What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Bob Kelso]

I'm a bit late to the game here, but I've been prowling the first and last twenty pages or so for a bit and had a few questions. 

Randy: 

I'm not defending anything. I'm explaining it...and why it is not as black and white as you anti-christers seem to believe. The Israelites were a stubborn, stiff-necked people. Here are a few assessments from various points in Israel's history:

• Exodus 32:9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people.
  
• Nehemiah 9:16 “But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands.
  
• Acts 7:51 “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!
  

From Moses to Nehemiah to Stephen...you can see what God was dealing with. Consequently, God had to bring the Israelites along slowly...forming His people little by little...weaning them away from false gods and other beliefs and customs.

Here's a classic from Jesus:

Matthew 19
When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. 3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” 4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 8 Jesus replied, “[b]Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Catch that?

Moses permitted the people to divorce but Jesus commanded us to step up our game. 

Same with slavery. It was permitted, but now it's not. We've been molded by God.[/b]

But this does not undermine my premise that God was training a people over the course of a long period of time.

If you want a curved piece of furniture, you have to work with the wood very slowly. Are people much different? See the Father's handiwork?

I'm saying that God worked with the Hebrews based on what they could handle at the time...not based on what you think of it several thousand years later.

Things that WERE permitted at various times in the past are no longer permitted. God was more lenient with the Israelites early on than he was later.

What exactly are you saying here? Do Christians not claim their deity to be omnipotent, and omniscient? Could he have not made their "stiff necks" a bit more flaccid? That doesn't sound like an omnipotent, omniscient god to me; and at the very least, if he did have the power to pull a reverse-Pharaoh on them and didn't, he certainly doesn't seem like a deity worth worshiping. 


Oh, and this line is especially hilarious:

From Moses to Nehemiah to Stephen...you can see what God was dealing with.

It brings a whole new meaning to "sympathy for the devil". 

"Don't you see what the arbiter of all things was dealing with? Stubborn people! Oh the humanity!"



CL:

There is no greater love than to die for somebody. 

Seriously? You're under the impression that the greatest demonstration of love is to die?

Honestly now. 

I really don't understand why Christians are so willing to accept this line. I'd like to submit a hypothetical:

If you had perpetrated a number of crimes, would you accept someone's willing sacrifice for your life when you are to blame and they are guiltless? No, not just someone, let's say it's someone you have a relationship with; a person you love, more than anything. Would you allow them to be ridiculed, beaten, tortured, and ultimately killed for your sake? The whole while knowing that all you had to do was take accountability. Would you do that?

I know that may seem like a loaded question but it isn't, if anything it's a step down from what you believe.

I think this old Darkmatter video is worth posting: