Stan, at his blog, recently addressed a post citing my concern about harm done to innocent people. The gist of his post is that "harm" as a measure for morality, is an imperfect measure. We, as people, won't be able to agree on what is and isn't harmful and HOW harmful something is. This, is, of course, not mistaken. Harm - and the extended notion of human rights - is not an objectively definable measure for morality.
Stan's conclusion, then, of course, was, "But we have the Bible and what GOD tells us, and that's a better measure." (My words, not his, but I do not think it's an unfair representation of the gist of his post. My response to Stan (not one that he posts or will post, but he's probably read - I know this because he routinely responds to my questions, even if he doesn't actually answer them).
Given your premises in this post - that harm is an imperfect
measure of morality, that maybe your religious opinions and
interpretations of the Bible are more reliable, I think a good-faith
point to raise would be to consider the benefits of the notions of "harm" and human
rights are to considering moral questions and policies and the PROBLEMS
of religious opinion and holy texts. Namely...
1. While it is a given that notions of "harm" and human rights are an inexact measure, they ARE at least a measure. Further, they are a measure that people could look to regardless if they are conservative or liberal, evangelical Christian, Catholic Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or non-religious. It is a fairly universal measure, and that's not nothing.
2.
Broadly speaking, we can see that most religions and secular groups can
affirm the notion of human rights and can affirm the notion of the
various golden rules, common to all religions - do unto others. In
general, that is a widely accepted truth.
3.
Further, it's not THAT complex, in broad terms: We should not be able to
deprive others of their lives, of their livelihoods, people should not
be beaten or raped or have their homes burned down. It's relatively
understandable and reasonable and agreeable for most people. Thus,
"harm," while an imperfect measure, IS a helpful measure and a fairly
universal measure, at least in broad terms.
4.
On the other hand, if we're going to appeal to "My Religious Text" or
"My religion," we immediately fall into the very difficult problem of
WHOSE religious text, WHOSE religion, WHOSE version of that religion,
WHOSE interpretation of those texts? What of those who don't SHARE that
religion's premises and policies and opinions?
Do you see? There is no universal or objective source or decider to has the authority to make that call/those calls.
5.
For my part, as a person of faith and what might be called a religious
person, I would want no part of setting up policies based upon my
religious beliefs or my views of particular texts wholly to me. To try
to force policy based on any one person/set of person/subset of some
religion is problematic on the face of it. EVEN for the religious ones
who might at some level delight in the notion of a Religious Realm. That
would be a great threat to a society, wouldn't you think? The fights
and oppression and chaos that would potentially bring?
6.
No, on a local, state of national level, I want policies that are
rational and can be appealed to on the basis of harm and human rights,
because in a multicultural, poly-religious world, that makes the most
sense.
I would argue for support human rights
and self-determination for LGBTQ folks NOT because I believe it's what
God would approve (which I do) but because it's also rational. Of
course, free humans should be able to make their own decisions about
marriage, who they love, their children, etc... So long as they're not
causing harm to others.
I would argue for
support of parents raising their children as they deem best not because I
think God approves (although I do think that), but because of human
rights and self-determination... so long as they're not causing harm to
that child.
I would argue for rights of people
to move from one place to another - especially if they're escaping
danger or starvation/deprivation - NOT because I think the Bible tells
us so (although, of course, it does) but because of human rights and
harm prevention... So long as they immigrants in question do no harm.
Can you acknowledge the benefit of "harm" and human rights as a policy measure in a multicultural setting, especially as opposed to one group's personal religious opinions?
16 comments:
1. Right. Case in point, the UN Declaration of Human Rights makes no reference to a particular culture, political system, or religion.
2. Right. And to say that over history the notion of human rights has almost always expanded and grown to include more human beings and more situations of security. But not always. The Code of Hammurabi gave relief from grain repayments for farmers who experienced devastation of their corps in a year due to flood or draught. They didn't have to pay back any that year.
3. Right. And again, these rights have almost always generally expanded. Except vis a vis debt and banks.
4. Well, let's be honest. No ancient religious scripture holds that same value of all human life that the world does now. Not even close. So, citing ancient texts is not a starting point for universal human rights.
5. Here we part company. I expect all religious people to bring their best communal thinking to the universal table for several reasons:
- Religious motivations were the earliest sources of moral reflection.
- Scriptures of any kind gave human beings the first and most complex models of moral systems thinking. They are our training ground and remain sources of critique to the downsides of modernity: especially the fracturing of kinship and communal bonds. Because scriptures have usually undergone a reflection and editing process because of experiences across time by the communities whose scriptures are a source of authority, paying attention to that process of reflection by experience across time are educative for all moral reasoners to pay attention to communal reasoning at each present epoch.
So while citing ancient scripture verbatim is a terribly lost and anachronistic cause - and death dealing to human rights because of its erasure of lived and living experience - the process of religious reflection woven into the consciousness and evidences provided by scriptures about themselves is very good training ground.
The caveat here is that those who are trying to believe in a pre-Enlightenment, pre-modern science, pre-philosophically critical fashion deaden themselves to all appropriate empathy and communion with others. This way leads to authoritarianism, fascism, and totalitarianism.
6. A clarification is needed here. There is the "rational" and there is the process of critically reasoning. The Enlightenment left us with two kinds of reason.
The first kind is instrumental and it comes with a cost. Instrumental reasoning has to do with how we build anything from a chair to a synthetic molecule to an ideology. Concomitantly developed with the scientific method in the 18th century, reason and the rational rests on the theory of cognitive capacities of human beings, and only human beings in the world and is built on the process of hHypothesis, experimental investigation, and consensus on conclusions. This goes for both the physical science and the social sciences. But there is no necessary a priori moral guidance for either. One product of the Enlightenment was a hypothesis that a technically designed slave ship could produce more profit. Reason was allowed to experiment, measure outcomes, and agree on a conclusion of the maximum number of human beings and the best methodology that can deliver the most surviving stolen lives to the shores of the Western Hemisphere.
Reason and the rational as instrumental capacities still often run into moral ruin.
Thankfully, some figures of the Enlightenment and intellectuals since have developed and bequeathed a practice of critical reasoning which is comparing outcomes to what is wished for and what is best for harm reeducation to human beings.
And this legacy means all the world.
And let me add that many modern religious people who worship god and believe in love for all creation are among the BEST PRACTITIONERS of critical reasoning's ability to re-steer the "rational" from the rocks of brutality.
We achieve that ability in community AND from the long, long heritage of reasoning from scripture and paying attention to exactly that history of reasoning from scripture.
But those religious people like Stan and the other thugs, they betray their claim to faith and corrupt their practice because they worship an idol that lies in the sands of ancient times. They kill off their own reason, and thus their humanity.
To you explicitly, Dan, I'd claim that if there is no explicit Christian reasoning for the church to welcome non-white/non-straight/non-binary folks - or anyone of any intersectionality thereof - then Christianity is no longer viable as a source of love that defeats death.
By now I'm sure you know that I read scripture according to the community of the body of Christ that worships the Holy Spirit as a living person of the triune god AND with that holds a confidence of faith in the human capacity for reasoning together in critical thinking about how to love (which is how we best bear the image and likeness of god).
So, when Jesus, in saying goodbye to his disciples by saying they will not be alone, that the Holy Spirit will teach them everything, I believe him. And when, in Acts 10-15 and in many of Paul's letters, it is clear that the apostles and the earliest disciples resisted the Holy Spirit teaching them that the gentiles were not unclean or reprobate by nature (that only some who debauched themselves were), I see the movement of god teaching them to transgress their inherited brutalities.
Scripture inscribes in itself the greater authority of the God the Holy Spirit over scripture, that scripture only gets its inspiration from the breath of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit, as both Old and New Testaments testify, moves where it wills.
I believe scripture when it testifies that, though tough, the Apostles and the Jerusalem elders, including Jesus' own brother, finally side with their belief in the living Christ and the Spirit - not because scripture told them to - and accept gentiles who have to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God as is. AS IS.
How can we not, as Christians, live into this revelation by scripture that people of faith will come from everywhere and, if they live by the light of love, they will taker their place as equal to any of us. We, too, needed to be grafted on to the first Jewish church of christ.
The problem is that Stan's principle premise is confused. Here it is:
"We are right." Okay, that's not sufficient. "We are right and where the Bible says otherwise the Bible is wrong"… Let's say that it is actually true that God's Word is true and what it says in the Bible is real. That's really where we diverge, isn't it? Christians take God at His Word (like Christ (John 17:17))…"
And yet:
1. The Bible itself changes course. First, eat the fruit and you die; but then it's, well, you wont die straightway, AND you will live on in your generations. Then it's end it all with the flood; but then it's, well we'll keep a very few; then it's "no more flood! I wont do that again! In fact, I'll put a rainbow as a promise. Then it's Israel will be a light to all nations, my chosen, my perfect bride; but then it's "the kingdom of Israel is doomed!". First it's split the sacrificial corpse and let's walk between it as a convenient; then it's no more sacrifice! I'm tired of it. I myself will provide the sacrifice that will be the flower of heaven, the prince of ages, and bind us completely together. First it's eat no meat with blood still in it, like the pagans do; then in Acts and Paul first letter to Timothy, it's eat whatever, don't let your conscience bother you because in Christ we are free.
2. Stan and the other anachronistic lawyers think the Bible has spoken once and it's over. But their idol, in fact, changes the message over the course of human experience with faith in ancient times.
Of course, they will claim that this is all the continuing roll out of god's plan for salvation. But then they shut it down and claim that that revelation ended with the last map and leather cover of their book. In this way, the plan of salvation played out between the covers is more important to them than the revelation of the Incarnation of God and the now closer advent of the Holy Spirit with the church for the rest of its existence. Jesus said the Holy Spirit will teach them everything. And the Holy Spirit is still alive and, by faith (surely Stan and the goons will give lip service to this) still active.
They are unaware that this view of scripture, that the history it unfolds of god's changing positions of relationship with Israel and the first church, is a theologically composed description of god's salvation. And not a theologically composed description proposed by scripture itself, but instead by 19th century German theology of heilsgeschicte, starting with Johann Tobias Beck (1804 - 1878).
Stan's whole belief in his own faith is just vapors from the protestant past. He thinks we distrust the Bible because we say that it cannot speak to modernity. You may say that because you think the Bible is imperfect. I say that because no scripture can contain the living god or the whole of human historical development in relationship to the living god. And because either idea destroys Stan's security in the world - so fragile because it is not build on Christian faith but on an idol that is just a book - Stan goes to inordinate torturous twists to defend himself from becoming aware of his corruption.
To the extent that Stan lies about his own idol. He uses John 17:17 in a coercive move to claim that Jesus is talking about a book when he prays to the Father: "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth." Here Stan claims "word" to be a stand in for the Bible. But what does Jesus say in John 17?
"I have given them your word."
0ops. Not the Bible. And more:
"I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them."
Oops. Jesus does not trust the Bible. And more:
"I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
How will this ever be done?!
"But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you."
Oops. Not the Bible.
And even earlier in the chapter: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you."
Oops. Not the Bible.
In fact, Dan, John 14 tells us all that you and I say over and over and over and over to the brutalizing Judaizing thugs: Love is the way. For the whole world. Not religious burdens of law.
"They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”
Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me. I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. "
Apparently I've been latched on by some dim-witted 12 year olds.
Anonymous(es): if you want to comment here, you're welcome to do so ON topic and, you, at least half rational. If you're truly a sub-teen, ask your parents for help.
Nonsensical tripe will just be deleted.
1/2 of that was me. I was playing him.
Please don't engage nameless trolls. It's just a distraction.
5. Here we part company. I expect all religious people to bring their best communal thinking to the universal table
I don't disagree with that. I think the point I'm making is that I would never want to say, "The Bible says X and I really believe that's right, so we should implement X by policy." I think we bring our best communal thinking and data supported reasoning and best practices based on experience to the table.
I'm not of the group that says "The Bible says it, I believe it, let's legislate it" and never would be part of that.
Right. But Christian thinking further reflects on why and where and how and to whom scripture says X. And does scripture always at X? What if elsewhere scripture says or infers anti-X or partial X, like /?
And then we must interpret X in the light of the incarnation of Jesus and the principal commandant to love.
And we have to do these things as a process in community.
And this whole thing is what makes religious moral reasoning a terrific partner in reasoning out and grounding the fabric of human rights.
Dear Feodor and Dan Trabue,
I am a new Christian. I trust that you guys are indwelt with the Holy Spirit. I am new to the faith and do not know where to begin. What kind of a church should I attend? What kind of Bible translation would you guys recommend?
Any translation will convey the message of Jesus the Messiah, Christ, and Son of God:
Love and care for your neighbor, love and care for the poor, the widowed, the orphan, the oppressed, the marginalized, and the foreigner.
So, attach yourself to a community that follows Jesus’ words and actions and get involved. As a member of a body of loving people, you’ll be a stronger, healthier, and a more compassionate person.
Which is exactly what the world needs. And what the divine three-person’d god calls you to do.
What do you think of the Darby Bible or New English Bible? Why so many different Bibles? How many Bibles do you have and why?
If you believe that Jesus Christ is a revelation of a loving god, live that out.
Christianity was not shared by a Bible for most of its history. And still isn’t predominantly shared by a Bible. It has always been person to person and exemplified by the welcoming and loving and thoughtful behavior of a community of believers.
The Apostles and early disciples did not have a Bible. The Hellenistic cities they visited and the Roman Empire was predominantly illiterate. Paul dictated his letters to an assistant and his letters were read out by the few literate believers in all places. Almost all people in antiquity, almost all people in the Middle Ages, and almost all people in the Renaissance and early Modern epoch were not literate.
Any English version is a translation of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, almost all of which are not whole but all of which are copies centuries removed from Jesus and the apostles, and there is a lot of disagreements among the texts.
Lead with love and the story of the Incarnation and teaching of Jesus and his crucifixion and resurrection. If you listen - listen! - to that story within you in a desire for love and justice and mercy, you will grow immense with faith and dedication to all other people without judgment.
That said, if you want a readable story and you’re native born in the US, the NIV is easy. If you want some scholarly material around your reading, the NRSV Study Version is great.
There is a Catholic version that ai find stimulating for some differences: The Jerusalem Bible, now with a New Jerusalem update. And The English Bible also has some non American English choices regarding translation.
But the differences are small potatoes unless you’re in a dogfight with literalists who worship the book instead of the triune god. And then, the only real point, though it discredits all literalists, is that there are unresolvable differences in our scriptures that do not pertain to a life worshipping and loving the living Christ.
I will point out that what I’ve written to you, JS, has inferences for who you should worship with. But worshipping with a community of people is a must. Together we are the body of Christ and Jesus draws near to us in communion, as he himself says.
My wish for you, if you are truly asking with integrity, is to join a church whose message and methods are centered in love and care for all people and give serious thought to our accountability to believe with ever greater understanding. If a community lives with faith in the Holy Spirit, then the expectation is that we all will become stronger, healthier, more compassionate, AND smarter people.
The Spirit leads us into larger worlds of being.
So, the community is far more important than any translation. Neither the Spirit nor the living Christ can be bound between covers of a book printed in black or red ink.
The rest of what I could say you’ve found way above, repetitively.
Anonymous and "john smith," what does this have to do with the topic of the post.
Please limit comments to topic of the post.
Feodor, you are being much more gracious than I was inclined to be. Thanks for the positive modeling.
Nonetheless, if you have questions about Bible translations and you're sincere, feel free to email me.
Personally, I suspect you're just more/the same trolls who have been visiting lately. But I'm always open to real conversations from real people. If you want to comment further, I'd ask for proof of identity - what's your real name, email, something like that.
Everyone, let's stay on topic, please.
Thank you.
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