alphaparticle

This is an enormous amount of theological speculation.

I'm afraid you missed my point. Look again at v 29. It says not to prostitute your daughter lest you defile *the land*. The land is Israel. These are commandments given to the Israelites *explicitly* in the context. Therefore I would not use v 29 here to argue against prostituting your daughter, I'd use a plethora of other verses which more clearly deal with believers in a general sense. The only thing I can take away from these verses is how God wanted Israel and how He wanted the Israelites to behave. Gaining insight into what we believers should do from that is very tricky business.

26“You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes. 27You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard. 28You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord. 29“Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, lest the land fall into prostitution and the land become full of depravity. 30You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord. Okay. Looking at verse 29, I think you could make many solid arguments that making your daughter a prostitute is sinful on many levels. But I would not use v 29 here to make the case, because, you should not due it because "the land" could become full of depravity. The land, here, in v 29, is Israel. The context of these verses has to do with the Israelite people and the land of Israel. That is what all of these laws are about. To argue any of these straightforwardly applies to believers in general you need to make the case.

butero, it is clearly, in the context, a rule that applies specifically to the Israelites given the explanations for the rule in the verse itself. The verses in question fairly clearly don't apply to mere decoration. Your interpretation of 'why' is what is highly speculative.

Nearly everything you've said there is pure speculation. That is not what is actually in Leviticus. I am not sure why you think we ought to observe this small item of Leviticus (which isn't about mere decoration anyway) but ignore most every other rule that applied to the Israelites.

I don't see how it violates the body as a temple to have a tattoo. That verse in the NT seems to be, in context, about moral issues. Using that to argue against tattoos is therefore circular. That being said, fundamentally I may actually agree with you. If you feel that you'd be violating God's desires for us by getting a tattoo, right or wrong, you probably shouldn't be doing that. Perhaps the arguments in 1 cor 8 would apply here.

The 'no tattoo' thing appears to be a point of law that applied to the Israelites. I don't see how it is appropriate to apply that to anything else. It doesnt' strike me as true to the context at all.

I may take this thread as a sign to pull the trigger on one I have been considering for a while. Well, depending on how the wife feels of course....

Sure, that makes sense. I should clarify I am not against them or what they do at all, merely that in my case I have found it wisest to do something else.

Yeah true. I wouldn't argue against that. If people find this is better, then, more power to them. I have just found being direct is better for my own circumstances as the Jews I know are incredibly suspicious of any hint of "Jews for Jesus" type of schtick. When I straight up say I'm a Christian and not use a time like Jewish believer, there has been less wariness.

I use the word convert because that's what I did. I use the terms OT and NT because that's how I see it. I see no reason to soft pedal that sort of thing and find that being upfront is more respectful. No matter what I do, there will be Jews who are offended I am a Christian, but Paul warns us about that. 2 Cor 2:15,16 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? But then again, I grew up hearing that 'Christians' were responsible for the holocaust, among other things, so I also already knew I wasn't going to be the favorite of some when I converted to Christianity.

dust in the wind my friends, dust in the wind.

Well, that cuts both ways. Some want to say that any critique of Islam counts as an irrational hatred of the religion, and that is to shut up conversation. That is no good. Clearly Islam has many problems, and is more problematic than other false religions insofar as it promotes violence and silences dissent through fear in unfortunate ways. I agree though that at times distaste for Islam becomes ridiculous when someone will pick on any little minor thing and blow it all out of proportion, assume all Muslims want to blow people up etc., which is clearly ridiculous. There is a line of reasonableness between the extreme views that "Islam is a religion of peace" and "all Muslims are terrorists" that is hard to come by.

Since the glory of God is indeed light, why should we doubt that God is Light? Ultimately all light (physical and spiritual) comes from God or is created by God. When He said "Let there be light" He created light with just a few words. As a matter of fact, after the new heavens and the new earth come into existence, God Himself and the Lamb will be the Light of the New Jerusalem, as well as the earth (Rev 21:23). There will be no need for the sun. It's from God. God created and controlled it. It's not God.

I'm not sure why the focus is always so much on dress codes vis a vis Islam. If you were to visit an orthodox Jewish synagogue, there would be all sorts of restrictions that way yet I don't hear the outrage. Ayin's example is even more interesting insofar they are Christians. None of that is to lend credibility to Islam as a religion, but worrying about wearing a headscarf inside a mosque seems like the wrong thing to get up in arms about.

I find this interesting but strange. Obviously she has a right to her reactions that way, but I am absolutely certain the loss of a child (for instance, God forbid) would be orders of magnitude more painful than the infidelity of a spouse for me.

Personally no I don't..... and it's probably because I have needed to be forgiven for a short time in my life of things I don't even want to think about.... short term stupidity and knowing you have been forgiven by both God and others for many things during that year or so makes it very hard not to forgive when people really do ask for forgiveness. If my wife was unfaithful it would be impossible to forgive unless God himself did something...... and being a reason for divorce, that's one thing that I'm not sure he asks us to forgive... I don't think forgiving means having to remain married. We are commanded to forgive others aren't we?

Just means the light source was not a fixed source like a star / sun. The previous versus essentially establish that time itself and wave lengths were being introduced / created. While there is no precise evidence as to how long an interval these events were, it is an educated guess that they were 24 hours long since the realm being set up would reverberate based on that cycle length. The rhythm of life. Also too the cycle of the week / weekly sabbath was not 6 eons shall you work and on the 7th eon you shall rest. A thing God could have done with the antediluvians... making a week about 7 generations long. So there's no reason to believe he shortened thousands of years to 7 days (week) because people don't live so long to memorialize the creation week. Yes but you are making a few assumptions here. One is, it makes sense to have a morning/evening with a fixed light source other than the sun, that was there, and there was a 'morning and evening' in 24 hr increments. None of this is actually stated. I'm not seeing how this is the an 'obvious' interpretation of the text at all. It seems as though some people think that days ought to be read as 24 hr periods, even with the creation account, then see how that could work given the potential difficulty I posted about. But, if you aren't going into it thinking that, it's not clear to me why you'd land on that position.

The church is not a building but the local assembly of believers. But since Christians do meet in designated buildings, that should be a given. And just because something is not specified in the NT does not mean that it is invalid. Printing the Gospel on paper and distributing it as tracts is not specificied in the NT either. Would you therefore question its validity? I would question that it is implicitly obligatory, or even a preferable method of spreading the gospel. Likewise I question that getting married in a church building ought to be considered the default, or best method.

I never saw a particular reason to get married in a church building. That isn't specified in the NT as far as I can tell.

If a woman doesn't like the headscarf policy, she could not work there, or if she changes her mind about the headscarf policy after being employed, she has a right to quit showing up to work. The company has a right to stop paying her.A company doesn't have a right to force an employee to stay employed, or stay on the grounds, or submit to discipline. If some employee doesn't like a policy he has a right to walk away, and the employer has a right not to pay him anymore. Forcing hand removal isn't on the table.

What the... "hope it helps"? It's somewhat more than GR "counterevangelism". More like a: "Step By Step, Excruciatingly Detailed, Irrefutable, Point by Point..... Taking to The Woodshed and Bludgeoning Senseless--- on the Altar of Basic Reasoning" motif. hope that helps I don't know, it made sense in my head. Too much laundry today.

An excellent point . My general point is what it is but generally relevant.

Can you imagine the chaos if we would apply this illogical and irrational principle to the rest of Scripture -- indeed to the rest of everything? True is False, False is True, Day is Night, Night is Day, Black is White, White is Black? I trust you get the absurdity of your idea. Not all. This is completely unique insofar this involves the very beginning of physical anything. The only other time this could possibly come up as a source of confusion is perhaps when God talks about ending history. Chaos is not lurking around the corner.

What do you mean by light? if you mean electromagnetic radiation, which is physical light, which is the only thing Einstein could mean, clearly God is not that. If you mean the Light of the World, that is some kind of metaphorical language, clearly does not mean physical light, and Einstein wasn't talking about that at all. By the way, Einstein wasn't confused about 'where' light (electromagnetic radiation) comes from. Do you have a specific quote in mind?