Is The Bible Really So "Bigoted" and "Phobic"?

The Bible does not condemn those who merely are sexually attracted to their neighbor’s spouse.  However, what one does with that attraction is what will be the death of him if he makes the evil choice.  Yet the Scriptures are never condemned as being adulterophobic.

The Bible does not condemn those singles who merely are sexually attracted to single members of the opposite sex.  However, what one does with that attraction is what will be the death of him if he makes the wrong choice.  Yet the Scriptures are never condemned as being extramaritalsexphobic.

In fact, the Bible does not condemn those who merely are uninterested in meeting the physical needs or desires of their spouse.  However, if this lack of interest persists as a product of repeated decisions borne of laziness, selfishness or foolishness, then these decisions will be his undoing.  This is one thing that the apostle Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians, chapter seven; yet no one would ever think to condemn the Scriptures as being abstinencephobic.

So may the reader consider this refresher course in biblically-based sexual ethics and the way in which it is worded.  We all need to get back to basics sometimes, as does Desmond Tutu and any number of persons today who in all undue glibness throw certain labels at Christianity or the Scriptures regarding certain social issues.

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Meanwhile, do not think that what liberal Christianity, as it were, has to say about the issues of the day are unimportant.  Liberals in general tend to think alike, coalesce, move in the same direction of thinking though they be a diverse group.  The Christian theology, again as it were, that attempts to paint a rosy picture of homosexuality is well likened to a viral infection, fifth column or Trojan horse.  First it attacks the Law and the apostles of Christ, because it must.  In the meantime, there remains the problem that recorded in the Gospel accounts is Christ’s acceptance of the authority of the Law even during his own time; accordingly, this becomes the next target as attempts are made to defeat it by glossing over it, lying about it, or writing it off as a matter of interpolation.  And the defeat of the Law, the apostles of Christ, and of the words and teachings of Christ comes at a great price: the destruction of sound practices of exegesis and hermeneutics.

Once the basics and common sense behind normal exegesis and hermeneutics are destroyed, the groundwork is laid for a groundswell of theology or teaching which fits with liberal thought patterns and emotional patterns: Sola Scriptura is effectively lost to false intuition and wishful thinking, the teaching of the everlasting punishment of the damned is lost, hell is reimagined as a condition that exists on this earth, universalism becomes a given, and the idea of divine omnipotence probably isn’t far behind.  Read this post again in fifteen years to see if and how it mirrors events of the day.

Ezekiel

Ezekiel, chapters 40 to 48 are to be taken literally, supposedly: Literally Reading Ezekiel 40-48 | hipandthigh (Cf. Triablogue: Literal events, figurative depictions)

Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39 are to be taken literally, or are they? Triablogue: Gog and Magog 

If Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39 are subject to some degree of figurative interpretation, then chapters 40-48 also take a place along the slippery slope. Where, for example, is the very high mountain near Jerusalem? (Riddleblog - The Latest Post - Eschatology Q & A -- What About Ezekiel's Vision of the Temple (Ezekiel 40-48)?

In the process, premillennialism and dispensationalism become questionable; however, by the same token some objections to the apologetical outreach of Messianic Jews also become questionable. For instance, some of the items of Mark S’ list--repeated and re-posed time and again on Yahoo! Answers--hinge on a strict literal interpretation of such passages: Where in the Tanakh do Jews reference when they deny Jesus was the Messiah? - Yahoo! Answers.

And yes, all of the information above is yet another reminder that the world is not a simple place.

It's Not You, It's Me

I was recently reading Deut. 33 and in it is detailed many blessings and curses for those that are obedient or disobedient. The obedient were on the receiving end of all kinds of positive things. The disobedient got all kinds of promises of disease or death, pestilence, etc.

It made me think of the way that many folks take a promise of God out of context and try to apply it to their own life. We would not dare take the curses as promises for us, because it is clear, looking at the context, that it is not for us (plus it is negative). If we would not accept the negative promises of God as our own, why do we accept the positive promises as our own without the same consideration?

I wonder if it is because we think we deserve all the blessings of God because we are so good, and God would surely not punish our disobedience to His holy, righteous law because of all the good we usually do.

I was thinking also of the promises to the Israelites for the promised land. We like to claim the promises for the promised land for ourselves, but not the promises to Moses, that he will not make it into the Promised land because of his disobedience. I think the same applies with Jeremiah 29, that I've addressed before...We like Jer. 29:11, where God has a good plan for us, but shouldn't also claim Jer. 29:17- thus says the Lord of hosts, 'Behold, I am sending upon them a sword, famine and pestilence, and I will make them like split-open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness.

Can we have it both ways? Can we claim promises of God that seem to be for someone else entirely? If we can, why not the promises of destruction for our disobedience also?

I wish we could claim some of these things as our own, but I am not at liberty to take something out of context and apply it to myself, no matter how encouraged it makes me feel...But we are called to rightly handle the Word of God and I don't think this does it.

In the News: Harold Camping Changes His Mind and Kirk Cameron Does Not

Curiously enough, both of these guys have more courage and humility than many of their critics and other people in this world. Sources:

Harold Camping says May 21 prediction was ‘incorrect and sinful’ - The Washington Post

Kirk Cameron responds to anti-gay comments flap - Yahoo! News (Reuters)

First of all, when has Ergun Caner, for example, ever manned up about his biography and admitted to having repeatedly done things which are sinful?

Moreover, stop and consider the closing remarks of the Reuters story for a moment. Since Tracey Gold professes to “believe in equal rights for all,” does she also believe that grown men of the NAMBLA ilk should be provided legal “equal rights” regarding their sexual orientation? Presumably, the answer is No. That means that Ms. Gold is being less than honest about the real reasons she supports the LGBT community or she hasn’t thought her words through to even 1 millionth of the extent to which her elder TV brother thinks his words through.

Of course, if Gold is dishonest then the real reasons should seem obvious enough. No one likes to be a pariah or social leper; furthermore, the fallen and rebellious heart of post-Edenic humanity is naturally drawn to a minimalist theory of ethics per John 3.19-20. (If one is to avoid being mindful of God’s law, a replacement for one’s code of ethics must be sought.)

Contrast Tracey Gold's cowardice--or so I believe it to be--with the work of Kirk Cameron over the past several years. Who else in Hollywood and who else in celebrity circles has the guts to go against the grain of political correctness in any way, shape or fashion? If it were the case that Alan Thicke hated Black people, would he also have the guts to call them savages on Piers Morgan’s TV show? No. If Mel Gibson has a low opinion of Jews, would he dare say this openly and with a normal blood alcohol level? No. Modern celebrities and corporations are cowards and wusses for the most part: this is no secret. However, Kirk Cameron stands apart from them not only in his honesty and commitment to God’s law and Gospel, but also in the sheer guts the guy has to continually do street preaching or witnessing as many of us have seen on Ray Comfort’s “Way of the Master” TV show. So Cameron has guts and honesty; I would think more highly of him than most celebs even if I were not a Christian.

Finally, Kirk Cameron has also been accused of being thin-skinned regarding his reaction to people’s criticism of him of late. Kirk Cameron is not thin-skinned--for one thing, he knows he is a laughing stock though that has not stopped him from street preaching and doing the other things that he does. Again, he is not thin-skinned; to the contrary, he is simply telling it like it is when in recent news he points out the BS quotient of those who holler “Homophobe!” or “Hate speech!” at anyone and anything that merely happens to disagree with the idea that homosexuality (the attribute) and homosexuality (the acts) are good things. Terms such as “homophobia” and “hate speech” are in fact the tools of people who are either too lazy, too evil, or too dumb to draw rudimentary distinctions of logic and language or who simply want to bank on the use of emotive, politically-charged words.

Self Esteem, Possibility Thinking and Phillipians 4:13

Here is a good post on the often used verse, Phillipians 4:13.

Philippians 4:13 famously says, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." There is perhaps no more confident statement in all of Scripture.

But it's not brazen self-confidence. It is confidence in the power of Christ.

That verse is not a manifesto for self-esteem and possibility thinking—although it is often used that way. People quote the verse as if it meant "With Jesus' help you can achieve whatever dream you have for yourself." That's not the idea at all. Paul is speaking as a man who wants to do the will of God and knows he is too weak and sinful to do it, but he is laying hold of Christ's power to do in him what he knows he cannot do on his own.

The appropriate cross-reference is 2 Corinthians 3:5: "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God." Paul is simply modeling the principle he gave as an imperaive in Ephesians 6:10: "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might."

There's not room for as much as an iota of carnal self-esteem, if you understand that principle.

AOMIN: "Private Interpretation of Scripture for Roman Catholics"

This is not comforting, as Roman Catholic apologists might have us to believe. To the contrary, this is scary stuff and presents a recipe for disaster:

AOMIN: Private Interpretation of Scripture for Roman Catholics

Even in strictly pragmatic terms, this philosophy of biblical hermeneutics over the years has not prevented Rome from losing parishioners, confidence, money, properties, etc. on account of liberalism and sex abuse scandals.

John 3.5 and the Obvious

Well, Mr. Finnell has lately exhibited enough signs of Functional Apologetical Madness to warrant my attention and to serve as a lesson for others. For now, let’s just focus on the November 28 blog post, which is only one example of how apologists sometimes try too hard to argue a certain point.

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How many times have we read somewhere, “Tomatoes are not vegetables; they’re fruit!” When we have encountered this claim, we have dealt with someone who perhaps fails to realize that the average person doesn’t give a rip about fine structural distinctions of the average fruit and average veggies and doesn’t give a rip about the range of recorded historical intensions of the words “fruit” and “vegatable.” Instead, if it’s a plant-like thing that tends to be served like veggies, it’s a veggie per vernacular language convention; if it’s a plant-like thing that is watery like watermelon and tends to be eaten whole while in hand, it’s a fruit per vernacular language convention. And that’s the point: average Joes speak like average Joes, not scientists.

How many times have we read somewhere, “Jackrabbits are not rabbits; they’re hares!” When we have encountered this claim, we have dealt with someone who perhaps fails to realize that the average person doesn’t give a rip about fine structural distinctions and behavioral distinctions of rabbits and hares or the range of recorded historical intensions of the words “rabbit” and “hare.” Instead, pretty much if it hops and has long ears, it’s a rabbit: period, or per vernacular intensions of the word “rabbit.” And that is the point: laypersons speak like laypersons, not scientists.

Meanwhile, guess what: the Bible was written by and for individuals who speak like average persons and not modern scientists. Don’t believe me? What then are we to make of passages such as Leviticus, chapter 11 where insects--which we all know to have six legs--suddenly have just four legs? That’s right: no one in the time of Moses made the taxinomical distinctions of modern science.

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In the same vein, who truly cares about esoteric distinctions of (distilled) water and amniotic fluid any more than we care enough about such things to insist that “watery eyes” are not watery but eyes filled with lipids, proteins, mucal secretions, and also some water? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears;) )

No one but an anal retentive scientist, doctor, nerd or Campbellite apologist could possibly care about such things. Bear in mind, meanwhile, that the idea that the water mentioned in John 3.5 is amniotic fluid is not something that non-Campbellites just plucked out of the sky or invented out of nowhere. Notice in the John 3 text that Christ first speaks of being “born again" and does not switch to the language of being “born of water” until Nicodemus brings up the language of emerging from his “mother’s womb”! Furthermore, would it not be apt of Christ to utilize Nicodemus’ mention of natural birth in order to contrast man’s fallen nature and the nature of regenerate persons to speak of matters of salvation--especially considering the apostle Paul’s extensive lessons in his epistles on the importance of being regenerate vs. being a slave to the flesh?

Don’t play the game of linguistic anthropology, grammar, pragmatics and discourse analysis if you don’t remember the rules.

Overheard at Work

Spoken with complete sincerity:

[Sally]: 666 is the devil’s number.
[Mary]: No, 999 is the devil’s number.
[Sally]: No, it’s not. 666 is the devil’s number.
[Third person jumps in]: It’s 666. As many Christians as there are in my family....
[Mary]: No, the number is 999. It’s 3 sixes upside down.
[Mary]:Look, I’m a Christian....

The matter was finally decided with a phone call to a family member. This family member’s answer happened to be at odds with the source text for our society’s apprehension, fun and wonder of the number 666: Revelation 13:18; Revelation 20:10.

More Depressing News from Blogosphere (with a twist!)

AOMIN: “A Few Thoughts on the Geisler/Licona Conflict”

Triablogue: “Our Intuitions and Mark 8:27-33”

Triablogue: Our Intuitions and Mark 8:27-33

Hopefully, more to say about this sort of thing later. For instance, in the past hasn’t the “intuition” of a few people suggested that the biblical teachings of Original Sin and corporate guilt are false?

Riddlebarger's Amillennialism

As long as eschatology is still on our mind (if anyone is wondering what Harold Camping is up to on Judgment Day +2) and we are referring to other people’s Internet articles, let’s talk about Kim Riddlebarger’s brand of amillennialism. This sort of “amillennialism” is not aptly labeled as such, unless what is being denied in such a term is the concept of a thousand-year period of a certain sort. Sift through the following materials carefully, and one will see what I mean. And though the two materials do not dot every last “i” and cross every last “t” if one is to convince premillennialists that their viewpoint does not jibe with reality, the man still makes a number of cogent arguments for his own point of view:

A Present or Future Millennium?

Riddleblog - Answers to Questions About Eschatology--Archives 3

The long and short of it is that if one consistently attempts to intepret the unclear by the light of the clear and to assume whenever possible that a given text is literal in meaning, one should come up with a system of eschatology which ironically is not premillennial.

Judgment Day...for Christian Philosophy and Scholarship

Family Radio | JUDGMENT DAY

AOMIN | Some Thoughts on the End of the World

If the Lord returns on May 21, Camping won’t have known that May 21 was the day, but rather would simply have gotten lucky. In any case, odds are that May 21 is not the day.

With that said, Dr. White forgot one thing: allegorical and symbolic methods of biblical hermeneutics may well come under greater skepticism and scrutiny after May 21 comes and goes; the same goes for those who attempt to place dates and contra-“scientific” dates on past biblical events.

Having witnessed the aftermath of the Campingites’ buying into one form of erroneous hermeneutics and epistemology, other Christians might do well to take a second look at the allegorizing of theistic evolutionists regarding Genesis, or amillenialists’ comparison of Revelation and OT symbolic prophetic texts, and so on. After all, Harold Camping’s error shows that hermeneutics matters, and who really wants to make similar mistakes with this sort of thing in mind?

The new version of the New International Version

I just now heard about this; I didn’t know how many other people have already heard of this. Bible Gateway has the run-down on the latest, updated version of the NIV. They have also published notes from the NIV translators. Here are the links:

Updating the New International Version of the Bible: Notes from the Committee on Bible Translation

Updating the New International Version of the Bible: Notes from the Committee on Bible Translation

(If you ask me, the NIV translators continue to dig themselves deeper into a hole each time they release a revised “rendition” or “translation” of the Scriptures.)