know, there
are also modern believers and probably far more ancient believers who would
not have thought of God as “perfect”.
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If God is perfect, than any change in God would be something
LESS than perfect, which ISN”T perfect, and therefore that what
God isn’t. So, God must be immutable. Logic, really.
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I really don’t even know what it means to posit that “God is perfect”. What
would a “perfect human being” be? What is “a perfect car”? What is “a
perfect color”? All of these can only be answered given a starting set of
subjective judgments. Perhaps a perfect God for me would be a nonexistant
one. :)
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Well, yes. He is beyond proof, so He may as well not exist if you prefer.
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But can change really not be in the nature of something that is perfect?
What about a perfect sunset? Isn’t change a part of any sunset? The sun
changes position, the clouds change colors. Perfect!
It seems more likely to me that the ability to change would be a necessary
part of the nature of something like God. Isn’t a God who has the ability to
change more perfect than the God who lacks that ability?
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But a perfect God cannot by definition lack anything. Eschew
anthropomorphism:-)
“Perfection” is one of those terms that is really beyond definition and
relegated to abject subjectivism. “Art” is another of these terms. Trying to
wrap our minds around the concept of a Creator is as well. Even Jesus resorted
to using the analogy of “the Father”.
JOHN
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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| (...) To say that it "rings true to you" almost makes it sound like you are evaluating it based on evidence and logic, rationally determining it to be the best explanatory theory. But this is quite different than saying that you are absolutely sure (...) (18 years ago, 19-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
| | | Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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| (...) I'd venture to say that this is just about your favorite question, because you return to it repeatedly! The answers, of course, are many and various: atheists don't necessarily deny the existence of God; they just don't believe that he exists (...) (18 years ago, 20-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: The Brick Testament - More Teachings of Jesus
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| Thanks for indulging me, John. (...) OK, I guess that answers most of the questions from my post. So, if I understand you correctly, when it comes right down to it, the reason you believe wholheartedly that Jesus spoke eternal religious truths about (...) (18 years ago, 18-Oct-06, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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