You act like you know what the true meaning of love is. As well as the true meaning of loving your neighbor as yourself. Confirming someone in their sins to be agreebale to other people is not love..
St. Paul talked about love, but he had no problem rebuking sinners(fornicators, sodomites). Other verses he said to have "nothing to do with them".. Neither did Jesus or Peter. Peter rebuked someone so hard that they dropped dead right in from of him(and then his wife did later)..
And what does "Neighbor" mean? many theologians took this for meaning only the christian community. The apostles took each other as their "neighbors" and their successors and so on..Are the Pagans and reprobate really are "neighbors"?? From St. Paul's writings it seems to portray a resounding NO.. Meaning loving each other in the community(your fellow christians). Jesus said if they do not listen to you, shake off the dust from your feet, for it will be more "tolerable for Sodom than for that town"..
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I thought Christianity had made this perfectly clear over the centuries. A "neighbor" is someone who thinks exactly as you do. All others are to be shunned, slandered, condemned and -- if possible -- eliminated.
I am guessing the Bible verse this guy is trying to spin is Romans 13:10
"Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."
I can see why it bothers him so much he has to do such semantical gymnastics. Because what Fundies describe as "Love" is harmful. Not to mention at times torturous and murderous and even genocidal-ous. By this measure, Christian Fundies are among the least Christian people
It probably also doesn't help their cause that this verse is so close to the Wiccan Rede.
Nor that his whole spin that non-Christians are Non-Neighbors is also contradicted by the Bible
Matthew 5:44
"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
"
So even if one accepts that a non-Christian is an "enemy" of Christianity, his spin doesn't work .
Apparently my being bible thumped has allowed me to know more about his book then he does.
"Peter rebuked someone so hard that they dropped dead right in from of him(and then his wife did later).."
"Are the Pagans and reprobate really are "neighbors"?? From St. Paul's writings it seems to portray a resounding NO.."
'it will be more "tolerable for Sodom than for that town"'
Peter rebuked someone so hard that they dropped dead right in from of him
Do you happen to remember what the guy was rebuked for? Keeping money for himself instead of giving it all to the commune. You seem to think the guy was gay or something.
Holy inability to read your own holy book Batman!
Neither did Jesus
And what does "Neighbor" mean?
Seriously, read it again, Rentboy405. Try the gospels. And read carefully this time. Get one of those bibles with the words of Jesus in red, maybe.
I think, Renton405, that you consider Paul and Jesus to be contemporaries and in agreement with each other. Paul took the Jesus stories and molded it to serve his own ends. He, in fact, perverted a lot of what Jesus may have been preaching and founded the Catholic Church and its dogmas based on those perversions.
If you can reconcile the two, you would make religious history. There'll be a sainthood in it for you.
Paul didn't know what he was talking about -- Peter, James, and John thought he was full of horseshit when he first showed up, and evidently they never really reconciled.
But go on, continue to take the words of Paul over Jesus, a man he never met.
Even John the Baptiser was strong on people being good to one another...Herod eliminated him because he was probably more popular than Jesus was in his heyday.
A pharisee's "love" is no more than rude self-righteous criticism. Quite definitely pauline love.
You want to know what the real meaning is? You can't, it's impossible The text is too fucking vague and ambiguous; any of its many possible translations could be the right one; even the original text was probably just as ambiguous.
This is why many scientific papers are so much longer than the average bible chapter - you have to be as explicit as possible, and qualify absolutely everything, to make sure misinterpretation is as unlikely as possible. Even so, as languages evolve, meanings can become obscure with age - if you read, say, a paper from only about century ago, on a subject that was mature then and has changed little until today, you'll be amazed by just how long it takes to figure out what the hell they're on about half the time, the language changes that much. Getting away from science and into texts whose underlying message cannot be checked against experimental evidence, it gets even harder - just look at the many heated arguments about the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence for an excellent example, and they're really quite recent.
With that in mind, consider an often figuratively written collection of yarns about such hard to pin down concepts as morality and metaphysics, after multiple translations and even purposely copied character-for-character despite changes of contemporary language for much of its existence. What possible chance does the original meaning stand many tens of centuries later?
There are many passages in the Bible where Jesus says he came only to save the lost people of Israel. In Matthew he specifically forbids the disciples from preaching to Gentiles.
So it's a pretty safe bet your neighbour in the Biblical sense has to be Jewish.
Incidentally, why does Renton405 use the American spelling 'neighbor'? According to fundies the KJV is written in God's Own Language and it spells it with the 'u'.
The problem, Renton, is that Jesus is not St Paul nor Peter and he was hanging out with prostitutes and sinners all the time, regardless whether they converted or not. And he was more than clear that neighbour is EVERYBODY. If you don't follow him, what the hell are you telling people whether they should do this or that to be a Christian?
How can they love their fellow Christians if many of them can't agree on what a 'true Christian' is?
Also, I'd love to see the loophole on, "Judge not lest ye be judged."
The "many theologians" who think that way, are those whose opinion you never actually asked, because you are so sure they must agree with you.
A few people have pointed out how this guy is calling himself a Christian, but putting emphasis on somebody else's philosophy ahead of Christ's. It happens pretty much constantly in fundie circles, and I, personally, am sick of it. It's the height of hypocrisy to take a hateful, close-minded philosophy and slap the label of "Christ" on it like a brand name, so they can claim divine support for the bigotry and insenstivity that they held before they even opened a damn bible.
#413642, I liked how you referred to Renton as a "Pauline fundie". We really should start addressing these people as Paul worshipers, until they can demonstrate that they have prioritised Christ's teachings above any others. Then, and only then, can they refer to themselves as Christ -ians
-End rant-
solomongrundy:
At best, that's a Biblical contradiction. Truth be told, the parable of the Good Samaritan is pretty explicit if you know the conext -- the Samaritans were remnants of the old, pre-exile Judaism that were intentionally excluded from the fold by Ezra and his people. To this day the Samaritans consider themselves (all 700 or so of them) apart from Judaism, and Judaism returns the favor.
To put it in the proper perspective, the priest and the Levite in the story, though they may have been mishpokhe, were not the wounded man's neighbor at all, but the Samaritan was. In modern terms, it's like being in the Jim Crow South and having a white man saved by a black man, or a Nazi being saved by a Jew.
Before you jump in the conclusion, the story of the Good Samaritan rings you a bell, doesn´t it?. That´s the NEIGHBOURG concept, fella, EVERYBODY. Now Christianity is not that fine, eh?
You're a fuckwit. You have literally no idea what love is, except what your misogynist, homophobic buddy Paul tells you(and he directly contradicted Jesus on several key issues, which is why most modern Christians are fuckwits like you).
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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