Ebonmuse

Helpmabob, a question, if you don't mind:

What does it mean to "recognize something with your heart"?

Helpmabob

Ebonmuse, it is complicated request. Try, for example, to compose a scientific analysis of why we are prompted to laugh or cry at certain things.

Emotions such as greed hate, envy and pride, which do not directly affect any human being but myself, are real to me. As are the more creditiable feelings of love, joy, peace and patience. I expect you recognise these yourself? A rigorous logical assessment such as you find on other parts of this discussion site would find that the heartfelt feeling of pride has a zero probability of existing. Yet I know it does, and I describe it as being 'in my heart'.

Added to this, something you will have heard of, but not experienced unless you are a christian - the Holy Spirit. In tandem with the Bible, it guides and comforts the christian, and increases the love, joy, peace and patience felt. The guidance and comfort is again subtle, and appeals counsels 'my heart'.

I hope that dosn't sound too wierd.

Bold

Would it? That is a big assertion. Are you talking about what you think are the logical consequences of naturalism/materialism? I think this is dead wrong. Naturalism doesn't imply that feelings don't exist. If you think it does, perhaps you could explain how.

So 'in the heart' means it's a feeling. Poetic license places this in the heart rather just than another part of the brain. Fine.

The problem I have with this is that the connections between various feelings and the ideas we use to interpret them are not consistent from one culture to the next, or even one individual to the next. And even if the connections were consistent, feelings can be difficult to identify - we can't point to them. Bulimics, for example, typically misidentify depression as hunger.

But we can identify to some extent, through normal sensory cues, how other people are feeling, and that is how we learn to identify the holy spirit feeling with being in church. ...or at the mosque ... or meditating ... or whatever it is.

Obviously the claim 'I have a feeling that tells me x is true' shouldn't count as evidence to anybody else. But considering the fungibility of the associations between ideas and feelings, it shouldn't count as evidence to the speaker either.

Clivedurdle

As someone brought up in churches where to be in fear and trembling about your salvation was a key message, this passage 'i knew you not" was constantly preached.

As a former xian i would disagree strongly with you. Why are you dividing how to obtain salvation and if someone is saved or not?

There are many preachers who state that healings, speaking in tongues, wealth, casting out demons etc are signs of God working. They seem to forget Job and statements like the rain falling on the just and unjust.

Possibly one of the reasons for the many sects is the different interpretations used - I was taught never to swear oaths for example - let your yea be yea - but the priesthood of all believers allows women priests who therefore can preach in Church!

diana

Hi, bob. I wasn't intending to correct your approach to logical argument, as it didn't appear to me you were attempting to approach it at all. My point was that, while you dismiss the evidence and continue to believe, the evidence--alas--continues to exist and gives the lie to the statement in which you have placed your faith.

Well, not exactly. The bible, in the verse you quote, asserts Jesus was without sin. However, descriptions of him--including stories of what he said and did--do not support the assertion. Which is our point.

Three points:

1. I wasn't categorizing in that post. I was proving that homosexuality was not the "defining sin" of Sodom.
2. I wouldn't use the "sin of the heart" label. I find such poetic language beautiful, but quite meaningless in serious discussion.
3. Your comment about the sins of the heart here has nothing to do with the discussion that I can see. I'm wondering why you included it, I guess.

d

John Kesler

I don't know that Jude misread the Old Testament, since Genesis 19:5 says that the men of Sodom wanted to have homosexual relations with Lot's guests. Ezekiel chose not to mention homosexuality in the passage that you quoted, but that doesn't mean that homosexuality, which the Bible describes as a sin, wasn't also involved.

diana

Hi, John.

I really think the "homosexuality" part was incidental. I have a couple of reasons for making this argument: Onan and the Levite man's concubine.

Onan was supposed to lie with Tamar in order to provide heirs for his deceased brother. Instead, he "spilled his seed," and for this, God killed him.

Lot's house was beset by "people of the city" who demanded he deliver his (male) guests so that they might "know" them. Lot refused, offering his virgin daughters in lieu of the strangers. We're given various reasons later that the people of Sodom were sinful, none of which pinpoint homosexuality (interestingly enough) as the sin for which they were known or destroyed.

Now. In the first, the Catholic church interprets this to mean that masturbation is condemned by the bible. At least they're consistent in their interpretation. Everyone else (it seems...I'm sure there are occasional exceptions) interprets this verse in context. To wit: Onan's sin was refusal to provide children to continue his brother's line; the sin for which he was destroyed was not the sexual act he used to commit the sin.

In the second passage, almost every Christian denomination interprets it to be a condemnation of homosexuality instead of placing it in context as they do the first, and understanding the passage to be a condemnation of the attitude of the people of Sodom (that is, their inhospitality*, as Mark noted).

* Lev 19:33-34 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. [But] the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] the LORD your God.

Why the double standard? Either the sexual acts connected with the crimes were the reason for the condemnation of the guilty parties, or the reason for the sexual acts was the problem. Which is it? Be consistent.

If S&G's sin was homosexuality, then wanking is a sin, too. You can't have it both ways.

Then there's the Levite man's concubine (Judges 19 and 20).

A Levite man's concubine leaves him and returns to her father's house. He goes to get her. On the way home, he and his entourage stop in Gibeah, which was a Benjamite city. No one offered them a place to stay. They were on the streets when an old man came along and invited the strangers to his home, washed their feet, and gave them food and drink. The men of the city surround the house and demand he deliver his male guest to them so that they may know him.

He replies (like Lot): "Nay, my brethren, [nay], I pray you, do not [so] wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly. Behold, [here is] my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. (v. 23-24)

The men wouldn't listen, so he delivers his concubine to them anyway. They abused her to death. The Levite, when he finds her on the doorstep the next morning, cuts her in 12 pieces and delivers her to the (other) 12 tribes, who wage war on Benjamin until the Lord destroys almost all of the warriors of Benjamin.

So um. If a biblical story that relates the desire to rape ("humble")* a stranger results in massive destruction which is (presumably) God's condemnation of homosexuality in the case of Lot, then why isn't an almost identical story in Judges a condemnation of heterosexuality?

* Women were second-class citizens, and any man who was "put in the place of a woman" was considered "humbled." This was the most extreme insult possible.

Well, because that would just be stupid, wouldn't it? Obviously, God is condemning the men's attitudes toward their guests in Judges, right? Or at least, he's condemning their treatment of her, right?

Then why don't people see S&G as a condemnation of attitudes and rape instead of reading it as a blanket condemnation of homosexuality? That makes no sense.

d

Ebonmuse

Ah yes, the famous argument from missing evidence. After all, Ezekiel doesn't specifically say that homosexuality wasn't among Sodom's crimes, right? I believe similar logic has been used to prove that Abraham Lincoln was at the Last Supper, since after all, the Bible doesn't explicitly say he wasn't there.

Here's Ezekiel 16:49 again, the NIV translation:

Homosexuality is not even mentioned. If it was, as many modern Christians assert, the one great and overriding sin that merited the city's utter destruction and the massacre of all its inhabitants, don't you think it should have been mentioned in a passage that says "this was the sin of Sodom" and then instead goes on to discuss something completely different?

pharoah

All of the debate about the sins of Sodom made me curious enough to read the Genesis story. I ran across yet another passage that clearly demonstrates that God was not always considered to be onmiscient.

We clearly have here a passage showing God seeking to acquire or confirm knowledge.

Helpmabob

Hi Bold, I will defer to your knowledge of naturalism. The Holy Spirit is a real entity, but is experienced by the christian as a guide and comforter. I am not under any illusion that this acts as evidence and I know that it is easily dismissed as woolly thinking.

Supposing there was a God, would set Himself out in a purely logical manner, so that men who mused long enough on the technicalities about whether He was there or not would be able to calculate a definite answer to whether He exists?

This approach would would miss a God who revealed himself to men's hearts who would entertain the possibility before being presented with definitve proof, so that they would love Him for who He is.

Hi diana - I firmly (but politely) disagree about the evidence and the Bible not pointing overwhelmingly to a sinless Christ, Saviour. Let us, however, agree to disagree? Me going on about the sins of the heart is by way of examples of things not being totally as they at first seem on the surface when we start talking about God. There is something different. It cannot be calculated. There is no middle ground. As Jesus said: "Whoever is not for me is against me." [Matthew 12:30].