I was almost finished responding to you all when the power went out.
So here goes my second attempt at answering your posts.
MGov,
I'm always confused by these long 'dissertations'(Verne - a big word) of 'I did it my way'(Frank Sinatra??) type logic. If God is truly God then He is not confused and He has His way. Pray and ask Him to reveal the truth to you.
That was my 2 cents towards this thread.
MG
MG, thanks for bringing up the subject of prayer, a subject I think is so often misunderstood. We know from common sense and the Scripture that we will never know it all in this life. I believe that all of us, at many times, pray for God to enlighten us and direct us in the way He wants us to go, but this kind of prayer is just a form of submission to God and a way of showing we want to know the truth, regardless of where it may lead. Prayer is often a form of submission, not simply a granting of our request. If you expected such a prayer of “reveal the truth” to work like a kind of spiritual Fed Ex and mystically-magically have THE TRUTH revealed to you by God, then why does God allow so many different expressions of himself in Christendom and beyond? To come to a better understanding of the truth you have to study a variety of sources, renew your mind, meditate, etc. God, in this case, helps those who help themselves. Such prayers as “Be with so-and-so who is sick.” Doesn’t God promise to be with us at all times? YOU go be with the person who is sick. At present, as the mystic once said, WE ARE HIS HANDS AND FEET. However, we do not fully know God’s mind at present; thus, nobody should be pompous enough to claim that they know THE TRUTH because they prayed to God and God revealed it to them. We can only hope to come to a better understanding of the truth, year by year, as we study a variety of sources, read, meditate, etc.
Al,
Thanks for trying to bring some clarity to the variety of views expressed here.
What i understand Will to be saying is that, Yes, God has his own way, and it is so vast and glorious and wonderful that no one of us is ever going to comprehend it to the point that there is no more for me to learn, and y'all can just come to me to check the truth of what you believe from now on.
It's kind of like Teddy Roosevelt's "Speak softly and carry a big stick." It's "Trust God and remain teachable."
Exactly, Al! We have to remain open and be soooo careful when we try to foist ideas on others. As Paul asked, “Do you have faith?” He then went on to say that we have the right to have our own ideas, but not to let how we live by our ideas affect others negatively. He also said in Romans to “Let each be fully convinced in his/her own mind.” To spout THE TRUTH as you see it to others and get all hot-headed and haughty as Al’s two clergymen do is simply stupid because it shows a lack of tolerance and a clear misunderstanding of where we stand before God—as worms who know nothing compared to Him. That song “They will know we are Christians by our love” is a joke if you look at how Christendom has become so divided over differences in THE TRUTH. There are differences, but, as it says in Corinthians, there can be unity in diversity (even in diversity of opinion).
Tom,
I have also spent many years studying and have examined the various errors or discrepancies in the Bible from a variety of viewpoints. In my opinion, there are many apparent discrepancies that are not errors when examined closely, BUT many of the issues such as ancient cosmology are not dealt with properly in my opinion and are simply explained away because it is clear that some apologists are attempting to preserve the man-made theory of inerrancy. Just my opinion based on many years of study. We will have to agree to disagree it seems.
As you have encouraged me, I will also encourage you: let us both keep studying.
Will, did you ever actually READ the Enuma Elish? I had to do it last November for a Biblical Archeology class I took. It was a wretched experience. What confusion...and it is obviously a politically motivated document to show the superiority of Babylon and its chief god Marduk. Page after page of the infighting, lying, murdering pagan gods...nothing like the Creator God of Genesis.
Yes, Tom, I have read it and the Epic of Gilgamesh more than once and compared the Enuma Elish with Genesis 1 myself. It is widely believed that, due to the clear similarities in the order of creation, that one of the accounts borrowed from the other to show the dominance of their God or gods. Most secular scholars today believe that Genesis 1 was written during the Babylonian Captivity to show that God is greater than all the Babylonian Gods. I happen to agree with them for a variety of reasons.
One of the things I find interesting is that the notion of a great flood appears as part of most cultural mythologies. You had it first in the Epic of Gilgamesh and, due to the fact that the Epic of Gilgamesh was believed to be so widely read, you have it in the Hebrew Scriptures, Greek mythology, etc. Because so many cultures relate this great flood in the stories of their people, in my opinion that speaks of the fact that such a flood did occur. And, like Genesis, there are two flood stories recorded in the OT too and they contradict each other. Noah was told about "clean and unclean" animals but the Law did not come until much later. Interesting? Check out these links that I found after a quick search:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/noah_com.htmhttp://energion.com/rpp/flood.htmlhttp://www.awitness.org/contrabib/torah/flood.html(I just took these from the first three sites that popped up after I did a quick search on google. But this last link allows you to compare the two side by side:
http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cflood.htm)
It has long been claimed that the text of the OT was written down at Babylon during the captivity, (7th century BC). Imagine how upset the fellows that say this were just a few months ago when a ninth century BC inscription described in the OT was found. That, according to their ideas, can't happen. But, it did happen.
Actually, scholars believe that there were four main writers of the Books of Moses and the History of the Kings. Some parts of the OT were written BEFORE the Babylonian Captivity. It is just believed that the stories of the OT took their final form during this time when the people of Israel fought to preserve their cultural identity; thus, the writing of Genesis 1 to show God is greater than the Babylonian Gods. The fact that the Jews could remember something 200 years in the past is not surprising seeing as parts of the OT were written in 9th Century BC and oral tradition preserved much of the stories. I can’t see why anyone would be upset about this.
Another interesting point is the Tower of Babel story. Some scholars believe that it was a form of propaganda against being taken in by the splendor of the city of Babylon. But what is really cool is that scholars, when they read the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Nebbacanezar [sic], discovered that his words are laced with such pride about his city and his buildings. (And the Tower of Babel story also shows a primitive understanding that the writers of the Bible had, i.e., that God can be reached because He dwells up in the sky/heaven.) Regardless, these discrepancies in fact regarding the two stories of the flood in Genesis or the Tower of Babel trying to reach "heaven" do not bother me in the least because I look to the message of the Bible, not accept the whole Bible as inerrant. And, as I demonstrated in earlier posts, I am in good company with the many other Christians of the past (up until the Princeton scholars of the 19th Century) who did not see the Bible as inerrant.
