Biblical Clarifications...

[Blaise (imported)]

Softee,

Now mind your manners...

Foreplay must come first...it works a lot better if they are wet...get my drift...the floods can come later...

A-1

You mean when one says, "Shut up and _________"?

[bryan (imported)]

Ahem...

Getting back to the topic. The Bible doesn't explicitly address many of the things we are faced with. For those who are seeking God, how do we decide what is acceptable in our own lives?

Here's something Susanna Wesley wrote to her son John when he asked for a definition of sin:

"Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

-- Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725)

I can't argue with that.

[Slammr (imported)]

Ahem...

Getting back to the topic. The Bible doesn't explicitly address many of the things we are faced with. For those who are seeking God, how do we decide what is acceptable in our own lives?

Here's something Susanna Wesley wrote to her son John when he asked for a definition of sin:

"Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

-- Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725)

I can't argue with that.

My definition of sin:

Something you do that you know is wrong because you know it'll hurt someone, but you do it anyway, out of greed, selfishness, or lust.

[transgirl23ny (imported)]

Ahem...

Getting back to the topic. The Bible doesn't explicitly address many of the things we are faced with. For those who are seeking God, how do we decide what is acceptable in our own lives?

Here's something Susanna Wesley wrote to her son John when he asked for a definition of sin:

"Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

-- Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725)

I can't argue with that.

I'm pagan, and a solitary witch. In MY religion I believe "sin" is based on intent:

"And if it harm none, do what thou wilt"

There are obviously many ways to hurt someone. Physical, mental, financial, etc... As long as you are not intending to do harm to another, there is no wrong in it.

[Paolo]

Something you do that you know is wrong because you know it'll hurt someone, but you do it anyway, out of greed, selfishness, or lust.

You forgot to mention doing it because it's just plain fun!

Link correction:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp

[philorchites (imported)]

Hello, everyone! I have been off the net for a few days to get a little work done, but I'm back and ready to jump into this great discussion. First of all, thanks so much to Transgiril23ny for an outstanding effort at argument by "reductio ad absurdum." That means making your oppponent's argument look ridiculous by the rigorious application of his logic to other related matters.

So much to be said about this; where to begin? One problem in understanding the case laws of the Old Testament is the lack of cultural context to explain or account for many of them. I think we need to supply one for the ban on wearing the clothes of the opposite sex. Canaanite religion made use of "ritual prostitutes" of both sexes. And of course, since who knows when, there have been just plain old "sex-for-money" prostitutes of both sexes. One variation in both kinds of prostitution was the man in woman's clothes. There have always been men, it seems, who wanted to have sex with other men, but to save their "hetero" image, wanted sex with men in women's clothing.

In other words, the ban on cross-dressing, in this context, is really a ban on prostitution, ritual or otherwise. The lot of prostitutes of both sexes has been a very hard one through the ages. Their patrons seem to think that they buy the right not only to use, but also to abuse their hired sex partners.

We have a lot of films that glamorize the trade, but the reality is not very glamorous. Particularly today, when many prostitutes are actually illegal aliens kept in slavery and subjected to horrible abuse and exploitation.

Seen in that light the law of Jehovah (more on that below) is really a very humane provision. Israelites were not to confuse sexual intercourse with religious ritual. Israelites were not to turn sex into a business proposition.

I find it hard to find fault with that.

On Jehovah: It has become the fashion to denigrate this form of the divine Name, perhaps because we have all been pestered by callers from the "Jehovah's Witnesses." It has a very long history, dating back at least to the days of Jerome and the Vulgate Bible. Scholars may carp at the primitive way in which it was vocalized, but "Jehovah" is so old as to stand on its own terms as an establish usage. It is also richly poetic! Scholars don't like to admit it, but the modern "Yahweh" rests on no better evidence.

It is true that the Mosaic laws have been abolished under the gospel. But that doesn't mean they don't deserve careful study. We can learn much from them about what a just society should be. Here, we are reminded that in a just society, the strong may not exploit the weak, even if they are willing to pay for the privilege. That's a lesson we Americans are still trying to learn.

[Patient (imported)]

". . .

whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you .

. ."Mrs. Wesley is expressing the idea that there is a dichotomy between the (good) mind and the (evil) body, a dichotomy that many of us have long considered false. Though this idea has been promoted as "Christian" I can find nothing in canonical scripture to indicate that Christ ever mentioned it. I think it is far more likely to be a Greek idea introduced into Christian thought by the early Christian fathers, perhaps by Augustine of Hippo.

One of the values of studying the Old Testament is that it can give one some appreciation of how very long people have struggled to understand how and why there can be both good and evil in the world, and how to identify the evil and protect ourselves from it. This dichotomy is one of a great many attempts to understand that; that it is an imperfect attempt should not surprise us because all the other attempts (that I know of) are also imperfect.

I agree with Sr. Krister that there are things the body knows better than the mind.

.

[Zoroaster (imported)]

The other thing to remember is that while any Christian with any ounce of brains in his head knows full well that the law of Moses doesn't really apply to him (which, in my personal experience, is a minority - most christians back in Kentucky had no idea what the covenant of Christ actually meant), the ones who are out there making headlines with their monuments to the ten commandments or teaching "intelligent design" in schools don't. Fundamentalists claim all of it is literal truth, and from exactly the passages transgirl states do they derive their retarded justifications for their backwards non-thinking (while ignoring the ones they find inconvenient, like wearing cotton/polyester blends...).

Any modern person following the example of Jesus would know to discount most of the things in there out of hand - either they don't really apply in a modern context (eating shellfish, aminals with cloven hooves, crop rotation, etc.) or are seriously at odds with the message of love Jesus brought (stoning homos, burning adulterers, etc.).

I'll say straight up that I'm an atheist, but if you take out all the supernatural stuff and ignore the Pat Robertson weirdos, ol' JC had it right-on. His covenant, the one that replaced Moses' was pretty simple: he was it. Christ was God's way of saying, "Okay, lowly humans. Time to grow up. You've had enough time to digest that damned apple by now so you've got a pretty good idea what's right and what's wrong. Just in case, here's somebody to model yourselves after. And you know what? I'm such a nice guy that even if you fuck it up (because you WILL), admit it, say you're sorry (and mean it), do what you can to make it right, and I'm cool with you."

As for the whole dying for the sins of others thing, well, I look at it this way: assuming there was a real and single person who inspired most of the New Testament (there's some evidence there were several "Jesus Christs" running around at the time), he died for what he believed in.

[Zoroaster (imported)]

Oh yeah - and I think it was the Gnostic heresy that talked about the good soul and evil body. Definitely related was the Manichean heresy, that said the entire world was bad, including us, and we had to prove we could be good to get to heaven.

Anybody who knows better, correct me on this one.

Mrs. Wesley is expressing the idea that there is a dichotomy between the (good) mind and the (evil) body, a dichotomy that many of us have long considered false. Though this idea has been promoted as "Christian" I can find nothing in canonical scripture to indicate that Christ ever mentioned it. I think it is far more likely to be a Greek idea introduced into Christian thought by the early Christian fathers, perhaps by Augustine of Hippo.

One of the values of studying the Old Testament is that it can give one some appreciation of how very long people have struggled to understand how and why there can be both good and evil in the world, and how to identify the evil and protect ourselves from it. This dichotomy is one of a great many attempts to understand that; that it is an imperfect attempt should not surprise us because all the other attempts (that I know of) are also imperfect.

I agree with Sr. Krister that there are things the body knows better than the mind.

.

[Blaise (imported)]

Figuring out how to pronouce a word from Hebrew spelling is difficult. At least this is what my friend who studies Hebrew telle me. He notes that we probably do not have a clear idea how to pronouce biblcal Hebrew. In biblical Hebrew, we do not write most vowels or we write them ambiguously because vowel letters double as consonants. Remember how Latin uses V to represent both the consonant V and the vowel U. Some Hebrew letters do the same kind of thing.

I believe that the standard scholarly convention is that the unpronouced Hebrew name for God is probably either Yahweh" or "Yahuweh". However, I understand that יַהְוֶה" was not the only vowelized Hebrew spelling of the sacred name for God appearing in scholarly sources in the 19th century. It is strange that we debate how to pronouce a name that we are not supposed to pronounce.