You must learn to distinguish between the Art Bell oddity chasers and discriminating researchers. There are responsible Bible researchers, and there are demonstrably kooky Bible researchers. (Please, no snide remarks from the atheist peanut gallery.:^) This is an intra-Christian issue.) Don't be so quick to put your trust in people just because they are Christians. They can still be wrong about things, and the evidence indicates that these Christians are wrong in this case.
Let me back up a bit... They may not be kooks or hucksters. They may be good, sincere believers. I don't want to defame them since I don't know them. But don't be so hasty to assume they're right about this. It would be wonderful if they found the ark, but the evidence at this point is not at all in their favor.
Answers in Genesis has an article debunking claims that Noah's Ark is on Mount Ararat. It should be noted, however, that the Ark explorers they mention are not from the same group as this current expedition mentioned in the CNN article.
There is a regular metallic pattern............FALSE
Lab tests show petrified laminated wood........FALSE
Turkish scientists found metal rods............FALSE
Metal artefacts have been proved by lab........FALSE
There are 'ship's ribs' showing................FALSE
There is lots of petrified wood................FALSE
Turkish Commission says 'it's a boat...........FALSE
After giving a lot of details to back up these verdicts, they conclude with the following statements.
For the many who had their hopes built up that this may be Noah's Ark, it needs to be kept in mind that the Bible in no way says that Noah's Ark would be preserved as a witness to future generations. Nevertheless, it certainly would be an exciting and powerful testimony to an unbelieving world for the Ark to be found, but if that is to happen it will be unmistakably God's doing in His time and in His way to bring Him the glory.
In the meantime, as Christians we need to always exercise due care when claims are made, no matter who makes them, and any claims must always be subjected to the most rigorous scientific scrutiny. If that had happened here, and particularly if the scientific surveys conducted by highly qualified professionals using sophisticated instruments had been more widely publicized and their results taken note of, then these claims would never have received the widespread credence that they have.
There is an enormous amount of evidence for creation and the Flood, so we don't need the Ark to be discovered in that sense.
I agree with you exactly. It's not bad for a child's drawing, but the seagull makes Foghorn Leghorn look like a dignified bird in comparison. The seagull is funny, but it's funny in a bad way, i.e., not appropriate for school kids, because it could be seen as promoting illegal drug use, sexual activity (see other posts), and plain daftness. Seriously, the first thing the bird's disheveled hair and disoriented look made me think of was Saddam Hussein when he was pulled out of his spiderhole.
In the "just due" matter, you are also correct and I may have illustrated more the motivations of most "christians" instead of the teachings of the bible... Attending church and having a belief "in the Lord" assures their right to heaven.
Ah, I see where you were coming from. You do understand! I wish you had written what you meant the first time. At least it's cleared up now.
You should realize that when you use phrases like "right to heaven" without proper explanation or context, most Christians (like TechnoLust and I) instantly assume that you know nothing about Christianity. Those phrases, which appear to trample on the doctrine of grace, grate on our ears. They just scream IGNORANCE.
Christians don't say anything like "just due" and "good" in the same sentence without a NOT in between. In Christianity, God's ultimate justice is fearful judgment for all; salvation is an undeserved pardon. Individuals do make a choice to accept Christ's sacrifice on their behalf to enter heaven, but we are loathe to speak of "deserving" God's favor, or having "fulfilled the requirements" to acquire the "right to heaven" within any context. Those words are anathema to Christian teaching. Jesus Christ fulfilled the requirement for believers to enter heaven. While, technically speaking, having faith is a personal "requirement," that word rubs Calvinist Christians (salvation is "by faith alone," not deeds) the wrong way. It's taboo, non-kosher.
I know you think I'm playing with semantics, but I'm really not. There is a big difference, if you really think about it.
For you to have used those inaccurate phrases wouldn't have been so bad if you hadn't claimed to have studied the Bible so much. To make matters worse, you accompanied your apparent ignorance of the Bible with flame-baiting criticism of Christianity.
So, you see why TechnoLust responded the way he did. He and I thought you were saying something you weren't, and given your comparison of Christ with Allah and Buddha, I hope you can empathize as to why we were confident that you knew nothing about Christianity.
I am refering to those who have fulfilled the requirements to going to heaven.
Still, nobody deserves to go to heaven. Even the believer is in a constant state of unworthiness. God must continue to hold out His grace for us to be saved.
Why is it that since you cannot argue against science that you want to twist semantics to make me sound like I am saying something else?
Huh? What science? I went to the top of this thread and didn't see anybody mention science. I'd be willing to discuss science, but nobody has brought it up.
Anyway, I had no intention of twisting semantics to put words in your mouth. As I explained above, justice and worthiness are crucial topics to understand Christianity, and I cannot afford to mince words or be imprecise. To say that heaven is the "just due" of anybody (Jew, Christian, pagan, atheist) is diametrically opposed to the message of the Bible. What you said wasn't just a little bit inaccurate; it was completely false. As a student of the Bible yourself, I thought that that would be an important thing for you to know.
aside from completely misunderstanding what I mean about "just due in the end" [i.e. God taking us to heaven].
No, I think he understood perfectly. Where did you learn that Christians deserve to go to heaven? That we are entitled to be with God? We're not worthy of receiving any good thing from God, much less moving in with Him.
All people since Adam are born into sin. Justice demands punishment for sin. Our "just due" is to be tormented in hell. But God shows us grace--unmerited favor--to save us from the judgment. This is the heart and soul of the Gospel and a central theme of the Bible. If you missed that point in your studies, you might as well have missed it all, cowboy.
Christians are not waiting to get what they deserve; they are waiting for what they DO NOT deserve! Glory to God! (Wow, it's amazing how that puts a smile across my face!:-D ) The Messiah became our sin on the cross, and His righteousness has been imputed to those who trust in Him. (2 Cor. 5:21) Christ got our just due, and we get His just due, which is to be with the Father in heaven. (Of course, Jesus Christ defeated death and is now with the Father, also.)
P.S. In an earlier comment, you seemed to equate Armageddon with the meek inheriting the earth. The book _God Will Bless You_ by the 19th century English theologian Charles Spurgeon is a wonderful commentary on the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. I found the third chapter online, which answers for you the questions "Who are the meek?" and "How do the meek inherit the earth?" Hint: It has nothing to do with Armageddon or the Rapture.
You are thinking of agnosticism, which asserts that the knowledge of the supernatural that would be required to choose either theism or atheism cannot be known by humans, e.g., both positions are bogus.
Atheism is the paradoxical doctrine that implies that atheists can and have investigated the supernatural realm which they believe to not exist, and the knowledge they found as a result of their investigation of this non-existent realm is that God isn't there.
Theism and atheism both tout declarations of belief concerning something that is supernatural. A materialist scientific verdict cannot be given either way. Therefore, they are both faiths.
Theism is faith in presence; atheism is faith in absence.
I went searching for the answer. Warping. It seems that this is a recommendation carried over from the wisdom concerning vinyl records to videodiscs and now to CDs. I think the advice is more applicable to large discs and needs to be heeded for CDs only for the utmost crucial data or paranoid users. Some online guides specifically say it doesn't matter whether CDs are stored horizontally or vertically. Judging from what I found through Google, it appears to be a very minor consideration for small discs. Heat is a much bigger factor.
Flexing (bending) the disc by any means, such as removing it from a jewel case or sitting on it, may harm the disc by causing stresses.
The disc should be stored in its case and placed vertically, like a book, on a shelf. Long-term horizontal storage, particularly in a heated environment, can cause the disc to become permanently bowed. While the data may still be intact, the disc may not operate properly in the drive or permit the laser to follow the track. The maximum degree of flex (bend) or number of times a disc can be flexed before it incurs damage is not known. To minimize the risk of damage, it is better to avoid flexing discs.
Is this just theory or does it really happen? Does anybody have a CD or DVD that became warped because of storing it horizontally? Almost all disc storage towers and cases hold them horizontally.
The reward is getting some annoying questioner off the phone.
How do the surveyers know that the people gave them REAL passwords?
Surveyer: We'll give you some chocolate if you give us your password.
User: (annoyed) mypassword
Surveyer: Thanks!
User: No problem. *hangs up* Idiot!
Authentication is a big part of IT security. It's amazing that the people doing a survey done for Infosecurity Europe weren't applying security concepts to their own research.
They had no way of knowing if they were given correct passwords, and they didn't even realize it! Hellooo? Didn't it occur to them?
"We are amazed at the level of ignorance from consumers on the need to protect their online identity," said Tim Pickard, spokesman for RSA Security.
Uh, yeah, well I'm amazed too, but not at users' ignorance. The surveyers were every bit as naive as those who would give out their passwords.
Attributing news to sources does not make it neutral. This tactic can be exploited to promote a certain view. Say the journalist wants to insert his opinion. He looks around until he finds someone involved in the story that is saying that or he coaxes someone involved into saying it. If there are many witnesses or participants in an event, a journalist will be able to acquire the sound bites he need to parrot his view, and it will be reported as a quote from Joe X. who was there. The journalist ignores the opposite expressed view, which may in fact be the majority view. If one view is far more prevalent than the journalist's favored view, the journalist may report an equal number of quotes from both sides to artificially portray them as being equally popular and balanced sides of a debate.
The issue of "equal validity" is discussed in the Wikipedia entry, but it kind of counters or qualifies the part you presented here.
The witch trials were a very brief episode that lasted for one whole year! 1692. I wouldn't even consider it American in any sense, because it was well before the colonists gained independence. Heck, their hair was still wind-blown from the trip across the Atlantic on the Mayflower. Nobody involved in those trials would have been alive in the 1770s when the Constitution was being drafted.
IIRC, the New England witch trials were mostly localized to Salem. The hysteria started to spread, and one other nearby town executed some witches. The total number executed in the Salem Inquisition was a whopping 25. The number executed in the rest of New England was less than that. Probably more people get killed in Los Angeles and Miami ethnic gang violence in a month than all the alleged witches ever executed in New England, but we don't hear about a Los Angeles Inquisition. Maybe if they carried Bibles, we would.
It should also be noted that many of the accusations of witchcraft were nothing more than personal vendettas. The hysteria got so crazy that some people thought they could get away with accusing people they hated of practicing witchcraft. Christianity had little or nothing to do with it. Just sinful, human nature. Move along, nothing to see here.
Did you put the commercials in all caps because of their volume? I don't watch much TV anymore, but when I do I've noticed that the commercials are sometimes louder than the programs. The program's audio will be kind of dull, and then the commercial comes on with BLARINGLY LOUD, bright, in-your-face audio. It doesn't help that the spoken words are increasingly shrill. I know TV didn't used to be that way. Has anybody else noticed this change? Maybe it's only during certain programs or on certain stations.
Great post! I enjoyed that very much. That was the most beautiful post I've read on Slashdot in a long time. We could use some more writing that sounds like it comes from a priest.
I know I'm preaching to the choir as far as you're concerned, but I just want to comment on a common statement you made that we often hear in discussions on Christ. The following is something I've been thinking about lately, and this is as good an opportunity as any to put it into words and share it with a brother in Christ.
Here we have a guy who (in life and in the movie) claimed to be God incarnate.
I think that would be better stated:
Here we have a God who claimed to be man in the flesh.
Look at it from God's perspective. He's been sitting up there in heaven forever.
God sends a messenger (as prophesied in Malachi 3:1), John the Baptizer, to announce that He will be coming soon as a man.
God enters Mary's womb as a human and sends an angel to announce that He is here! (Matthew 1:20)
Immanu El (God is with us).
He is born, He grows, He lives, He teaches. It is God Himself living as a man, not a man making claims to be God.
The great action was that supernatural God put Himself squarely in the material world that He had created and fully immersed Himself in the human experience (unlike the "angel of the LORD"). To cast the experience of Christ as that of a man (implied: having not existed before his physical birth, inheriting a sinful state, existing as spiritually separate from the Father, born of the flesh requiring remission of sin) and yet claiming to be God is to mischaracterize what happened. Even as one who already believes that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate, I wince when I hear "Jesus was a man who claimed to be God." It's a half-truth at best, because it implicitly precludes Jesus' supernatural existence of eternity past. Before He was Jesus of Nazareth, He was Jesus of Heaven.
Jesus of Heaven became Jesus of Nazareth. God became a man. Then as a man, He asserted the authority of God. His actions spoke louder than His words. His miracles and fulfillments of the ancient messianic prophecies were His major "claims" to be God.
To say that Jesus was a "man who claimed" to be God implies that He simply spouted off, "I am God!" as any arrogant or delusional fool could do. No, He lived God's Word in a way that manifested the reality that He was God incarnate more than any direct, verbal claim could ever do.
There have been thousands of people throughout the ages who claimed to be God. Why do they have no followers and Jesus has billions? If Jesus were just a man--any old Tom, Dick, or Harry in the desert--who ballyhooed himself to be God in the flesh, the examples of history indicate that He would not be able to get more than a handful of people to revere Him for very long.
However, if it were God making claims about a man, and in this case, about Himself being a Man... you would expect that Man to attract huge masses of worshippers... which is exactly what we've seen for 2000 years.
I know you believe this, IndigoDarkwolf. I just want you to see that the statement you wrote uses language that is actually kind of hostile to what you and I believe. Moreover, I find that saying "Jesus was God who claimed to be man" is profoundly inspirational to me. It's more theologically correct and helps to guide my thinking when I think about Jesus.
Anti-Christian bigots' insistence on going back centuries ago to condemn "Christianity" shows just how non-"regressive" our Christianity must be (if we buy the notion that the inquisitions were even truly Christian).
Secondly, the inquisitions ended before the founding of the united states of America, so it is disingenious to associate them with "American Christian fundamentalism." The founders weren't even Spanish, and I'm quite sure that George Washington, while a war general, was not a Crusader. (He was born a little late for that.;-)
Right, most of them were political. And they weren't nearly as bad as 20th century non-religious violent episodes.
The crusades went on for hundreds of years and resulted in the murders of tens of thousands of people. The Spanish Inquisition lasted over 300 years and resulted in the murder of 300,000 people.
But in 1994 alone, the Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. Mao Tse Tung's regime massacred 26.3 million Chinese between 1949 and May 1965. By 1971, about 62 million Chinese had been murdered. From October 1917 to December 1959 under Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev, 66.7 million were killed in the U.S.S.R. None of the aggressors acted because of religion, except in certain cases for the purpose of wiping it out.
I am a Baptist in the South, and I don't happen to know of any church that speaks out against all dancing. In fact, the trend in worship service is very much moving to a more charismatic and expressive style. I know of some churches that actually teach dancing as a form of worship.
There are certain Christian sects that separate men from women in the church. This is the way it was done during the Apostle Paul's day, and it is still this way in Orthodox Jewish synagogues. However, talking and associating between the sexes outside of the church or synagogue is perfectly fine.
Most modern kinds of dancing promote sexual relations between people who aren't married. As a result, some Christians (a very, very tiny percentage) forbid all kinds of dancing.
As for merely talking, I think you're confusing certain fundamentalist Qur'an followers with Bible followers. I've never heard of any Christians having such prohibitions. Orthodox Jews don't allow unmarried men and women to kiss each other, but talking is okay.
If you were to read the first few chapters of Genesis, you would understand Christianity's take on sex and sin a little better. Leviticus has a lot to say on sex, too.
God did not create the body evil. Man caused a curse of evil to fall over everything on earth when he first sinned. Man continues to make the body evil when he sins with it and against it, like through the use of pornography.
When a person trusts in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, he is born again, this time of the spirit, rather than of the flesh. Paul says, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" The old inclination was toward sin, but our new inclination, after being born in the Spirit, is toward righteousness. We will not be able to shed our old inclination completely until we shed our bodies, our earthsuits. Then, our spirits can live in purity with no hidrance of the fallen world.
Absolutely, the body is a beautiful thing. Fire and water are also beautiful things. They can be used for good or evil. There are proper ways to handle and display the body, and there are improper ways.
We do not hate the body. In fact, a Christian belief is that the body of a born-again believer is a temple where the Holy Spirit dwells. The body is to be sanctified and kept holy because God is holy. So, the Christian view of the body is much higher than that of the non-Christian who uses it only for his own self-serving pleasure.
Christianity holds that sex is a beautiful thing. You should read the Song of Songs (in the Old Testament). Read Genesis chapter 2. The problem is that most sex in the media is non-marital. But even if it were marital, sex should be done privately. Nor should it be filmed or simulated and displayed for the world to see. Sex is something to be shared between only the married man and woman engaged in it in a private place.
Sex is like fire. You have to be very careful with it. Encircle the fire with rocks (protective rules). Rake away any material that could burn (people you could have sex with) but should not be burned (it is not wise to have sex with them). Have a pail of water ready in case the fire gets out of control (use your brain when lust starts leading you to do stupid things). It's wonderful, helpful, and gratifying when it's kept in safe bounds. The mysterious powers of sexuality have yet to be fully understood, but we know that, when misused, it causes profound damage to relationships, personal happiness and productivity, families, and even society and the state (if a common trend).
The logical fallacy of trying to do "good acts" with an "evil body" just blows my mind.
There's nothing fallacious about it. It's not much different than an obese person who's trying to lose wait. He craves foods that are unhealthy, but he tries to abstain. When he sees commercials advertising these bad foods, he gets upset. Whether the issue is pornography/immoral sex or unhealthy foods, the person who abstains is greatly rewarded with a better life. The person who fails to abstain has fun for a little while, but later regrets it when he ends up a fat slob with AIDS and no self-esteem.
I'm not saying that we should censor the display of foods in the media. Pornography is a much bigger deal. See the link in my sig.
Slashdot Mirror
You must learn to distinguish between the Art Bell oddity chasers and discriminating researchers. There are responsible Bible researchers, and there are demonstrably kooky Bible researchers. (Please, no snide remarks from the atheist peanut gallery. :^) This is an intra-Christian issue.) Don't be so quick to put your trust in people just because they are Christians. They can still be wrong about things, and the evidence indicates that these Christians are wrong in this case.
Let me back up a bit... They may not be kooks or hucksters. They may be good, sincere believers. I don't want to defame them since I don't know them. But don't be so hasty to assume they're right about this. It would be wonderful if they found the ark, but the evidence at this point is not at all in their favor.
Christ did not think it was a myth.
Adults are the ones making business decisions. Logos are ultimately for adults.
Hey, I knew I'd seen that face before! :-) Or maybe that was here.
I agree with you exactly. It's not bad for a child's drawing, but the seagull makes Foghorn Leghorn look like a dignified bird in comparison. The seagull is funny, but it's funny in a bad way, i.e., not appropriate for school kids, because it could be seen as promoting illegal drug use, sexual activity (see other posts), and plain daftness. Seriously, the first thing the bird's disheveled hair and disoriented look made me think of was Saddam Hussein when he was pulled out of his spiderhole.
Ah, I see where you were coming from. You do understand! I wish you had written what you meant the first time. At least it's cleared up now.
You should realize that when you use phrases like "right to heaven" without proper explanation or context, most Christians (like TechnoLust and I) instantly assume that you know nothing about Christianity. Those phrases, which appear to trample on the doctrine of grace, grate on our ears. They just scream IGNORANCE.
Christians don't say anything like "just due" and "good" in the same sentence without a NOT in between. In Christianity, God's ultimate justice is fearful judgment for all; salvation is an undeserved pardon. Individuals do make a choice to accept Christ's sacrifice on their behalf to enter heaven, but we are loathe to speak of "deserving" God's favor, or having "fulfilled the requirements" to acquire the "right to heaven" within any context. Those words are anathema to Christian teaching. Jesus Christ fulfilled the requirement for believers to enter heaven. While, technically speaking, having faith is a personal "requirement," that word rubs Calvinist Christians (salvation is "by faith alone," not deeds) the wrong way. It's taboo, non-kosher.
I know you think I'm playing with semantics, but I'm really not. There is a big difference, if you really think about it.
For you to have used those inaccurate phrases wouldn't have been so bad if you hadn't claimed to have studied the Bible so much. To make matters worse, you accompanied your apparent ignorance of the Bible with flame-baiting criticism of Christianity.
So, you see why TechnoLust responded the way he did. He and I thought you were saying something you weren't, and given your comparison of Christ with Allah and Buddha, I hope you can empathize as to why we were confident that you knew nothing about Christianity.
Still, nobody deserves to go to heaven. Even the believer is in a constant state of unworthiness. God must continue to hold out His grace for us to be saved.
Why is it that since you cannot argue against science that you want to twist semantics to make me sound like I am saying something else?
Huh? What science? I went to the top of this thread and didn't see anybody mention science. I'd be willing to discuss science, but nobody has brought it up.
Anyway, I had no intention of twisting semantics to put words in your mouth. As I explained above, justice and worthiness are crucial topics to understand Christianity, and I cannot afford to mince words or be imprecise. To say that heaven is the "just due" of anybody (Jew, Christian, pagan, atheist) is diametrically opposed to the message of the Bible. What you said wasn't just a little bit inaccurate; it was completely false. As a student of the Bible yourself, I thought that that would be an important thing for you to know.
No, I think he understood perfectly. Where did you learn that Christians deserve to go to heaven? That we are entitled to be with God? We're not worthy of receiving any good thing from God, much less moving in with Him.
All people since Adam are born into sin. Justice demands punishment for sin. Our "just due" is to be tormented in hell. But God shows us grace--unmerited favor--to save us from the judgment. This is the heart and soul of the Gospel and a central theme of the Bible. If you missed that point in your studies, you might as well have missed it all, cowboy.
Christians are not waiting to get what they deserve; they are waiting for what they DO NOT deserve! Glory to God! (Wow, it's amazing how that puts a smile across my face! :-D ) The Messiah became our sin on the cross, and His righteousness has been imputed to those who trust in Him. (2 Cor. 5:21) Christ got our just due, and we get His just due, which is to be with the Father in heaven. (Of course, Jesus Christ defeated death and is now with the Father, also.)
P.S. In an earlier comment, you seemed to equate Armageddon with the meek inheriting the earth. The book _God Will Bless You_ by the 19th century English theologian Charles Spurgeon is a wonderful commentary on the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. I found the third chapter online, which answers for you the questions "Who are the meek?" and "How do the meek inherit the earth?" Hint: It has nothing to do with Armageddon or the Rapture.
Look it up.
You are thinking of agnosticism, which asserts that the knowledge of the supernatural that would be required to choose either theism or atheism cannot be known by humans, e.g., both positions are bogus.
Atheism is the paradoxical doctrine that implies that atheists can and have investigated the supernatural realm which they believe to not exist, and the knowledge they found as a result of their investigation of this non-existent realm is that God isn't there.
Theism is faith in presence; atheism is faith in absence.
For the record, here's what the Council on Library and Information Resources says (emphasis mine):
Is this just theory or does it really happen? Does anybody have a CD or DVD that became warped because of storing it horizontally? Almost all disc storage towers and cases hold them horizontally.See this and this slide on programming languages.
It mentions Perl, too.How do the surveyers know that the people gave them REAL passwords?
Surveyer: We'll give you some chocolate if you give us your password.
User: (annoyed) mypassword
Surveyer: Thanks!
User: No problem. *hangs up* Idiot!
Authentication is a big part of IT security. It's amazing that the people doing a survey done for Infosecurity Europe weren't applying security concepts to their own research.
They had no way of knowing if they were given correct passwords, and they didn't even realize it! Hellooo? Didn't it occur to them?
"We are amazed at the level of ignorance from consumers on the need to protect their online identity," said Tim Pickard, spokesman for RSA Security.
Uh, yeah, well I'm amazed too, but not at users' ignorance. The surveyers were every bit as naive as those who would give out their passwords.
The issue of "equal validity" is discussed in the Wikipedia entry, but it kind of counters or qualifies the part you presented here.
IIRC, the New England witch trials were mostly localized to Salem. The hysteria started to spread, and one other nearby town executed some witches. The total number executed in the Salem Inquisition was a whopping 25. The number executed in the rest of New England was less than that. Probably more people get killed in Los Angeles and Miami ethnic gang violence in a month than all the alleged witches ever executed in New England, but we don't hear about a Los Angeles Inquisition. Maybe if they carried Bibles, we would.
It should also be noted that many of the accusations of witchcraft were nothing more than personal vendettas. The hysteria got so crazy that some people thought they could get away with accusing people they hated of practicing witchcraft. Christianity had little or nothing to do with it. Just sinful, human nature. Move along, nothing to see here.
Did you put the commercials in all caps because of their volume? I don't watch much TV anymore, but when I do I've noticed that the commercials are sometimes louder than the programs. The program's audio will be kind of dull, and then the commercial comes on with BLARINGLY LOUD, bright, in-your-face audio. It doesn't help that the spoken words are increasingly shrill. I know TV didn't used to be that way. Has anybody else noticed this change? Maybe it's only during certain programs or on certain stations.
I know I'm preaching to the choir as far as you're concerned, but I just want to comment on a common statement you made that we often hear in discussions on Christ. The following is something I've been thinking about lately, and this is as good an opportunity as any to put it into words and share it with a brother in Christ.
Here we have a guy who (in life and in the movie) claimed to be God incarnate.
I think that would be better stated:
Look at it from God's perspective. He's been sitting up there in heaven forever.God sends a messenger (as prophesied in Malachi 3:1), John the Baptizer, to announce that He will be coming soon as a man.
God enters Mary's womb as a human and sends an angel to announce that He is here! (Matthew 1:20)
Immanu El (God is with us).
He is born, He grows, He lives, He teaches. It is God Himself living as a man, not a man making claims to be God.
The great action was that supernatural God put Himself squarely in the material world that He had created and fully immersed Himself in the human experience (unlike the "angel of the LORD"). To cast the experience of Christ as that of a man (implied: having not existed before his physical birth, inheriting a sinful state, existing as spiritually separate from the Father, born of the flesh requiring remission of sin) and yet claiming to be God is to mischaracterize what happened. Even as one who already believes that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate, I wince when I hear "Jesus was a man who claimed to be God." It's a half-truth at best, because it implicitly precludes Jesus' supernatural existence of eternity past. Before He was Jesus of Nazareth, He was Jesus of Heaven.
Jesus of Heaven became Jesus of Nazareth. God became a man. Then as a man, He asserted the authority of God. His actions spoke louder than His words. His miracles and fulfillments of the ancient messianic prophecies were His major "claims" to be God.
To say that Jesus was a "man who claimed" to be God implies that He simply spouted off, "I am God!" as any arrogant or delusional fool could do. No, He lived God's Word in a way that manifested the reality that He was God incarnate more than any direct, verbal claim could ever do.
There have been thousands of people throughout the ages who claimed to be God. Why do they have no followers and Jesus has billions? If Jesus were just a man--any old Tom, Dick, or Harry in the desert--who ballyhooed himself to be God in the flesh, the examples of history indicate that He would not be able to get more than a handful of people to revere Him for very long.
However, if it were God making claims about a man, and in this case, about Himself being a Man... you would expect that Man to attract huge masses of worshippers... which is exactly what we've seen for 2000 years.
I know you believe this, IndigoDarkwolf. I just want you to see that the statement you wrote uses language that is actually kind of hostile to what you and I believe. Moreover, I find that saying "Jesus was God who claimed to be man" is profoundly inspirational to me. It's more theologically correct and helps to guide my thinking when I think about Jesus.
Secondly, the inquisitions ended before the founding of the united states of America, so it is disingenious to associate them with "American Christian fundamentalism." The founders weren't even Spanish, and I'm quite sure that George Washington, while a war general, was not a Crusader. (He was born a little late for that. ;-)
The crusades went on for hundreds of years and resulted in the murders of tens of thousands of people. The Spanish Inquisition lasted over 300 years and resulted in the murder of 300,000 people.
But in 1994 alone, the Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. Mao Tse Tung's regime massacred 26.3 million Chinese between 1949 and May 1965. By 1971, about 62 million Chinese had been murdered. From October 1917 to December 1959 under Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev, 66.7 million were killed in the U.S.S.R. None of the aggressors acted because of religion, except in certain cases for the purpose of wiping it out.
(Sources for figures cited within this page.)
There are certain Christian sects that separate men from women in the church. This is the way it was done during the Apostle Paul's day, and it is still this way in Orthodox Jewish synagogues. However, talking and associating between the sexes outside of the church or synagogue is perfectly fine.
As for merely talking, I think you're confusing certain fundamentalist Qur'an followers with Bible followers. I've never heard of any Christians having such prohibitions. Orthodox Jews don't allow unmarried men and women to kiss each other, but talking is okay.
God did not create the body evil. Man caused a curse of evil to fall over everything on earth when he first sinned. Man continues to make the body evil when he sins with it and against it, like through the use of pornography.
When a person trusts in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, he is born again, this time of the spirit, rather than of the flesh. Paul says, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" The old inclination was toward sin, but our new inclination, after being born in the Spirit, is toward righteousness. We will not be able to shed our old inclination completely until we shed our bodies, our earthsuits. Then, our spirits can live in purity with no hidrance of the fallen world.
Absolutely, the body is a beautiful thing. Fire and water are also beautiful things. They can be used for good or evil. There are proper ways to handle and display the body, and there are improper ways.
We do not hate the body. In fact, a Christian belief is that the body of a born-again believer is a temple where the Holy Spirit dwells. The body is to be sanctified and kept holy because God is holy. So, the Christian view of the body is much higher than that of the non-Christian who uses it only for his own self-serving pleasure.
Christianity holds that sex is a beautiful thing. You should read the Song of Songs (in the Old Testament). Read Genesis chapter 2. The problem is that most sex in the media is non-marital. But even if it were marital, sex should be done privately. Nor should it be filmed or simulated and displayed for the world to see. Sex is something to be shared between only the married man and woman engaged in it in a private place.
Sex is like fire. You have to be very careful with it. Encircle the fire with rocks (protective rules). Rake away any material that could burn (people you could have sex with) but should not be burned (it is not wise to have sex with them). Have a pail of water ready in case the fire gets out of control (use your brain when lust starts leading you to do stupid things). It's wonderful, helpful, and gratifying when it's kept in safe bounds. The mysterious powers of sexuality have yet to be fully understood, but we know that, when misused, it causes profound damage to relationships, personal happiness and productivity, families, and even society and the state (if a common trend).
The logical fallacy of trying to do "good acts" with an "evil body" just blows my mind.
There's nothing fallacious about it. It's not much different than an obese person who's trying to lose wait. He craves foods that are unhealthy, but he tries to abstain. When he sees commercials advertising these bad foods, he gets upset. Whether the issue is pornography/immoral sex or unhealthy foods, the person who abstains is greatly rewarded with a better life. The person who fails to abstain has fun for a little while, but later regrets it when he ends up a fat slob with AIDS and no self-esteem.
I'm not saying that we should censor the display of foods in the media. Pornography is a much bigger deal. See the link in my sig.
Watch the monkey! (1.7 MB QuickTime movie)