Ah, there you are. I put “#true christian” into the tags on a hunch, and you didn’t disappoint.
I agree, this is hateful, spiteful, abuse and murder.... justified by the same book, the same religion you have chosen to associate with. And continue to do so. The same fable book, the same god character, the same Jesus character.
The difference is that they follow the whole book, while you cherry-pick your way through it looking for the less grotesque, irrational, violent crap so you can pretend it’s a “religion of love” and sleep at night.
Let’s examine this notion for a moment. If the Old Testament doesn’t apply, then neither do the Ten Commandments. Genesis is a myth (well, duh), and Original Sin doesn’t exist - it’s been done away with. If Original Sin doesn’t exist, then nobody has to believe in your silly sky wizard in the first place, since they do not require salvation from this imaginary disease. In addition, Jesus, if such a person existed at all, died for a myth while advocating that he was there to enforce it:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.
He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.
Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?
Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;
If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
Apparently, you don’t agree with your god, Jesus or Paul. Indeed, you’re saying that Jesus died a complete failure at his stated mission, a Jewish prophet determined to fulfil the law.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
The New Testament says that all the scripture is good, divinely inspired and the basis for “good works.” Yet, you want to discard 75% of that “good works” scripture. Weird.
Meanwhile, the New Testament says that if you don’t give “god” the validation glory he craves deserves, you really just deserve to die:
And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.
The New Testament says that “god” wants to set the Earth on fire to burn the non-believers:
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
Indeed, Jesus is annoyed at the Jews for not killing their disobedient children.
And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.
For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:
But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.
And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;
Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.
But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,
This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Let’s be super clear here: Jesus is siding with the parents, not Ethan.
Now, given the massive toll in human lives, torture, executions, burnings, hangings, misery, violence, discrimination and hate all conducted based on the “good works” scripture in this book over the last 2000 years, the fact that only now does some of it “no longer apply” - you know, now that we’ve used our evolved, secular morality to find the enclosed biblical morality abhorrent - you’re conceding your god is sociopathic terrorist, or at best, a bumbling, moronic incompetent, having left humanity with entirely the wrong idea for 2000 years. You know, until you “moderate” Xians came along and decided to quietly rewrite the fandom.
Case in point right here with poor Ethan. According to you, your god’s perfect message is so perfect that these parents didn’t know to ignore, like, more than half of it. That message just never got through. The bible can go on at length how to conduct slavery properly, what types of people to stone to death, and how icky homosexuality is, but can’t make it clear that the majority of the book is as irrelevant (duh) as the boring, endless genealogies it insists on wasting page after page laying out (despite also saying such genealogies are vain and worthless).
So, how come you know this but theological scholars for thousands of years did not? People who - unlike you, millennia-removed and siting at your devil machine computer with a tight knot of panic in your stomach trying to come up with the right way to handwave your way out of this mess - committed their entire lives to the scripture, teaching it, enforcing it. The people who lived closest to the inception of the bible were quite clear what applied, what did not and acted, killed, tortured and destroyed accordingly. Biblically.
But, apparently, you seem to know better than them. Exactly how stupid is your stupid, stupid god that it can’t communicate in a way that is not only unambiguous, but doesn’t cost children their lives? Despite it being the aforementioned “by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Is it literally the single stupidest creature in the entire universe? That might explain the eye-eating worms and the bushes that make you want to kill yourself, I suppose.
The Old Testament is still a core component of Xianity. If you ignore it, you ignore its foundation. Without the Old Testament, the entire mythology, the prophesies that justify your supposed “messiah” collapse and vanish. Like deleting The Matrix from the Matrix Trilogy. There’s a reason they still print the Old Testament with the New. They are inextricably linked. It’s like 75% of the entire bible.
If “the Old Testament no longer applies” then you’ve reduced Xianity down to a bronze-age version of Forrest Gump, with more violence.
Instead of making lame, obvious “othering” excuses in a desperate bid to distance yourself from atrocities that are justified by the belief system you share with the perpetrators, maybe it’s time you expended even half as much of this denialist energy on a little personal and intellectual honesty and reflection, about why you feel the need to associate yourself with these (shared) superstitions at all.
You already exercised your own secular morality by rebuking these people - given the bible is demonstrably quite comfortable with it - and mentally lalalalalalala finger-in-ear-ing away more than half the bible - the only source of any of Xianity’s claims at all. Why not just go the rest of the way and walk away from the whole thing?
You feel awkward and uncomfortable about the fact you’re both Xians, that they have just as much claim to calling themselves Xians as you? Well good. A child fucking died over these stupid myths. So, you just get good and used to that feeling, or leave.
