RmDebArc_5The world if christian lived by christian values
Gandalf the GorsedProblem is, the Bible doesn’t present one cohesive set of positive moral principles. It’s a collection of books written over hundreds of years by many authors with their own beliefs, biases and contexts, so it’s not possible to derive one set of “Christian values” from it. This means people will cherry pick bits that align with their pre-existing beliefs and dismiss or downplay whatever is inconvenient or contradicts them, and there are plenty of less than savoury parts to cherry pick from.
If i remember correctly (it's been a while), then the Bible becomes a lot more coherent if you throw out the old testament, and keep to the new testament only - which actually is what christians should do, because the sacrifice of Jesus is a new covenant which supercedes the old one with Moses.
If you keep to the NT, then there isn't so much ambiguity - evangelicals who cite from the OT are even more backwards than catholicism itself is.
Jesus himself says that he didn’t come to abolish the old laws, but to fulfill them.
The whole book is worthless.
Jesus came to fulfill the 10 Commandments and spread the word of God being a loving God; not the ritualistic laws of the early-Israelites.
I’d say the book has meaning, but the lens in which one applies when reading it matters. There’s the text as it’s written, there’s the perspectives of the respective authors, and then there is your own lens being three main ways of reading it.
I think the biggest issue is people that are Christians in name only that pick up a Bible and call themselves Christians without even knowing the teachings of Jesus. The types that think what you do on Earth doesn’t matter so long as you believe, so they go on to do near the exact opposite of Jesus. A short comic about this: Supply Side Jesus
If that god was really loving, then hell wouldn’t be a punishment for rejection.
I’m not convinced that any gods are real, but I’m convinced that the Bible god absolutely isn’t.
The mature-faith circles I hear say that it’s a state of mind that is the only place for one who disagrees with God to go, because God fills up that much space otherwise and it wouldn’t be fair for them to experience God when they have clearly stated that they don’t want to.
mature-faith
That’s an oxymoron.
I stopped believing in fairy tales when I was 8.
I was only talking from their perspective, not ours.
Hell doesn’t exist in the Bible, it’s something later Christians thought up as a moral basis to keep people following the rules and to show up to their specific church services. I mean the church was even selling indulgences for a long while there which was a way of buying yourself a space in heaven, which goes against what Jesus talked about.
The Bible is all made up stories anyway. Why not keep adding to the fiction?
The Christian Bible ultimately is about telling the story of a kind and caring God, and that we are made in God’s image. The early Israelite God, in the Torah and Old Testament, by comparison, was more focused on adhering to strict rules, traditions, and collective punishment for lapsing in the early Israelites commitment to the rules and traditions.
I do agree that there are parts of the Bible which were added where the authenticity of the author was forged. For instance, many of the books attributed to Paul were not written by him, yet they were made to sound like they were his instructions. Most notably, the whole section about women not being allowed in leadership positions in the church. Hierarchies were not inherently parts of Jesus’ teachings at all, but it’s how the early Christians chose to organize themselves. It’s how they maintained aspects of the patriarchy as well.
Some people would agree with you that the Bible should have kept being added to. In some ways that’s seen among some Christian faiths, although few add to the Bible itself for those stories. For instance, with Catholics there are the Saints which followers of the faith learn about, not generally all of them but one(s) that align with the aspects of their faith they care most about. Such as a focus on education, feeding the hungry, healing the sick and injured, etc.
Genesis, Exodus, and Job were fabricated from older myths. They literally didn’t happen. Matthew and Luke were copied from Mark, and none of the gospels have known authors.
It’s a book of badly written fiction with a few embellished events tossed in.