Morality: based on the Bible or our views?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by devilslayer365, Dec 17, 2016.

  1. devilslayer365

    devilslayer365 Wazzup?!

    So, I often see Christians basing what they believe to be "right" or "wrong" on their personal opinion or how it makes them "feel" rather than seeing what the Bible actually says about the matter. Why does that happen? Pride? Ignorance? Simple laziness?
     
  2. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Yes
     
  3. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    However, to some extent, the law is written on our hearts. Romans 2 speaks about people without the Law and their guilt but they don't have the Bible.
     
  4. devilslayer365

    devilslayer365 Wazzup?!

    Sure. To a point, all mankind has a conscience. For instance, most people would concede that stealing is "wrong." I'm talking more things like, let's say, drinking alcohol in moderation. Some Christians think that drinking any amount is sin for all Christians. It's just something that they "feel" is true, despite the fact the Bible actually indicates drinking alcohol to a certain point (the point before becoming drunk) is fine. In other words, they're basing their view of alcohol use being sin on their personal opinion rather than actual scripture. As Christians, we have no excuse for biblical ignorance. Most of us have access to the Bible.
     
  5. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    I think the best thing would be to ask them some questions based on Scriptures. Ask them to read a passage and then ask, "what does that mean?"

    Paul telling Timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach's sake is a good example.

    The Jews complained about John the Baptist in Luke 7 because he didn't eat bread or drink wine. They said he had a demon. They complained about Jesus because he came eating and drinking and they called him a glutton and a drunkard. So Jesus drank.

    They might counter and say it wasn't like ours today. Then I'd take them to John 2 where Jesus made wine. The head waiter called the wine Jesus made "the good" stuff. We all know what he meant.

    All that being said, I don't drink at all. I never have. But the Bible doesn't teach that.
     
  6. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    I'm with TG.

    Although I might have 3 adult beverages a year on vacation.

    I did see a great t-shirt last month..

    It said "I LOVE JESUS" in big letters.

    Underneath in little letters it said "And I drink a little."


    Most "morality codes" start, as TG said, with the law of God written in our hearts. We all understand natural law. From their societies (and churches are societies) create a list of do's and don'ts either that make us feel good about ourselves, make us feel superior to others, or which allow us the maximum leverage for control and manipulation.
     
  7. devilslayer365

    devilslayer365 Wazzup?!

    I just find it weird that some people that call themselves Christian don't even actually bother to look at the Bible and they just make up their own rules about "right" and "wrong" or simply follow along with the customs of others.
     
  8. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Meh, reading the Bible is overrated. All you need to do is listen to the profits prophets of your choosing and they'll tell you how to get God to download everything directly into your spirit. In this day and age where God can apparently guide you in every aspect of your life reading a book is so last century.

    Remarkably, some people genuinely seem to believe that this is the case.
     
  9. devilslayer365

    devilslayer365 Wazzup?!

    Well, to be honest, I wish that's how God worked. It would make my life so much easier if He did. However, I've seen nothing to indicate God works that way.
     
  10. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    God gave us a mind. He wants us to use all of it.
     
  11. devilslayer365

    devilslayer365 Wazzup?!

    Sure, but the problem is too many Christians want to use their mind APART from the Bible, rather than in conjunction with it, to figure out on their own what is "right" and what is "wrong."
     
  12. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Funny, I've always found that if I don't read my Bible for a while my walk with God suffers. And yet people still think that they can just wait for God to download just what it is they need at the precise moment they need it.

    I'm sure some of the times an obscure Bible verse pops into my head at just the right time is at least partly God's doing, but the fact I remember the verse even if not the reference is a result of having read it at least once before.
     
  13. hisleast

    hisleast FISHBEAT!

    I'm still trying to figure out how one can tell. Putting aside whether or not Christianity is true, there is a conundrum whereby there are a plurality of understandings of scripture, which has lead to a plurality of moralities. Further, there are both prohibitions and commands in scripture that flat out get ignored in these types of conversations. They're ignored because they are four-letter-wording horrifying. But they're in the bible. But they're ignored, or explained away.

    So who's morality is based on their own views? Everyone's.
     
  14. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    This is an interesting twist on the topic for sure.

    A while back over on - ahem - another forum I jumped into the Controversial area to argue that abortion was Scripturally acceptable. Most of the arguments people used against it (typically Ps 139 and Jeremiah 1) were predictably wielded in the early stages and quickly shot down as irrelevant to the discussion. Then came increasingly desperate attempts by people to appeal to emotion (not a useful tool when determining theology) but, despite the fact people hated the argument I was putting forward (I didn't like it much myself, but in the spirit of "test all things" my own emotions aren't relevant when forming theological beliefs I might apply to others) they struggled to fault it.

    On another occasion, as an intellectual exercise, I argued that the prohibition of adultery was merely a cultural matter and wasn't relevant in the modern world now that women aren't considered property and can provide for themselves even if they don't have a husband. Again, not something I personally believe but interesting to argue to see how far it rolls.

    It is interesting to see people in church decry homosexuality as "an abomination" (conveniently ignoring the issue between homosexual desires and homosexual acts), happily pulling verses from Leviticus but conveniently ignoring the prohibitions of eating shellfish, trimming the edges of one's beard, wearing clothes of mixed fibres etc. On one occasion the person making the comment about homosexuality was a woman, and it was tempting to ask if she was having her period on the basis that, had she been, she was required to be set apart for seven days as required by Lev 15:19.

    (I know homosexuality is also mentioned in Romans 1, it's just a little tedious when people cherry-pick from Leviticus as if their preferred prohibitions were eternal and everything else were transient)
     
  15. hisleast

    hisleast FISHBEAT!

    And this is why I'd encourage the original poster to resist the urge to look at this as black and white. In all my reading of the Bible, I have not found it to be a simple, straight forward, obviously internally consistent, instruction book on life. Intelligent, humble, and well meaning minds have spent lifetimes reading it, come to different understandings, and different moralities.

    The stuff one man says is peripheral is absolutely *central* to someone else (and that someone else may not be a d-bag).

    Best reconciliation I've come up with in life:
    - if its selfless, and difficult, its probably the right thing to do.
     
  16. devilslayer365

    devilslayer365 Wazzup?!

    In essence, God, if He really exists, and His expectations, if He truly is the one behind the writing and compiling of scripture, is an unknowable God and His desires on how we are to live are unknowable, too? That would have to be what you mean. If you believe my conclusion to be incorrect, please explain how, exactly, that is so.

    Sure, I see things in the Bible that are hard to immediately understand. However, I've seen PLENTY of other things in scripture that are not difficult to grasp and really shouldn't even be up for "debate" or looked into deeper to see if there is a "different interpretation." Some of the things I've seen people try to "debate" has been downright pathetic.

    Honestly, much of the time, though certainly not all of the time, the people that "debate" scripture do it merely because they don't personally like what the scripture says. In other words, it puts a cramp on their style. That's because it often forbids them from engaging in some kind of sinful activity that they personally engage in, or want to engage in, and that they see as enjoyable.

    In their "debating" what the scripture "truly means," they wish and hope to somehow explain it away so that they then get the green light to continue in their activity and maybe also have others approve of it, or at least tolerate it, so they don't get flack about it anymore. Their "debating" has an obviously biased ulterior motive behind it. The motive is not to arrive at an objective truth. It's to display THEIR "truth."
     
  17. hisleast

    hisleast FISHBEAT!

    Looks that way to me from years of reading scripture on the inside, then reading it again on the outside. A cursory read of scripture is one that appears to make the absolute morality of God unclear, especially when living in the 21st century. Unless you propose that *deeper* understanding of scripture tends to iron out all those details... in which case we're already talking about something that's hard to know and understand. If its hard to know and understand, then how can people *NOT* rely at least a little bit on their own understanding, rather than this supposed crystal clear scripture.

    Plenty != all. There's plenty of moral clarity in the Quran too. But those grey areas could mean the difference between an eternity in rainbow icecream land, and an eternity of torture beyond your most horrendous nightmares. That you find the debates pathetic has nothing to do with the debate's legitimacy.

    Let's illustrate where nearly all modern Westerners would rely on their OWN judgment of morality vs. scriptures.
    Let's imagine a horrifying event in which your daughter is raped. Would you accept the requisite amount of silver so the rapist could then marry her?
    But what if she was gang raped? Which rapist would be the husband, since the woman can only marry one?
    Before you answer... remember to use scripture, not your own personal understanding of morality.

    Also, when was the last time you heard of an American family stoning their daughter at the front door step for pre-marital sex (or being date raped while intoxicated?). NONE?! How could this be? Scripture is *SO* clear on that matter.

    How do you know their motivations? And what makes you so confident you aren't doing exactly the same thing?
     
  18. Dani

    Dani You're probably fine.

    Well, when it comes to OT Law, people often get its 3 categories intermingled and use them however they wish to make their "point".

    Which are:
    1. Moral law (unchanged as it reflects the character of God who never changes -- what was wrong then is also wrong now such as theft, covetousness, perjury, etc.). Funnily enough, these laws are generally universal, and people who don't even know the OT scriptures have a built-in sense of these things being wrong and structuring their cultural and community legal codes around them. Gee, I wonder why? It's almost as if God created us all with a conscience to give us an understanding of basic morality as we are created in His image and charged with the task of furthering His kingdom upon the earth.
    2. Civil law (only applied to Israel at the time and was issued to give judges a way to reach legal decisions in criminal cases)
    3. Ceremonial law (points to Christ as the Messiah and provided a worship structure for Israel -- we now have Jesus as a concrete representation and need not observe those ceremonial things any longer)

    The Levitical commands to stone people for various acts were an ancient civil law matter and have zero applicability for any of us.

    Which means, to me, that whoever uses that verse in Lv 20 to condemn modern homosexuality lacks an understanding of systematic theology.

    We observe the moral law of love, which Paul conveniently detailed for us in 1 Cor 13.

    But, I reckon it's easier to use Lv 20 as a pocket mirror for random homosexuals, than it is to use 1 Cor 13 as a full-length mirror for oneself. 8)

    [quote author=hisleast]Best reconciliation I've come up with in life:
    - if its selfless, and difficult, its probably the right thing to do.[/quote]

    Since the purpose of a moral code is to provide the framework for a healthy, functioning community, then selfishness is obviously a problem because the wants of one person can never supersede the needs of the community. So your reconciliation is not wrong. :)
     
  19. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    Since the purpose of a moral code is to provide the framework for a healthy, functioning community, then selfishness is obviously a problem because the wants of one person can never supersede the needs of the community. So your reconciliation is not wrong. :)
    [/quote]Potential derail here...

    This is actually why I believe that we most likely developed via evolutionary means. We have a core of self-interest and self-preservation which is readily apparent in the created order around us. The quote of Paul stating (paraphrased) "that no love is greater than a one person laying his life down for another" is about the most altruistic act one human can make. Every other action, even if primarily altruistic, has some benefit to the giver. Christ of course represents the ultimate altruism in his sacrifice. And as you said, any community is a result of people abdicating some personal self-interest for a greater societal benefit.
     
  20. TrustGzus

    TrustGzus What does this button do? Staff Member

    Actually, Jesus said it, not Paul. John 15:13
     

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