Belief versus Piety

[Br. Bear]

Finding answers in the Bible
post #7

 

[Kirby D. P.]

You base your view of "justice" on the justice the OT delivered to the wicked.
And find it immoral..
What kind of justice do you seek?

Again, I think we may be separated by a wall of miscommunication. I don’t suffer any worries behaving according to OT morals. I simply find OT morals morally flawed and insufficient.

What OT morals do I consider as lacking? Providing you a full list of the positive morals I accept would be complicated in the extreme. But I will offer some specific examples that come to mind...

1. Slavery is evil and not to be permitted.
2. The killing of another human is only permissible in preventing them killing, severely harming or enslaving someone else. Killing is never a moral punishment for murder.
3. Homosexuality = AOK.
4. It is morally unacceptable to tell any adult what he or she can and cannot do with his or her own body.
5. Every person has a right to some minimum levels of food, shelter, education and medical care depending on his or her society’s standard of living.
6. It is a moral duty to minimize the suffering of any creature according to each creature’s capacity to experience suffering.
7. It is a moral duty to preserve the health of the environment.

Often when I articulate these principles, some people declare they are preposterous and reflect some sort of unrealistic and immoral Utopia. Frankly, I never understand these objections. Reading them over, I don’t envision a society that looks all that very different from the one we live in today.

I’ve never tried, but I think I can find liturgical support for each of these precepts in scripture. But I KNOW (because I have had it shown to me) there are scripturally-based arguments against all of them. Those, for a start, are the biblical principles I find unacceptable.

 

[B-A-C]

1. Slavery is evil and not to be permitted.
2. The killing of another human is only permissible in preventing them killing, severely harming or enslaving someone else. Killing is never a moral punishment for murder.
3. Homosexuality = AOK.
4. It is morally unacceptable to tell any adult what he or she can and cannot do with his or her own body.
5. Every person has a right to some minimum levels of food, shelter, education and medical care depending on his or her society’s standard of living.
6. It is a moral duty to minimize the suffering of any creature according to each creature’s capacity to experience suffering.
7. It is a moral duty to preserve the health of the environment.

We are back to you want to be God. I don't mean it in a mean way... but I don't know how to put it any other way.
Everyone has their own idea of what is right and wrong. If we asked 100 different people, we would get 100 different lists.
Why is your list better than the list in the Bible?

Take #4. According to the Bible... it isn't really "your" body.
If a person has an affair with someone else besides their spouse... is that morally acceptable to you?
Wouldn't that break #6 in your list. If they find out and it hurts them that you cheated on them.

If an adult molests a child, that would be OK with you? We can't tell them what to do with their bodies at all?

You hate slavery, but you are OK with homosexuality. Yet in a homosexual relationship, one person has to submit
to the other. One has to be the "male" and one has to be the "female". No matter what sex they really are.
Every homosexual act is a form of dominance over another man. (or being dominated). Yes some people like this...
some people like being slaves. Sexual and other-wise.

Take #2. So what do we do with all of these killers and murderers? Just let them be in prison, taking up time
and tax payer dollars? Why should we let them be a burden to society? Do you think they are happy in prison?
(perhaps some might be, but all?). If there is no penalty for killing, then what incentive do they have "not" to kill anyone?

We can argue your opinions vs mine. I doubt either of us will get very far... but the point is... everyone has a different
opinion of what is wrong and what is right. Why is your opinion more right than mine or anyone elses?

The only "right" people have, is what they earn. No one should be a burden to someone else. This would break rule #6.There is a large city with over 6000 homeless less than 200 miles away from me. I have met these people, I have talked to them.
Most don't want help. They don't want jobs. There is a Union gospel mission with 300 empty beds every night. They don't want to
go there. There are rules. They have to be in by a certain time, they can't have weed or alcohol on their breath. They would
rather "be free". Some have college degrees. Some have PHd's and Master's degrees ( I call these people professional students)
but they've never had a job, and they don't plan on ever getting one. Why should I support these people?

I've worked since I was 17. There have been times I was out of work (see my story about the motorcycle accident).
But I never got disability or unemployment. I never qualified because "I made too much money" that year. Ha...
I am a veteran, but I never got any of my education paid for. Even when I unemployed and did get "free medical" (Obamacare)
I still ended up owing over a million dollars to the hospitals. How did socialized medical help me?

The main purpose of colleges today is not to teach people white collar skills (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc..) it is to
radicalize young people into liberal agendas. And everyone is falling for it. We are even paying them to do it.

In countries like Sweden where they have socialized education and sociaiized medicine... the tax rate is over 50%.
People are hurting, lowering their standard of living, in some cases starving... so that other people can freeload.
Where is the justice in that? They are finding out that when every has a degree, wages level out and no one makes
any money.

If you want medical and education... do it the way our generation did it. Earn it. I'm not against helping people.
I give to orphanages, homeless shelters, world hunger organizations. Everyone needs a little help sometimes.
Jesus gives an example in the story of the good Samaritan. But He doesn't say take this person in and support them
for the rest of their life. That is just people being selfish and lazy... thinking it's their "right".
What about the rights of the people supporting them? Why should those who work suffer?

 

[At Peace]

Again, I think we may be separated by a wall of miscommunication.
I don’t suffer any worries behaving according to OT morals.
I simply find OT morals morally flawed and insufficient.[

These two statements are in direct opposition to one another.

 

[Kirby D. P.]

We are back to you want to be God. I don't mean it in a mean way... but I don't know how to put it any other way.
Everyone has their own idea of what is right and wrong. If we asked 100 different people, we would get 100 different lists.
Why is your list better than the list in the Bible?

Take #4. According to the Bible... it isn't really "your" body.
If a person has an affair with someone else besides their spouse... is that morally acceptable to you?
Wouldn't that break #6 in your list. If they find out and it hurts them that you cheated on them.

If an adult molests a child, that would be OK with you? We can't tell them what to do with their bodies at all?

You hate slavery, but you are OK with homosexuality. Yet in a homosexual relationship, one person has to submit
to the other. One has to be the "male" and one has to be the "female". No matter what sex they really are.
Every homosexual act is a form of dominance over another man. (or being dominated). Yes some people like this...
some people like being slaves. Sexual and other-wise.

Take #2. So what do we do with all of these killers and murderers? Just let them be in prison, taking up time
and tax payer dollars? Why should we let them be a burden to society? Do you think they are happy in prison?
(perhaps some might be, but all?). If there is no penalty for killing, then what incentive do they have "not" to kill anyone?

We can argue your opinions vs mine. I doubt either of us will get very far... but the point is... everyone has a different
opinion of what is wrong and what is right. Why is your opinion more right than mine or anyone elses?

The only "right" people have, is what they earn. No one should be a burden to someone else. This would break rule #6.There is a large city with over 6000 homeless less than 200 miles away from me. I have met these people, I have talked to them.
Most don't want help. They don't want jobs. There is a Union gospel mission with 300 empty beds every night. They don't want to
go there. There are rules. They have to be in by a certain time, they can't have weed or alcohol on their breath. They would
rather "be free". Some have college degrees. Some have PHd's and Master's degrees ( I call these people professional students)
but they've never had a job, and they don't plan on ever getting one. Why should I support these people?

I've worked since I was 17. There have been times I was out of work (see my story about the motorcycle accident).
But I never got disability or unemployment. I never qualified because "I made too much money" that year. Ha...
I am a veteran, but I never got any of my education paid for. Even when I unemployed and did get "free medical" (Obamacare)
I still ended up owing over a million dollars to the hospitals. How did socialized medical help me?

The main purpose of colleges today is not to teach people white collar skills (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc..) it is to
radicalize young people into liberal agendas. And everyone is falling for it. We are even paying them to do it.

In countries like Sweden where they have socialized education and sociaiized medicine... the tax rate is over 50%.
People are hurting, lowering their standard of living, in some cases starving... so that other people can freeload.
Where is the justice in that? They are finding out that when every has a degree, wages level out and no one makes
any money.

If you want medical and education... do it the way our generation did it. Earn it. I'm not against helping people.
I give to orphanages, homeless shelters, world hunger organizations. Everyone needs a little help sometimes.
Jesus gives an example in the story of the good Samaritan. But He doesn't say take this person in and support them
for the rest of their life. That is just people being selfish and lazy... thinking it's their "right".
What about the rights of the people supporting them? Why should those who work suffer?

B-A-C, I don’t know where you live or whether you drink. But I would love to take you out for a beer or a coffee (I’m actually a scotch man, myself) and dig WAAAAAAY deep into this fine steak with you.

First, thank you for your service.

I’ll tackle your questions in no particular order. If I skip anything, it’s not because I wouldn’t like to discuss it. But much more I wouldn’t want to bore you.

Adultery is in the eye of the (married) beholder. If you love someone and promise them you won’t have sex with anyone but them, then don’t have sex with anyone but them. If, after you make that promise, you discover you no longer want to keep that promise, have the integrity to go to the person to whom you have made that promise and inform them of your desire to dissolve the promise. If this is a promise you know you’ll have trouble keeping, say so when you make it. If you have no intention of abiding this promise, don’t make it. Unless you’re a sociopath. Or, in street vernacular, an a— hole.

Adults are the CUSTODIANS of their children. Not their OWNERS. They are morally and legally obliged to nurture them and not harm them. This can become an hours-long sidebar quibbling over whether sexual abuse of children constitutes “harm,” so to end-zone that I’ll simply ask, let’s stipulate that imposing sexual activity on pre-sexual children is “sexual abuse.” A “no-no,” ya?

Whatever kink blows a person’s skirt up is their own problem. Not mine. BUT, so long as that activity is consensual, adult and voluntary, that is NOT slavery.

It is tempting to challenge your suggestion that sexual activity necessarily entails some dominant/submissive relationship. Even MORE tempting to argue over whether the ‘submissive’ gender is male or female. It’s been a long while since I was at large in the shopping mall of sexual adventure, but, if you think “sex” requires two, and only two, participants, and that one MUST always assume a male/dominant role, and the other some female/submissive caste, I sorrow for your deprivation.

(I’ll add here I am not some ravenous, sex-starved, pansexual orgy fiend. I am simply acquainted with enough extra/pre-marital sexual activity to consider marital vows to have only and exactly the force of those rules one abides. 13 years ago I married the woman I love most of all and promised her I would forsake all others beside her. I meant it, and I still do, and (call me crazy) I’ve never looked back. Maybe tomorrow I’ll repent of that policy. But, if I do, you know with whom I’m going to take it up? Not God, but my wife. The person to whom I made the original promise in the first place.)

In any event, SLAVERY, the deprivation of one’s actual, personal autonomy, is not literally equivalent to just any dominant/submissive relationship between any two people or groups of people. SLAVERY is the condition of one human owning another human as a piece of property. To be owned, bequeathed to one’s successors, and sold and bought according to one’s capricious will. A crossing guard holds a certain, transient level of dominion over my behavior. But in no wise am I the crossing guard’s slave.

Asking, “What IS to be done with murderers?” does NOT require the answer: “execution.”

Imprisonment is not “no punishment.” And it preserves the ability to be exonerated for a crime with the discovery of exculpatory evidence, of the possibility for the convicted to repay some or any of their debt to society, and for the (as I understand it) rather Christian virtue of redemption. AND, on a practical level, since (thank God) we live in a nation that exults due process, the actual material cost to society entailed by appeals, entreaties for pardon, room and board on death row, etc., eclipses the price tag of simply keeping a murderer in the slammer the rest of his/her natural days.

But, before I move on, could you please describe, as you see them, the benefits derived in capitol punishment? That’s not rhetorical. Long time ago I supported capitol punishment. Then, learning how tragically often innocent people are so punished, and insidiously uneven execution is applied depending on how good your lawyer is, I decided it was too complicated for me to have a definite opinion about it and that society at large, including many great minds much wiser than my own, would decide and I would trust to that decision. But more recently I have become convinced that the annihilation of any prisoner in custody is evil and that’s where I have laid down my nickel. I acknowledge that execution answers a desire by a murder victim’s survivors for vengeance and it shows a certain aesthetically pleasing symmetry of social order in an “eye for an eye” kind of way. But I just cant figure out anymore how it repairs any portion of the damage done. And i do believe it confounds the justice of a society that insists killing can be the worst crime a person can commit.

The city where I live shelters 63,000 homeless people by last count, which does not consider street folk who have been marginalized out of the system. But that unaccounted number must be huge. Because the system DOES track how many of its school children are homeless: around 100,000. I don’t doubt you have encountered homeless people who live on the streets even if they don’t need to. So have I. But I’ll argue that accounts for a minority of homeless parents with enough virtue to get their kids to school 5 days a week. And I will not write off the support and future of 100k innocent children even if it means the freeloading of the same number of glue sniffers.

As I said, I don’t want to bore you. You may ask me to work on through detailed responses to more of your specific questions than this. (Though, I will say, if you were shafted with staggeringly steep medical bills, the system which treated you was anything BUT socialized.) But you can imagine they follow the same garden variety routine of argument as the ones I have already mentioned.

I know you are speaking figuratively when you say I want to be God. But you also say, more than once, that everybody has their own notions of what constitutes good and evil. We could not possibly agree more. What makes MY morals BETTER than anyone else’s? Maybe nothing. But we who live together must have a shared, agreed-upon policy of mores or else go to war with each other. Can scripture inform and contribute to that moral consensus? Perhaps. But on no account will I be ruled by them and, in my opinion, neither should you.

Example: Do you know any witches? I do. One of them is a neighbor of mine. (Or, at least, she believes she is a witch and that’s good enough for me.) I suffer her to live. And, I bet, if you lived in our neighborhood, you would, too.

At this point in conversation I am often confronted with some form of, “But that’s OLD TESTAMENT law, and Jesus established a new covenant that allows us to dispense with the nasty bits of the old one.” But, to me, this dodges the point. I won’t belabor why I think so — you must have heard others make similar protestations.

My point here is not to compare/contrast OT law vs NT law. I simply want to show one example why I don’t find the Bible a reliable moral guide.

I hope that does not offend you. And I REALLY hope I have not bored you.
Now, I am off to read the motorcycle story. I have every reason to think it will be anything BUT boring.

 

[Kirby D. P.]

These two statements are in direct opposition to one another.

Ok.

 

[Kirby D. P.]

We are back to you want to be God. I don't mean it in a mean way... but I don't know how to put it any other way.
Everyone has their own idea of what is right and wrong. If we asked 100 different people, we would get 100 different lists.
Why is your list better than the list in the Bible?

Take #4. According to the Bible... it isn't really "your" body.
If a person has an affair with someone else besides their spouse... is that morally acceptable to you?
Wouldn't that break #6 in your list. If they find out and it hurts them that you cheated on them.

If an adult molests a child, that would be OK with you? We can't tell them what to do with their bodies at all?

You hate slavery, but you are OK with homosexuality. Yet in a homosexual relationship, one person has to submit
to the other. One has to be the "male" and one has to be the "female". No matter what sex they really are.
Every homosexual act is a form of dominance over another man. (or being dominated). Yes some people like this...
some people like being slaves. Sexual and other-wise.

Take #2. So what do we do with all of these killers and murderers? Just let them be in prison, taking up time
and tax payer dollars? Why should we let them be a burden to society? Do you think they are happy in prison?
(perhaps some might be, but all?). If there is no penalty for killing, then what incentive do they have "not" to kill anyone?

We can argue your opinions vs mine. I doubt either of us will get very far... but the point is... everyone has a different
opinion of what is wrong and what is right. Why is your opinion more right than mine or anyone elses?

The only "right" people have, is what they earn. No one should be a burden to someone else. This would break rule #6.There is a large city with over 6000 homeless less than 200 miles away from me. I have met these people, I have talked to them.
Most don't want help. They don't want jobs. There is a Union gospel mission with 300 empty beds every night. They don't want to
go there. There are rules. They have to be in by a certain time, they can't have weed or alcohol on their breath. They would
rather "be free". Some have college degrees. Some have PHd's and Master's degrees ( I call these people professional students)
but they've never had a job, and they don't plan on ever getting one. Why should I support these people?

I've worked since I was 17. There have been times I was out of work (see my story about the motorcycle accident).
But I never got disability or unemployment. I never qualified because "I made too much money" that year. Ha...
I am a veteran, but I never got any of my education paid for. Even when I unemployed and did get "free medical" (Obamacare)
I still ended up owing over a million dollars to the hospitals. How did socialized medical help me?

The main purpose of colleges today is not to teach people white collar skills (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc..) it is to
radicalize young people into liberal agendas. And everyone is falling for it. We are even paying them to do it.

In countries like Sweden where they have socialized education and sociaiized medicine... the tax rate is over 50%.
People are hurting, lowering their standard of living, in some cases starving... so that other people can freeload.
Where is the justice in that? They are finding out that when every has a degree, wages level out and no one makes
any money.

If you want medical and education... do it the way our generation did it. Earn it. I'm not against helping people.
I give to orphanages, homeless shelters, world hunger organizations. Everyone needs a little help sometimes.
Jesus gives an example in the story of the good Samaritan. But He doesn't say take this person in and support them
for the rest of their life. That is just people being selfish and lazy... thinking it's their "right".
What about the rights of the people supporting them? Why should those who work suffer?

Wow, B-A-C. Assuming your motorcycle story is the one you related in 2014, that is one amazing, and intensely affirming, experience. I hope your recuperation is either complete or at least continues apace.

I can absolutely relate to several points. I too recently spent a couple of months in the hospital. (Brain damage. To which my wife declared, “HA! And these people get PAID for this? I called that diagnosis over a decade ago!”)

I spent most of my time in the CCU and I have very mixed feelings when I reflect on surviving through a rotation of 4 roommates who did not. I have always been mindful to appreciate and savor as much of life’s joys as possible, but, if it is at all possible, this appreciation has been intensified by the experience.

The business of last right ministry being as brisk as it was, I had the chance to meet a regular smorgasbord of ministers from a rainbow of creeds; Catholic, JW, LDS, Baptist — though no Rabbis as I recall, but I credit this to the religion of record on each of my roommates’ charts while mine was filled in, “none.”

Anyway, once in our room, they always checked with me to see if I were of a mind to finally accept belief and, if so, was there anything they might do to aid the process. They were all quite nice. Every time they began their gentle evangelizing, I would politely interrupt and, as mannerly as I could, explained I was fine in that department and, if there were other patients who were faithful and possibly in need of a pastor’s death bed attentions, I would feel terrible if I knew they might be wasting that precious, irrecoverable time on me. They always agreed and left me with a good word and their card.

I guess I’m bothering you with all this to bond a bit on a “been there, brother” basis, but also to show an incident which, I suppose, might have prompted me to seek religion and offered every opportunity to do so. I’ve had a few very close “near death experience” calls, none of which provoked much worldview re-revaluation in me. And neither did this very loooooong, protracted one. And, I can’t tell exactly what you think of me as a person, but I hope at least I appear open-minded enough to notice the voice of God during more pedestrian times.

I guess what I’m saying is don’t hate me because I ignore God if I could sense him. Instead, hate me for my dreadful sense of humor. That’s what my kids do, and we get along just fine.