Yeah – that was a really good plan! If I ever do decide to sacrificed one of my kids to Jehovah, I’ll do it in a wilderness area, and pretend he or she got dragged off and eaten by a bgear or a cougar, leaving (shucks!) no evidence. I certainly won’t leave an altar with a pile of bones on top of it.
The kind of God who had a choice to make robots or because He loved them so give them free will.
Free will? Follow my command to slaughter your son? That is a loving god who imparts free will? And that god knew what the outcome would be. So why play that game?
You can ask Him when you see Him.
Because you are uneducated.
That isn’t true. In fact, I am very well educated even in Catholic thought.
Yes, progressed beyond bronze age superstition. If that is what you call truth then I want none of it. I have no concept of raising myself above God, and I admit that I am not very humble except in my clinical, surgical, work. When people trust me with their life I am truly humbled. That is an incredible level of humility that I thank goodness I can feel.
My world isn’t little, it’s very broad. How can you in good faith make such demeaning statements? Besides that, I thought the discussion was about Old Testament stuff, not Christ.
Indeed we have progressed, but it’s not fair to look back upon how God instructed the people of past ages and presume he could have dealt with them then in the same fashion as he deals with us today.
Let me first express my sincere appreciation of your well written and very thoughtful reply. That is a breath of fresh air!
Then you wouldn’t be so caught up in the areas of the OT that trouble you so. Perhaps someone should have cleaned up the text so it wouldn’t offend people, but then it wouldn’t be true. We have to deal with these truths. God tried to set man on a path and man was acting like a terrible two year old tantrums and all. I nor others cannot answer some of the questions you ask without building a foundation. It’s akin to a one year old going near a stove and trying to explain thermodynamics to him. Most parents start by telling him it’s hot and associating it with pain. As he grows in understanding and experience more complexity can be broken out. That is why I pointed you to the book. It will help you get a handle on what was going on. I believe somewhere in your learning (and many Catholics including me) quite a few chapters were skipped.
In who, you or me?
Both.
That is undoubtedly very true. I am working on it as hard as I know how, and I appreciate your help. It’s a difficult trip, no?
Our Deacon took us through a little trip Sunday at Mass. He asked us to look around and try and remember all we see that is brown. Then he said close your eyes and recall all that is purple. No one seen purple because we were looking for brown. Everyday we are spending time looking for brown not even caring if purple exists. It is no surprise that we do not see God.
I am sorry, that is so simplistic that I can’t use it for anything. I can see God if that is what I want to see. Can you see God in the Old Testament? I mean in the retched horror of some of the depictions of God? I can’t believe in that kind of god. Brown or purple doesn’t matter, it’s a very nasty god that doesn’t belong to a belief in a loving god.
This is why the book I referenced is so important.
Perhaps the answer is simplistic and we are making it too complicated.
Old Testament Jeopardy: I’ll take child sacrifice for 500 shekels.
namesake, perhaps StA’s mocking positions are more suitable to you. You think you could accept her positions?
Who’s mocking? If you accept the stories literally, child sacrifice was no laughing matter for Issac or Jephthah’s daughter.