Comments
Please wait...
Comments are closed.
Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.
Editors' Picks
is a proud member of the
network
network
All contents © Noisy Creek, Inc.
1101 East Pike St. Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98122
1101 East Pike St. Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98122
Anyway... New Testament. No stoning. And look at all the actually unfaithful Evangelical Republicans. Obviously, either God doesn't give a rat's ass; or He's saving it all up to smite their entire party in the mid-term elections.
The definition of adultery is being stretched pretty thin.
Remember way back when Playboy was also a source of news, arts, social commentary, and some T & A? That issue was one of my favorites.
Presumably, as @9 suggests, this was intended as an admonition to believers who adopt an attitude of moral superiority over those found guilty of the act of sinning, that they themselves are no less guilty if they even merely think about sinning "in their hearts"; they know they've done it, therefore they must understand that Yahweh knows as well.
Off topic a bit?
There's little reason to doubt that Carter tries to be a good man. Habitat For Humanity is actually a worthwhile charity to which I donate both time and money.
There's no reason to doubt however that he was an incompetent president, or that his ideology (like all lefties) is that of a not very bright 5 year old child.
Oh. Well if Wikipedia says it, it MUST be true!
But on that theory you'll be demanding Obama return his risible Nobel prize, given him well before he took office? No? Imagine that, a hypocritical lefty!
We can argue about how crucial to victory the religious right was for Reagan (or Bush the Younger, for that matter) but there's no denying that they did, in fact, embrace Reagan as their candidate, and they did, in fact, present this to the evangelical Protestants of the day as if Reagan was somehow the more "Godly" candidate. My parents were still dragging me to church in those days and I remember it vividly.
On a side note, when I was a kid and still trying sincerely to make sense of the Bible, I always assumed that verse had to be referring not to the passing thoughts and emotions that we all have, but to thoughts that are nurtured and encouraged and sought out -- you know, the difference between happening to catch a vision of a woman who inspires a random moment of lust, and hanging around outside her balcony with binoculars.
I wonder if things work the other way though. If merely having a "bad" impulse without acting on it itself is a sin, does having a good intentions, either not acted upon, or acted upon with a bad unforeseen outcome, counts in your favor? This verse would seem to suggest that that might be the case, that the intention is perhaps even more important than the act or the outcome themselves.
What a fascinating misinterpretation of Christianity.
Few things to set you on the right road-
Christianity is about personal rather than social or species change. Comparisons to communism are simply wrong.
Christianity builds family and social obligations. Don't cheat on your spouse, honor your parents and so on. It warns against promiscuity and lying and the things that destroy these familial and social bonds.
The Inquisition, witch trials and other anomalies notwithstanding, I have yet to be tortured at my church. Though the Machiavelli poster has bizarre church based sexual fantasies I have yet to witness anything of the kind personally. Sorry kiddo, but keep dreaming. ..
This verse is simply reflective of a basic truth, if you plant and tend tomatoes you'll probably harvest red fruit with that taste an awful lot like tomatoes. If you plant and tend destructive thoughts in your mind you're going to act destructively.
By 1980 the born-again Christians had fully morphed into the Religious Right, turned against Carter, and helped put Reagan into office. However, the botched hostage rescue attempt that summer is what really did Carter in. No President, of either party, can get reelected if they make the US look like a hapless ineffectual clown. If the raid to kill Osama bin Laden had ended in disaster, we'd be kvetching about President Romney now; and if the raid to free the hostages had been successful, Ronald Reagan would be remembered as a mediocre actor who later served as Governor of California before disappearing down the memory hole.
Carter's been a better ex-President than he was President.
As for the torture, for the most part it's self-inflicted (albeit encouraged by religious institutions). Fasting is a good example that's widely practiced today. Hair shirts and flagellants are examples of similar sorts of things. I had a teacher in Catholic school once who had her entire class hold our arms straight out to the sides to gain some understanding of what it was like for Jesus to be on the cross.
Christianity is about personal change. But so, fundamentally was 20th century communism. And, for that matter, fascism (which is why the youth wings of both were so important).
All three, Christianity, communism and fascism, share an understanding that each person is born a tabula rasa upon which may be written the necessary beliefs and desires needed to mold the individual into a proper citizen of Utopia.
I suspect this lies at the heart of why many Christians can't tolerate homosexuality...it interferes with their creation of the ideal person, who, needless to say, cannot possibly be gay.
Why is that? Because people weigh negative information as much as 10x as much as positive information (Google "negatively bias").
Christianity's whole emphasis is on sin. The early Christians realized that it must be, because otherwise their thesis on Jezuz doesn't make any sense.