From: cctr114@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Rea)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: How we are seen (Was Re: Question on the Bible)
Date: 5 Oct 92 02:14:26 GMT
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

>	Well, there you go.  NO, i have no right to dictate what God is
>sposed to believe.  However, if i am horified by his mandates in a war
>to kill ALL of the enemy, including women and children, cant i say:
>"Well, that God is not worth worshiping.  Lets move on."  

Just by way of information to readers of s.r.c, I replied to the article
on Questions on the Bible both in s.r.c and twice by e-mail setting out
an alternative view of the Bible and the Church which is closer to
what is actually practiced. The original poster did not (to the best
of my knowledge) reply to my posting and has not replied to either of
my e-mails. This posting raises the issue of how non-Christians think
Christians ought to be. That is to say, many non-Christians have a certain
standard which they expect all Christians to adhere to and if you don't
then in their opinion you are not for real.

In this case it seems that the poster thinks that Christians have to adhere to
the contents of the Bible in a most literal fashion right down to supporting
slavery and presumably if he read much further would tell us that we cann't
wear clothes with two types of material in them. This heavy emphaisis on
legalism really misses the whole point of Christianity as Christians are
well aware. But how do we deal with such people. I would suggest that
a sensible way to deal with them is to accept their initial question at
face value and answer it. If they choose to respond in some way it is then
that you can determine whether they were genuine or merely wanted to do
some stirring. If they are genuine then you can proceed, but all to often
if a questioner comes on aggressively after the initial answer there is
nothing further that can be said of any value. In this particular case the
questioner obviously has no intention of entering into a dialog in which
they actually listen to and respond to the points being made. If they did
they would have at least acknowledged that my e-mail had been recieved.
In this case all I can suggest is to allow the person to go their own way
If they chose to say, "Well, that God is not worth worshiping.  Lets move on."  
then all I can say is, you have made your choice and thats fine, but
I do not wish to move on with you.  After all, they are perfectly entitled 
to that choice and who am I to say that they can't take it.

But are they entirely to blame? I think part of the problem is that we
profess to beleive things about the Bible which we don't actually
practice. This posting raised the point that often Christians will
say something like ``The Bible is the maker's handbook, just follow the
directions in it.'' but in practice there are many things which we just
don't follow and we have no intention of following. The example of slavery
is one such example. It is morally repugnant, just as the original poster
said it was. Because we are Christians we know very well why we are 
not obeying certain sections, for example why I am wearing a pair of
trousers made of two different materials when this is forbidden. Non-Christians
do not understand, and sadly often don't want to understand, a living
faith. But we can't blame them because many Christians, in my experience anyway,
don't seem to have a good grasp of the living, changing nature of their 
faith, whereas we have a good understanding of the static unchanging
aspects of it. We tend to project to the watching world the static parts,
for they are at Christianity's very core, but the living, changing 
nature of that faith is not seen. 

I saw one of the other posters telling the author to read the Bible as
is really is (or similar comment), but the problem is that we have
put the ideas into their heads about how they ought to read it. So we
should not be surprized when they call us hypocrits who don't follow
the Bible and tell us they don't want to have anything to do with God.
This doesn't make them right or excuse their behaviour, but it does 
make it difficult to get through to them how things really are.

>-nick
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                                                                     ___
Bill Rea                                                            (o o)
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