Sanctimonious Christian Shits

[VacuumFlux]

Ya know, sometimes the Jews handle their own scriptures better than the christians do. They're not stuck on that "sola scriptura" thing, so they can get much nicer morals out of the stories than a literal reading gets you.

 

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/638426/jewish/What-happened-to-Jephthahs-daughter.htm

 

First, there's the nicer version:

 

 

many of the biblical commentators maintain that Jephthah did not offer his daughter as a sacrifice. In fact, his original vow, “whatever comes forth . . . shall be to G‑d, and I will offer it up for a burnt-offering,” had a dual intention: if it will be a person, then it “shall be [consecrated] to G‑d”; and if it should be an animal, then “I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” (The Hebrew prefix ו which precedes the words “I will offer it” can be translated as “and” or “or.”)

 

 

or another explaination:

 

 

he was not bound whatsoever by the vow he made—as it clearly transgressed the rules of the Torah—he ignorantly went ahead and offered his daughter as a sacrifice.

 

Had he only consulted with Phinehas, the learned high priest of the time, he would have been informed of his error. But that didn’t happen. Jephthah was too arrogant to travel to Phinehas to receive guidance: “I am the general of the Israelite forces, and I should go to him?!” And Phinehas was too proud to unilaterally go to Jephthah to advise him: “He needs me; why should I make the trip?”

The hubris demonstrated by these two leaders cost an innocent girl her life. According to the Midrash both were punished. Phinehas lost the divine spirit that had hitherto rested upon him. Jephthah became ill, and he lost many of his limbs. Because his limbs were buried in many locations, the Bible says that Jephthah was “buried in the cities of Gilead.”

 

[midniterider]

 

 

I began reading the discussion out loud to my wife and as I went along my voice was rising until, near the end, I was practically screaming. They really are a bunch of slimy eels when it comes to explaining things. When he kept asking where does god endorse it, I screamed out 'BY NOT INTERVENING IN ANY FUCKING WAY YOUR gOD WAS ENDORSING IT!'

 

Wouldnt it be fun for all of us here to descend upon an Xian forum and start out as Xians but then begin to troll ever so slightly until eventually we all get banned :-)

 

And we could pretend to have really heated arguments over finer points of doctrine, each of us claiming that none of the others could be saved if we don't all believe the same thing.

 

That would be really cool. Someone might start it off as being an emo backsliding Christian full of doubt. Really grab the X-ies by the heartstrings....then everyone else starts spewing their particular denominational beliefs.... 

[midniterider]

If I was Isaac, I don't know that I'd trust either God nor my dad after that. And as for Abraham, that must've been traumatic. Why use trauma to test someone's faith? What does it do for God? Why not test his loyalty some other way. Why test it at all? Is he not omniscient?

 

 

Oooooh, that is so good!  "Why test one's faith if you are omniscient!" Holy cow!  I'm gonna use that...thanks!

[boftx]

You gotta admit, if God is such that he could test Abraham in that fashion, then it lends credence to the fundamentalist claims that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and God created all the fossils, cosmic background radiation, etc in place to test people.

 

What the heck, if you're all-powerful, flaunt it!

[Thought2Much]

 

If I was Isaac, I don't know that I'd trust either God nor my dad after that. And as for Abraham, that must've been traumatic. Why use trauma to test someone's faith? What does it do for God? Why not test his loyalty some other way. Why test it at all? Is he not omniscient?

 

 

Oooooh, that is so good!  "Why test one's faith if you are omniscient!" Holy cow!  I'm gonna use that...thanks!

 

I asked that question for a long time before I deconverted, and never found an acceptable answer. If bad things that happened to Christians were "tests" sent from God, what was the point of all of those tests when God already knew the answer? What was he preparing people for? If all Christians went to heaven, where supposedly we were all on an even playing field and didn't have any responsibilities other than endlessly praising God, how did the "testing" of people's faith make them any more suited to that task than the people who are never tested? EDIT TO ADD: And, if all of the testing made us better suited for our existence in heaven, then the normal Christian description of heaven was a serious misrepresentation, and heaven must be a pretty nasty place if everyone needs to be so tough to need all kinds of shit to happen to them here to get them ready for it.

 

That's one of those subjects that when I asked other people about it, they would tell me I think too much. They seemed like pretty good questions to me.

[mwc]

     Don't know if it's the same thing but...

 

2 Samuel 21

New International Version (NIV)

The Gibeonites Avenged

21 During the reign of David, there was a famine for three successive years; so David sought the face of the Lord. The Lord said, “It is on account of Saul and his blood-stained house; it is because he put the Gibeonites to death.”

² The king summoned the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not a part of Israel but
were survivors of the Amorites; the Israelites had sworn to spare them,
but Saul in his zeal for Israel and Judah had tried to annihilate them.) ³ David asked the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? How shall I make atonement so that you will bless the Lord’s inheritance?”

⁴ The Gibeonites answered him, “We have no right to demand silver or gold from Saul or his family, nor do we have the right to put anyone in
Israel to death.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” David asked.

⁵ They answered the king, “As for the man who destroyed us and plotted against us so that we have been decimated and have no place anywhere in Israel, ⁶ let seven of his male descendants be given to us to be killed and their bodies exposed before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul—the Lord’s chosen one.”

So the king said, “I will give them to you.”

⁷ The king spared Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the oath before the Lord between David and Jonathan son of Saul. ⁸ But the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, whom she had borne to Saul, together with the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab,^[a] whom she had borne to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite. ⁹ He handed them over to the Gibeonites, who killed them and exposed their bodies on a hill before the Lord. All seven of them fell together; they were put to death during the first days of the harvest, just as the barley harvest was beginning.

¹⁰ Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest till the rain poured down from the heavens on the bodies, she did not let the birds touch them by day or the wild animals by night. ¹¹ When David was told what Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, Saul’s concubine, had done, ¹² he went and took the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from the citizens of Jabesh Gilead. (They had stolen their bodies from the public square at Beth Shan, where the Philistines had hung them after they struck Saul down on Gilboa.) ¹³ David brought the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from there, and the bones of those who had been killed and exposed were gathered up. ¹⁴ They buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the tomb of Saul’s father Kish, at Zela in Benjamin, and did everything the king commanded. After that, God answered prayer in behalf of the land.

 

     The "lord" mentions what the problem is, an offering of humans is made to the "lord" and the "lord" starts answering prayers after it's all said and done.

 

          mwc

[Guest r3alchild]

I would never read the ot much, one reason was because it was so big and another was I found it hard to relate to. I either forgot or ignored bible passages like that. I think once you stop being subjective about the bible you can see it for what it is.

[boftx]

I suspect that many, mnay Christians have never fully explored the theology behind the verses and stories being referred to in this thread. Here is the shortform of the justification for the story above.

 

The justice of God is a perfect justice. When one swears an oath, no matter how ill-conceived, that perfect justice demands that it be fulfilled even if it means an act of evil. The requirement for perfect justice by God overrides all other consideration. It does not matter that an all-knowing God already knew the consequences of the vow, it mattered only that the vow was fullfilled. even as that same perfect justice of God demanded that his oath to Abraham and Moses and the isrealites be fulfilled by the slaughter of untold innocent lives in the conquered towns.

 

Now excuse while I go puke so I can get the taste of that out of my mouth.

[SquareOne]

 

The "lord" mentions what the problem is, an offering of humans is made to the "lord" and the "lord" starts answering prayers after it's all said and done.

 

          mwc

 

Thanks for this story, mwc, helpful!

 

 

You gotta admit, if God is such that he could test Abraham in that fashion, then it lends credence to the fundamentalist claims that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and God created all the fossils, cosmic background radiation, etc in place to test people.

 

What the heck, if you're all-powerful, flaunt it!

 

I know, right?  God created the earth 6000 years ago, but made it look like it was 4,540,000,000 years old.  Why -- to trick people into thinking Genesis 1-2 was metaphorical rather than literal!  Muwahahahah!!

 

And for not taking a blatantly poetic verse literally, al those Christians who take it metaphorically are going to hell!

 

And as for the atheists who think the whole Bible makes absolutely no sense because it has no correlation with reality, don't those fools realise that almighty God just made it look as though history does not match the Bible  -- to trick people!!   To test their blind faith to a book that looks like the cobbled together tales of an ancient tribe over a period of a thousand years that has no relevance to the modern world.

 

 

 

Because he loves us and wants to have a deep and personal relationship with us.

[Guest r3alchild]

Lol spot on there.

[Guest r3alchild]

I suspect that many, mnay Christians have never fully explored the theology behind the verses and stories being referred to in this thread. Here is the shortform of the justification for the story above.

 

The justice of God is a perfect justice. When one swears an oath, no matter how ill-conceived, that perfect justice demands that it be fulfilled even if it means an act of evil. The requirement for perfect justice by God overrides all other consideration. It does not matter that an all-knowing God already knew the consequences of the vow, it mattered only that the vow was fullfilled. even as that same perfect justice of God demanded that his oath to Abraham and Moses and the isrealites be fulfilled by the slaughter of untold innocent lives in the conquered towns.

 

Now excuse while I go puke so I can get the taste of that out of my mouth.

Just like what they tell you about the slaughter of the men, women and children of the canaanites. Its all good when god does it but evil when a person does it alone.