On Apr 12, 2006, at 12:20 PM, Charlie Bell wrote:
On 12/04/2006, at 10:01 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
Of course, it's possible that the answer you get will be
"RTF¹M" . . .
Now there's a good shortcut to atheism. :-)
Not necessarily, if as some have suggested the Bible is a record
of God's dealings with other humans. Then it might give you some
useful guidelines which you could employ in your life. FWIW, my
experience is that God, like a good professor, gives you the
smallest possible hint to get you on the right track. In some
cases that hint may well be found in the Scriptures
Sure. But, I guess you're just as likely to find that smiting and
stoning is recommended as a solution as kiss-and-make-up is...
In fact (and you probably know this), it is the preponderance of
smiting and stoning as a means of nation-building that convinces some
scholars that much of the OT is a human product. It is full of
exhortations to tribal violence. Those parts it is relatively easy to
disregard as having normative value for me and to interpret as a
tiny, feisty nation's self-justification.
Perhaps it is as Ronn! says: that Professor God's hints are
extraordinarily subtle, that we might best /own/ what we learn by
pursuing them. The main hint I get from reading some huge swaths of
Scripture is that regardless of how much violence we do to one
another, or how poorly we follow what we dimly see as God's will, God
continues to love and pursue us. That, I find refreshing, remarkable
and redeeming.
Dave
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