“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.”
James 5:1-6
Meanwhile, a few chapters later in the same book:
44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
TBH I can’t blame Christians for being confused about what love looks like if this is what they believe God says.
EDIT: Upon further reflection, I regret the way thus comment targets believers more than it does the problem in question. See: https://lemmy.world/comment/12608950
I think most people assume the old testament is just stories like the new testament, but its full of legal technical stuff and obscure stuff like you quoted.
I think its chapter 2 or 3 that goes over how many animals you need to give to the church for what type of sin is committed. Like a list of fines.
“yOu CaNt ApPlY mOdErN mOrAlItY tO ThE bIbLe!”
Then stop using it as the basis for your modern faith.
TBF you could pick the passages that do good and right for your fellow people and not the ones that are terrible. They ignore stuff they disagree with or find inconvenient all the time. So it’s a choice that says a lot about them for them to ignore the line to treat the asylum seeker or migrant well, but choose to obey some interpretation that does others harm.
The Mosaic laws are really quite interesting. These verses can work in tandem with those in Leviticus 19. There later is the understanding of why we were given the Mosaic laws, just for Jesus to disagree with them a bit later, which is explained in Matthew 19:3-8. "
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning."
Many of the things discussed in the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible, where the Mosaic laws lie), are just about how to live their day to day lives, and at the time they had many slaves, something that they wouldn’t be willing to change. Instead of this, God commands how to treat these slaves. The Old Testament is full of confusing stuff, but it certainly isn’t just from “the Jew section of the Bible” as suggested in another comment. It has value, but they must be understood through a specific lens, understanding the lives of the people God is talking to.
Thanks for the comment. If I may quibble:
and at the time they had many slaves[…]
If memory serves, the Mosaic laws are said to be delivered to the Jews 90 days into their wandering in the desert after crossing the Red Sea. Which means that the people who received these rules about slavery were all recently freed former slaves. Unless they immediately started re-enslaving each other while wandering the desert with manna raining from heaven and water springing up from the rocks, I would think that none of them owned slaves.
[…]something that they wouldn’t be willing to change. Instead of this, God commands how to treat these slaves.
That line of reasoning has never sat right with me.
God doesn’t want people to kill. He knows people will do it anyway. He doesn’t say “Make it quick and painless when you kill someone.” He says “Thou shalt not kill.”
God doesn’t want people to steal. He knows people will do it anyway. He doesn’t say “Only steal from people who are well off and can afford to lose some possessions.” He says “Thou shalt not steal.”
I cannot imagine the guy who tells people to cut some skin off the end of their penis has any problem with making big asks of people.
EDIT: Upon further reflection, I regret the way thus comment targets believers more than it does the problem in question. See: https://lemmy.world/comment/12608950
Thank you for the quibble. I’m not the most informed on all these topics, and still growing in my faith and knowledge. The reason why I’ll always argue for God despite not having all the answers is because I’ve had a personal experience with him, and as such will always strive to find an answer the aligns with God’s existence, the same God as that in the Bible.
There is no archeological evidence of Israelites residing in Egypt at the time of Moses nor of their enslavement there.
It is widely agreed that the tribes of Israel decended from Canaanites and other locals.
I wish modern christians would revise the bible. It’s not like they haven’t done it before.
I don’t have much to add to the great discussion your having, but as a sort of side point,”Thou shall not kill” is such a vague and poorly phrased commandment, at least if that’s the best translation. everyone seems to take it as “Dont murder people for most reasons” which is really quite different. the only way to stop killing anything actively is to be dead and that’s not even an option if you can’t kill. sorry I’m on phone so this is poorly and curtly typed, but all meaning to say that there has to be a lot lost with the really poor communication going on and not just by me. as I said earlier maybe it was better in the original language though.
33 That night the two girls got their father drunk, and the older daughter went and had sexual relations with him. But Lot did not know when she lay down or when she got up.
34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I had sexual relations with my father. Let’s get him drunk again tonight so you can go and have sexual relations with him, too. In this way we can use our father to have children to continue our family.”
35 So that night they got their father drunk again, and the younger daughter went and had sexual relations with him. Again, Lot did not know when she lay down or when she got up.
When old testament says to love someone instead of just smiting people, you know that shit is serious.
When I was young growing up Southern Baptist there was one time where the pastor preached about this verse, and the whiplash I felt when I heard family members bad-mouthing immigrants the moment they stepped outside is partly what led me to read the Bible myself, which led to me losing my faith.
did you ditch the family too? sounds like the Bible was actually ahead on this one so itsweird you dump the faith instead (not overall, just the way you told the story had a whiplash of its own)
I suppose I excluded some important detail. The reason I had wanted to read the Bible then was so I could better understand God’s word and confront my family with that understanding. But reading the Bible didn’t clarify things for me the way I thought it would, instead of clear instruction on right and wrong I found more hypocrisy and contradiction, as well as a disturbing focus on the appropriate conduct of slave-owners and the treatment of women as property.
Reading the Bible gave me the same whiplash I felt seeing the hypocrisy of the people around me, which made me realize that it wasn’t in spite of their faith, but because of it.
Just because you disowned your family doesn’t mean you have to project your misery in everyone else.
The people I know that have cut out parts of their family are happier for it, not miserable.
“That’s from the Jew section of the Bible.”
There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galations 3:28
damn it just keeps coming up! Its like this whole bible thing was really trying to get this whole ‘dont be a dickhead’ point home, shame its not working so well
I disagree with the statement mentioned in the original comment, but this isn’t a proper argument against it. In that verse, they’re discussing who Jesus came for. Instead, you can look at Matthew 5, in the sermon on the mount, which says that Christ did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. As such, the laws cannot be disregarded.
So then animal sacrifice is meant to be continued by Christians? The “did not come to abolish but fulfill” thing is really an explanation for abolishment. He didn’t destroy the law but completed it, so it’s done. And by law we basically mean Leviticus. So yes, Leviticus pretty much is irrelevant. By your argument and the argument embedded in OPs post Christians should still be stoning women and not eating pork.
How can you know which chapter of Matthew starts the sermon on the mount and not know pretty much the most core concept in Christian theology? Like that is almost the whole central point of Jesus is that he abolished the law by fulfilling it. That and salvation. That’s like the two things.
