A loving God that instills fear of punishment as His "love"?

Peace out and love you all!
some of you might enjoy this:

 

The American Revolution and model of government would not be what it is were it not for the influence of "Frenchy liberal thinking". A detail the right wing doesn't like to talk about.

 

Tsk. Tsk. You shouldn't laugh at that hypothetical poor woman. She has defiled herself before the Lord and would have to live a life of shame if not for his mercy. And because the Lord loves her he makes sure that she understand the gravity of her misdeed by instructing the men around her to ensure that she has been adequately disciplined. It might seem extreme to us, but it's all out of love.

 

Actually, The Bible never says "Spare the rod, spoil the child". The line is from a poem by Samuel Butler and his intention is a lot different from what most people intend it to mean...

 

Not quite, but the same stuff appears in Proverbs (13:24) for example
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Not just thinking. I think their soldiers (and sailors) were pretty important, too!

 

And pretty much all mention of "the rod" in Proverbs, according to the exegesis I have read, does not refer to a stick, but rather to the concept of discipline. It's a metaphor for God's law and disciple.

Parents that like to hit their kids, tend to read it the way they want to and use it to legitimize their abuse.

 

And who are you to question the creator of mankind, the almighty, perfect God? You're nothing but a fallible man, incapable of even grasping what perfection would look like.

 

Your "God" gave us the free will to decide whether to believe in him or not, no?

 

wait...are we really playing ping pong with eddie using 17th century theological ideas instead of the usual shuttlecock? how fascinating. in the meditations on first philosophy, descartes made that same argument regarding perfection. thing is that you don't need to know what perfection *is* to have an operative notion of perfection. it's simply an inversion of the notion of imperfection. it's what human beings are not, then. but this as a simply logic operation, like taking imperfection, placing a minus sign in front of it (maybe some brackets around it too) and asking oneself---ok so what is produced by this operation? no need for god at all, because there's no need for a substance associated with the notion of perfection.

as for this whole discipline/abuse/scourging thing, it's another circle---if you assume original sin then all this discipline/abuse stuff kinda follows. thing is that original sin, taken in the roman catholic/protestant manner, isn't the only take available in the xtian tradition---byzantine xtianity was quite different (i guess it'd be greek orthodox? is there an anatolian orthodoxy?) and played down original sin. one result was a quite beautiful alternative to the dour masochism of the roman tradition that emphasized the possibility that human beings could merge with god or acquire divine knowledge---gnosis.

 

I have to disagree, respectfully. I am VERY spiritual and I call myself Christian solely because I follow what Christ taught. I also considered myself in part Buddhist, for I try to follow what Buddha taught. Having never read the Koran, yet, from what I know of Mohammed his teachings are similar. As Lennon stated, what (they) taught was right it is how the interpretations have been used are messed up.

And I can respect that, even if I feel your first statement blankets ALL people who believe as something I disagree with.
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Those are called "life lessons" Eddie. They have NOTHING to do with what Jesus taught. Jesus did NOT say that, it was written to keep POWER of the disciples over the people. READ the WHOLE not that select passage.

 

You're right, Pan, I was painting with an awfully broad brush. There are exceptions to every rule, but I stand by my statement for the majority of church-goers I've met over the years

 

WOW....... just WOW Eddie, you are way out there aren't you? Even Jesus questioned God, while he was on the Cross. Jesus taught people to FIND the answers themselves. His was a program of attraction rather than promotion. Jesus knew that *if* you questioned you would return to Him. He didn't need to beat you into submission or fear. He said, "this is who I am, believe me or not, question me, let me show you so that you can garner faith in me."

Matthew 16 in fact teaches that one will eventually question and to look to Him for answers. People are allowed to question, I would rather have a God that allows me to question than one who wants me to blindly follow him.

And WHAT do you proclaim yourself to be Eddie?
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Thank you, it's easy to do when our spokespeople are out there giving the rest of us a bad name. I also want to say, grabbing hold of science is not just a buddhist/atheistic thing. There are many of us in "Christiandom" that accept science and can see that the Bible is a matter of parables, Greek/Babylonian "myths and stories", yet, if read for what it is, it can be a great guide on how to live life. Am I perfect in how I am? No, but with Jesus' teachings I have faith that I do not need to be perfect, that I will make mistakes but it is how I handle them that will dictate the happiness in my life.

I don't have to be "punished" nor "disciplined" by a God, to believe. Just the opposite is true for me. I would propose one that send his "children" to an eternal Hell, simply because they questioned him can't possibly exist. In my mind that is not a loving God at all.

In the "Prodigal son" story we learn that to go out and question is ok, that when and if we return we will find that love was always there waiting for us and never diminished, HOWEVER, the son that NEVER questioned was the one that had to serve the one that did.

 

Thanks for that, pan6467. Elegantly put.

 

Never said they weren't.

And pan, Jesus said "I am the way, the Truth and the Life." The way...singular. Either you believe He's the only way, as the bible states, or you don't. Picking and choosing the verses in the bible you agree with and the ones you don't is about as flaky as picking several different religions to follow.

 

Yet your view on homosexuals, for example, is not something that Jesus expressed. Nor is your view on taxes, where Jesus said "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"

 

Interpreting the verses in any way you like is pretty flaky too. In this passage Jesus can be interpreted at saying something quite different than what most modern Christians interpret.

Suppose what he is really saying is "The way I live is the Way, the truth I've learned is the Truth, the Life I live, I live as an example to all". In this interpretation, Jesus is not deifying himself or claiming that unless others worship him and create a religion around him, they will never see God. In fact, to my way of thinking, Jesus was never teaching blind faith or speaking about an afterlife, he was instructing his followers to live as he lived and treat others as he treated them - promising them that the rewards for doing so could and would be realized within one's own lifetime.

 

back in the old days, martin luther said that the bible was not open to interpretation. human understanding had no access to it except by means of grace. what that seems to have devolved into amongst many evangelicals is a bizarre-o form of projection-based reading, each version of which is simultaneously arbitrary and held to with a doctrinaire rigidity. it's like basic facts about the king james version get erased---that it was translated by a committee, that it dumped quite a few books that were standard since the council of nicea did the same thing from amongst the riot of gnostic texts, picking the gospels for example because they were in the main neo-platonic conceptually, so were versions of the mythology of jesus that staged it in ways that allowed for a top-down bureaucratic church to interpose itself between believers and this god character. because grace doesn't require a theology, there's no sense of context...the books are understood to speak directly to each reader. it's possible to create from the often pretty clunky 17th century prose a running gloss on one's intimate life in the 21st century. there's no sense of interpretive traditions, so the wheel gets reinvented. it's all very strange.