Here is a video clip young at heart singing “forever young” very moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4kqfYsOe4M&feature=related

I was thinking, can you have a seemingly perfect or accurate orthodoxy and have a nonexistent or shabby orthopraxy?
Can you have a orthopraxy like St. Francis or Mother Theresa and have the orthodoxy of Oprah or Larry King?

Which of those two scenarios would Jesus track with?

I am saddened by the amount of Christians that will leave a healthy giving vibrant community of friends and family because of their orthodoxy not aligning perfect. My feeling is the reason there are so many sects of Christianity is that orthodoxy is king not orthopraxy.
We can come to a unity of the faith when we focus on orthopraxy. Not to many people will argue that helping the poor, healing the brokenhearted , forgiving 70×7, love your enemies, serve others to serve God and the like are good solid doctrines from the mouth of Christ. We can unify on these practices even if we are at odds with an orthodoxy issue.

Orthodoxy driven people often use phrases like “you’re going down a dangerous path” or “that’s a slippery slope you’re on”. I like to ask “where is that path or slope going to take me?” They never answer. Maybe its orthodoxy that leads to the slippery slope.

I think that one myth in our world is that Christians aren’t logical whereas non-Christians are. The problem is that most of them haven’t studied logic or any of the classical philosophers that set the table for argumentation. So then we have a cat fight. It’s ridiculous. I think you are right on with how a lot of them just aren’t listening but there are some who are and they are worth it. That’s the long and the short of it.

Where are you working now a days?

Thank you for your kind words about my post, but actually it wasn’t well written at all. I didn’t tie my thoughts together as well as I thought I did last night.

I agree with you a 100%. I didn’t want to get technical with God revealing Himself in other ways other than the bible just for argument sake. But ofcourse I don’t believe the bible is the only source. If that was true than what about all the generation of people who knew God and had experienced Him before Moses came along and wrote the Torah?
So yeah that was just for the sake of the arguement because I was trying to make the point that a christian should be curious to know details about the bible since he/she has faith in it. “One should always know why they believe what they believe in” (J.P. Moreland told me this in person when he visited my college back in 2003)

As far as the kids i worked with… one not wanting to stop having sex. I only mentioned that story to support my argument in that poeple try and fit christ in their lifestyle the way they want to, and if He doesn’t agree than they cut Him out. Convenience is the word I used. My argument is that people believe in what is convenient to them and their beliefs of what is right and what is wrong.

The last thing I said was to approach non-christians with caution. I was basically saying the samething you said in your last paragraph of your reply, “I can only respond to what is in front of me.” I don’t know who might be in front of you and asking you these questions. That would be up to you to analyze the situation and figure out the right course of action.

The people I interact with are scholars, PhDs from work, lawyer friends and etc. They come prepared in an argument with me and so I answer like Jesus did in Luke 20.
But ofcourse my approach was totally different at the christian retreat dealing with 14 yr olds when similar questions were asked out of curiosity.

I do agree that we should bridge the gap as much as possible, I mean it is our job to preach the good news to everyone ain’t it?
But I think your approach with most adults will just lead you into a trap… so again, approach with caution because most people can care less about what God says but more about what they think God should say and what God should have done. And when people have that kind of mentality your approach won’t prove a thing about looking at cultures and timeframe.

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Let me give you some arguments I’ve heard (All are true, nothing fabricated):

“Is Rape a sin? yes,
Is God perfect? yes,
Well than how come God out of all the sins in the world to outlaw… didn’t mention “Thou shall not rape” in the 10 commandments?
Why does God put more value in the Sabbath than in Rape?
Why does God thinks it’s more important not to steal than to rape?
Why does God worry about being worshiped in his first 3 commandments over having someone be raped?”

With your approach one would respond by saying;
“Thou shall not commit adulturey” covers this issue. Because if you can’t have sex with someone outside of your spouse with consent… then surely having sex with someone without consent is also wrong.
Its like saying 2+1=3 and 1+2 also equals 3. They are one in the same.

We can also cover the fact that in our culture adulturey is different than it was to the hebrews of that time. For us adulturey is not a crime today and we take it very lightly. So we can cover the fact that back then adulturey had a different meaning all together to try and explain that rape and adulturey go hand in hand and are understood that way in the law.
(we can even go further and say, even Jesus said that if one thinks and lusts in his heart it’s the samething as doing it… so if thinking about sex and lusting in the heart is the samething as committing adulturey with consent… then surely without consent it also wrong)

Then you’d get a response like this:

“Well if God is so perfect then He should have been smart enough to include Rape in the law. He should have known that the people of our age, and known to include things that are relative to us today. It seems that God only wrote to the people of that time without a care about me and people of my time. So why should I trust and believe in a God that puts more value in pity stealing over rape?”

“Oh and why did God choose to send His message via a book? I mean with all the power in the universe He couldn’t have come up with a better more efficient way of communicating with His beloved creation?
If He really wants us to believe Him then why didn’t He give His word thru a computer? Surely everyone would have believed Him if He had given His word thru something that wasn’t invented. Oh but no, the all powerful God chose a book. How inconvenient is that? who reads books these days anyways? It’s almost like if God doesn’t want us to believe. Why couldn’t He just download the bible in our brains so we can understand everything about Him? but no, He plays around and hides and demands us to worship Him, worship Him, worship Him. Who wants to serve a God that is so inconvenient and needy annnnnd cares about the sabbath worship of Himself over Rape?”

at this point in the conversation is when you realize you were just taken for a ride.
ofcourse your faith wouldn’t be shaken one bit with this non-sense conversation. But what about the young christians around you listening? what about them?

That’s why I said approach with caution. Non-christian that approach you in a crowded place more often than not have no interest in your answer, but rather how badly they want to take you for a ride and make u look stupid.

That’s why personally I like to do things one on one. If the person refuses than I know what his intent was.

what do you think?

First of all, I always appreciate your well thought out responses. I appreciate the exchange and I hope to keep posting provocative posts that we can swing back and forth. With that being said, I have a few responses.

If I take what you are saying with a grain of salt then I might agree with a lot of it but there are something’s that I would like to question further.

For example, the Bible says that “creation reveals God’s invisible hand”, therefore, is it fair to say that the Bible is our ONLY source of knowledge about God? You did however include the qualifier of “for now” in your statement so I’m assuming that you said what you said for the sake of brevity.

Finally, I recognize that your experience has been with people who think they’re too good for Christianity and are focused on proving it wrong with deep pessimism and cop outs. I’ve come across my fare share of skeptics as well. However, at what point do we exercise the “be as innocent as doves and as shrewd as serpents” mindset? Often times, I cannot know what the deeper barrier is between my non-Christian friend and Christ, however, I can respond to the objections that are raised and hope that these responses will allow the barriers to become fewer and fewer. It is also important to note that Jesus was dealing with religious leaders, as you mentioned, in Luke 20. Perhaps a better example of a conversation between a believer and a non-believer can be found in Acts 17 with Paul and the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. I appreciate Paul’s ability to build bridges between the truth they already believed and the Messiah he knew. He didn’t assume that the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were anti-God, instead he tried to make close associations between what they believed and the Truth. I recognize that these non-believers had never heard of Jesus and so they might be different then the non-believers we run into who have often times heard a lot about Jesus. However, I would argue that most of the time, the non-believers I talk to have heard of Jesus which I myself do not believe in. Often times, there issue is with bad interpretations or representations of who Jesus is and therefore need to be re-acclimated with Jesus. IE, the harsh God might not be as harsh as they have been told if they can see him in light of the contextual story of scriptures.

If a non-believer were to tell me that he doesn’t want to become a Christian because he doesn’t want to stop having sex then I would question him further about good sex. I’d ask him “who made sex?” Or I may talk to him about the long term ramifications of sex outside of marriage and how God only commands us to follow him because it’s for our own good. I’d offer a vision of a healthy marriage with healthy sex that celebrates the goodness of God we worship and the life we’ve been given. I wouldn’t go down the road of evaluating Old Testament texts which seem detached from the real issue.

Finally, if someone had deep emotional problems which were holding him or her back from following Christ then again, this would be a case of pointing the person toward a good place where they can deal with these things. Perhaps a bad interpretation of Christ is intertwined with their emotional issues and this would require patience.

My point is, I can only respond to what is in front me. I may need to refrain from assuming the deeper motivations unless of course an individual is ready to deal with those things. Christ was able to make natural connections between the practices of the Pharisees and the deeper emotional issues that they were rooted in. (you wash the outside but don’t care about the inside.”

Anyway, Whatya think?

1Samuel10 talks about Saul being anointed as king and I never realized or never payed attention that in verse 10 Saul received the Holy Spirit temporarily. Also in 11:6, 16:13, 19:20 we see the Holy Spirit being given.

To think we have the Holy Spirit on a constant bases today makes think of your analogy of how God was building and leading us step by step to the right direction to eventually have His son fulfill all the prophesies. =)

I like how you tied the two together (The Old with the New) and I like the frame work, it gets you in the right frame of mind in analyzing the true meaning of the biblical stories. =)

To answer your questions:
1.Were these fair objections for my non-believing friends to have? NO
2.Are these good questions for Christians to ask? YES

Christians are followers of Christ and students of the bible, because the bible is our only source we have of trying to understand God’s identity. (prayer too but lets just go with the bible as our source of knowledge and understanding God for now)
I think a christain should ask detailed questions like the one you presented in order to understand what God intented.

However, I don’t think a non-christian should, (I know you’re thinking why the heck not?) and here’s why:
Based on my experience, everytime one of my friends has asked about harsh biblical stories it always been about arguing about “God not being Just… so why serve an unjust God?”

Even if you go out of your way and explain as you have so nicely done about this story in the bible, there are hundreds more controversial stories that don’t show God’s love in the old testament as one would suspect it in our time.
One of my friends applies the socratic method beautifully when he asks me questions. He just asks why?, why?, why?, why?, and why? until I can’t provide a reason.
I think with non-christian one should apply Jesus’s method of answering when He spoke to the pharisess and Sadducees (Luke 20). One should get to the root of the question and answer accordingly, rather than a lenghty explaination which it would require a great deal of faith to believe at the end anyway.

Now I don’t believe this method should be used on all non-christians as there are people who really want to know why and are seakers of basic knowledge. But based on my experience I’ve come to understand that every non-christian or everyone for that matter has their own idea of what God is and what God does. And everyone’s idea of God’s identity is conveniently someone who agrees with all their ideals and beliefs.
My 6yr old cousin believes a God of love is a God that provides her a world of barbie dolls. To some God of love is someone that would eliminate all diseases, and if not than He’s not God of love.
To some the Just God they serve is the God that would eliminate homosexuals, or make all blacks slaves (KKK).

Everyone has some kind of idea of what God should be like, and conveniently this God always thinks like themselves.

At a christian retreat I had an opportunity to work with teenagers and share with them about Christ. One of my kids said he couldn’t be christian cause he liked having sex and didn’t want to stop. One said he couldn’t be christian cause God let his brother die of cancer and didn’t answer his prayers. One couldn’t believe cause he was a foster kid and was never loved in his life, so “Where is His Love?” he asked.

Had I told them, God will allow sex, and bring your brother back to life ,and provide you with a loving family. All three would have been very happy because God would have “FIT IN” to what they wanted or “FIT IN” to the lifestyle they had chosen.

That’s a huge problem. We can’t limit God to our own ideals and understanding of what is Good and what is Evil.

If you tell someone don’t steal it’s a sin. They’ll respond by saying don’t judge me, you’re not God.
Well when God says, “Don’t steal or I’ll judge you”. People respond by saying, “this is not the God of love in the new testament” or even better, they say “this is not the God that I know”
hahahahaha

This is just funny cause if God can’t pass judgment without being critizied for being an unjust God. Then who can?

Thats why I think it’s okay to look in depth to understand “God’s view” in the old testament to better understand how He was leading us to Christ. But to a non-christian who is looking in the old testament in his world view, I say approach it with caution.

Here is my view of judgment.

http://www.stevenetniss.com/?p=410

Simply put, when one accepts Jesus Christ, then one also understands to some degree about God’s Love and Mercy.
In Psalm 136 you’ll notice that every verse ends with ‘His Mercy endures forever’. God loves us so much that He has mercy on us and it endures forever.

‘Mercy triumphs over Judgment’ because a christians life is characterized by mercy (atleast it should be) and therefore is ready for the day of judgment and will escape all charges of sin because of God’s mercy.

On the 2nd point you understood me perfectly. I think what you said in the original blog about virtue being gained over time is spot on.

you should consider writing a book on it. The title should be, “In Search of Virtue” =)

God Bless brother.