Bedeviled Pigs Luke 8:27-33, 37 NIV

26They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the
lake from Galilee.

27 When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a
demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had
not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs.

28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at
the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the
Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!”

29 For Jesus had commanded the [unclean] spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.

30 Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. 31 And they begged him repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.

32 A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons
begged Jesus to let them go into them, and he gave them permission.

33 When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and
the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
. . . .
37 . . . all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked
Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear. So he
got into the boat and left.

I enjoy how the demon-possessed man’s inner spokesman knows that Jesus is “Son of the Most High God.” That’s proof for sure. I mean if a demon in PR says so, who am I to doubt it. Who am I going to believe: 99 demons with PR, or some jewish heretic like Paul, or a liar like Peter? Demons!

Jesus doesn’t even offer to pay their owner for drowning his pigs. He scoots back across the lake. What will Mary think? This guy’s just not kosher.

anti_supernaturalist

Oops. Looks like I said this already.

Most Christians do seem to believe that ever word in the Bible is inspired by God. That is why they refer to it as the Word of God, It is, as I have said elsewhere, an idol; something that stands in the place of God. There are several problems that emerge if the Bible is only partially inerrant. First, how do you determine which parts are inspired and which are not? Whose to say that the opposite of what you say is not true? Maybe God did inspire the genocide you mentioned and did not inspire the rather humanistic thematic motif of social justice. How do you determine? And if the former is indeed the case, shouldn’t the Bible be purged of its sadistic passages? Preachers today are still interpreting the genocides as the will of God. For example, I just heard Charles Stanley preach on the Disobedience of Saul. The only problem he had with the passage was that Saul did not follow the will of God: destroy the Amalekites “men, women, babies…oxen, sheep, camels”. He let the best of the animals live. This barbaric set of ethics still prevails. Shouldn’t this be corrected?

As for starting with Jesus, that’s impossible. You can only start with what some writers, who were not eye witnesses said about Jesus. Your faith in Jesus is really faith in the not necessarily inerrant Paul, John, Luke, Mark and Matthew.

Thanks for the kind words. I do appreciate them, and I appreciate your being civil and respectful of me as well. That’s uncommon around here lately.

It certainly beats getting called a hypocrite, a liar, et al, that’s for sure! :)

@brgulker I’ve written pages and pages about

You’ve written pages and pages here.

Interminable walls o’ post, dodging, saying what you said here doesn’t count because it was part of an outside conversation, clueless about what you are trying to accomplish. It all amounts to “Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence #73″.

73. ARGUMENT FROM EXHAUSTION (abridged)
(1) Do you agree with the utterly trivial proposition X?
(2) Atheist: of course.
(3) How about the slightly modified proposition X’?
(4) Atheist: Um, no, not really.
(5) Good. Since we agree, how about Y? Is that true?
(6) Atheist: No! And I didn’t agree with X’!
(7) With the truths of these clearly established, surely you agree that Z is true as well?
(8) Atheist: No. So far I have only agreed with X! Where is this going, anyway?
(9) I’m glad we all agree…..
….
(37) So now we have used propositions X, X’, Y, Y’, Z, Z’, P, P’, Q and Q’ to arrive at the
obviously valid point R. Agreed?
(38) Atheist: Like I said, so far I’ve only agreed with X. Where is this going?
….
(81) So we now conclude from this that propositions L”, L”’ and J” are true. Agreed?
(82) I HAVEN’T AGREED WITH ANYTHING YOU’VE SAID SINCE X! WHERE IS
THIS GOING?
….
(177) …and it follows that proposition HRV, SHQ” and BTU’ are all obviously valid.
Agreed?
(178) [Atheist either faints from overwork or leaves in disgust.]
(179) Therefore, God exists.

So far you certainly haven’t said nothing, but you’ve done nothing, proved nothing, amounted to nothing, accomplished nothing.

No hard feelings my friend and sorry if I came across the wrong way. Unlike some other christians I consider you to be a gentlemen and thoughtful person as far as christians go.

mark: My problem with your answer is this, if I were looking for god and I was in a room with a muslim and you, what is the reason I should believe your interpretation of god over the muslims.

Heres an example of what I mean.

Mark Asks: Im looking to find god, which faith should I choose and why.
Brgulker: replies: Well my friend you should choose Christianity. As your reason you give the above qoute.
Muslim: No my friend you should choose Islam. For his reason the muslim gives a similar answer only he uses the Koran.

mark: Well how do I know the bible or Koran is the word of god? Also is the bible/Koran 100% true. This is a question address to both muslim and bgulker.
bgulker: No the bible is not 100% accurate but pray to god and he will give you all of the answers.
Muslim: Yes the Koran is 100% accurate and if you pray to god he will give you the answers. I think you loose this exchange very badly.

Does this example illustrate the problem with your answer to my question?

” Another tenative, albeit more liberal, unorthodox answer would be to claim that God transcends all religion and works through and in spite of religion simultaneously. ”

mark: My friend you have no way of verifying this so it would be nice if you would give reasoning for making this statement. What exact reason found in the bible makes you believe this statement. Otherwise I could say that god only speaks to people who have red hair and green eyes and it would have as much validity as your statement.

As long as you try to answer honestly you have no problem from me, my annoyance came earlier because I thought you were evading my obvious and most important questions and not addressing my point.

No hard feelings my friend and sorry if I came across the wrong way. Unlike some other christians I dont consider you to be a gentlemen and thoughtful person as far as christians go.

mark: But this information isnt new to god, please explain to me why your god didnt just inspire an accurate writing of the bible. No matter how you spin things your perfect all knowing god is allowing and creating confusion does that really make sense comming from an all knowing and perfect god?

http://www.theopedia.com/Divine_accommodation

Please explain why your god would inspire parts of the bible that are true and parts that are not true.

The first comment is extremely frustrating to me, because you’re implying that I’m doing something that I’m not doing. I’m trying to respond to your initial question as specifically and directly as possible.

You asked me:

Which is, why is your all knowing god the author of so much confusion?

I responded by giving you an example of confusion, and then asked if it was an accurate example of your question.

Then, I proceeded to explain how my own viewpoint about what the bible is and how it functions is different from those who hold to biblical inerrancy (which is the position you are describing when you speak of divine inspiration of any sacred book). And I explained in detail that I think the bible was authored by human beings, and I used to

Why would your perfect all knowing god allow the confusion of inspiring a document that man is supposed to live by, that is filled with errors and mistakes.

In other words, I’ve never said or tried to imply that I think the bible was inerrantly inspired by God (as fundamentalists and conservative Evangelicals claim). So, I feel like you’re putting words in my mouth and asking me to justify and/or respond to a position that I don’t claim to hold.

Do you not see how if your god inspires only part of the bible but then allows followers of other religions to claim 100% accuracy of thier own religoius documents/text how that can be confusing to someone who is niether christian or muslim and is looking to find god.

Yes, I do see the confusion. When you mentioned confusion before, I thought you were talking about the bible itself being confusing, but it seems like you were making a more general claim across religions.

I want to be careful with what I say next, because there’s a no evangelizing policy, and I don’t want to break that policy. Nor, do I want you to feel as if I’m pushing something at you that you don’t want to hear. With respect to someone who is not religious looking to find God, as a Christian I would say, start with Jesus. Jesus is the reason that we Christians feel justified in making any claims about God. Read about Jesus and the impact he made on those around him, and read about his early followers (the epistles of NT and Acts).

Why would he allow this especially given the fact that even before he inspired the first word of the bible that the errors and mistakes would greatly confuse man.

Mark, I don’t have a good answer for you here. When I’m asked, “Why would God allow _________” most of the time I don’t feel like I can give a good answer. It may not be much help, but I think the best I can do is say that not having an answer to a question like that is part of the ambiguity of human existence. Orthodoxy would say that our inability to answer those questions definitively is a witness to our finitude and fallibility. At times, that answer makes sense to me, and at other times it doesn’t. In that sense, we’re both seeking for the answer.

Another tenative, albeit more liberal, unorthodox answer would be to claim that God transcends all religion and works through and in spite of religion simultaneously. I’m taking a cue from Karl Barth here, who argues that very point. In Jesus, God judges all religion (i.e., our human constructions of God) and pronounces “No” over all of it, but simultaneously says yes to humanity.

” we know that homosexuality is linked to genetics ”

Again if this is the case, then the god you believe in knew this as well. Yet he still allowed those anti gay verses in the bible.

Does it really make sense whatsover for an all perfect, knowing and loving god allow verses in the bible that claim homosexuality is wrong and an abomination against god when it is natural.

Didnt your god know the hatred against gay people that would be incited and ginned up by people who literally believe the bible to be the word of god?

“we now have new information which requires us to re-envision and re-imagine the covenant between creature and creator. Thus, I don’t understand Scripture to be a perfect document that was dropped from the sky containing all the answers, but rather to be the narrative that describes the interaction between Israel -> Christians and the God in whom they believe. ”

mark: But this information isnt new to god, please explain to me why your god didnt just inspire an accurate writing of the bible. No matter how you spin things your perfect all knowing god is allowing and creating confusion does that really make sense comming from an all knowing and perfect god?

There should be no mistakes in the bible because god is perfect, if god can inspire the bible to be 60% accurate then he can inspire the bible to be 100% percent accurate.

I cannot understand why your perfect god would inspire a bible that is only partially true.

Mark: Typo, I meant to say . Why would he allow this especially given the fact that even before he inspired the first word of the bible your god knew that that the errors and mistakes in the bible would would greatly confuse man.

” (Do you think that’s a fair example of the “confusion” you mentioned?)

To put it simply, I think Israel got the latter wrong. I don’t think genocide is a part of life as it should be, i.e., shalom. I think it’s a horrible atrocity. Yet, Israel, as a people and nation, never seemed to realize the inherent self-contradiction. ”

mark: Like has been mentioned before I believe you are playing games, because I asked you a simple and specific question which you choose to overlook or not answer. But I will re ask some things I asked you previously that speak to my curiosity. I would appreciate it if you would address what I asked as honestly as you can.

In return I will address anything you may ask in return to the best of my abilty.

The type of confusion I am talking about is allowing some parts in the bible that are not accurate or gods word due to humaness.

Please explain why your god would inspire parts of the bible that are true and parts that are not true.

I want to know this because thier are people who follow other religions such as Islam and others that claim thier holy book is 100 inspired by god. You from my understanding do not believe that everything in the bible was inspired by god .

If all of the bible isnt inspired by god but muslims claim that all of the Koran is accurate then they can claim that Islam is the true word of god because the bible even according to christians like you is not 100% accurate.

Do you not see how if your god inspires only part of the bible but then allows followers of other religions to claim 100% accuracy of thier own religoius documents/text how that can be confusing to someone who is niether christian or muslim and is looking to find god.

Why would a non believer of any religion looking for god not be inclined to believe people who claim that the Koran is 100% inspired by god instead of you who admits that the bible has passages that are not inspired by god.

That is what I am talking about when I say confusion authoured by your god. If your god is perfect and all knowing that means he knew that partially inspiring the bible and allowing things in the bible that arent his word would confuse people.

Why would your perfect all knowing god allow the confusion of inspiring a document that man is supposed to live by, that is filled with errors and mistakes.

Why would he allow this especially given the fact that even before he inspired the first word of the bible that the errors and mistakes would greatly confuse man.

“I think that the bible records the words of human people who were responding to their perception of God’s actions in the world.”

The bible: Indistinguishable from Fan Fiction.