Contra_Mundum #fundie puritanboard.com


Yes, anything God commands is moral. And he may tighten or loosen that which he enforces, or that which he makes explicit. But he has encouraged us to think of him as consistent through his revelation. If you and I would like to be consistent, but cannot be--not to the imposed standards from outside, or even to our own standards (hypocrisy)--God is able to be so, and wills himslef to be. If something changes, relative to man in the commands of God, then something has changed about us--either in our being or our circumstances. In any case, God is also in control of those changes, and he has a morally sufficient reason for everything he does, and all that he expects of us, at whatever time he calls for it.

God is TRUE to himself, and more than we're able to be. God keeps his Word, and better than any of us. He chose to make covenant, and bind himself to promises in order to show himself faithful. Again, this is something he is free to do; and if he has done, who dares to charge him with an inconsistency? That he was supremely free, and now he is not because he made a promise? This is trying to bind God with an absurdity. But it is an internal, voluntary constraint. If he denies himself, the world goes out of existence. He is the only constraint on his own freedom; but it is his WILL to act precisely as he has. There isn't some "higher standard" by which he is held. The absurdity is in the puny creature, who tries to render God impotent or irrelevant by language-games.

There's all kinds of different standards of atheistic "morality," including cannibalism and Naziism. So, what complaint does the questioner have against such individuals or societies? He has none. He operates under a "might-makes-right" ultimate philosophy, which is guided only by what he hopes is a mindless evolutionary process that has selected him and his genes to triumph over lesser creatures, and lesser humans. If he is right about the world, then it makes perfect sense for him to get to the top of the heap, and try to live like an absolute monarch, impregnate all the women in his power, kill all his rival males (whoever he cannot make his obedient soldier, farmer, or slave-drone).

Saying there are untold "kinds" of Christians or Christian morality, is like saying there are as many "maths" as there are answers given to a given problem. The implication is that there is NO yardstick, there is NO subordination of a reader to an author's text because there's no such thing as successful communication of meaning. That is an absurd expectation, and it defies common sense and human experience. It is possible to analyze texts for their intrinsic meaning, as well as getting closer or farther away from that meaning. It is possible to agree to what a text means, while disagreeing with its content, or another analyst's judgment as to its worth. It's possible to gain consensus between several people, or even a majority of them, at least for a time. It is possible to analyze all of this, and to come to a "moral" conclusion on the whole.

In the end, you can expose the ridiculous bias of persons who simply "don't like" what the Bible has to say; as well as persuading the truly searching person that most of us have the tools (if not the will) to study the Bible for the message it contains. No one is really interested in the hater's biographical reasons for not being a Christian or accepting the Bible's message or morals. The student of Scripture is interested in the content of Scripture for what it says about itself. I am concerned for truth, and not interested in pluriform contrary opinions from those who may not share my passion and method of getting there.

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So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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