Heneni…
I am a bible thumping, gospel believing, Christ centered Biblican…and I think that you need to answer the question about what that other dude asked about. He brings up a good point. There are many areas in scripture that seem, at first appearance, to contradict themselves. This is one that I personally can answer; but, before I do answer, I want to address the need for each believer to express love, kindness, gentleness, and humility towards all people. Sarcasm and Pride only smear the Great, Great name of Christ. If you don’t know how to deal with it, then be honest and humble and admit it. It’s not the end of the world. We’re Christians, not perfect…Christians aren’t perfect people, nor should they try to be such. In fact, we should wear our faults on our sleeves, and show the world that we can respond to Christ in our lives through blatant and ardent repentance. The only person, who is in more denial than a hard hearted atheist, is a hypocritical religious member of modern Christiandom. An atheist will deny that God exist, which is a denial of their own existence…while somebody who is religious and strives to appear perfect is in fact denying the need for Christ. Our perfection is Christ and Christ alone. Although Isaiah talks of dirty rags, Christ talks of righteousness. In Christ we are a Royal Priesthood, not filthy rags. I understand that there needs to be a certain self placated understanding of who we are before Yahweh, we also need to know that it is only through Christ that we can even know that God exist at all: meaning this, if you claim to be Christian in any form, thus, acknowledging that you abide, to one degree or another, to the teachings of the apostles and their testimony of Christ, then act like it. That is what believing is all about. What you are talking about in your question is the matter of faith. IF we truly believe something, then our actions will reflect it. We believe that there will be a new day tomorrow. We believe this by our actions…same applies to Christ. If we believe in Christ, then we know that we are sinners and imperfect, and if we are sinners and imperfect, unless we are deceitful to others or ourselves, we will admit that we don’t know something about the scripture. Of course, to deny the existence of scripture is total foolishness. There is scripture in many forms. There is the Tibetan book of the dead, there is the Koran, there is the Tanahk, there is the Septuagint, there is the Christian Canon, there is the book of Mormon, and there is the sermon of Buddha with the seven levels of existence. Mankind has been adhering to scripture for thousands of years, and to say that there is no such thing is a sure sign of ignorance, or stupidity. I digress; believing is doing. Like the example of Abraham, who in essence believed in the resurrection of the dead, knowing that it was through Isaac that the promise would be kept, and in faith obeying God in sacrificing Isaac anyway, only to be stopped by an Angel at the last minute. Belief can also be expressed by us Gentile believers by our lives lived as holy sacrifices according to the Holy Spirit as He worked through Paul. Upon further study, you will see that all of Paul’s letters are simply an expansion of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). So we read that Sermon, and do as it says. Part of this is to love and bless our enemies. We know that self proclaiming atheists are enemies of Christ, so we bless them and indulge them in this type of post, so as to not shame Christ. Perhaps by your example of love, this or that atheist will reconsider their position. It is not for us to say how we are going to positively affect someone as to coming to a full affect in their thinking. My previous life, I was a wretch (not said lightly) and hard hearted. I dated a tiny faithful woman who opened my doors of faith in my heart one summer, and the seeds she planted led to my conversion some months later. All she did was use her life, and an unwillingness to indulge in sinful behavior for Christ sake, to plant those seeds that God grew. That’s what I like about these forums. Granted, some of the people on this form of scripture debate seem to be just picking for a fight; but, what I think you will find in the end, is that these “atheist” are really just looking for a way to believe in God past their frustration of all the garbage that modern Christiandom is. There is rampant hypocrisy, spiritual foolishness and duplicity, selfish ambition, personal agendas, ignorance in the scripture leading to false walls of constriction that mislead the willing down a path of religiosity that is truly demonic in nature…and what more? It is no wonder that people, who have good hearts and want to believe, so they go on these bible forums in hope that someone will not let them down “this time”, but in the end become frustrated and disgusted by so called Christians and their ignorance. For example, this chap that is looking at these two different scriptures with seeming contradictions, let’s look at them…4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Exodus 20:4-6. Okay, we see here that basically, this command, of the ten, is a ‘relationship with God’ command. Each command has to do with either the relationship with God, or man’s relationship with other men. Thus the meaning that the sum of the law is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and like it, love your neighbor as yourself; meaning, back to the basic golden rule. This particular command comes with a prophetic promise on it. It is a gracious Creator trying to impart some wisdom on our hard hearts. Don’t make assumptions in what is being said here. First, God is expressing that He hates it when we put images of any kind before Him, or instead of Him (we know that there are many “Christian” faiths that do this very thing), but more so, God is just zealous for the truth. Let us not bow down to images of anything created. Okay, so this word “Visited”, in its Hebrew original language, can mean a possible two things: one is meaning that God will be Judging that generation, and the residual effects will last through a few following generations. Meaning, that if you bow down to man-made images instead of God, you’ll be judged and that judgment will have adverse effects on his kin folk. We can imagine how this might manifest, perhaps by the father teaching his children to do the same thing as worshiping Idols, and their kids teaching their kids. The example of worship tends to go from generation to generation and there will be from two, to maybe two dozen people all worshiping false Idols, all from one man’s decision to bow down to a statue (of course in the late seventies I had a Farrah Faucet poster I bowed down to, but I was just a kid…now it is all God Jesus style). Or, “visiting” could also mean a judgment that would have an effect on the transgressors family for years to come; perhaps through the death of the perpetrator and not have the sage elder in the family that the Hebrew culture stood so proudly on. Lineage was huge for the Hebrews, and perhaps this would affect the lineage? There can be many things that derive from this. But one thing is for sure, since God mentions it over and over again, it must be severely important to Him.
Now, let’s look at this other scripture: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own sin.” Deut. 24:16….and….”The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”Ezekiel 18:20
These scriptures, especially is you take them into context, simply mean what they say. God will not hold you responsible for your fathers, or son’s guilt. God will not judge you by what your father or son has done. Will you be influenced by your fathers’ actions? Sure, and will your son be influenced by your sin? Sure. But this doesn’t mean that you are guilty of what your dad or son has done. We are all responsible for our own sin. So you see, there really isn’t a double standard here, just a misunderstanding.
You’ll find this is the case every time. Taking scripture into context, doing the research in root word definitions, alongside translation complications, we must make sure that what we seek to destroy doesn’t come back to us and bring judgment upon ourselves.
Before I go, Heneni, I want to encourage you to push forward in your dealing with atheists, why are they on a Christian forum? Not just to start trouble, but to find the truth. There is a part of them that really hopes it is not all a bunch of rubbish. We must answer their questions, otherwise, they’ll feel justified in ignoring God, and tragically, on the day of the resurrection, they will not receive their new bodies, and the old ones they have will be destroyed forever. (Not this eternal torment rubbish that modern Christiandom is deluded into thinking)
I hope that helps…
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