tdekeyser

'Discernment' is what Xians call the insight for right & wrong.

They tell me that god grants all humans discernment to tell good from evil. Rightousness from lawlessness.

Why then cannot they use this 'insight' when it comes to the bible/gods actions?

I asked one Xian what would her discernment tell her about a parent that puts a 6 yr old child in a closet and lets her rot in her own feces? She said it was wrong.

I asked her what her discernment tells her about a man who raises hundreds of cats and then kills them by drowning them? She said it was wrong.

I asked her what her discernment tell her about a GOD who does these things to humans?

"God is perfect, hence his actions must be perfect."


Why do believers fail to allow their own discerment to guide them on what is wright and what is wrong when it comes to God?

If they don't, how do they know they are not worshipping an evil god?

Mageth

They tell me that god grants all humans discernment to tell good from evil. Rightousness from lawlessness.

According to Genesis, God didn't grant it - we were proactive in gaining such knowledge for ourselves.

tdekeyser

If we gained that knowledge for ourselves, then why can't we see that some of gods actions are evil?

Mageth

Mebbe that's why he didn't want us to gain it...

Vandrare

maybe these xians need a little more fresh fruit in their diets.... (i've heard it makes you smarter)

pmurray

Because if they do then their god will roast them alive in molten sulphur for eternity.

The Other Michael

This is sounding more like GRD material, so you need to pump up the moral foundations and principles aspect some if it is to stay in MF&P.

cheers,
Michael
MF&P Moderator (Maximus)

Carrie

For sure, many Christians will not admit that the things their God did are wrong. My big issue is that this God made women marry the men that raped them, and this God also demanded proof of virginity be shown (when there is no such thing), or the woman was to be killed. I imagine lots of innocent women died, and
non-virgin men got away with sleeping around. This God also said the Israelites could own slaves and beat them to within an inch of their lives.

Christians that cannot see that these things are wrong have something wrong with them! I don't get it. My husband rationalizes these things away and says it was okay somehow for God to be this way.

Christians hold onto the idea of a good God, because they can't imagine there being an evil God. And since they don't know what other God to believe in, they accept the Bible God. They also can't stand believing in no God at all, and they don't want to believe in some idea of God they made up themselves, so the Bible God will have to do.

Certainly the Bible God does not leave most things up to discernment. He tells you what is right and wrong, whether they seem right or wrong to you or not. I never thought homosexuality was wrong, but when I was a Christian I went along with saying it was wrong just because God thought it was wrong.

And then on a lot of stuff he leaves it up to us to figure out. Like birth control, war, the death penalty, or even if women today should still cover their heads. Churches often don't even agree about this stuff, so how can anyone know if they are discerning correctly? I don't think this "God" meant for these things to be up to discernment. It's just that the PEOPLE who wrote what they wanted in the Bible stopped writing in the first century, so on many things the Bible can't relate to us. Don't Christians wonder why God just leaves them in confusion, like he doesn't even care about people today?

The Bible God sucks. For anything good about him, there's more that's bad, but Christians don't want to think about it. A lot of them even avoid reading the Old Testament because they don't want to struggle in their faith.

NonHomogenized

...and less nuts


But, to the topic at hand.

I think that it's interesting that these people don't. After all, many of these people who claim that god is good, and was good when doing said things, also proclaim absolute morality.

It seems that, for them, god is held to entirely different standards than humans. Presumably, this comes from the idea that they define morality as "doing what god tells you". Not only is this a sick attitude, considering what god supposedly did/does, but it indicates a herd mentality, and, possibly, that without their belief in morality from god, these would be very dangerous people.

It may have something to do with the fact that, sometimes, everyone gets the urge to do something they know they really ought not to (except, perhaps, psychopaths and sociopaths). Perhaps these people think that, were it not for their fear of god, they would act on these?