Comments on: Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, and the Ten Commandments

By: wang

wang — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:22:33 +0000

I think that’s the point. Conservative Christians want it to be easy. They don’t wan to think so much so the struggle to find an answer for everything in the good book. Problem is they aren’t fond of thinking for themselves and end up cherry picking laws/verses to the point where it doesn’t make much sense.

By: Donnie

Donnie — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:04:46 +0000

@wang: I didn’t even mean to post this; the point really wasn’t very clear. But, oh well.

The verses you mentioned demonstrate the inconvenience of the OT. Very unsafe to use a particular law to demonstrate much of anything.

Jesus just combined everything into two laws: “Honor and love God above everything. Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now, there’s a lot of play there, with a lot of subjectivity in implementation. But at least, that makes more sense than cherry-picking what’s valid and invalid from the Torah.

@Annie: There’s the incident with Jesus upsetting the moneychangers in the Temple, so perhaps there’s precedent for your tear gas idea after all.

By: annie

annie — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:32:43 +0000

If God smote all the false prophets, life wouldn’t be very interesting.

No, Christians should not be actively seeking to execute these men. Some radical Muslims are actively seeking to kill Christians since we’re false prophets to them. Look how that’s turned out. I will admit I have thought about tear-gassing religious protesters at soldier’s funerals. But that’s not very Christ-like.

By: wang

wang — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:04:55 +0000

Well this is one of the problems with the Old Testament. Or simply Testament if you are Jewish. Christianity used it as a tool for legitimacy when it was the new kid on the block. It was kind of like “look we are Jews with a more advanced, better etc. belief structure.” Problem is the two books are not terribly compatible. The God of the Old Testament is angry and jealous, God in the New Testament is all about love. I have never figured out how the holy rollers reconcile to two.

I’ll make it simple for you. The Old Testament is not relevant when it comes to anything inconvenient for people, your example of working on the Sabbath comes to mind.

Here are some other things we ignore because it offends our modern day sensibilities.

Exodus 21:7 – talks about selling a daughter into slavery.

Exodus 35:2 – If you work on the Sabbath you can and should be put to death. Would make football season a bitch wouldn’t it?

Lev 11:10 – Eating shellfish is “loathsome – dude I don’t know if I would want to go to heaven if there isn’t going to be any shrimp cocktail!

Lev 19:27 – Tells you how you should have your haircut.

Now we ignore those things, unless it’s stuff that reaffirms a small minded, bigoted view of the world, such as…
Lev 18:22 – Says you shall not lie with a man as you would with a woman.

Well then if you are a homophobe you make sure that this page is bookmarked, for two reasons.

1. With it bookmarked you can show anyone who would care to listen to you that God said homo’s are evil and they are all going to hell.

2, With this specific page bookmarked you’d have zero chance of accidentally opening up to one of the other previously mentioned passages that you would not be prepared to talk about.

Hope this clears stuff up.

BTW, sorry for the rant, didn’t mean to post on your blog but religious fanatics drive me crazy.