What's a 'Red-Letter Christian'?

Originally posted by SuperBaptist:

Just because a person starts a thread does NOT make him/her the dictator of what can or cannot be posted in that thread. This is a PUBLIC forum. If you can't back up what you say scripturally, then keep quiet. We have produced scripture--you ignore them.

John 5:39: Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me

DHK pretty much laid out the rules for you--instead of jumping on the Moderators--why not start your own board!

 

I dont have my desktop Bible on this computer so I dont know the exact words and verse but didnt Jesus say something about starting at moses and going all through the scriptures that these all testified of HIM?

The same Holy Spirit that inspired one Bible writer inspired the others to write what they wrote.


claudia

 

Tell you what. When the yet to be named coward / gossiper comes on here and identifies themselves, maybe we can talk. As of yet, you still haven't told me who this person is that I have personally attacked.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Now we really are into gossip, hearsay, innuendo, backbiting, ets. This needs to stop.
What is being said is neither edifying nor is it said in grace.
What is the topic of this thread. Let's get back to it.
DHK

 

DHK,

You are correct. My apologies.

Joseph Botwinick

 

1 Corinthians 14:37
37 If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.

Maybe we should be putting Paul's words in red too?

 

The phrase "Thus saith the Lord" is used 430 times in the Bible, and none of them are in the New Testament.

 

Good point, DHK!

"I am the Lord thy God" appears 7 times and it is not in red either!

 

"I am the Lord" appears 162 times
"I am God" appears 9 times

 

I agree with many of the comments made by Campolo how it is unfortunate how Republican right wing politics is so strongly associated with Christianity in the US. I believe that association is one that does appear to ignore much of Christ's words of grace and peace.

I do like the label red-letter Christian in that it focuses on Christ's words which I believe are of paramount importance for those who call themselves Christian and often seem to be missing from many popular right-wing political expressions of Christianity.

I don't like the label red-letter Christian in that it appears to devalue the rest of Scripture which I consider to be a serious mistake.

 

Exactly!

To my mind, the rest of Scripture has to be interpreted through (not devalued by) the lens of the Incarnation - the supreme revelation of God to Man. Verses of Scripture which, if read literally, contradict that revelation, must therefore be interpreted in other ways. For example, there is absolutely no way I could take the passages where God commands genocide and infanticide to be literally true, since such a literal interpretation would manifestly contradict the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

 

What passages are you talking about, and what do you mean when you say literally?

Deuteronomy 20:16-18
16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:
18 That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.

These commands to the Israelites were very literal. Are we to apply these commands to ourselves literally today? Of course not, but that doesn't negate the reality that God gave these commands to be literally followed. Saul got in trouble in 1Samuel 15 for not obeying the Lord's command to slay everything of the Amalekites.

1 Samuel 15:3-11
3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

8 And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
9 But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.
10 Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying,
11 It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.

 

Yep. Those verses, plus Josh 6:17-21 and Ezek 9:6 as a couple of other examples. If you read those literally, how does that make God morally superior to any other genocidal maniac such as Hitler, Saddam or Milosevic?

 

Hmmm, If you don't read those literally, then you are viewing a book of fairytales through the lens of the incarnation of a book of fairytales. God destroyed all the world except for eight people by water, and He is going to do it again by fire. How can you question the morals of the author of everything?

Matthew 13:39-42
39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Hitler sent some people to the furnace. Do you want to compare Jesus to Hitler?

 

You tell me. The Matt quote is talking about eternal punishment not temporal genocide. I ask the quesiton again: how is the god created by a thoroughgoingly-literal interpretation of the OT morally different from Hitler or Pol Pot?

 

Is this the old liberal question God's justice song and dance? Who are you to question God's justice, or attempt to change God's Word to try and justify God's actions? I think God is above mankind and our puny little pee-size finite brains and that we have no right to judge God.

Joseph Botwinick

 

We throw that "who are we to question God" quickly, in issues like this, but the irony is that we often have not even read the passage throughly, yet the reading we come up with causes a lot of problems in the world we are called to witness to. (and the objecting world and takes our word for it, and reacts accordingly). Yet we don't care, and instead love to revel in "hard doctrine" that offends others.

Here is an excerpt from http://members.aol.com/etb700/relativism.html (my defense of Christianity/the Bible to the world) where I discuss these types of passages:

The first time we see this, it is with the Midianites, who had been at constant war with the Israelites who "vex[ed them] with their wiles", and were "beguiling" them, into once again, idolatry. (Numbers 25:18) So in chapter 31, God tells Moses to "avenge" the children of Israel. All of the males (adults, apparently) were slain (v.7). The women and "little ones" were taken captive (v.9). Then, Moses, angry that the women (who were all used to lure Israel into sinning against God) instructs the armies to kill the males among the little ones, as well as all women who were married, while the unmarried would be kept as wives for the Israelites. Obviously, the point of killing the male children and their mothers were so that these people would not grow up within Israel and be taught by their mothers or any ther survivors to retaliate, as well as, of course, spread idolatry. So for one thing, that was actually Moses' particular decision, not necessarily God's. God had initially commanded "driving out" those nations. But we see, Israel did not always drive them out thoroughly, and they were far too impressionable, religiously. So Moses often used his own discretion on how the people should be cleaned out. God condoned it, but in this entire era of Biblical history, God allowed many things that were really not His will, and which of course, are forbidden to His people today. (Acts 17:30). This would later be repeated in Judges 21 with the people of Jabesh-gilead, a city of Israelites that failed to show up for the census, and thus broke an important oath. This however was neither God's instruction, but rather the sons of Jacob (fathers of the 12 tribes) who were in a state of infighting. So a lot of the killing we see recorded in the Bible is not really God's instruction, but just the decisions of men at war. In places like Numbers 21:1-3, 34,5, it was actually the entire nation of Israel's "vow" to God to utterly destroy them and "smite all the people, until there was none left alive". God granted the people into their hand to fulfil this, but did not necessarily command them to do it that extensively as to kill the children. Now, entering Deuteronomy, keep in mind that this is the "Second giving of the Law", and is the words of Moses (1:1-3) reiterating the commandments God had given Him. God commanded to drive out the pagan nations, and Moses would direct how these wars were to be carried out. So in chapter 7, he speaks of "utterly destroying" them, but does not specify children. It was the fighting men who would be killed, and the societies, and most importantly the religious items that were the focus. Then, in chapter 20, when instructing the Israelites on cleaning out what would become the Holy Land, the first method would be to "proclaim peace" to the city they arrive at (v.10). If they answer peaceably, then there would be no war. If they fight, then they were to besiege it and smite the males, but keep the women and little ones. However, of the six worst nations, the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, they were to "save nothing that breathes" (v.16,17). Once again, this was because of the utter defilement of those tribes, "that they teach you not to do all of their abominations which they have done unto their gods" (v.18) —including making the sacrifice of children (12:31), which God, in this last passage seemed to have a special hatred for.
(I then go on to explain how God's allowance of the slaughter as far as the children were concerned may have even been an act of mercy, rather than some hatred or retribution against them; given the detrimental spiritual and psychological effect a life of ritual abuse has).
Joshua, the same thing. We need to step back and ask Who is speaking there?

Ezekiel seems to be a prophecy. The leaders commanded to destroy seemed to be symbolic (prerhaps for the angels of wrath. The prophet was after all taken into a vision, with cherubs present and all--prev. chapter). Is this even something that happened back then, or did it look forward to the final destruction of Jerusalem in AD70? In any case, of course, God has the right to take any life He gave, but the main objection is God telling humans to kill rather than Him doing it Himself. Remember, the Islamists trying to destroy us are operating under the same principle, and we can say "but that's different, because our God is true and theirs is not", but with the decadence of the West, and how it creeps in over there, as well as the greed, questionable motives int he mideast, etc. they have a point in that, if you really want to look up to the OT slayings. But of course, that's a different story, when WE turn out to be the "pagan tribe".

Another place this mistake was made was in Genesis 9. Nowhere does it say "God cursed Canaan" (Let alone all of Ham). It was Noah who said that (as well as "Let him be a servant to his bretheren") (v.25-27) Yet centuries of racism was justified on some divine curse of "inferiority" and "servitude" on a group of people, and neither those interpreting this, notr those who would then reject the Bible on that basis ever looked at what the actual text said. And Romans 9 is another one that is taken way out of its context by certain people to teach some "hard doctrine".

 

Is this the old liberal question God's justice song and dance? Who are you to question God's justice, or attempt to change God's Word to try and justify God's actions? I think God is above mankind and our puny little pee-size finite brains and that we have no right to judge God.

Joseph Botwinick </font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, thanks for the simplistic answer So if God bayonets a baby and roasts it slowly over a fire, it's OK then, because it's God doing it?

 

Eric, thank you for your more thoughful post. Some comments arising:

Hmmm...not so very different from the 'ethnic cleansings' in Yugoslavia in the 1940s and 1990s.

Interesting points.

Not sure I buy that one: the same argument has been used to justify the abortion of Downs Syndrome, spina bifida and other handicapped babies ie: the quality of their lives will be poor, therefore best to 'mercy kill' them in the womb

Both good points.

 

Once again, in that respect; I appeal to Acts 17:30. Once again, you have to understand that all of that was under "the Law". The Law stated that man sinned, and the wages of sin is death. It was all a lesson as to the severity of sin and its consequences. (and that no matter how much you simply preach Law or punish him for it; even that would not make man reform). But in the Gospel, we see that was not really God's ultimate will. He permitted it as part of the lesson He was writing, just as he permitted polygamy, and "an eye for an eye". etc. Nobody has the right to use any of that to justify their actions today, because precisely the lesson being taught was that all of us really deserve that. (Who would even qualify to be God's executioner, rather than the subject?)
But that's the lesson many hadn't/haven't learned. It's a shame so many through history have gotten this wrong, and not only try to continue it, but some had even come to believe from it that the Old and New Testaments had separate Gods; one good and one evil.