Why has this site seen a huge turn towards Christian shit? It smells waaay off. Like, Russel Brand and all these other influencers turn Christian and this forum becomes overrun with worshippers of the Lord God of Israel via the Jesus psy op.
Why have TPTB decided to shove Christianity down everyones throats and flood boards with Christian bots etc?
Are they trying to strengthen their grip over us spiritually by reinforcing their original deception or what?
If YHWH is all good and other gods were demolished for 'our' good then how do you explain his continual calls for genocide?
And why does he state that the nation that does not serve israel shall be utterly wasted?
Why does he say that israel will eat the riches of the nations and that we will lick the dust of their feet?
Why does he say to rejoice in the bashing of babies off of rocks?
Finally, where in the entire bible does YHWH ever claim to be the god of any people other than the Israelites? He's not your god in his own view. For reasons already explained, you believe he is your God but nowhere can you point me to YHWH himself saying that he is anyones loving god but the Israelites. Declaring himself a conqueror of nations doesn't count.
That's a challenge for you if you're up for it
I will look into this and thank you for the challenge. I'll search by the key words you provided since you didn't link relevant scripture, the only words that matter are God's words on the matter.
If I may ask you, do you know who are all the Israelites in our present time? It's something I'm trying to figure out also.
The challenge, as you put it, is deep. While it certainly is an opportunity to grow, it's not the easiest step to take, and neither is it a small one. I urge you to pray, to see if God even wants you addressing this in your own walk at this time.
I suggest that exploring what SS is into is an essential prerequisite to this topic, broadly. Also that Jewish teaching on this includes many perspectives, none of which deserve to be ignored. I seriously doubt that OP has the patience for any of this, if he has even a drop of sincerity. Hopefully I'm proven wrong about that, but it's not a light matter.
I very much appreciate your thoughts. I am praying but could also be praying better, so thanks. I think this conversation is a long time coming between me and Jacobin and I'm willing to proceed.
Good!
Personally, I'd like him to pick ONE instance of "genocide," a completely anachronistic term, and to discuss that one reasonably from every angle until it's exhausted.
The basic issues include the teaching tool of moral dilemma, which appears countless times throughout the OT. It's designed to cultivate critical thinking. This idea completely clashes with the bias he inherently brings to the topic. It will help him to discover the source of that bias; he mentioned a prior gf and I imagine she DID influence him, but I bet he'll discover earlier influences in his life. That will be key.
My interest here is solely to help him understand the literature in question, which is in fact difficult. It's also richly rewarding! Just at the level of literature.
Try searching Sephardi, Mizrahi, marranos. They love being called white colonizers. ;)
He has a point. Following Jesus can seem subversive to ones country, govt (which used to include the respective religious cult as a means of social peace through appeasement to one's deities) and ethne if one does not have a high view of the truthfulness of scripture or see it's narrative being reflected in reality.
I will look into those because I don't understand right now.
God's law supercedes human law or other, as far as I understand things. This has not gone well previously and I know it will not go well in the future, but I do know it will be well with my soul to follow God, even if that means breaking human laws and facing the consequences. Thinking about Matthew 10:28
Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Following Jesus is EXACTLY why the US was founded!
I don't think anyone knows really. They're apparently 'lost'. Some circles claim that Europeans are made up of Israelite tribes and that the Danes, for example, are named for the tribe of Dan.
Other still might suggest that the Ethiopians are definitely in there.
Others still that black people in general but particularly those in America are part of the lost tribes (Black Hebrew Israelites).
They've probably been diluted out of existence through mixing. Perhaps the entire story is mythical. Perhaps there is just jews.
You cannot be diluted out of existence, God holds dear His creation.
I would like you to confirm if these are the 3 scriptures you allude to, the 1st and 5th I think are over-arching themes and I don't feel pressed to pinpoint it in one verse, if you don't mind.
As for genocide, I would encourage you to help me by pinpointing the scriptures you are using in your estimation. There are many. I would blanketly state any genocide ordered or ordained would be because of it's incontrollable evil, my first thought is the great flood, God regretted His creation and has promised that is over. (Edit: He won't wipe us all out ever again)
Isaiah 60:12
For the nation and the kingdom
that will not serve you will perish;
those nations will be annihilated
If this is the verse you mean then my explanation would be; God has shown you all His ways through these people throughout oral and written history for millennia and if, in the end, He is rejected then you will receive what you wish, to be far from Him.
will kneel before Him—
even the one who cannot preserve his life.
If this is the verse you refer to I would highly suggest reading the whole Psalm, it has been irreplaceable in my understanding the Lord and savior Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. To the quoted verse, if it is the correct one, I would say from dust we were made and dust we shall return, but the Lord has given us the opportunity for new life and eternal bodies, through His sacfrifice.
and dashes them against the rocks.
If this is the scripture you speak about I would give my great thanks to u/SwampRangers for getting to this sooner than I, his explanation is what I understand also. Evil is so nasty in it's torments that it can indeed be a blessing to be spared.
Hi, on the first point - yes, you're correct in genocide being an overarching (and very repetitive) theme.
Why order the murder of babies? And of livestock? When Saul kept some sheep and cattle alive to burn in sacrifice to YHWH, YHWH changed his mind towards Saul being King of Israel - because he didn't fulfil the complete and utter genocide of the Amalekites and all their livestock! Is this really the god you accept as your own? Is this really a god you can call all good and all-loving?
Deuteronomy 7 contains the command to genocide many peoples and reiterates the fact that YHWH is the god of Israel only and of no other nation. For example:
Deu 7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; Deu 7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Deu 7:3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. Deu 7:4 For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. Deu 7:5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. Deu 7:6 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
See? He chose ONLY Israel to be his very own. And to conquer all other nations. Hence the verse in Isaiah 60:12 which states that the nation that does not serve thee (Israel) shall perish. Yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. There were multiple genocides past in the bible, and more yet to follow for the sake of the fulfilment of prophecy - which Jesus says he is come to do and that no jot or tittle shall pass until ALL be fulfilled.
For example, Jesus acknowledged that it is he who is referred to in Psalm 110 in Matthew and Mark. Thus:
Mar 12:35 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? Mar 12:36 For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. Mar 12:37 David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.
Psalm 110 says that Jesus will rule of Israels enemies and that they will be made his footstool. The enemies of Israel were Rome - and it was Rome that became the seat of Christianity in what was the Jews theological conquest of the gentiles and parasitisation of the Roman Empire. Remember, it is Jesus being spoken of in Psalm 110 where it says: Psa 110:5 My Lord is at your right side, and when he gets angry he will crush the other kings. Psa 110:6 He will judge the nations and crack their skulls, leaving piles of dead bodies all over the earth.
Jesus will judge the nations (goyim ie the non-Jews), crack our skulls and leave piles of dead bodies all over the earth. Is this guy REALLY your saviour...?
sa 49:23 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.
Our leaders are to fall at the feet of Israel and lick up the dust of their feet. I mean, they already do so now, but still...
Or in Micah 7:16-17:
Mic 7:16 The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. Mic 7:17 They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the LORD our God, and shall fear because of thee.
Us goy (nations) are likened to worms and will be afraid of their god and shall be in fear because of Israel. Their god is not your god. Them and their god hates you if your not Jewish. Jesus is one of them and is not your saviour.
Hi, I'm not sure how to proceed but I hope to keep talking, I'm thinking we could go back and forth on scripture all day, I think you're pretty smart and I'm glad you've informed yourself to a point, I'm still learning to do this also with God stuff and everything really, though I have a different point then you at this time.
Forgive me if I'm stepping over boundaries now, I am thinking you not only don't believe Jesus is real but also if He is real then you don't want anything to do with Him. I think this is all a giant misunderstanding and I'd like to learn more with you about the nature of God, if you're willing.
We can even step outside scripture (special revelation) and go to the observable universe (general revelation) and what that means for observers like us.
You're not stepping over any boundaries at all. You are correct in what you think. I don't believe Jesus was real, I believe he was a trick rustled up by Jews - a midrash from their scriptures to be sold to the Gentiles (as he was) in order that they would come to worship the god of the jews, which is what happened. By force and by persuasion. And all of our own gods and ways of life were prohibited by the Jews using the husk of the Roman Empire to enforce it - an Empire which became the holy Roman see and the seat of power of the Jewish Messiah, fulfilling Psalm 110. But bear in mind that Rome, for Jesus and the Jews, is the 'midst of thine enemies' from which he will rule. Not to mention all those dead bodies to come...
And if Jesus was real, then he's still a vile character who has set out to deceive not only the gentiles but even his fellow Jews. His main target however is us gentiles who he wishes to bring to utter destruction.
I'd not be keen to move on if that's ok as you still have that challenge pending...
Well, thank you for this fresh meat and I hope u/Thisisnotanexit doesn't mind my stepping in first, as we agree on a lot but not perfectly.
If you start with natural law, that rapidly leads to necessity for capital punishment for the incorrigible, and then to the possibility of just war against the incorrigibly belligerent society. If you have a problem with the idea of defending your nation with force when attacked, that's probably a separate discussion because most moral codes allow protection of the innocent.
The question turns to when to judge that a nation is sufficiently belligerent (hardened), and the degree of collateral risk against noncombatants. This is also a very detailed moral dilemma but is closer to the objection you are staking out. It seems that you're not objecting to the principle that nations have the right to judge that war against one of their number is better for all, and to judge who is included in that war; you're objecting to the loose application of this principle as many read it into the Bible. If we could never declare war against an attacking nation or determine for ourselves who constitutes combatants or what collateral risk is acceptable, that would be quite a difficult pacifism to walk.
It's my experience that the Biblical accounts indicate principles in this moral minefield that are at least as good as those of any other comparative system: this requires reading them in their context the same way as any other historical document, of course.
Your first passage, 1 Sam. 15:2-3, states the rationale directly, that Amalek had attacked Israel without cause (Ex. 17:8). In context Amalek "smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary", so grave an attack against a people on pilgrimage as to require continuous remembrance (Ex. 17:14-16, Deut. 25:17-19). They hadn't changed any later, as cited by the independent witness of Balaam, who also judged the people worthy of death (Num. 24:20); this is unlike the Kenites, who had been among Amalek but accepted terms of peace with Israel, 1 Sam. 15:6. Now, as with Egyptian justifications for its many wars, you could object that the history is wrong or exaggerated, but we don't have an objection that there are times when a nation should be judged for crimes against humanity, and attacking the feeble among a wearied people en masse is one such crime.
In those days it was also argued that one who attacks the weak (i.e. including the children) deserves to have one's own children attacked; the fact that we are (often) more sensitive nowadays is a further moral development, but still isn't an objection against the morality as it had developed that far. The fact is that the adults were all judged worthy of death by Samuel and Saul, and for the children in this case death was judged more merciful than alternatives (including their remaining alive to revive the rebellious nation). I believe that anyone seeking morality should be able to accept that the Creator, through the Cosmos, allows many unexplained deaths of children or "innocents" through many secondary causes, and that if we're not atheists we trust that there is a good reason for this. So it's not impossible for the Creator to communicate that a certain nation is so far gone that its children are better off spared from growing up in that nation, due to the secondary cause of war. Since that's possible, I don't have a problem with the theory that it may have happened on a couple occasions. When genocide occurs for any reason, I trust that the Creator knows who are truly dying in innocence and who are dying for their sins, and judges rightly.
The cattle are a separate issue, as the victor in a just war has the right to dedicate its spoils to its god rather than use it for other purposes. Saul's issue was that he agreed with the dedication and then didn't follow through. Samuel called this out publicly and said that Yahweh had said "It repenteth me" about it, which means not that he changed his mind but that Saul's kingship had turned away (repented) from him. Yahweh didn't leave Saul in that sense, Saul left.
Now you ask if this is a good, all-loving God. That's a moral question that I'll just allude to briefly. God being Love cannot mean rewarding the evil: sooner or later Love draws a line and allows justice and judgment. The complex transactions of God in the Bible demonstrate a very developed sense of how to draw those lines, and when I compare it to other systems I find it superior. Many who speak of omnibeneficence haven't thought through what it would actually mean as an attribute of deity.
Deut. 7:1-6 is similarly a judgment against various Canaanite tribes for their evil practices, well-documented in the Late Bronze Age archaeology. One reference to these evils, aside from idolatry itself being connected to many shrine immoralities, is that they bring diseases (7:15), including sexual; another reference is the Deut. 2 giants, several nations of which had already been dispossessed by other Semitic tribes, which was regarded as a judgment against their sexual immorality (Gen. 6), a judgment in which Israel had much precedent from which to participate. This is not about genocide against every other nation, but is surgically selected; the rules of just war require offering terms of peace, allowing coexistence. Also, Moses gives laws of war by which captives can be spared and naturalized, which apply in all these cases (Amalek being a specific exception).
Now, if a national god was in fact the true Creator it would be natural to affirm that all nations should come to know him; but this aspect is claimed by several gods, so we need not choose a priori, as it remains for them to continue competing in history as we study truth claims to determine which of them is correct.
You then regard Christianity as some kind of Jewish plot ("parasitisation") to subvert all these nations. Well, again, American Christianity today is great at hearing all competing truth claims and allowing discussion, so if this were true then the way it exists today as upholding rights of conscience is one of the best vehicles in which to discover any errors! I'm happy to discuss faults of Jews and Christians, but that is a separate matter from whether the true Creator is actually on Jesus's side and speaking truth through him.
Ps. 110:5-6 is of course warlike, though you have an exaggerated paraphrase and in the KJV it reads more rightly and generically as "He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries." If a king is unable to defeat enemies and wound heads when called for, yeah, that wouldn't be my Savior forever. It doesn't come close to implying that every Gentile will be killed. I don't see a problem with the psalm itself, or other multifaceted Messianic literature, unless racism is attributed to Jesus contrary to the historical record.
Is. 49:23 could be taken as Gentiles serving Israel, but the same passage (6) says "It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." Salvation and light to the Gentiles alongside Israel, where both are given to the Messiah "servant", means that all are equally serving the Messiah as the true representative of what Israel or any nation was supposed to be. I'm a love-slave of Jesus, sold to him unless truth should be otherwise. So I don't have a problem with the idea that all nations, including Israel, serve him in his kingdom, as he's proved his worthiness for it. I know that it's been said Talmudists take this triumphalistically, but that hasn't been demonstrated and doesn't inform the idea that they have any power to do so via Christianity apart from Jesus.
Micah 7:16-17 isn't really even an applicable passage, it comes in the midst of shepherding, compassion, and pardon (14, 18-19) for all who have the faith of Abraham (20), which precedes that one grandson Israel. Generic charges against the nations generally refer to whether they accept God's offer of peace or remain belligerent against him (hmm, returning theme), not to race.
TLDR: It takes eyes to distinguish advocacy for child murder from a wartime accepted risk of collateral death to children. The Bible gives hundreds of examples of moral decisionmaking and the couple times it discusses collateral damage appear to me to be some of the best guidance on the subject, compared to any other analyst. Child murderers write in a completely different way. Your difficulty blurring the two indicates you have some other objection, possibly founded in some other (European?) religious code that you haven't shared with us. By all means, teach us Odin and Yggdrasil if that has a better morality, but don't deconstruct one morality disingenuously without setting up something better in its place.
There are definite answers to this.
Understanding even just one of them requires patience; and there are many different answers, all of which have their own unique facet of truth.
Perhaps the place to begin is by looking at where these appear in Scripture, and how incredible it is that we can recover any meaning at all from such ancient scribblings. Have you devoted any effort to this?