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NASB | Exodus 20:13 ¶ "You shall not murder. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Exodus 20:13 ¶ "You shall not commit murder (unjustified, deliberate homicide). [Gen 9:6; Ex 21:12, 14, 18] |
Subject: 'Conscientious Objection' Biblical? |
Bible Note: Dear EdB, You bring up several really good points. For instance, why did the disciples have swords to begin with? Oddly enough, it is because Jesus told them to bring them. (Luke 22:36). The obvious question is why would Jesus tell them to bring swords, and then when they were actually in the garden, tell them not to use them. I do not think that Jesus wanted them to be able to defend Him. Jesus said that 2 swords was enough, (Luke 22:38) although that would obviously NOT BE ENOUGH to stop an entire company of soldiers. It seems that instead Jesus just wanted to make it obvious that He was choosing to allow Himself to be arrested. The fact that they had at least a couple of swords, but still didn't use them showed that Jesus was not taken against His will, but within it. This made His sacrifice for us and our sins even greater. You also made a couple points about humanists, and imply that possibly I am one. The first was that "humanists believe they are god". That is probably true of extreme humanists, but it is definately not true of me (I do not consider myself a humanist at all). Your also said that "to a humanist life is far more important than salvation". This is also completely not true according to my beliefs. In fact, I think this thread would greatly go against that thought. My basis for being against killing humans is that it removes the chance for them to come to salvation in the future. In fact, in the case of me allowing a criminal to kill me or my family instead of me killing them shows that I value their chance for salvation more than my own life or even my family's life. In fact, it is the position of my opponents who say that the lives of people on this earth are more important that the eternal life and salvation of the criminal. You make one more good point that I would like to comment on. You said that I seem to be limiting God by arguing that we as humans can take away a person's chance for redemption. This issue really just comes back to the question of "free will" versus "predestination" that comes up so often on this forum. If you believe in predestination, then my entire argument is useless. If God already has decided who goes to Heaven and Hell before they are born, then it doesn't really matter what we do to a person in this life. This life is so short in comparison to eternity, that it is almost completely insignificant, and so who cares if we kill someone 40 years before they would naturally die. Conceeding this point, I would have to say that on the other hand, if a person believes in "free will", then they believe that God has limited His own abilities enough to give people a choice. God could have created people so that they would have to follow Him and love Him or so that they would have to not do those things. However, if they didn't have a choice then it would have been empty and meaningless. But this has been thoroughly covered in other threads. I would suggest that instead of rehashing all that, we just focus on whether the death penalty is appropriate from a "free will" perspective. |