Dave, you said,
"Tom I don't appreciate your sarcasm "Reverend" Just to let you know other people whom I disagree with but respect have appologized to me for your behavior."
Dave,
It seems to me that folks who claim to occupy the moral high ground and make severe moral condemnations of others don't have a whole lot of room to complain when someone calls them "reverend".
Let's see Dave, you get to say that others are liars, decievers and murderers, and that is perfectly ok. But, if someone points out that you are acting as if you are the supreme moral judge of the universe, that's foul play.
Well Dave, if that's how you see it, that's how you see it. But you can't cash that check at my bank.
"Tom last friday I found out that a student of mine just lost her father in Bahgdad. He was hit by a military vehicle. This news has brought me to tears. Could you come and explain to her why it was neccessary for her dad to die?"
First of all, let me say that I'll bet that HE believed that it was necessary for him to be there.
Second, what I would say to her is that she should be proud of her dad, and revere his memory.
Our country is involved in a war against terrorists, who have blown up entire school buses full of kids like her. They are trying to terrorize their parents with the ulitimate goal of getting them to place political pressure on their governments to cooperate with the terrorist's desire for domination of entire countries. Corrupt tyrants like Iran's ayatola's, Saddam Hussein, Yassar Arafat, the Saud family, and many others have encouraged and funded this horror. He died in the campaign to stop these monsters and to keep it from happening to her.
Dave, what's your answer??? Would you dare to tell her that we are nothing but the product of hydrogen atoms with no explainable origins being operated upon by random chance, so that her father's death is utterly meaningless and doesn't matter? If you had the intellectual integrity to follow the logic of what you have claimed to be true on this BB, that is what you would have to tell her.
But Dave, I'm sure you wouldn't say that to her. Because something in your heart tells you that your head is full of baloney.
"Where does the great pain and injustice I feel come from?"
"It is in the fact that I am human. That all of humanity is part of my family?"
So....folks who disagree with you aren't human?
?
Now, if all of humanity is part of your family, where are your tears for the (at least) tens of thousands of Iraqi's that Saddam Hussein oppressed, tortured and murdered? Where are your feelings of "great pain and injustice" for them? Seems to me that you are being a little selective here.
Did you ever think what it must have been like for a young girl turned over the horrors of Uday's thugs. Gang rape by brutal thugs, sexual torture for their video collection???
What about the parents of those girls Dave? Knowing that their child was being treated like that and also knowing that to speak a word of protest would certainly result in her death and probably theirs as well.
"Who or what put this awarness inside of me? I don't know!"
Well, Dave, let me recommend a good book on the subject. It is called the Bible. It says that it came from being created in the image of God, but that it has become corrupted through sin. We are a fallen race Dave, living in a world of fallen men. Good still exists in our world Dave, though we are rarely if ever completely free of evil's presence even in our efforts to do right.
Look at WWII. Was everything we did perfect? Of course not. Did we need to do everything in our power to prevent the entire world from falling under the dominion of a previous generation of monsters and tyrants? You bet your sweet patootie we did.
This is another round in an old fight. Your student's dad intended to see it through, and you dishonor his death by your claim that it was meaningless at best, or that he died in the service of evil.
"But the fact that it is there is enough to uphold what I believe to be right. I find that the Bible says many many different things that can be used to justify our governments actions or condem it. The Bible therefore becomes a matter of debate."
What about what is "there" in other people's hearts?
Also, what about when you thought GG was right? Was the "fact that it, (that idea) is there enough" to uphold what you believed?
"But let me ask you "Who would Jesus kill?"
Brent has already answered you.
Dave, you keep claiming that we can't know anything for sure about God.
Yet, you keep on preaching and judging. And on what basis....your feelings. Others feelings don't seem to matter, just yours.
"And ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil".
Thomas Maddux