If you are Christian and are in the military , will you go to heaven if you kill ?

[JurisDictum]

Originally Posted by Faerie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is a wonderful quote, and it may very well be true. But it seems completely silly to me for anyone to believe we've grown past the darkness Heine was describing. I don't know why, but I'm reminded of an encounter I had with a doctor of mine, last summer.

I'd gone to see her, and we were making small talk. Somehow the topic of The Dark Knight came up, and I told her that it was excellent and she really ought to see it in theaters while she had the chance.

"Weren't you scared?"

"Scared? Of the movie? No, it wasn't really a scary movie..."

"No, I mean, because of the shooting."

Living in the Colorado area, she was the first person I'd actually encountered that was frightened of seeing the movie because of that crazy guy. The weight of that sadness hit me hard, as I realized just how frightened we are of ourselves. I just can't bring myself to believe that we're living in daylight, when there's so much darkness within myself and everyone around me.

"If we took no chances, life wouldn't really be worth living."

The rape, murder, hypocrisy and condemnation of beautiful things found in the Bible never phased me. Religion is humanity struggling its hardest to understand and experience itself; and violence is a language we all speak. It's fine with me if some people want to refer to the Bible as firewood because, "there's rape in this book!" like an enraged soccermom after finding a copy of Lolita in her kid's backpack, but I treasure mine. Religious texts honestly cannot (imo) be strictly interpreted literally, because then you'll find that it has very little actual meaning. Instead of seeing the advocacy of rape and deciding that an entire religion is insane, I think it would be much more prudent to make efforts toward understanding what the cultural and historical significance of the passage might be, and then take that even further by trying to understand what the figurative meaning of the passage might be in the context of the aforementioned culture and time period.

During the time the Bible was written, women were far from being considered people. Even during the middle ages, some scientists were unsure if women and men were even of the same species. That's how it was, and rape did happen. In many societies, rape truly was a advocated and considered normal. It happened, and it can't be undone, so there's not much to do about it besides understanding and accepting.

And the Bible was divinely inspired, not written by God Himself. How else is God going to be expressed by man of the time period, if not through figurative language that the people understand? You've also got to expect some loss of divinity, as God is translated into rape and murder. I think this is expressed eloquently in the story of Moses, and the Lost Commandments. Does it make the Bible any less true? Not in my mind [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm sure this all goes over well in whatever drum circle you spend your time with and all... but you didn't in anyway outline why we all benefit from Christianity or appreciate the beliefs of modern Christians. Nor did you fully acknowledge that Christian beliefs have demonstrably negative impacts on other people's lives.
I've yet to hear critics of religion claim that the bible doesn't have historical and cultural significance. I'm sure most skeptics will agree with me that study of the bible and biblical beliefs are great if done in a secular and objective way. This is a far cry from actually believing that the Bible comes from God, and provides good moral instruction.
I wouldn't want the text of Mein Kampf and burned either. It does have great historical and cultural significance, and describes a pioneering political theory. Nevertheless, if someone told me they appreciate the beliefs articulated in Mein Kampf I might just inquire as to why the hell they would say that. Maybe they would come back at me with something along the lines of "I'm a reformed Nazi. We don't believe in all that rounding up and killing the Jews stuff, we are more about getting together and celebrating being good people regardless of race or gender."
To me, what is actually written in the bible does matter. Because that's all the bible is at the end of the day, a book. And considering there is absolutely no reason anyone should find the book credible to begin with, it disturbing people base their life and thinking around it.
So I occasionally remind people that the book they hold up as the pinnacle of morality, is full of immoral instruction. The goal is to get them to channel whatever critical thinking abilities they have, toward their unjustified beliefs. Because it is important for humans to use their reasoning abilities when it comes to matters of morality and values. Blindly deferring to authorities is an extremely detrimental behavior to human progress. We know this because of books like the Bible and Mein Kampf.