So this refers to something that perhaps feels unjust to you, but you expect that God has a darn good reason for it, so that’s why you do not label that aspect as “unjust.”
Posted Jun 9, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC
Yes, it's unjust that God justifies and saves people through no goodness or merit of their own.
Beause we have no goodness or merit of our own
Eternal hell for finite actions
And are you okay with this because you feel that God is “perfectly just”?
This used to be the case for me, I had a hard time dealing with isolated situations in the Old Testament until I read the Bible in historical order for the first time.
Honestly no. Sorry I don’t have a more interesting answer.
It's going to be hard for people to respond well to these types of questions.
(1) Probably some people are afraid you're crowdsourcing "arguments against Christianity." In a complex way, every religion, philosophy, ethnicity, profession, and subculture will have some 'inside baseball' that if fully exposed to non-members would look bad. There would be symmetry with any other group, but it might appear asymmetrical unless everyone was reading in good faith and steelmanning people's positions.
The question you're asking is almost a catch-22. If you were a Christian on the prayer chain phone calls you would get a different answer as to what someone finds difficult to reconcile with their moral intuitions than you will get as a stranger on reddit.
(2) Acceptance of the Bible in rather legalistic terms means that, not only is it all morally good, but if one disagrees, it's a sign of their own moral failure, but never a sign of anything wrong with the scripture, the traditional interpretation of it, or God. Basically, you're subject to the more powerful force (God) and you're also responsible to accept it all as a single unified package as it is presented. Your level of accepting it, even to the point of 'liking it' will be viewed socially, as well as likely internally as "spiritual maturity." It may even be viewed as intellectual maturity.
(3) If one's primary moral duty is assent to the will of the Big Man, regardless of their own judgements or moral intuition on any matter (which is 'as filthy as a menstrual rag'), and the eternal welfare of one's soul literally depends on this, then moral imagination will be severely curtailed. Someone going down that particular path is not going to have, in good faith, explored a lot of side roads. Maybe once "but they repented" -- So in some sense, in good faith, the structure of beliefs might have prevented them from even seeing what you are asking for.
(4) This forum (mostly) skews conservative. These aren't the only ways to read the Bible.
One could read the Bible within deep contexts, and try to extract principles well beyond the literal readings. Instead of seeing Paul as meaningfully forbidding all women from teaching all men forever, for example, one might see Paul as forbidding women in 50ad (who might have been extremely uneducated and skewing very young, since many died in childbirth) from teaching men of that time. So one might extract a principle from this that a woman with a degree in theology and a PhD in 2023, who is the more privileged and educated party, might actually be required to teach men who are less educated, by the principle underlying those passages. The same passages could hold two radically different outcomes depending on how the context is read or ignored and whether one is reading litigiously or not. Keep in mind, not everyone reads the Bible litigiously, and the people who might want to talk to you on reddit could be systematically skewed in one direction (or the other).
"Turn the other cheek" goes against my default nature. I'm more of a "Don't start none, won't be none" disposition. Also "obey the government" is the opposite of how I was brought up as a rugged individualist.
But since I don't think I am the arbiter of what's right in objective reality, I understand I have to adjust my thinking to what God says. Intellectually, I can analyze it and see that God's way really is better, but that doesn't mean it always feels that way to me.
The Bible says "there is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof is the way of death."
Human history is full of people that FELT like what they were doing was right, but it was not. I don't think I'm superior to all other humans, so I must be fallible in that same way, and should not trust my feelings to guide me with 100% accuracy. That's what I need God's word for.
No
Good God. Bad Devil.
There are parts of the Bible that I initially read and was like "what the heck is this?" And it wasn't the idea that a something a just God allows must be just, it was simply trying to understand the mindset of the culture and how they worked. Things made sense and the justness and the righteousness was made apparent.
The way you ask this question it kind of sounds like you are fishing for circular reasoning with us. Most of us though come to realize God is right, not that something must be right because God said so.
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At the beginning of my journey many of the war scenes seemed unjust. But then I thought about war now and it's pretty much the same stuff. So... No.
But there are some things that I recognize would be unjust if a human did them but since its God it is just.
That's pretty much any death. If I cause a death it's not just. Because I'm not above the other person. As God is the giver and taker of all life, any life he takes is within his right.
We love the Lord's every word, will and way, if that's what you mean. He is the embodiment of perfection.
Not really.
If I know that God has a just reason for stuff... It doesn't feel unjust, everything feels annoying/against my will, or welcome.
Homosexuality being a sin
Why? It's just as abnormal as say incest, not part of our design. Sorry for harsh words but that's how I see it
Because I am uncomfortable with the idea that 2 consenting and loving adults cannot be together. And I do not put homosexuality on the same level as incest.
The thing is that Man and Woman are designed for each other. Sure you can and actually have to love others, but having analsex with another man is just pure lust.
Is anal sex between a man and a woman just pure lust as well?
Why is homosexuality not on the same level as incest though. Both are 2 consenting adults that live each other. Incest actually makes more sense to me than homosexuality.