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

[t0lkien]

Originally Posted by stonez138 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Have you read the book of Joshua? Just in that book alone many thousands of men, women and children are put to death by Joshua on orders from God. If you claim otherwise then YOU are the one guilty of being misleading.

Or how about Elijah. He was pretty bad ass bringing fire from the sky to murder 1000 priests of Baal or when he burns alive the hundreds of soldiers for no other reason then to prove he is a man of god? Am I being misleading?

I know I'm going to regret this, but:

Re. Joshua, it was war. The city was evil yadda yadda. There are several other instances in the OT where God commanded the Israelites to wipe out an evil settlement/city (often who had been trying to wipe them out). Would you take out Hitler if you met him as a child? No, because you don't have perfect vision, yet people have argued for it ethically. God (if he is there) does and did have complete foresight and knowledge. These were isolated instances, not general ethics i.e. it's not the same as saying to kill all Jews at all times (and those who refuse to "believe" and convert, by the way) as the Koran does. Would you take down someone who was threatening your family if that was the only recourse? I would, yet I don't subscribe to hurting anyone in any way.

That's an incomplete answer to a much larger discussion, I realize. If you want more complete responses, Google is your friend. It's not like this is a novel question that hasn't been raised and debated before. I'm not hoping to convince you or anyone else. I just don't want a lack of response to imply reluctance to discuss it. I already know it's not going to achieve anything.

Re. Elijah, you might want to read the story again, or read it if you haven't. The priests challenged Elijah to a "battle" to the death. If he lost, he was going to be killed by them. Those soldiers were coming to kill/imprison Elijah, hello? He spared the ones whose leader spoke with him directly and didn't attack him.

God is not a hippy, or Oprah. The same love that spared us nailed Jesus to the cross to pay for our crap. You won't understand God's definition of love (and justice) until you understand that. Half the issue with these "modern" assertions and attacks is the incomplete and flawed context they come from.

Anyway, peace out. We aren't going to convince each other of anything.

[JurisDictum]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I know I'm going to regret this, but:

Re. Joshua, it was war. The city was evil yadda yadda. There are several other instances in the OT where God commanded the Israelites to wipe out an evil settlement/city (often who had been trying to wipe them out). Would you take out Hitler if you met him as a child? No, because you don't have perfect vision, yet people have argued for it ethically. God (if he is there) does and did have complete foresight and knowledge. These were isolated instances, not general ethics i.e. it's not the same as saying to kill all Jews at all times (and those who refuse to "believe" and convert, by the way) as the Koran does. Would you take down someone who was threatening your family if that was the only recourse? I would, yet I don't subscribe to hurting anyone in any way.

That's an incomplete answer to a much larger discussion, I realize. If you want more complete responses, Google is your friend. It's not like this is a novel question that hasn't been raised and debated before. I'm not hoping to convince you or anyone else. I just don't want a lack of response to imply reluctance to discuss it. I already know it's not going to achieve anything.

Re. Elijah, you might want to read the story again, or read it if you haven't. The priests challenged Elijah to a "battle" to the death. If he lost, he was going to be killed by them. Those soldiers were coming to kill/imprison Elijah, hello? He spared the ones whose leader spoke with him directly and didn't attack him.

God is not a hippy, or Oprah. The same love that spared us nailed Jesus to the cross to pay for our crap. You won't understand God's definition of love (and justice) until you understand that. Half the issue with these "modern" assertions and attacks is the incomplete and flawed context they come from.

Anyway, peace out. We aren't going to convince each other of anything.

It's good to hear someone taking up the pro killing children side of the argument. God knows, we don't, so it's perfectly moral for him to command the killing of as many kids as he sees fit. Kids he created mind you. Sounds like a perfect moral entity to me.
What's hilarious to me, Is you come here with some jaded attitude about primary sources. But when people discuss the bible directly and point out "hey none of that shit is remotely moral at all," You start with this tap dance about how it could someone be moral to demand the murder of innocents.
It isn't moral to kill kids now. It wasn't moral to kill kids then. This is not the kind of behavior you would expect from a perfect being. It is however, the kind of behavior you expect from a bronze age God of primitive desert dwellers.
The way God dolls out punishment is not moral. The believe that these people deserved what the got is not a respectable position to take. So while a respect many Christian people, I refuse to accept their repugnant stance of biblical morality.

[Daldolma]

shut up

[Mandalore93]

Hey, with silver only being about 19 dollars an ounce, with Biblical law you can get a brand spanking new wife for about 15-20 minutes of rape (depending on stamina/blood curdling screaming of victim) and $5000! Praise Jesus!

[Sollix]

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The absolute best thing you can do is forget about all the guff and just read it. It's not as complicated as all this secondhand knowledge and discussion makes out.

The amount of idiocy on these forums never ceases to astound me.

Without context, the bible is a completely different book than if you explain things in terms of history.

Jesus H. Christ man, if what you're saying is true, then priests and preachers should all be out of jobs. Coz like .. that's what they do. Explain the bible (which the flock has already read) in terms of what was going on and how those lessons can be applied.

I don't mean to play the Reynes of Castamere at your little wedding party, but The Church would like to have a word with you.

[Ahldagor]

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

The amount of idiocy on these forums never ceases to astound me.

Without context, the bible is a completely different book than if you explain things in terms of history.

Jesus H. Christ man, if what you're saying is true, then priests and preachers should all be out of jobs. Coz like .. that's what they do. Explain the bible (which the flock usually hasn't read because they're lazy) in terms of what was going on and how those lessons can be applied.

I don't mean to play the Reynes of Castamere at your little wedding party, but The Church would like to have a word with you.

ftfy

[myriverse]

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

Jesus H. Christ man, if what you're saying is true, then priests and preachers should all be out of jobs.

Guess he's right then... because they should be.

[Joroz]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's not as complicated as all this secondhand knowledge and discussion makes out.

Ever play the game of telephone? How many people do you think the recorded stories went through before they got written down, not to mention re-translated?

[Faerie]

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

[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.]