Religious tolerance

I should leave it there soon - good idea!

I never find looking up bits of the bible easy soon, I just repeat what I have learned from the bible after years of reading it and leading bible study groups

Yes Elegran! I said I got it wrong! keep up at the back.

Happy Christmas. (King Herod)

As Elegran found, Psalm 51 is said to have been written after David's "affair" with Bathsheva, and Nathan the prophet told him off.
Soon - verse 5 in my english translation from hebrew says " I was begotten with the capacity to sin and with predisposition to iniquity..."

Your version is slightly different to mine. More along the lines of what I was thinking of this morning.

Anniebach. You are right, it isnt easy. Fair enough.

I did have a thought come to me.
If you have a loving mum and dad, they discipline us because they love us, as I think you will agree.
God is love - absolutely true, but with it comes the discipline, and hopefully obedience.

And in God's case, other stuff if he is angry enough after constant warnings being given[talking about stuff that happened in the Bible].

Jings I wasn't asleep! You posted while I was writing the rest of my post, King David and all that.

I had to look it up, at first I thought the son was his favourite, Absalom (who died while leading a rebellion against his father. David said that no-one was to harm him, but his military commander shot three darts into Absalom and killed him. When he heard, David said "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!")

No soon, I still cannot agree with you, our parents would not kill our child because we did wrong - stuff about David and God taking his child, God killing the first born of the Egyptians, how can I believe God would do these things? I cannot

Time for Epicurus again?

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

If Gog is angry with me. he can punish ME- NOT my child. If God is angry with me, he can punish ME not Aylan. If God is angry with me, he just cannot make children starve or suffer, to makee ME repent. That is NOT discipline- discipline is good, torture and cruelty involving innocents is NOT discipline- it is torture and cruelty of the highest order.

Would you truly be prepared to kill your own child, because God asked you? Truly?

granjura, I do not believe God punishes . Some quote ' the sins of the father will be visited upon the next generation . I think this happens when people will not forgive or forget, God does not punish and a Christian accepts Christ died for our sins, this is not a cop out, in fact it makes life harder because if one loves Christ then doing wrong or harm is really saying - I don't care that you suffered

My belief anyway

God tested Abraham's obedience by commanding him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and carried the test right up to Abraham lifting the knife to do so. Only at the last minute did He substitute a ram for the sacrifice.

That is carrying obedience too far. No-one should be expected to put obedience to a deity before humanity, and to do so does not prove virtue, it only proves subservience.

If you will forgive me butting in - that event has also made me uneasy Elegran. Why did God ask Abraham to do something so dreadful? I think we have to look at the cultural context and bear in mind that Abraham's whole life was a series of lessons that future generations could learn from, right up to the present day. Given that an only son was more precious than rubies in Old Testament times, it seems reasonable to think that the story is really about a man being challenged to give everything up if God requires it of him. Yes, it is about surrendering everything we have and are to a higher power. I do not personally like the fact that it involved being prepared to kill another human but also recognise that there was no other way of illustrating what it means to submit to God's absolute authority over our lives. When you think about it, there are many times in every life when events seem impossible to reconcile with the idea of a loving God, yet people of faith must still hold onto the belief that he is working in ways we don't understand, just as Abraham did. For us, this story must be taken in alongside God's sacrifice of his own son in the New Testament and it is this that makes the instruction to Abraham comprehensible, I think. Abraham had to be willing to give everything up, but it was God who actually did it; for God alone, the nightmare became a reality. This is one of the most important parallels in the Bible and illustrates his great love and the life of sacrifice that Christians are called to. It needs to be there, distasteful as it perhaps is.

Oh - you don't really believe that do you?! Come on!!!

This sacrifice stuff gives me the creeps. He certainly is "working in ways we don't understand" !! - not sure they are ways I have any desire to understand.

Elegran I think the story of Abraham and Isaac was written with deeper intent than simply to demonstrate Abraham's righteous obedience. The threat to Isaac's future is also a threat to the future of the entire Abrahamic lineage, especially bearing in mind that his previously barren mother was ninety years old when she gave birth and his father nine years older.

The story also consolidates the practice of sacrificing the first-born of both people and animals, but substituting an animal for the human sacrifice.

It is also one of numerous examples of theophany.

Having said that, I agree that killing one's own child – or, for that matter, someone else's – in blind obedience to a deity is a disgusting idea. No reason for god's demand of this sacrifice (which, of course, never happened) appears in Genesis as far as I can see.

Sorry, I'm not sure I phrased that well at the end. Abraham's sacrifice story is appalling partly because it is not just about being asked to kill, but a father being asked to give up his son. It seems designed to make us flinch and question God's sovereignty. When we turn to the New Testament and see that God chose to give up his 'everything' to spare us from eternal death, we are able to see that God loves each of us with the same father-love that Abraham had for Isaac. Abraham was simply following orders, willing to give up his treasure if God required it. God's sacrifice took place on another plane altogether. It was a free choice made out of love - a father's love and a shepherd's love that will do anything to find the one sheep that is missing, even if it means giving up the one lamb that you love most. I agree that the Bible is difficult and controversial. Many parts of the old Testament seem needlessly punitive. However, there is also a continuing thread of mercy and care for the fatherless, the poor and the widowed - something that we have not managed to crack in our society.

And in the meantime, somewhere in Africa, children are tortured and killed by their parents or community because they are believed to be inhabited by the Devil, and God asks them to do so. Tragic.

Jingle I believe every word of it and I speak as someone who has, in the last six months, lost two close family members at the ages of 33 and 69. I'm not saying that for sympathy but to assure you there has been no opportunity for rose-tinted spectacles here. But God is a reality in my life and his love for each of us can only enrich and add meaning to our lives, if we will give him the opportunity.

Granjura, there is absolutely nothing in the Bible that would condone such behaviour. In fact, the distinguishing traits of Christianity in biblical times was its condemnation of child abuse, abortion and child sacrifice (making the Abraham story all the more telling).

I think we do - and have done - a damn sight more today for " the fatherless, the poor and the widowed" than they ever did in Old Trestament days.

So, why are there no burning bushes, and Rules-for-everyday-living carved in bits of rock these days?

Do you, really Jingl? In Jewish times they were required to have a 'day of Jubilee' regularly when all wealth got redistributed and all debts were cancelled. That did more to combat injustice that we've ever done today. There were laws in place to ensure that some of the society's supplies were set aside for those who were poor. When a man died leaving a woman and her children behind, there was a law that ensured they would be given a home with a family member. In our culture, we wouldn't want that but it was fitting for that time and probably did work better than our 'community support' for those facing hard times, not to mention the housing crisis. But I'd be interested to know why you hold your view?

Burning bushes and 10 commandments . You're asking why God deals with us differently now? It's quite involved. In many places in the world, he does seem to intervene in ways that we would consider miraculous. But fire doesn't mean in our culture what it meant in Old Testament times. It wouldn't be relevant for us. The ten commandments were an attempt to lay out laws that would prevent the Jewish people from falling into the cruelty and injustice that was happening in other neighbouring cultures. It outlawed murder, stealing and protected family life. It came after repeated attempts from God to lead the people through love (which they ignored). Having eschewed the relationship with God, God in turn focused on their outward behaviour. In the New Testament, the 10 commandments were upgraded to the same behaviours plus an inner heart attitude - and an assurance that this heart attitude would be made possible by the Holy Spirit. While the rules haven't gone away, feelings and relationships have once again become the priority. Does that answer it?

Ah those ten (sometimes 16 or more) Commandments... what a lousy collection to base a moral existence on! Four of the ten are wasted on sucking up to Yahweh, I'm pretty sure murder and theft were not considered fair game before the Commandments arrived - and as Christopher Hitchens said, in the one about 'coveting' you have the first establishment of thought crime!

Nothing about child abuse or rape...

What rules for living would you choose feetlebaum?