In all my discussions with religious individuals throughout the years, no one has ever been able to explain to me what “Christian values” are. Are they any different than non-Christian values? Than non-religious values? What exactly are they?
In terms of the Bible, I’ve read it, and I dare say there is little morality contained in that book. As a wise man wrote: “Once purged of the insane, plagiarisms, illegalities, contradictions and the perverse, the Bible could be printed on match book covers while increasing its usefulness.”
Here are some verses found in the “holy” Bible; both from the Old Testament and the New. Someone please explain to me where good moral values can be found in these words… TGO
Behold, I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces…
Malachi 2:3
…The Lord will smite with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts.
Isaiah 3:17
I will strew your flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcass. I will drench the land even to the mountains with your flowing blood…
Ezekiel 32:5
I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rend them.
Hosea 13:8
Pass through the city after him, and smite; your eye shall not spare and you shall show no pity; slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women…
Ezekiel 9:5
Behold the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger… Whoever is found will be thrust through and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes, their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.
Isaiah 13:9, 13:15
Therefore, fathers shall eat their sons in the midst of you and sons shall eat their fathers… I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they shall rob you of your children; pestilence and blood shall pass through you; and I will bring a sword upon you. I, the Lord, have spoken.
Ezekiel 5:10, 5:17
And I will fill your mountains with the slain; on your hills and in your valleys and in all your ravines those slain with the sword shall fall… Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 35:8
… I make weal and create woe; I am the Lord, who do all these things.
Isaiah 45:7
But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me.
Luke 19:27
Do not think that I have come to bring peace on Earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law…
Matthew 10:34
The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnaces of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.
Matthew 13:49
He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.
John 3:36
And that servant who knew his master’s will, but did not make ready or act according to his will, shall receive a severe beating.
Luke 12:47
If one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:26
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money.
Exodus 21:20
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: You may buy male and female slaves from the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness.
Leviticus 25:44
Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy… and they shall be your possession… They shall be your bondmen forever.
Leviticus 25:45-46
Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect…
Titus 2:9
Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ…
Ephesians 6:5
But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, then you shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones…
Deuteronomy 22:20
… They have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them? Therefore I will give their wives to others…
Jeremiah 8:9
I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire will be for your husband.
Genesis 3:16
Behold the day of the Lord is coming, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in the midst of you. For I will gather the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the horses plundered and the women ravished…
Zechariah 14:1
… I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the light of this Sun.
2 Samuel 12:11
Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives…
Romans 7:2
For the wife does not rule over her own body, but her husband does…
1 Corinthians 7:4
For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman but woman for man.
1 Corinthians 11:8
Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord.
Ephesians 5:22
Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your husbands…
1 Peter 3:1
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
1 Corinthians 14:34
… So when he went into his brother’s wife he spilled semen on the ground… And what he did (spilling semen) was displeasing to the Lord and he slew him also.
Genesis 38:9
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
1 Timothy 2:11
And David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem…
2 Samuel 5:13
When men fight with one another, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall have no pity.
Deuteronomy 25:11
And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profanes her father; she shall be burnt with fire.
Leviticus 21:9
Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against God. They shall fall by the sword; their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
Hosea 13:10
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Psalm 137:9
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
AFP
Britain is a Christian nation and should not be afraid of standing up for Christian values to help counter the country’s “moral collapse”, Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday.
In a rare foray into religion by a British premier, Cameron said “live and let live” had too often become “do what you please” in Britain.
The “passive tolerance” of immoral behaviour had helped fuel the August riots, excess in the banking industry and home-grown Islamist terror, he said.
“We are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so,” Cameron said at an event in Oxford, southern England, to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.
“The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today. Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.
The alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option.”
Cameron described himself as a committed but only “vaguely practising” member of the Church of England, who was “full of doubts” about big theological issues.
“We’ve got stand up for our values if we are to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations,” he said.
“Moral neutrality or passive tolerance just isn’t going to cut it any more.
“Shying away from speaking the truth about behaviour, about morality has actually helped to cause some of the social problems.”
Cameron said that along with the works of William Shakespeare, the King James Bible was a “high point of the English language”.
“The Bible has helped to shape the values which define our country,” he said.
“Responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, love, pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities — these are the values we treasure.
“Yes, they are Christian values. And we should not be afraid to acknowledge that.
“But they are also values that speak to us all — to people of every faith and none. And I believe we should all stand up and defend them.”
People who say that would be “doing down other faiths” were “profoundly wrong”.
Must be the brain eating amoeba affecting you!
Just as you won’t find TGOian values in the writings of The GhostRider, you wouldn’t find GhostRidian values in your words either. You won’t find Christian values in the words of Malachi, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, nor John, Paul, George, or Ringo. Christian values are those that come from it’s founder, Jesus Christ, and no one else. Of course that doesn’t mean that nether you nor Ringo exhibit Christian values but as such, neither of you would be attributed for their conception.
Specifically, if one wanted to now just exactly what Christian values are, one would go to “The Sermon on the Mount”, to find the Beatitudes, a collection of sayings and teachings of Jesus, which emphasizes his moral teaching. Together, these values attributed to the words of Jesus Christ, presented a new set of ideals that focus on love and humility rather than force and exaction.
Although many religious and moral thinkers have admired its message, man does not focus on those teachings as they are considered to be one of the main sources of Christian pacifism and as you know, man is not a pacifist.
But, tis truly is better to turn the other cheek, than to take an eye for an eye.
GhostRider Wisdom…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.