“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
This small excerpt from Jesus speaks to so many of the contentious issues in our society today. I keep asking myself, "What if He is correct?".
26 comments:
Ah, Craig! But don't you know that some dudes "know" they're really women, and thus God created them so. It's just that simple. Whatever you like to think about yourself, that is what you are and meant to be. Stop wasting time with that Bible stuff!
And Jesus thought the sine went around the earth.
I like separating ancient religious texts that deliver moral messages about love and commitment from their relative ignorance of facts regarding nature and physical laws.
Anonymous,
Can you clarify your comment in greater detail, please?
Art,
Isn't that the point? Doesn't always trace back to some variation "Did God really say...?"?
Either Jesus was correct about these things (if John 1 is accurate than He's know), or He wasn't. If He was, then it's a bunch of folx telling Jesus that they knew better. If He's wrong, then why should He be believed about anything?
Dude, you know, the sine. I thought everybody knew what the sine was?
Anon,
I assume that you meant sun. Althogh I'm not sure on what authority you makes the claim about what Jesus was "ignorant" of. It's almost like you've decided to accept "moral messages" from someone who was an idiot regarding the world around Him. I'm not sure that's a great idea, dude.
Maybe you've spent too much time in the sine.
Are you suggesting that Jesus knew the cures for leprosy, tuberculosis,surgical procedures, and cavities... and didn't share it?
Sounds like you worship a sadistic Messiah.
Interesting question. I suspect it's one designed not so much to gain information, or to further discussion, but more to reinforce one's preconceived notions.
So, by what standard does "withholding" these "cures" become "sadistic"?
I could provide you with a theological answer, but I doubt that you'd be interested. I'm curious as to what "surgical procedures" there are "cures" for.
Craig,
If Jesus had wanted to impart all that info, all the factories in 1st Century Judea would have retooled to produce all the meds and surgical tools required to cure everyone!
Art, stop being so ridiculous. Clearly Jesus should have just skipped the entirety of human history and development, and just moved straight to the future.
In all seriousness, the only issue here is: "Was Jesus who He was portrayed to be by Himself and the gospel writers?". If He was, then one needs to explain His words and demonstrate that He had no way of knowing these things. If He wasn't, then why would we listen to anything He said?
No, that's not the only issue. You've inferred that Jesus, two thousand years ago, establisehd biological truth for all time. If he did, then he knew all manner of other helpful biological, sociological, political, sociological, physical, and psychological things that would be just as much help as... one woman, one man, the woman serves the man as the man provides for the woman.
You're isolation of this one absolute truth that serves as biological, psychological, and sociological norming "law" together with your refusal to admit of any other of the truths Jesus, in your belief, "knew" which would be equally good for people ("wash your hands and you'll save your health and those of all around you")... makes you appear to be un-credible.
Does God have two feet and two hands and a side that can be pierced? Does God have a head that thorns would wound? Does God pick up road dust?
I think that if the Word that was from the beginning and through whom everything that was made was made took on the mortal limitations of human birth and body and the need to eat and eliminate - and die - then Jesus was a human being, too. Jesus lived within the limits of his time, place, culture, and socio-poltical circumstances.
Why do I think that? Because the bible tells me so:
- Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
- Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
- The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
btw Your sarcastic, "Clearly Jesus should have just skipped the entirety of human history and development, and just moved straight to the future," is not something I think you want to say.
You've clearly inferred that God - or at least the Jesus you believe in - is fine with the develpment of human knowlege - in this context we all clearly mean safety, health, and freedom - in time.
This is the very argument liberals make: the course of development of human liberation into freedom is the work of the Spirit. Up through today.
Therefore:
all women, all ethnicities, all sexualities and all identities have the same capacity for faith, for church leadership, for wisdom, for love, for being subjects of grace...
as you do.
The "entirety of human history and development" exhibits the grace of God... just as you have, unwittingly, observed.
"You've inferred that Jesus, two thousand years ago, establisehd biological truth for all time."
No, you've inferred that. That's literally not what "inferred" means.
"You're isolation of this one absolute truth that serves as biological, psychological, and sociological norming "law" together with your refusal to admit of any other of the truths Jesus, in your belief, "knew" which would be equally good for people ("wash your hands and you'll save your health and those of all around you")... makes you appear to be un-credible."
First, this statement makes absolutely no sense, because you've chosen to misinterpret what I actually said, with what you think I said.
I'm merely pointing out the reality that Jesus claims abut Himself, and those of His closest disciples, are foundational to how we view what He said. If Jesus made false claims about Himself, then wouldn't those false claims call everything else He said into question?
What Truth's am I "refusing" to admit?
"Does God have two feet and two hands and a side that can be pierced? Does God have a head that thorns would wound? Does God pick up road dust?"
The real question then is; "Is Jesus God?". Was Jesus actually the incarnate second person of the Trinity? If the answer is yes, that leads down one road. If the answer is no, that leads down a different road.
"Jesus lived within the limits of his time, place, culture, and socio-poltical circumstances."
Yet no one is arguing otherwise. Jesus did live within the confines of His time on earth, yet He never divested Himself of His divinity. Further, His incarnation doesn't eliminate the fact that His divine role encompassed His earthly ministry.
To my mind, there are 3 options:
1. If Jesus knows all and shared only a miniscule part - being your first position - then Jesus withheld goods. So, Jesus' beneficance is whimsical. Mercurial. Part kind and part mean. And it ignores the confession that God knows infinitely more than we do, and sooooo what we think of as the goods that Jesus did share cannot be the last word. A book, even of infinitely longer size, cannot contain divine knowlege.
2. Jesus shared everything God knows. False on the face of it - though rigidly right political "Christians" speak as if that is the absolute fact: a perversion of the radical protestant tenet that the Bible holds all things necessary for salvation. Forgetting, again, that the Holy Book cannot contain god.
3. Jesus emptied himself of Absolute and Universal knowledge in order to be fully human, yet was still in full commmunion with the Father. So the things of power he did, he did in an ancient context, and the good news he delivered, he delivered in an ancient context. Surely Jesus did not come to share the greatest textbook on all human knowlege - which is the other positon you take, contradicting the first one - and even more surely did he not come to give us ten pages out of a trillion from our own current capacity of undertanding the nature of all things in the universe. Surely he emptied himself of divine transcendence but not pure communion with the Father in order to share the greatest lessons and act of love as a revelation of the nature of God and the promise of life guided by the Holy Spirit: a life of continual discoveries of the network of love in all creation but needing human beings to co-participate in the healing of the cosmos.
This is the position that you kind of take secondarily. I think because you perceive the problem of your first position. But your second, reformed stance, isn't backed by scripture. Only conceiving of the Son of God as, for a time, emptying himself of ALL knowlege is coherent with scripture.
Therefore, admitting that human history continued with manifold evils, we also must confess that what we have discovered since the close of the New Testament about human love and freedom, represents, according to the will and love of God, the life of the Spirit and the capacity of human beings to glorify God in our own lives, intellectual and emotional and artistic.
"You've clearly inferred that God - or at least the Jesus you believe in - is fine with the develpment of human knowlege - in this context we all clearly mean safety, health, and freedom - in time."
Once again, that's not how "inferred' works. Also, if I'm being sarcastic, maybe taking me literally is not the best idea.
What I'm suggesting that that YHWH (omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and the like), created humans with the ability to discover and create as part of our nature (see the beginnings of modern science). YHWH also seems clear that He has a plan for humanity, and that His plan is an outworking of His perfect nature. For you to suggest that Jesus was somehow "sadistic" to have not jumped ahead 2000 years and imparted His foreknowledge to a 1st century civilization incapable of understanding or utilizing that knowledge, seems like it's calling YHWH's omniscience into question. It also seems to fail to acknowledge the effects of the fall. YHWH's original creating had no need of any of the things you criticize Jesus for "withholding" because YHWH was literally in communion with humanity, and there was no sickness etc to be cured. So yes, I am fine with acknowledging that God is sovereign, that Jesus is God, and that I'm not in a position to doubt YHWH's timing or plan.
This all goes back to your "Jesus though the sine goes around the earth.". I can only presume that you are reference Jesus use of idiom when referring to things like the sunrise, sunset, and the like. This attempt to try to force a woodenly literal interpretation of figurative language is almost certain to cause problems like it has here.
As far as the rest of your comment, it's so divorced from any reality of what I've actually said, that I'm not sure I want to take the time to correct your errors.
I guess I'd point you to Paul's words in Romans. "19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."
Paul seems clear that YHWH's very nature is communicated to us through His creation.
I'm not sure how you got from acknowledging that reality to all the rest of the stuff you ascribe to me.
1. Or Jesus being God knew the fullness of YHWH's plans for humanity and "did the will of His Father." Of course, this seems to support my first point. That how we see Jesus and the claims He made about Himself, affects how we evaluate everything else He said. You seem to be evaluating Jesus based on what He didn't say, and imputing all sorts of motives to His lack of doing/saying what you thought He should have. You are free to draw your own conclusions, yet I'm under no obligation to accept them, absent something beyond your feelings.
2. Simply asserting that something is false, is meaningless. If Jesus chose to temporarily limit His omniscience during His time on earth, that doesn't mean that He didn't know the Truth of what He said. This is quite a leap, unmoored from any objective support.
3. That's quite a few claims about what "position I take" without actually demonstrating any evidence. However, I actually think that #3 is the closest to my actual position. I think that your mistake is assuming that Jesus was operating outside of YHWH's plan and purpose and that Jesus was obligated to share future developments with those in 1st century Israel. Even if it was appropriate for Jesus to share the things you think He should have, were 1st century humans equipped to understand of benefit from His sharing? I think that your conclusion that Jesus speaking to His earthly audience in the context of the specific time and place was "sadistic" is where you went off the rails.
As a general rule, I'm not a big fan of people telling me what I believe and what positions I take based on such a brief, limited, acquaintance. It certainly appears presumptuous and superior. Especially in light of the fact that you seem to be demonstrating the point that I made.
That point being, that how we look at Jesus, affects how we interpret His words. Either Jesus knew that his words I quoted were True, or He knew them to be false (or had absolutely no idea, which is effectively knowing they were false). If those words are True, then we need to determine how we approach His words and those topics. If His words are not True, or have been superseded by human progress, then that will affect how we interpret everything else Jesus said.
Either He was "The Way, The Truth, and The Life", or He was something else entirely. Whichever side of that you fall on is immaterial to my point.
I'm still going with this Anon guy being feo. Given time, he'll begin to prove it with more boorish behavior.
All said indicates to me a desire that Christ must be something not presented in Scripture in order for this guy to take Him seriously, or he's working toward asserting the real Jesus (or God the Father or God the Holy Ghost) would accept behaviors He does not.
More importantly, it all ignores Christ's purpose, which was our souls, not our technical knowledge or abilities. Why should He have concerned Himself with anything not within the purview of that purpose?
Art,
It could be, although since he's crawled out from under his rock and commented as himself on this thread, I don't think so. I also think he's too full of pride and a desire for self aggrandizement to post anonymously and make the kind of grammar mistakes of someone without his incredible intellect.
I think you're on the right track. If we are to believe Jesus, He came primarily to achieve a "spiritual" goal, rather than a "physical" goal. Obviously, there is some overlap, but I think it's reasonable to conclude that Christ came primarily to Glorify His Father, and to provide the final atoning sacrifice for sin.
But, the notion that Jesus came to impart 19/20th/21st technological/medical advances to 1st century Israel seems out of sync with the entire NT.
Clearly Jesus should have told them the secret of using Titanium to make medical devices to treat broken bones, and how you build a MRI machine so that they could accurately diagnose things.
I can see them all feverishly jotting down all the details!
The logical extension - to which you continue to not pay attention - of your post is that Jesus gave one set of information that humans should observe to avoid problems and so did not give so much more proportionally sets of informatoin that is really, really good to know... if one cares for human beings.
I am decidedly not "suggestingn that Jesus was somehow 'sadistic'. I am pointing out that where you stopped in your thinking infers that conclusion.
Scripture - like all of ancient humanity according to its literary records - *believes that the sun goes around the earth. "The sun stopped."
If you are willing to continue your approach that scripture is full of metaphor and analogy, then, please, let's continue. Metaphor and analogy are open-ended literary strategies. The interpretation and application metaphorical scripture has no end. And this is precisely how Jewish midrash, Paul the apostle, and late antiquity Saints read scripture... all the way up to through the Renaissance and up to the scientific revolution of the 1500s.
If you are so defensive that you cannot get that, then you don't have the capacity to continue this discussion.
"The logical extension - to which you continue to not pay attention - of your post is that Jesus gave one set of information that humans should observe to avoid problems and so did not give so much more proportionally sets of informatoin that is really, really good to know... if one cares for human beings."
You see, when you jump to these sorts of conclusions, with no justification for what you ascribe to me, you severely undermine your credibility. The reality that Jesus' incarnation occurred during a specific time in history. Jesus interacted with humanity as it existed at that time and place. Further, for whatever reason, Jesus was sometimes not as precise as we'd have liked Him to be when He spoke. For me, I'll err on the side of Jesus (the second person of the Godhead, who was there "in the beginning", and who was engaged in doing the will and work of His Father) making the right decisions about what He should have communicated with His earthly audience. If would have been ridiculous to tell His listeners about laparoscopic surgery, as they'd have no concept of what He was talking about. Further, if His purpose was primarily the elimination of human suffering in our temporal condition, then He failed miserably.
I'm not ignoring what you claim. It's irrelevant to this post.
Either Jesus spoke Truth, and knew the Truth of what He said, or He didn't. If He was speaking Truthfully and accurately about the reality of God's purpose and created order, then His words should inform how we view that which He created.
Nothing in my post or comments leads to Jesus being sadistic, that's your fanciful conclusion.
Jesus using idioms to describe the actions of the sun and earth, in no way demand that we conclude that He was ignorant of the solar system He created.
But nice try.
“This small excerpt from Jesus speaks to so many of the contentious issues in our society today.”
I guess you have ordering china in mind? You’re disingenuously hiding from your own words.
Either he was ignorant of how leporosy was spread (again, the Philippians scripture you ignore) or he was your inferred sadist, content to let millions more suffer.
If Jesus the man knew all that God knew, then he himself really didn’t suffer did he? And his faith is empty: he knew all things. Crucifixion was but a moment for a cosmic god.
And with that, you have erased the entire OT testimony to coming Messiah, a man of many sorrows, whose suffered - by his own blood-sweating, terrified will - for us.
You’re left with a poser Savior.
Only because you’re not thinking things through.
"I guess you have ordering china in mind? You’re disingenuously hiding from your own words."
I do enjoy a good non sequitur as much as anyone, but really this makes no sense.
"Either he was ignorant of how leporosy was spread (again, the Philippians scripture you ignore) or he was your inferred sadist, content to let millions more suffer."
Since Jesus promises His followers suffering, and since nowhere in scripture does it say that YHWH of Jesus is planning to eliminate suffering, I'm not sure what your point is. If you're trying to impose your feelings on YHWH and Jesus, I can see where they might not live up to what you think they should do.
"If Jesus the man knew all that God knew, then he himself really didn’t suffer did he? And his faith is empty: he knew all things. Crucifixion was but a moment for a cosmic god."
When you make shit up, you don't really help yourself as much as you apparently think. Either Jesus knew of which He spoke or He didn't. If He did, then we deal with His words one way, if He didn't then why would we pay Him any attention at all?
"And with that, you have erased the entire OT testimony to coming Messiah, a man of many sorrows, whose suffered - by his own blood-sweating, terrified will - for us."
Again, making shit up doesn't help.
"You’re left with a poser Savior."
No.
"Only because you’re not thinking things through."
Ahhhhh, the hubris coming through.
Blocking now, huh? The resort of the fragile.
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