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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: David and Bathsheeba
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Okay, I have to do some disagreeing. Because I'm that kind of person, duh. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Thanks for that - also thanks to Kelly for the previous post - I had these ideas milling around my head but had never been able to properly articulate either of them.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I suppose the only option for worried parents is to vet everything that their children see, including books of Bible stories. A good mainstream Methodist parent would probably cast a critical eye over a kid's book that came from evangelical sources.[/quote[
I am not a "worried parent", I am a parent who is bothered about what we (family, church, society) are teaching our children.
[quote]But don't lots of kids these days see all sorts of 'inappropriate' things from a young age?
Not sure what your point is here - kids see inappropriate things, therefore it is OK to teach them that the deity we're supposed to believe in is A0K with mass murder.. or something.
My kid didn't see inappropriate things, that was part of my job as a responsible parent.
quote:
I'd be more worried about porn myself, but I suppose it depends on your social context.
I don't see this as an "either we're concerned about porn/body image/relationships" or "we're concerned about the way we teach our religion to our children and what they might be picking up from it" issue. I'm quite concerned about body image too, I don't see that has anything to do with this particular discussion.
I must say it concerns me how casual the church (and I find it very hard to believe that Methodist churches are not also teaching their kids exactly the same content) is with telling kids a message that amounts to if God tells you to, you are quite entitled to do absolutely anything that is normally considered to be totally off-limits, up-to and including mass murder of enemies and child sacrifice.
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arse
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Not sure what your point is here - kids see inappropriate things, therefore it is OK to teach them that the deity we're supposed to believe in is A0K with mass murder.. or something.
I just feel that Christian parents should be able to ensure that their children learn about the Bible without scaring them to bits. That may mean choosing the appropriate books and attending churches that care about children. But I'm not a parent myself, and I appreciate that it must be hard to get it right. Every parent will have their own boundaries.
Certainly, if I thought that Christianity was unsuitable for kids I'd wonder if it was suitable for me. We may need to develop a somewhat different theology for our contemporary sensibilities.
quote:
I find it very hard to believe that Methodist churches are not also teaching their kids exactly the same content
Ah, so you don't have much experience of British Methodism. Fair enough.
Methodism was once very evangelical, but now it has a reputation for being one of the least evangelical of the mainstream churches. There are evangelicals within it, but evangelical congregations don't have the visibility they do in the CofE, and they're a much smaller part of Methodism as a whole.
The problem with Methodism is that it's not a terribly lively denomination to be in, which means young people don't attend or stay in great numbers. This is a shame, because they then end up going to more dynamic evangelical churches, where they hear inappropriate things.
BTW, what kind of church does your daughter attend? And why do you allow her to attend a church that teaches her things you consider to be inappropriate? Is her interest more social than anything else? I'm just curious, because most families with feelings like yours would simply stop going to church. Not that I'm saying you or your daughter shouldn't go, of course.
[ 01. September 2015, 20:04: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
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Garasu
Shipmate
# 17152
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Posted
Um... Am I the only person to encounter children who enjoy gratuitous violence?
Not saying they truly understand it, but my sister's kids are all for a bit of wanton destruction (okay, maybe not number 4; but the rest...)
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"Could I believe in the doctrine without believing in the deity?". - Modesitt, L. E., Jr., 1943- Imager.
Posts: 889 | From: Surrey Heath (England) | Registered: Jun 2012
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Baker
Shipmate
# 18458
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Posted
Gerasu, see my post from yesterday about bloodthirsty Sunday School students.
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Ad astra per aspera
Posts: 108 | From: Tottering-on-the-Brink | Registered: Aug 2015
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
BTW, what kind of church does your daughter attend? And why do you allow her to attend a church that teaches her things you consider to be inappropriate? Is her interest more social than anything else? I'm just curious, because most families with feelings like yours would simply stop going to church. Not that I'm saying you or your daughter shouldn't go, of course.
It isn't possible to reply to this without giving lot of personal detail, which a) I don't want to give and b) is not relevant to this thread.
But let it be said that I am perfectly able to share my faith with my progeny whilst at the same time contemplating which parts of it are appropriate to her age, thanks all the same.
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arse
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I am perfectly able to share my faith with my progeny whilst at the same time contemplating which parts of it are appropriate to her age, thanks all the same.
That's great. But if you can do what's appropriate for your children then you shouldn't presume that others can't do the same for theirs. People know what's suitable for their own families.
FWIW, biblical knowledge in Britain is declining, so the problem of children being hurt by unsuitable Bible knowledge would seem to be quite small (though it may be a problem in the circles you know). This decline in knowledge is apparently also the case for churchgoing Christians.
I doubt that many British people choose to learn more about the Bible as adults if they've not been encouraged to do so as children.
http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2014/bible-literacy-and-other-news/
[ 02. September 2015, 01:22: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
That's great. But if you can do what's appropriate for your children then you shouldn't presume that others can't do the same for theirs. People know what's suitable for their own families.
If I don't think mass murder is appropriate for my child to hear in church, why would I think it was appropriate for any other child?
quote:
FWIW, biblical knowledge in Britain is declining, so the problem of children being hurt by unsuitable Bible knowledge would seem to be quite small (though it may be a problem in the circles you know). This decline in knowledge is apparently also the case for churchgoing Christians.
Teaching children age appropriate things does not make them biblically illiterate.
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arse
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Truth be told, given some of the defences of genocide and draconian laws in the OT that I've seen on here over the years, I'm not sure some of these stories and passages are suitable for adults, never mind children. Some bits'd make the leaders of IS turn around and say "steady on there, old chap!" but it's there in the Bible, so people will defend it.
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
See, now THAT is a scary thought: will future generations of whatever-religion-IS-morphs-into tell their children a funny story from the archives about when they went into a city, took away all the women and children as slaves and the men to behead publicly later?
Will that kind of behaviour be worth a chuckle in a few thousand years?
I don't think we should hide from these texts, and we should certainly hear and wrestle with them in church - if only to thank the Lord that we've all grown up a bit since OT times.
But we should be shocked by them. They should make us contemplate our own lives. We should be contemplating the inner turmoil of someone who thinks the deity is telling him to sacrifice his own child.
We should be asking ourselves whether it is God who has changed - from the tribal deity who demanded blood to the gentle forgiving Jesus who instead demands inner change - or whether it is actually mankind who has changed not God.
But we should certainly be listening to these things in context and within a community that recognises these things are not funny stories to tell to our children.
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arse
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Yes, and there is a big space between "telling them as funny stories to children" and "not telling the stories at all".
I agree there is something problematic if by the time our children become adults all they know of Noah is singing "The animals went in two by two. Hurrah! Hurrah!" or of the story of Joshua singing "and the walls came tumbling down". It's equally problematic if they don't know these stories at all.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It's equally problematic if they don't know these stories at all.
Is it? Why? How do you suggest we should teach our children these disgusting stories? What do they actually need to know about them?
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arse
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It's equally problematic if they don't know these stories at all.
Is it? Why? How do you suggest we should teach our children these disgusting stories? What do they actually need to know about them?
Well, we start with the observation that these stories fall within part of the Bible that is mythical - these are the foundation stories of the nation of Israel. They serve a bigger purpose than describing what happened, indeed describing what happened isn't required at all.
Noah is probably more obviously non-historical - we can confidently say that at no time did God wipe out all the people and animals on the earth with the exception of eight people and a managerie on a leaky tub. We can easily talk about the destructive nature of sin, about how big an issue it is for God, about how despite being such a big issue He can save those who trust Him.
Joshua is harder because it reads more like history than Noah does. It sits on the boundary between the mythic foundation of the nation stories of Exodus and the more historical stories of Chronicles, Kings etc. It has some elements of each in it. There is a strong element there of trusting in God rather than cowering under the apparent magnitude of our calling (remember the backdrop of the people not entering the promised land earlier because they thought the cities were too strongly defended). In God those things that hinder us can be utterly defeated.
Those are just suggestions, which may not be perfect (probably aren't). But the main point is we do our children, and ourselves, no favours by taking the easy option of ignoring these passages.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
If we think we are entitled to reconstruct Christianity to make sure it fits our own particular package of prejudices, then it's time to take a long hard look at ourselves. We've got something very fundamental the wrong way round. We follow Jesus. We don't expect him to fit in with us.
That's just the same whether we're talking of the Patriot's Bible or an article I read written by a Quaker theologian which assumed that theology had to be assessed according to how it fitted with non-violence.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
I do not think that my aversion to mass murder, genocide and killing people for worshipping the wrong God is a "personal prejudice". I call it "not being a massive homicidal sociopathic arsehole". Otherwise what right would we have to condemn IS for not having our "personal prejudices"?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - if you can say "genocide is fine if God orders it" then I do actually think you have sociopathic tendancies, a lack of empathy, and are a potentially dangerous individual. It's exactly the thinking that drove the Inquisition, and it's the thinking that drives IS today.
[ 02. September 2015, 10:10: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
If we think we are entitled to reconstruct Christianity to make sure it fits our own particular package of prejudices, then it's time to take a long hard look at ourselves. We've got something very fundamental the wrong way round. We follow Jesus. We don't expect him to fit in with us.
But didn't he reconstruct scriptural views of God - e.g. 'If your father....l how much more will your heavenly father...'?
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But didn't he reconstruct scriptural views of God - e.g. 'If your father....l how much more will your heavenly father...'?
The difference is that he is the incarnate Son of the Father, and knew/knows what he is talking about. We don't have either that knowledge or wisdom. The three statements 'Jesus/scripture/the inherited wisdom of Christian tradition say x, but I say y', stated as rawly as that, just sound flatulent and conceited.
That we dress up such a statement so that the underlying argument isn't quite as obvious, may fool others. We may even fool ourselves. But the dressed up statement is as flawed as the raw one.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
but he promised that the Spirit would lead us into all truth and gave the Church the authority to discern, bind and loose.
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
I think that if anything, I'd be even more wary of someone who claimed the Holy Spirit had led them to do something that was inconsistent with scripture, reason and tradition than I would of those who have argued that their personal reasoning overruled and took priority over the other two.
Besides, even as a Prod, I don't think anyone can claim that authority delegated to the Church = delegated to me. Wouldn't that be the ultimate presumptuous sin (Ps 19:13) and wilfully letting it have dominion over one?
quote:
"Jer 17:9 (AV) The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:"
Few, if any, of us have the wisdom and self awareness to be entrusted with the ability to discern between the counsel of God and our own particular package of prejudices. There was a time, back in the fifties and sixties when fashionable theologians spoke of 'mankind having come of age'. That phrase sounded then as though people somehow believed that 1933-45 had been a mere temporary aberration. Now it just sounds presumptuous, flatulent and complacent.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I think that if anything, I'd be even more wary of someone who claimed the Holy Spirit had led them to do something that was inconsistent with scripture, reason and tradition than I would of those who have argued that their personal reasoning overruled and took priority over the other two.
Which is why the Church looks for the concensus of the faithful, not for any individuals and also why it as to be consistent with scripture amnd tradition.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
In which case, are we actually that far apart?
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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