Originally posted by @fmfThere is no dodging.
The question you are dodging is not about whether your god figure disapproves of gays; it's about whether executing gays was once deemed morally sound while it is no longer deemed morally sound. There is no need for you to concoct a question different from mine and answer that instead. Has the morality of executing gays changed?
Your trap simply doesn't work.
At age two your mother may have said to eat with your fingers.
At age five she may have said "Use your spoon".
Something there has not changed in the basic need to eat.
Her attitude towards you getting food into you has not changed.
The how to deal with the situation has developed.
If I stone two men for sleeping sexually together, I should both be reported to the police and I need to repent to God.
Originally posted by @sonshipStill dodging. I am not talking about table manners. I am not talking about god's anger with gays. I am talking about whether it was morally sound to kill them. And whether it is no longer the case.
There is no dodging.
Your trap simply doesn't work.
At age two your mother may have said to eat with your fingers.
At age five she may have said "Use your spoon".
Something there has not changed in the basic need to eat.
Her attitude towards you getting food into you has not changed.
The how to deal with the situation has developed. ...[text shortened]... sleeping sexually together, I should both be reported to the police and I need to repent to God.
Again Paul said that the Law was a child-conductor leading us to faith.
This is the moral code of the commandments of Exodus being a tutor like guide leading sinners along the way to something further.
"So then the law has become our child-conductor unto Christ ..." (Gal. 3:24)
The skeptic's job is to arrest this developmental maturing of the God / human relationship to argue for its wrongness and impracticality.
There is a reason what the New Testament Gospels are not arranged as Matthew, Mark, Luke and Leviticus.
We all know that God commanded the Isrealites to keep the Sabbath holy.
We should know that the religions power structures hated Jesus because He tended to go out of His way to do things on the Sabbath day.
He was revealing something further and deeper about the nature of God.
He still wants man to REST in Him, being without anxiety to REST in trust with God's provision. God had not changed.
God spoke in the prophets. God spoke again "in the Son".
" Because of this therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God." (John 5:18)
Originally posted by @sonshipThere really is nothing to stop you from declaring your own morality to be "universal" and "objective". What difference do you think it makes to whatever personal opinions you express about moral issues?
There seems to be a dichotomy set up by some that if morality is universal then it cannot be personal. And if it is personal it cannot be universal.
I think you should contemplate that the dichotomy is not true ultimately with no exception.
There may be a fear that universal morality will not be able to deal with very intensely personal cases. Diffic ...[text shortened]... not always have the wisdom to sort it out.
Does that mean that God could not know the answers?
Originally posted by @fmf
There really is nothing to stop you from declaring your own morality to be "universal" and "objective". What difference do you think it makes to whatever personal opinions you express about moral issues?
There really is nothing to stop you from declaring your own morality to be "universal" and "objective".
I would be internally stopped from declaring some of MY personal moral choices as universally true or everyone. I don't think any parent who has raised kids will not understand that by the time they become teenagers and young adults.
The Holy Spirit within and the Bible both would not allow me to whole sale declare all my norms as universally true for everyone.
Instances of excesses can be found in history from both the lives of theists and atheists.
But there is a last judgment.
What difference do you think it makes to whatever personal opinions you express about moral issues?
I suppose that depends on the situation.
With regard to the Gospel a good place to start is to realize that ALL without exception have sinned.
Every right winger - sinned.
Every left winger - sinned.
Every religion person - has sinned.
Every "free thinking agnostic / atheist" has sinned.
Every "straight" person - has sinned.
Every non-"straight" person has sinned.
All are in need of justification before God.
All need sanctification in the life of Christ.
Originally posted by @fmf
There really is nothing to stop you from declaring your own morality to be "universal" and "objective". What difference do you think it makes to whatever personal opinions you express about moral issues?
There really is nothing to stop you from declaring your own morality to be "universal" and "objective". What difference do you think it makes to whatever personal opinions you express about moral issues?
You believe that people get away with things.
I know that no one is getting away with anything.
"Nothing is to stop you from getting away with _______" you fear.
I don't have that confidence at all.
Originally posted by @sonshipThis just seems to sidestep what I put to/asked you.There really is nothing to stop you from declaring your own morality to be "universal" and "objective". What difference do you think it makes to whatever personal opinions you express about moral issues?
You believe that people get away with things.
I know that no one is getting away with anything.
"Nothing is to stop you from getting away with _______" you fear.
I don't have that confidence at all.
Originally posted by @sonshipYou seem to be on a tangent. What about what I asked you? This:There really is nothing to stop you from declaring your own morality to be "universal" and "objective".
I would be internally stopped from declaring some of MY personal moral choices as universally true or everyone. I don't think any parent who has raised kids will not understand that by the time they become teenagers and young adults. ...[text shortened]...
All are in need of justification before God.
All need sanctification in the life of Christ.
What difference do you think [perceiving your moral code to be universal and objective] makes to whatever personal opinions you express about moral issues?
Originally posted by @dj2beckerOf course I can. Don't be daft. I was a Christian for the better part of 30 years. But I post here as a non-believer.
You on the other hand can't seem to see things from a Christian perspective even if you were a Christian for decades.
Since I want to talk about From Law to Grace leanings toward that I am likely to elaborate here.
The grand moral code of the Law of Moses had some positive function and some negative function.
One of my mentors Brother Witness Lee put is differently. He taught that there was a day aspect of the Law and a night aspect of the Law.
Anyway, part of the negative or "night" side of the moral code of the law of Moses was that it was to EXPOSE man's utter failure to live righteously. The law was given for the purpose of exposing man's sinning nature that has him captive to the uttermost.
Ie. "You think you are OK? You think you have no problem with God or with other people? Fine, here, keep this law of Mine."
Arguments for the existence of God from morality, I think, should remember that the divine moral code ordained by God had a function not to be kept but to EXPOSE the sin nature holding man entirely captive to rebellion against God.
Paul writes that the moral code of the law was added to make sin appear as exceedingly sinful. And it does.
The inability of man to be right according to the perfect keeping of the law is exposed by it. This inability is called "death" by Paul, in that you are non-vital and unable to carryout in your body the good that you know you should do.
" Did then that which is good become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin did, that it might be shown to be sin by working out death in me through that which is good,
that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful." (Rom. 7:13)
"I KNOW and delight to do what is right. Even what is right by God, I agree with. But something is dragging me down. This DEATH renders me powerless to carry the good out. This DEATH in my body makes me not be able to resist the evil that I actually hate and do not agree with."
That is the sense of Romans 7.
"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?"
Man does not need another system or another ideology or a philosophy or a method.
He needs a WHO. He needs a living Person as a deliverer.
If this Person is not available, there is no hope.
"Who will deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then with the mind I myself the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin." (See Rom. 7:24b,25)
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Originally posted by @fmfI pay a little more attention to what I say.
Do you personally think any of it was morally unsound in the way dj2becker has said he does?
I don't think I am arguing for me being a perfect person.
Do you think that an imperfect person can point to One who is a perfect person?
Each of the twelve disciples of Jesus was disqualified if their own perfection made it impossible to point men TO Jesus.
I don't know of any Christian apologist who does not admit that very difficult moral situations exist for us, though God is the source of all ultimate moral goodness.
Really very difficult moral issues exist which have no easy answers.
But God is the end of the passing of the cosmic moral buck.
I need to get to know Him personally.
Shall I protect myself from bad "moral police" by arguing that the moral buck is too relative to stop anywhere and that there is no God?
The twentieth century should have proved to us that atheism was not the answer to men placing themselves as so ultimate that they could do whatever they pleased.
Originally posted by @sonshipOK, good grief. So, Do you personally think any of it was morally unsound? Forget about the rest of the question.
I pay a little more attention to what I say.
I don't think I am arguing for me being a perfect person.
Do you think that an imperfect person can point to One who is a perfect person?
Each of the twelve disciples of Jesus was disqualified if their own perfection made it impossible to point men TO Jesus.
I don't know of any Christian apologist who ...[text shortened]... ot the answer to men placing themselves as so ultimate that they could do whatever they pleased.
Originally posted by @sonshipWell, I am not asking you if you think it is morally sound for you to kill gays. I am asking you if you think it was morally sound for the Hebrews to kill gays.
I don't know of any Christian apologist who does not admit that very difficult moral situations exist for us, though God is the source of all ultimate moral goodness.
Really very difficult moral issues exist which have no easy answers.
But God is the end of the passing of the cosmic moral buck.