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Solomon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:16 AM
Original message
A Question about Jesus
Mark 10 versus 11 and 12

"And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery."

This has to be the most unquoted statement of Jesus ever. I'm just curious to know how the "bible is the inerrant word of God" people deal with this statement.

Had an argument with my dad whose pastor is preaching fierce against gay rights and gay marriage. My fundy sister is divorced and remarried. I asked him why it is that he can ignore this passage but insist on others. He acted like he didn't know this passage existed at all. Suffice it to say. He gave me no answer.

Any "inerrant" people here want to explain it?
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ChavezSpeakstheTruth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:18 AM
Response to Original message
1. As a Catholic, I'm familiar with this quote
as I'm sure many other Catholics are
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GreenPartyVoter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:21 AM
Response to Original message
2. I'm not one of the inerrant folks
but I can tell you that if you look elsewhere in Scripture it says that you can divorce if adultery has already been committed.

I know some folks do have trouble with the idea of just divorce, let alone remarriage. But you are right in noticing that many churches are letting this precept fade away along with the stonings etc.

They may not like to admit it, but churches do change with the times and the culture they are in. I have yet to hear about a church that perfectly preserves life from 2000 years ago.


http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/liberalchristians.htm
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grannylib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:23 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. Exactly - know any churches where the members sell all they have and
share everything as needed???
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!! *lmao* hahahahahahaha....
surely not any mainstream churches...I worked in the ELCA for several years, and the folks with the most money felt that they were paying more 'dues' than others and as such were entitled to more of a say in the running of the place...it was sick.
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Solomon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:28 AM
Response to Reply #2
7. GreenParty. You raise another point that I ask about.
If Jesus is God, then how is it that some other scripture said by someone else, can trump what Jesus said?

This is also a point I made with my parents: if Jesus didn't condemn homosexuals, and Jesus is God, then how can Paul's condemnation of homosexuals trump Jesus's non-condemnation? I've heard it said that Paul is just completing Jesus's message, but the problem with this answer, is that it implies that Jesus came with an incomplete message. How can that be if he is God?
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Az Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:44 AM
Response to Reply #7
13. Trumping god
Its quite simple really. The person trumping god is here and can press their point. You will note that the majority of dogmatic religions are authoratarian in nature. That is there is someone that interprets the words of the people. In fact for most of the history of Christianity it was illegal for common people to even own a bible under penalty of death.

The issue of interpretation was handled by the clergy who pronounced the laws to the people. As society advanced and we freed ourselves (to an extent) from the authority of the churches other means of determining the nature of the religion came about.

As what a person does is based on belief then it matters not what is in a book if they are convinced of a different meaning. Thus those that claim to have special understanding of the text can sway those that believe them. Once swayed in such a way no amount of appealing to the actual text will suffice. Belief has placed a filter that they now see the world through and they can only see the text as they believe.

When westerners look at the moon they see a face. When some cultures in the east look up they see a rabbit. How you see the world is determined by the culture you find yourself in.
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grannylib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:21 AM
Response to Original message
3. Yes this is still a tenet of Catholic faith; that's why a marriage in a
Catholic church must be annulled (deemed to have been invalid from the get-go, basically) before a Catholic can remarry in the church.
Fundies like to ignore this one because so many good white Republican types are divorced, including St. Ronnie of Rayguns, Dole, Gingrich, etc. so they don't like to focus on that.
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Az Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:26 AM
Response to Original message
5. Thats the trouble with religions
They are seldom what was intended or what the book says. We cannot know what if anything was intended at the foundation of a religion so far removed by time. We only have the books to go by. But people do not come by their religious beliefs strictly from books. It is their life within the religion that guides their beliefs about it. Thus if they choose to ignore parts of the bible (there are a lot of parts to ignore) then the religion is what their community deams it to be.

Walk up to a literalist and point them to Luke 6:30. Then ask them for their coat or some other thing of theirs. It is not the book that people follow. It is what they believe the book represents that they follow. Even if you point them to something clearly spelled out in the bible they will reject it as misinterpretation, out of context, or inapplicable to their situation. Its belief not a book that they follow.
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DenverDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:27 AM
Response to Original message
6. The Bible is inerrant only to the Roman bureaucrats that wrote it.
Edited on Tue Mar-09-04 11:28 AM by DenverDem
The Council of Nicea did a complete rewrite in 300 AD at the behest of Emperor Constantine and co-opted the original message into a guilt based slave religion. The Power Elite has been using christianity ever since to control the collective unwashed.

What Jesus was really preaching was a liberation theology of personal relationships with Prime Creator through the Holy Christ Self that we each possess within our hearts. No need for priests or corporate church intercessors. That didn't play with the Jewish hierarchy of the time and sure as hell didn't fit in with Roman Empire politics so He was whacked and his message was changed by Romans like Paul and ultimately obliterated by Constantine. The Bible has continued to be edited and rewritten by folks with agendas of their own, so "inerrancy" is a ludicrous as "creationism". Willful ignorance.
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Lydia Leftcoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:35 AM
Response to Original message
8. One interpretation I heard was that
in those days, a divorced woman was really in deep trouble. If she was lucky, her parents would take her back, but probably not, since she had "disgraced" the family, and even if they did, she would be a pathetic hanger-on, unlikely to remarry and considered a useless mouth to feed. There were no jobs available outside family businesses. Divorced women often ended up as prostitutes, simply to survive.

Divorce was different then, so a man who divorced his wife simply out of boredom or because he found someone else more appealing was condeming her to a miserable life.
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Solomon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:41 AM
Response to Reply #8
11. I hear ya Lydia, but this doesn't answer the question of how
a remarried person can avoid breaking one of the Ten Commandments. You certainly can't "repent" every night if you intend on staying remarried.
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YNGW Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:38 AM
Response to Original message
9. You're Right.
If you're going to be a Christian, which means "follower of Christ", then it would be necessary to obey all his commands, including those passed down through His inspired writers.

Most people who call themselves Christians are Christians in name only, and by virtue of that, not really Christians.

"Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many good works? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye who work iniquity." Matt 7: 21-23
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damnraddem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:39 AM
Response to Original message
10. It's simple:
this is something the Bible says Jesus said. By contrast, to condemn homosexuality, the preachers have to twist something said in the Old Testament. Obviously something twisted from the OT is more important than a direct statement in the NT. Otherwise, why would the Religious Right insist on interpreting Genesis literally yet ignore Jesus' reputed assertion that one should love one's neighbor as oneself?
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Solomon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:42 AM
Response to Reply #10
12. I believe Paul condems homosexuality in the New Testament
as well. I can look for the cite but I'm sure it isn't necessary.
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supernova Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 11:48 AM
Response to Reply #12
14. There's some disagreement
Edited on Tue Mar-09-04 11:57 AM by supernova
about what exactly Paul is referring to. I happen to think he's talking about temple prostitution, which is a different thing altogether from private love lives.

Here's an interesting non-traditional take on Paul. This person goes so far as to say Paul is really talking about courtesans who spend more on expensive clothing and so forth:

http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/greek-3/msg00171.html

edit: I used to say I had Paul issues, and this is one of them. But now I'm not so sure. While I'm not certain I'd like Paul if I actually met him, maybe it's the poor translations of koine Greek I have more of a problem with.
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Solomon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 12:14 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. I personally believe that Paul himself was gay.
He talks about a sin of the flesh that he can't rid himself of. It couldn't have been just lust for a woman, because you can get married
to "sanctify" that. I beleve too that he had "issues".
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drb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Mar-09-04 12:39 PM
Response to Original message
16. Well, Jesus really didn't leave any ambiguity....
...about the issue.

Yes, divorce is a sin. And I've been divorced twice, although one would have been technically justified according to the Bible.

Here's the problem for the churches today - if they threw out every couple where one of the members had been previously divorced, the parking lot and the collection plates would be essentially empty.

On the other hand, gossip, slander, hatred, and not loving your neighbor are sins, too.

Lucky for me God accepts me just like I am, warts and all.
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