Why God hates divorce - an alternate look

[Guest shiloh357]

9 minutes ago, StanJ said:

 you continually strive about English words which is not how you properly exegete the Bible.

http://religiondispatches.org/does-the-bible-really-call-homosexuality-an-abomination/

 

This is not an exegesis problem.  This is problem with your inaccurate theological claims.

If we listen to you then every Bible translator and every translation that says God hates sin got it wrong, and we are supposed to take your word for it or the word of someone you found who happens to agree with you.

Everyone here despite what you may think, knows how to read the Bible and many here are competent exegetes and are simply not buying your argument, because it's a wrong argument.

God's primary attribute isn't love.  God's primary attribute is Holiness.  God is holy above all, and for that reason he hates, detests and thus, judges sin.   It is something God abhors and the Greek, Hebrew, Latin, English, French and German, all of those theological languages bear that out.  

You are in a debate that you're not going to win.

[nebula]

23 minutes ago, StanJ said:

Our fallen nature was the source of our carnal nature.  not something inanimate as you choose to believe. 

How does our fallen nature have the power to create?

[Steve_S]

1 hour ago, StanJ said:

1.  I've already given one example and you rejected it
2.  I'm pretty sure giving you more would not change your mind
3.  like I said, linguistics is a difficult matter and to reconcile a source and destination language doesn't always work. Does the word 'all' in the Bible always mean  Everything or everyone? What  about Matthew 4:8?

1.  I did not reject it, I'm not an expert in translation, most experts roundly reject it I reject it based upon the arguments or more learned men than myself and the fact that there is a massive consensus by God-fearing men on the translation.

2.  Why would you make that assumption? I will listen to any argument if it is made from a position of reasonability. Could you provide the list, please?

3.  It's very rarely difficult to reconcile one word into another language, it's just that sometimes it takes more than one single word to get the idea across in the translation. What would be so difficult about using "oppose" instead of "hate" if indeed "oppose" is the best translation? It would seem that thousands of experts in hebrew disagree that oppose is a reasonable approximation, as none of them have ever used it, to my knowledge, in an actual bible translation.

I'm also having a hard time finding the logic in arguing that, firstly, that there is no word that it translates while simultaneously arguing that it translates to "oppose." 

[nebula]

10 minutes ago, StanJ said:

 I'm talking about the God of the Bible not the god of your misunderstanding.

How would you describe how God feels about "haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers."?

[Ezra]

50 minutes ago, StanJ said:

I'm talking about the God of the Bible not the god of your misunderstanding.

Really?  And who is the God mentioned in Hebrews 1:9? Which is a direct quotation from the Old Testament.

Give it up Stan.  You have no case. And there is no conflict or contradiction in Scripture.  It is time to say "I am seriously mistaken".

The same God who loved the world and gave His Only Begotten Son, is the same God who hates iniquity and hates divorce.

[StanJ]

3 hours ago, shiloh357 said:

This is not an exegesis problem.  This is problem with your inaccurate theological claims.

If we listen to you then every Bible translator and every translation that says God hates sin got it wrong, and we are supposed to take your word for it or the word of someone you found who happens to agree with you.

Everyone here despite what you may think, knows how to read the Bible and many here are competent exegetes and are simply not buying your argument, because it's a wrong argument.

God's primary attribute isn't love.  God's primary attribute is Holiness.  God is holy above all, and for that reason he hates, detests and thus, judges sin.   It is something God abhors and the Greek, Hebrew, Latin, English, French and German, all of those theological languages bear that out.  

You are in a debate that you're not going to win.

Definitely is when you don't see for yourself what the words in the origin language really connote.

It's not about winning it's about telling the truth  and seeing that a God who is love does not hate in the sense that you understand it, or are you looking for a reason to justify your hatred.

[StanJ]

2 hours ago, Davida said:

Well Stan, I see where you are coming from -the article is from the lefty U of southern California. If this article is reflective of your opinion then I would guess that you don't believe in the Bible as the Word of God or that it is written by God as in God-inspired.

2Tim 3:16 "Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness,"
From a quick scan of article , it seems to believe the view that the OT is just about cultural history and that it really is nothing that expresses God's thoughts. I used to belong to a denomination that preached along those lines and I left, since it was preaching a God of their own clever imagining rather then the GOD of the Bible. 

As far as these scholars are concerned , I think it is really a case of:

Rom 1: 22 " Professing themselves wise they really became fools." 

As well this verse comes to mind for me.  This speaks to me of those that believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and do not care to mess with it, but to be spiritually fed & glean it's wisdom & blessings:

1 Cor 1: 27 "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."  

sadly it sounds to me like you're focused more on homosexuality rather than the proper connotation of abomination, which was my point.

[StanJ]

4 hours ago, nebula said:

How would you describe how God feels about "haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers."?

 I would say God feels about these sins the same way he feels about ANY sin, that it is not acceptable.

[StanJ]

9 minutes ago, Davida said:

An excerpt from the above article:

"Now, if by “abomination,” the King James means a cultural prohibition—something which a particular culture abhors but another culture enjoys—then the term makes sense. But in common parlance, the term has come to mean much more than that. Today, it connotes something horrible, something contrary to the order of nature itself, or God’s plan, or the institution of the family, or whatever. It is this malleability of meaning, and its close association with disgust, that makes “abomination” a particularly abominable word to use. The term implies that homosexuality has no place under the sun (despite its presence in over 300 animal species), and that it is an abomination against the Divine order itself. Again, toevah is not a good thing—but it doesn’t mean all of that.

Progressive religionists must stop using the word “abomination” to refer to toevah. The word plays into the hands of fundamentalists on the one hand, and anti-religious zealots on the other, both of whom want to depict the Bible as virulently and centrally concerned with the “unnatural” acts of gays and lesbians. In fact, toevah is mostly about idolatry, and male homosexual behavior is only as abominable as remarriage or not keeping kosher. Whenever we use the word “abomination” we are perpetuating the misunderstanding of biblical text and the religious persecution of LGBT people.

Personally, I like “taboo” as a replacement. It conveys the culturally relative nature of toevah, has some connotation of foreignness, and rightly aligns the taboo against homosexuality with taboos against, for example, eating unkosher food. It also has a vaguely archaic feel, which it should. Admittedly, “taboo” began as tabu, and specifically refers to a particular concept in Pacific indigenous religion; it is a bit inexact to import it to Judaism and Christianity. Yet the word has, by now, entered the common parlance, and in that general sense, it matches toevah fairly well. (Alternatively, we could stick with the Hebrew term, the foreignness of which heightens the foreignness of the biblical concerns about homosexuality.) One thing remains clear, though: what’s really abominable here is the word “abomination” itself."

Is this scholarly work a remaking God in our own image or what??

it is an attempt to quantify a word that has been misused since it first appeared in the King James version of the Bible. I don't have a problem putting into perspective who God actually is and not what certain translations have made him out to be.  Does anybody really think that God has degrees of sin and that the concept of mortal and venial sins from the Catholic Church is a tenable one.  The issue is not whether almost homosexuality is acceptable, because the Bible clearly shows it is not,  the issue is whether or not we probably understand 'abomination' in the context of scripture.  I'm amazed at how everyone on this thread so far avoids the fact that scripture says God is love and are willing to accept that a God that is love, can hate.  We were made in God's image but that doesn't mean that he is like us. 

Does anybody really believe that Luke 14:26 is to be taken literally?

[StanJ]

29 minutes ago, Davida said:

"sadly" ? that was what the article was referring to Stan, and using this as an example of misusing the translation as meaning "abomination"

no it was about the proper understanding of abomination but like I said, sadly you focus on a typical right-wing Christian attitude about homosexuality rather than understanding what Abomination really means.