But you are putting a moral judgment on this in the first place. You are assessing that what God has done in the Old Testament stories is bad according to your view of morality which can be wrong if you use your subjective view.
If I use my subjective view, it can be anything I make it into.
No it doesnt. The acts of burning witches were not based on the bible itself. It was based on human views. If you look at the bible it is clear about how we should act. That is found in the teachings of Jesus. Those people of that time either didnt understand the bible or added their own hate and judgments. Jesus represented the truth. He constantly exposed hypocrites and emphasized that it was what was in a persons heart that mattered. He also said the greatest commandment was to love others as you love yourself. So if those people used hate for women as a way to hurt them then they acted against Christs teachings. Its clear and simple to expose.
So why do parts of the bible command people to kill those who practice witchcraft?
It is also about understanding. In those times because we didn't understand why people did certain things we put it down to other things like curses, magic ect. Even science and medicine had old wives tales like the medicine man. So it was a lack of knowledge. Witches were thought to have the power to kill people with curses. So they didn't burn witches out of hate and for no good reason. They executed them because they honestly believed they were murderers by casting curses on people and the penalty for murder was death was death.
I doubt this is absolutely the case. Only the accusation of witchcraft was often enough to warrant the following:
Tie heavy weights to the accused woman, throw her in the river, if she drowns, she is not a witch, if she is a witch, she will levitate out of the water by witchcraft. Therefore, mere accusation meant death either way.
I disagree. The bible is clear and has no ambiguity about how we should live and act. That is in Jesus Christ and that is why He came so that we could have a clear example. God came to earth so that we could see Him in the flesh and observe and hear the instructions and example. That is why Jesus is so central and important to our belief. If you look at the teaching of Jesus there are no bad things. Anyone who claims any different is a false prophet. So the morality of God is clear and objective.
And yet it is clearly not, in the real world. Some Christians believe contraception a sin, others don't. Some Christians believe in capital punishment, others don't. Some Christians believe on forcing their moral codes through government legislation, others don't. How can that be objective morality?
My idea of morality will differ from you but not another Christian. A christian is someone who is Christ like hence Christ-ian. A Christian has received Jesus into their life and as Christ said they are born again. They will follow Jesus and His teachings and there is no other way as Jesus said. Jesus answered, John 14:6 "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So all Christians will follow this.
Your morality will differ from many Christians.
If I speak to a Christian on the other side of the world in a foreign country they will have the same belief about Christ as me. There is no other way they can believe because that is what Christ said and that is being a Christ - ian. If they dont then they are not a Christ-ian. They are changing what Christ said. There is no grey area to this.
There certainly is a grey area. Hence why we have over 40,000 different sets of Christianity who believe slightly, or sometimes drastically, different things.
Morality can exist without God but it doesn't mean that it is what God intended or wants. The bible says we were all born with the laws of God written in our hearts. So whether its from other religions or man made attempts to find right and wrong this is the inclination we have from what is within us from God in the first place. Some just try to put a different spin on it and substitute Gods laws for other ways.
The bible is wrong about so many things that I have no reason to suspect it gets morality correct.
The bible tells us that we have Gods laws written in our hearts and even without the law our conscience will either accuse us or excuse us according to Gods laws.
Conscience doesn't tell me to stone a woman for committing adultery, nor to kill a murderer for murdering someone else. Obviously some professed Christians, aren't Christian to you, then. Perhaps you could give me the exact interpretation of the bible's morality which is objective and correct, so we can be done with denominationalism and dispel any great myths.
But you can't, because you can't know for sure that your interpretation of the bible is any more or less correct than another Christian from another denomination who interprets it differently. Thus practically, in the real world, "God's morality" is far from objective and certain.
Romans 2: 14-15
"For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves" in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.
Again, the bible's morality is not synonymous with natural conscience.
You are getting the crime and punishment mixed up with each other. You are also getting the different laws and rules which represented different aspects of the Israelites life for that time. There were the Mosaic Law. This consisted of 365 negative commands and 248 positive for a total of 613 commands. These may also be divided into three parts or sections (see below)the moral, the social, and the ceremonial.
These laws mostly applied to the Isrealites at first and especially the ceremonial laws which have some perculier rituals and practices that were associated with sacrifices and atonement for sins like being ritually clean ect. This is where you may find those things like how to dress and what to eat. So it doesn't apply to us gentiles anyway. So you have to make the distinction between these laws.
So God's morality changes depending on culture and circumstance. How convenient is that for proponent's of its objectivity willing to bend it to their own wills?
Theres also laws like the civil laws which had various statutes and judgments as part of its civil code or national law. This is where stuff like the wearing of two different fabrics would come in. Most aren't binding laws for Christians today. They are more like instructions without punishments for the Hebrews back then. They will tell you how to conduct business, economics, safety and practical living. Some of these laws seemed to not make sense like how and where to plant crops otherwise they would be defiled. The reason it was said to not mix fabrics may have been to do with shrinkage as one fabric would shrink more than the other and spoil the whole garment.
AS if this has any importance enough to merit capital punishment! lol
But the broader principle of the several statutes that forbid mixing in various ways is that God wanted His people to pursue purity and quality. But there wasnt any punishment with death for these things as far as I know.
Do Leviticus 19: 19 and Deuteronomy 22:11 condemn wearing mixed fabrics? | United Church of God
As far as I know, there was.
Fundelmentalists will be more dogmatic. But as a Christian we believe that the way through Christ is the only way to God. But we will live as Christ did and set an example as well. Human views of morality are subjective so there are many different views are included.
Human views of any morality are subjective, and as well as that, human interpretations of thousands of year old texts translated and changed so many times they are faulty, are definitely subjective.
No one is truly right and everyone has the right to have their own views. But whichever view can be promoted the best will have more influence. The thing is humans are fallible so these views can be wrong even if there are many who agree that they are right. God is all knowing and infallible so it is wiser to rely on something outside of human views which is independent.
Nothing viewed by a human, is outside human views. The very interpretation of the "All knowing God"'s laws and moralities, are subjective.
You are seeing things from a misunderstanding that you have either got from others of by not studying the bible properly or enough. As I said many of those rules, decrees, rituals and laws only applied to the Israelites and some only to the priests who did the ceremonies.
Some Christians would disagree with you. That's my point.
Jesus came to fulfill the old testament laws. So now we follow the teachings of Jesus and He has never promoted the stoning of anyone. Quite the opposite in fact. He said we should love others as we love ourselves.
This is wishy washy enough to be interpreted various different ways. That's also my point. There's no consistent objective singular correct interpretation of the bible, or if there is, nobody is absolutely certain which interpretation that may be.
The bible and Christian morals is not forced on anyone. Some may try but as a society we live by the laws of society. If anything we are subject to 100s of rules and laws that many disagree with from the government. Then we are subject to a justice system that never seems to get it right. It is subject to compromise, contradiction and corruption. It also does some of the things you see in the old testament like capital punishment.
Human law doesn't profess itself to be objective, all knowing and perfect, thus, it is open to dispute, reconstruction, reformation and change. The beliefs of a particular sect of Christianity are a lot more strict and staunch and inflexible, even though there are just as, or perhaps even more so, subjective than human laws. At least human laws are based on the desires of societies, thought of in context of cause, consequence and social welfare. Biblical moral codes, subjectively interpreted from ancient texts asserting the existence of a supernatural force of which there is no evidence, are deontological, and are asserted regardless of the changes in society, the evolution of the human condition, or the passage of time.
Outdated, illogical.
