Comments on: Busting Myths About Christianity: Assessing Myths 1-3

By: Christians Are Hypocrites at The Blog Of Dysfunction

Christians Are Hypocrites at The Blog Of Dysfunction — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:11:13 +0000

[...] myth busting is taking place over at cerulean sanctum. Busting Myths About Christianity; The Myths 1, 2, 3, [...]

By: Cerulean Sanctum » Busting Myths About Christianity

Cerulean Sanctum » Busting Myths About Christianity — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 07:13:00 +0000

[...] Busting Myths About Christianity: Assessing Myths 1-3 [...]

By: David Riggins

David Riggins — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 19:35:09 +0000

We are all faced with coin-flip type issues every day. “Right” or “Wrong” are concepts that are difficult to define without the input of some sort of rules that provide direction and influence to our point of view. Imagine Peter when God, the rule-maker, told him that some of those rules were subject to change. But were they? Jesus said that “Love God… and love your neighbor as yourself” summarized ALL the law and the prophets. We would like the concepts of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, to be clearly defined for us, but if Jesus eating and drinking with sinners fulfilled the law, then what are we to make of issues in our life that seem to be “good” but are vilified as “evil”?

God used Israel to exact His justice for disobedience, just as He used Elijah to punish young men for mocking His prophet (do you honestly think they didn’t know who Elijah was?) In this case, “Love God” is often left out of our evaluation. Children with disabilities are born every day, just as women have miscarriages every day. But do we kill disabled children after they are born? Why not? Where is the dividing line? We are given more choices because of technology, but the basis of how we choose should not change. Peter was given more choices because of the freedom given to him through the Grace of salvation. But the basis of his choice : “Love God, and love others” was still the same. So do we show love to a disabled child by aborting it, or is that simply easier? Is it showing love to God? Jesus told a crowd that a blind man was born so, not because of some sin of his own or of his parents, but so God would be glorified. That is true of each and every one of us.

“We know in part, and so we prophesy in part,” never has more weight than those times where we are called upon to discern between what is of God, and what is of the world, and to judge the actions of those who are our brothers and sisters in Christ. To do so in love recognizes that we often hold the fate of someone’s eternal soul in our hands. We must be careful.

By: Chooselife

Chooselife — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:03:22 +0000

David,
I definitely see where you are going. Even Jesus’ harshest words were for the Pharisees and Sadducees — those who were supposed to be moral and religious authorities — and some of his most compassionate were for the “sinners.” I think our emphasis on judging people is partly because of the culture we live in. We in America are “mind people” and also dualistic, spending a lot of time arguing on right and wrong to bolster our positions. But to some extent, actions and behaviors are relevant and can not always be confined to the right and wrong, good and evil camps. For example, in the Old Testament, God orders Israelites to kill people on many occasions. Is that right or wrong? Good or evil? How do we explain away the Elijah cursing kids who picked at him and them being mauled by a bear? What about a woman who aborts her child after finding out the child will have severe disabilities? Is that right or wrong? Good or evil? One may say we shouldn’t kill the unborn (the fact is women’s bodies spontaneously abort quite often) You can’t always argue based on motivations either- we aren’t mind-readers and even the person doing the act can’t always explain why. When we judge, most of the time we are just projecting our beliefs and opinions onto other people. I do think that Christians are often too judgmental, especially over trivial issues, and in the end cause ourselves even more stress trying to keep up with appearances.