Re: a code behind the bible
Thomas, thank you for pointing out that passage in deuteronomy. It gave me something to think about. I actually wasn't surprised to see it. It seems like most christians like to start with the New Testament, reading all about God's love, mercy and grace, and about the works of Jesus. When I came to Christ, I felt like God was telling me to start from the beginning, so I'm reading from cover to cover for my first go at the bible. I think when I read it though, that verse went a bit over my head.
Here's what I can come up with on the subject. Yes, deuteronomy says he has to marry the woman he raped, but he also has to give her father 50 pieces of silver. I get the impression that was quite a chunk of money back then. As I recall, Judis betrayed christ for 30 sheckels, or pieces of silver, which if I'm remembering right was a lot, so 50 being almost double that might be someone's entire fortune. Also, having to marry the woman, the man will most li kely never be in a loving relationship after that, at least not without angering God further. If you have to marry a woman you've raped, she's probably never going to love you, and your entire life after that is going to be completely miserable unless you go and take a second wife, which it's quite clear in the bible gets you punished further. I see so many people going around having affairs in today's society, taking second wives, living a polyamerous lifestyle, and so often they seem to lose everything, including their happiness. It may not be the physical punishment you're looking for when someone gets raped, but from experience, I think that often times the emotional punishment can be a lot worse and a lot longer lasting, though we may not always see the effects of it.
It seems like the woman is getting the short end of the stick here. I think that God put much more emphasis on being unclean in the Old Testament times. He also had a lot of other ru les that don't make sense to people, such as anyone who has had their penis or testicles damaged being unable to join the congrigation. No bastard was allowed to enter the congrigation either. That is punishing the child, or the person with the physical defect. Sin also tends to lead to more sin. For example, a lot of rape victims want revenge on their rapest, when God clearly says in the bible, "Vengence is mine." So even to seek revenge against someone who you believe has done you wrong is a sin. I guess in a way it's testing the woman to see if she can stay true to God and not sin or remain unclean. and I'm not pointing out that rape makes women unclean because I think that rape victims deserve to be punished or some similar nonsense. God even back then seemed to consider even sex unclean. If you had sex with a woman, even your wife, you were unclean for 7 days and could not make offerings until you were purified. This all leads back to the fact that God is the most holy of all beings, and will not tolerate any kind of evil or impurity in his presence, even if to us mortals it doesn't seem like the victim has done anything wrong. I know that seems like some very twisted logic, it certainly would have to me before I was a believer. I can even see why that would push people away from God. A lot of the people around me were afraid of what was going to happen when I read the old testament, because it's the one that christians seem to get bogged down in the most and have trouble with. Animal sacrifice, slavery, rape, sexual sin everywhere, main characters of the bible murdering others, God tossing his wrath around everywhere you look, some find that pretty horrific. I think that to me at least, God has given me the ability to see things from a different viewpoint. I know that I will never grasp for myself why some of those rules were such a big deal to God without being omniscient, but I know that they were and that they were t o be obeyed unfailingly.
One thing also to remember is that Jesus specifically said, a lot of this doesn't apply anymore after his resurrection, and even some before. For example, we were only supposed to eat certain kinds of food back in old testament times, but Jesus made all food clean in the gosple of Mark, before his resurrection. The new testament is the one I'm the least familiar with, so I don't know where things stand on rape victims now. But what I get out of it is that we're supposed to use the bible as a guideline, both literally and metaphorically. For example, some people take that passage about all food being clean, and apply it to other things, such as video games or music. I don't know that I necessarily agree with that, but my point is that only God knows exactly how the rules are layed out, and as mortals, all we can do is try to interpret that and fit it in to our various societies. As I said before, James also points out that in tr ying to spread the word of god, when we open our mouth, we get it wrong almost every time. I also believe that not everything in the bible was approved by God. A lot of it is to show us how imperfect we are without God. I can't apply that to the rape example because that was a law layed out directly by God, but just because someone did something in the bible, especially without consulting God first, doesn't mean it's OK.
As for my conversion, well you're right that I didn't sit down and read the holy books of a bunch of different religions. My wife has read some of them though, and I had done a lot of research on both modern religions and some of the mythological ones. One of my biggest gripes before was, "Why does Christianity get to be the only true religion? How is that fair that all these other religions are false." Haha, I picked the wrong religion, shintoism, to talk to most christians about that one, because it involves a lot of plurra l Gods, mutilation and marking. But I was convinced that if people just looked hard enough in those other religions, they'd find supposed evidence of the events in that religion, just as christians had done.
For me, if it were to be a cultural thing, I would have turned out Mormon. Our town is heavily dominated and run by them, and in fact, my faith kind of got started by talking to some Mormon missionaries. I ended up a non-denominational christian though because there were just too many contradictions between the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and the bible specifically says that scripture or the word of God's prophets will never contradict itself. I had other issues, but I don't think this is the place to go into those.
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=178511#p178511
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