Results 281 - 300 of 701
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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Author: Sir Pent Ordered by Verse |
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Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
281 | Should Christians practice nonresistance | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 15828 | ||
I am called to never kill another human. The answer to this question is extremely difficult to apply to all Christians. But let me explain what I believe God's will is for me. When it all boils down, it is a question of whether it is right for you personally to kill another specific person. So lets look at some common reasons for killing people. Some of these are easy to throw out as obviously unchristian motives. I think that we would all agree that it would be wrong to kill a person becuase of greediness for another person's wealth or position of power. I would also assume that all Christians would, upon reflection, agree that it would be wrong to kill a person becuase of hate, even due to such terrible things as adultery or abuse. I only say "upon reflection" because some Christians might have a first reaction of supporting a wife, who has been beaten for years, finally fighting back and killing her husband. Then there are those middle areas where most, but not all Christians agree that killing is wrong. This would include abortions. I think all Christians would agree that abortion is wrong when motivated by its most common reason, convienence (the mother just doesn't want to deal with having a kid). However, more Christians would be supportive if the girl had been raped, and a very high number of Christians would support killing the baby if the life of the mother was in danger. I believe however, that it is wrong to kill a baby, even to ease the pain of the trauma associated with rape. And although it is more difficult to say absolutely when the mother's life is endangered, I believe personally that it too is wrong. Another of these issues where there is disagreement within the Christian community is the death penalty. Many Christians would say that it is right to kill a serial killer. They would say that this is what that criminal deserves, that it keeps them from harming more people, and that it deters others from following in their path. Once again, I would disagree. I believe that it is wrong to kill a human to set an example, or based on what they might do in the future, or even to get the fair revenge for what they have done in the past. Finally, there are some issues, which the vast majority of Christianity agrees are appropriate reasons to kill a person. These would include protecting of countries (wars) and protection of our families (from criminals). I'm going to go out on a limb here to be in the very small minority who believes that these too are wrong. As a soldier in a war, it seems that there would only be a few motivations when one fires one's gun to kill someone, or pushes the button to blow up someone. The first is that one likes doing it, and I think all Christians would agree that is sinful. A second is that one really believes in one's cause. For instance, one could believe that democracy is so much better than communism that one was willing to kill a Vietnamese man in order to keep a country from switching political systems. This is an oversimplification and I am probably extremely offending any Vietnam veterans on our forum, which is not my intent. Please be patient with me. The third reason that I can think of is that one could feel that it was one's duty to obey the orders of one's superiors. I agree that God wants us to respect the authorities over us, but I think that our obedience is limited by the will of God. Therefore, if an authority over us commands us to do something that goes against that (such as, in my opinion, killing people), then we are not responsible to obey that command. The last issue that comes to mind is that of protecting one's family. Almost all Christians would say that if a burglar broke into their home and was threatening to kill their family, that it would be right to kill that person. This brings up a couple of questions. Should we do something wrong to keep someone else from doing something wrong? More classically this is the question, "Do the ends justify the means?" The second question is based on an assumption. Probability would indicate that the family members of a Christian are more likely to be in a better relationship with God than a murderer who breaks into their house. So the question is, "Which is worse, for the murderer to kill the innocent family members (who would probably go to Heaven for eternity), or for the Christian to kill the criminal (who would almost definately spend eternity in Hell)?" I know that most people in the Christian community and probably on this forum will disagree (some extremely) with this perspective. I ask that you please respond gracefully, not for my sake (I could take the attacks), but because of all the other people who will read these posts and judge Christianity by how we deal with each other. They will know we are Christians by our love. |
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282 | Should Christians practice nonresistance | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 15841 | ||
Death penalty in OT is good, death penalty in NT is bad. I agree with you that in ancient Israel, it was right to kill people for certain reasons. For instance God specifically commanded stoning to death for certain sins, and specifically commanded killing certain kings and enemy nations. However, I think that a fundamental change occurred, which causes killing for any reason to no longer be an appropriate action. This fundamental change happended between Christ's death and resurrection. During that time, Jesus preached to all the people who had died before that time. Therefore, it seems that although the people in the OT were killed in the body, they still had a chance to later hear Christ's message to them. However, from that time on, people have had the opportunity to hear the message of salvation during this lifetime, so that when they die, their eternity is set. This is why I think that killing people now is so terrible. It not only kills their body, but also takes away any chance that they would later come to know Christ and be saved. I think that it is interesting and somewhat supportive that never in the NT is it presented as good for a human to kill someone. In fact the only times when death is seen as a good thing, it is done by God Himself (Annanias and his wife Saphira, King Herrod). P.S. Joe, I know that you come from the reformed perspective and therefore probably believe that giving someone more time to choose whether to follow God is irrelevant, because they are predestined one way or the other. This has of course been thoroughly discussed in other threads. But, I want to give everyone as much of an opportunity as possible to come to relationship with God. |
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283 | Should Christians practice nonresistance | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 15927 | ||
Could you make this a seperate thread? It seems to be veering off the original question, but it is of definate interest, and I think deserves its own thread. | ||||||
284 | Should Christians practice nonresistance | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 15933 | ||
I must agree with Angie, I find it inconsistent to support the taking of human life for one reason (capital punishment), and oppose it for another (abortion). I also agree with Brian G. when he says, "When we begin accepting the destruction of life from one perspective, then it becomes easier to end life from other perspectives. The different acceptable reasons for destroying life begin to feed upon each other." Killing is desensitizing. In fact, a large part of military training is dedicated to that purpose. On the other hand, EdB makes the point there is no record of the martyred Christians using the argument that the death penalty is morally wrong to defend themselves. I would submit that none would be expected anyway. It is not logical that a person would use a defense, which is irrelevant to the authority over them. If the authorities were not Christians, then they would have no reason to care about what the Christian thing to do was. EdB also makes the point that there are many places where the "Bible clearly prescribes execution". I would submit that these are in the OT and that there has been a fundamental change since then (see "Death penalty in OT is good" post). There have also been people posting on both sides of whether the death penalty is an effective deterrant. That is to be expected, because there are experts on both sides of that as well. In fact, since that has not been conclusively shown either way, I don't think that it is a reasonable basis for deciding either direction. I understand where EdB and many others are comming from on this issue, but I believe that no matter how "right" our motivation is, it is still "wrong" to kill another human being whom God has created. |
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285 | Should Christians practice nonresistance | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 16051 | ||
Dear EdB, I am also enorously saddened by the tragic events of yesturday (9-11-01). I pray that this will be one of those cases where our enemies meant it for bad, but that God will bring about good as a result. I pray that the families of those who were killed will be comforted, and have a greater sense of their need for God. I also pray for the people who orchestrated this outrageous violence, that there hearts will be changed as a result of all of the pain that they have caused. For if their hearts do not turn to God, then they await a punishment for eternity that is worse than anything which they can even imagine. As for the post which you are responding to, it seems that I must have been unclear in my message, for which I apologize. I BELIEVE GOD IS COMPLETELY CONSISTENT. This is a belief, which is of great importance to me, and I want to make sure that it is not misunderstood. God is the same yesturday, today, and tommorrow. "Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." (James 1:17) There is also a second important belief which seems to have been unclear. I BELIEVE THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT IS STILL TRUE. I know that Jesus did not abolish the Old Testament, and I am not trying to say that at all. Nor am I saying that I am the authority to determine what part of scripture is true (please go back and read my post "May I share a simple story to help out", it is the one about the farmer and his 10 fields). I must admit that at first I was a little hurt by this last post of yours. But as I went back and looked at all of your posts to me in the past, I noticed that there aren't very many. You disliked my user id, which you mentioned a couple times, and you did like the farmer story mentioned above. Other than that, I saw very little interaction. I can only assume that you and I have somewhat different interests in threads. I therefore, am guessing that perhaps you have not read enough of my posts to get a clear picture of my beliefs. I would encourage you to take a look at some of them, to get a better idea of what my theology truly is, instead of making very large and incorrect assumptions and then posting them. I would particularly direct you to my thread "How inspired is the NASB" to see my high respect for the authority of scripture. Finally, I would like to point out that my views on capital punishment are based primarily in scripture, and only augmented by my own logic and feelings. My previous post "death penalty in OT is good" explains why I believe that a fundamental change has occurred (not in God, but in the world itself). In that post I refer to much scripture including: Exodus 19:10-13, 1 Samuel 15, 1 Peter 3:19, Hebrews 9:27, Acts 5:1-10, Acts 12:21-23. P.S. I regret that I felt compelled to continue posting to this thread after you attempted to close it, Nolan, but I wanted to clear up the confusion that EdB seemed to have about my position. |
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286 | Should Christians practice nonresistance | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 16063 | ||
Dear EdB, There is a simple misunderstanding here. You believe that God's position is against abortion, and for the death penalty. Therefore, my statement that those positions are inconsistent implies to you that I believe God to be inconsistent. I can understand where you are coming from. The problem is that you don't seem to understand where I am coming from. I do not imply that God is inconsistent, because I do not believe that God is for the death penalty (at least to be carried out by humans) any more. Let me begin by granting that it is obviously scriptural that God supported the death penalty in the Old Testament (just like He supported the sacrifice system, and many dietary laws). We would all agree that after Christ the sacrifices of animals are no longer appropriate (not because God changed, but because the system changed). We would probably all agree that it is no longer a sin to eat pork (see Peter's vision of the sheet and animals in Acts). This also is not because God changed, but because the system changed. I tried to explain (in my post "death penalty in OT is good") that in a similar way, there has been a fundamental change in the system (not in God) that has caused the death penalty to no longer be appropriate for humans to commit. I think that this whole misunderstanding comes down to the fact that you are assuming (based on scripture of course) that God and you have the same view of capital punishment. What I am trying to communicate is that I believe this assumption to be incorrect, and I think that a good biblical case could be made that God is now against the death penalty. I have enjoyed many of your posts in the past (in fact I tried to keep your "using company computers" post alive). We seem to agree much more than we disagree (ie. the "who made God" thread and the "why is the word selah in the Bible" thread). I look forward to learning together with you on this forum in the future, with hopefully a greater understanding of each other. |
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287 | Was God morally wrong? | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 16074 | ||
Dear Tim, Since Nolan (who started this post) has tried to wrap it up, and since the original intent of this post was to discuss "nonresistance" (mainly along the lines of war as opposed to the death penalty), I would recommend that we start a seperate thread to discuss this topic further. Would that be alright? |
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288 | Should Christians practice nonresistance | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 16076 | ||
Dear Tim, Since Nolan (who started this post) has tried to wrap it up, and since the original intent of this post was to discuss "nonresistance" (mainly along the lines of war as opposed to the death penalty), I would recommend that we start a seperate thread to discuss this topic further. Would that be alright? |
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289 | NT support for dp | Lev 26:6 | Sir Pent | 16077 | ||
Dear retxar, Since Nolan (who started this post) has tried to wrap it up, and since the original intent of this post was to discuss "nonresistance" (mainly along the lines of war as opposed to the death penalty), I would recommend that we start a seperate thread to discuss this topic further. Would that be alright? |
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290 | How do we respond to war as Christians? | Deut 7:2 | Sir Pent | 24101 | ||
Contrary View .................................... It is a rare occasion that I disagree with Tim Moran, however, this is one of those times. I believe that Christians should not directly support wars. For an extensive background on why, I would recommend doing a search for "killing OT good NT bad". Without going into all that here, let me just make one point about this whole defending rights and freedoms idea. I don't find much of a biblical mandate to kill people in order to keep our rights and freedoms. In fact, our example, Christ, gave up his rights and freedoms to come to Earth for us. He also taught such ideas as walking an extra mile (when they had a right to stop at one), turning the other cheek (when they had a right to strike back), and not casting stones (when they had the freedom to). The Bible seems to consistently say that we should trust God to take care of us and not depend on ourselves to protect our rights all the time. And as for freedom, Paul talked about how excersizing his freedoms wasn't even worth causing a brother to stumble in his faith. Do we honestly think that Paul would support it being worth killing someone to be able to excersize our freedom? Throughout history Christians killing people (crusades, inquisition, etc.) has been a huge stumbling block to the rest of the world. I just don't think that the response we are doing is the response that Jesus would do, or support, or want His followers to support. |
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291 | How do we respond to war as Christians? | Deut 7:2 | Sir Pent | 24367 | ||
Personal Note ................................... Dear Tim, Do you have any thoughts on my recent post regarding killing people to protect our "rights and freedoms"? |
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292 | How do we respond to war as Christians? | Deut 7:2 | Sir Pent | 24433 | ||
Contrary View ............................... Dear Tim, I know that we have discussed war in general at length previously on another thread. I don't want to repeat what is there already, but this whole idea of rights and freedoms is IMHO somewhat uncovered. It seems that you are saying that it is wrong for a Christian to kill someone to defend their own rights, but it is right for a Christian to kill someone to defend the rights of another person. However, in the garden, when Peter tried to defend Jesus, he was told to put away his sword. Also although I agree with your overall interpretation that killing is not always wrong (since God commanded it in the OT), I disagree with your burden of proof. Since there is a clear commandment to not kill, and since it is never condoned in the New Testament, I believe the burden of proof lies on those who believe that it is right to kill. As you know, I believe there is a biblical basis for why the killing in the Old Testament was an exception to the rule. I find it hard to imagine discovering a biblical basis for why killing is still appropriate. |
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293 | How do we open eyes to truth? | Deut 7:2 | Sir Pent | 24440 | ||
Contrary view ................................. Dear Hank, I don't want to pick on you, because it seems like many people are saying the same thing you are. I'm just responding to this post, because it's the last one I read. I'm a little tired of everybody talking so much about freedom. Yeah, it's great that we live in a country that has it, but is it really worth killing people over. I'm glad that I can say what I want, and go to a church building in broad daylight, and get as many groceries as I can afford at Wal-Mart. However, none of these things are really necessary. None of them are INHO worth killing someone to hold onto. If I were punished for my speaking, so be it. If I couldn't get anything at Wal-Mart, God would provide. And if I could go to a church building in broad daylight, I could meet in my house at night. If I was caught and killed, so be it. I do not fear those who can kill my body. What I'm trying to say is that in America, we have overvalued freedom and personal rights. This is partly to blame for why our society is so selfish and is falling apart. But it is also why so many good people are confused into thinking that they should kill people just to hold onto those things. It makes me a little upset, and I've been in kind of a bad mood today anyway. So I better leave things for today and come back tommorrow, when I can live up to my name and keep things "Pent" up better. |
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294 | How do we open eyes to truth? | Deut 7:2 | Sir Pent | 24622 | ||
Personal Note .................................. Dear Hank, I'm feeling better today, and want to once again say that I am not trying to pick on you. I know that you can handle it, and you consistently contribute excellently to this forum. I was a little testy yesturday, and that affected my outlook. As for this particular thread (by the way, why is it being blocked from appearing on the homepage?), I wholeheartedly agree with you that the spiritual lostness of our society is the root cause of all problems. At the same time, I think that individuals have demanded their personal rights and freedoms to the detriment of the society and world as a whole. Don't you agree my friend? |
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295 | Consuming alcoholic beverages: ok or not | Deut 14:26 | Sir Pent | 60868 | ||
A Different View ........................................ Welcome to the forum Tepridemore. I personally believe that it is wrong for a Christian in America to drink alcohol. There have actually been some very good discussions on Christian consumption of alcohol. I would strongly recommend that you take a little time to read some of what is written. A great place to begin your search would be to do a quick search (top right corner) for the number 10288. |
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296 | If God knows all,why create the universe | Deut 29:29 | Sir Pent | 13788 | ||
If God knew from before the beginning of time, everything that would ever happen, then why go to the trouble to actually go through it. In other words, if God know everything, then what is the purpose of the universe? 1. I can think of a couple examples on the level of humanity, but neither seem to fit. Humans eat the same foods over and over even though they know what they'll taste like, and how long they will be filling. This is becuase we need food, but does God NEED the universe. In my view, He is self-sufficient. 2. Humans often will watch a movie that they have seen before, just because they enjoy it. But the universe contains real people and real suffering (even eternal suffering for some people), and in my view, a holy God would not enjoy experiencing that. The "Sunday School" answer to this question is that God created the universe for His glory. But isn't that the ultimate of selfishness to create a universe where some people would eternally suffer just for a beings own glory? |
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297 | May we return to the original question? | Deut 29:29 | Sir Pent | 13792 | ||
1. The only reason the I started my question with the word "if" is because it is a statement which some would disagree with (although probably not on this forum). However, God's omniscience, is a necessary assumption for the question to make any sense. I do not intend to be merely hypothetical, but am genuinely interested in discovering God's purpose here, as I hope are you. 2. As for my user name, I apologize that you were offended, but the meaning is clearly stated in my personal preferences, and is actually biblical. Anyone can click on my name to find out. 3. I would appreciate any input that you have as to the original question. |
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298 | God has the right, but why do it? | Deut 29:29 | Sir Pent | 13873 | ||
Greetings Lionstrong, Thank you very much for your response to my question. I must admit that I felt a little attacked by the first two responses. For the most part, I completely agree with your perspective. I too think that it is "logical" for God to be the "end of all things", for indeed He is the only true purpose for our existence. I also agree that He has the right as God and Author of everything to do whatever He pleases with the universe. I do have two thoughts though. The first is that the universe is different than a book or movie, in that the characters are real people. I don't think we would enjoy a movie if we knew that the actor who played the bad guy REALLY got killed in the end. The second thought is that although God should be the purpose of our existence and actions, that doesn't really tell us what the purpose of God's actions are. We don't do everything that we have the "right" to do, so why did God choose to act on His right to make the universe as we know it? Or more personally why did He make me? |
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299 | What's God's purpose in life? | Deut 29:29 | Sir Pent | 13935 | ||
Once again, I must wholeheartedly agree with my fellow believers. You have both done an excellent job of articulating two very important characteristics of God. Namely His "transcendance" (focused on by Debbie), and his "imminence" (focused on by Lionstrong). I also appreciate and agree with your suggestions about OUR purpose in life. At the same time, I would still appreciate more input as to ideas about what God's purpose is. As a follower of Christ, I strive to understand God as much as possible. I feel therefore, that discovering His motivations, can help us immensly. Any more ideas? |
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300 | Perhaps we found God's purpose in life | Deut 29:29 | Sir Pent | 13946 | ||
Welcome to the discussion Steve, That is an interesting point that you bring up. I read Romans chapter 8 again, keeping this idea in mind, and it would seem to say that God's purpose is to bring about good for the people who love him. Based on that interpretation, then God created the universe becuase if there were no universe, there would be no people to love Him, and He would not be able to bring about good for them. What does everyone think? Is this the answer? |
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