Saturday 7 November 2009

Who really believes the Bible?

In Exodus 31:15 it says: 'whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall be put to death'. This is one of many passages in the Old Testament laying down the death penalty, but while reading it the other day the thought struck me almost as if it were new. So many people say they believe every bit of the Bible is the infallible word of God, 'the Maker's instructions' and so on. But who takes passages like this seriously?

Of course, Christians don't observe the Sabbath anyway, which is strange when you consider it is in the Ten Commandments, which most Christians talk of as the 'core' set of God's laws. We observe the first day of the week as 'the Lord's Day', but many Christians call it the Sabbath and have all sorts of rules about it. But have you heard of anyone recently, whether Jewish or Christian, advocating the death penalty for breaking the Sabbath?

They accuse us 'liberals' of picking and choosing rather than accepting the whole Bible as the Word of God. But doesn't everybody?

1 comment:

  1. The big division among Christians today is on whether they accept the Bible as the Word of God, or whether they accept the Bible's own witness that Jesus is the Word of God. Those who opt for the Bible (not all of it, as Ray points out, or if they do they are dishonest)prefer the 10 commandments. Preferably without knowing them. They just get the idea from them (their favourite idea) that God is against sin and disapproves of everybody (except them) Those who accept Jesus notice that when he was asked which was the greatest commandment, he ignored the ten, and chose two with love in them - Love God, Love you Neighbour. Significantly, those who opt for the Bible as the Word and the Ten Commandments are often in favour of capital punishment, whereas one of the ten commanments tells them not to kill. There is no rhyme or reason about these people, and only love when heart overrides their loopy theology. Fortunately that does sometimes happen.

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