Re: Lying is wrong, deception not always wrong

On Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:21:40 GMT, "1st Century Apostolic
Traditionalist" <nospamatall@xxxxxxx> wrote:


Do not forget it was Almighty God Himself that pronounced sentence on the
woman from the very beginning.
Gen 3:16 "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall
be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

Thus in your twisted estimation, God is guilty of misogyny and also a women
hater too then?

No, Jeff, of course not.

As I have said many times, the words of "God" in the Bible are not the
words of God, at all, but they are the words of men about God, the
words of men describing their experience with God. This is why you
and I don't agree on stuff--you believe that every time words are
ascribed to God in the Bible that God actually said them just the way
they are written and that they meant the same thing then that they
mean to us now (for example, the word "lawyer.")

It is not surprising that people see and describe their experience
with God through the cultural matrix of their rearing and their every
day experience, nor that they are tempted to interpret it in such a
way as to provide or preserve benefit to them. It is not surprising
that the state of knowledge of their time led them to include things
in the Bible that we know, today, are not true. We do not cling to
Biblical notions about astronomy nor should we.

That's why God seems to some to change as one reads through the books
that were finally chosen by (fallible) human beings (who had a frankly
stated political agenda in getting together to do the selecting) to be
part of the Bible, because the cultural context changes. God doesn't
change, of course, but human understanding changes. The God of David
is not seen to be the same by those who worshipped it as the God of
Jesus because people at the time of David had a different cultural
context than people at the time of Jesus. Naturally they saw things
differently, even though there were then, as there are today, many who
try to preserve "ways" and "means" that have lost their usefulness as
the cultural context that gave rise to them has changed.

You quote the words of "God," above. Who do you suppose heard those
words, repeated those words over and again in an oral tradition and
finally wrote those words down, then who edited them (the book of
Genesis is not one story, you know, it's at least two put together)
and reedited them? The book of Genesis is, among other things, a
cultural myth created and perpetuated to justify male supremacy in the
Jewish culture that "wrote" it.

I'm betting that those words "of God" were repeated, finally written,
edited and re edited by men. How many male mouths and pens did they
pass through before they got to us, in their current form? And how
many of these mouths and pens belonged to men who never bothered to
question the male dominated, paternalistic culture in which they were
reared? And why should they question it? They were the beneficiaries
of this cultural structure--no wonder they portrayed it as ordained by
God--it was just too good a deal to give up. They could "throw away"
a wife any time they wanted, for example.

(interesting case in point. God apparently told the Jews that this
was God's will because Moses said it was. Then along comes Jesus and
changes that because its God's will. Did God change its will between
Moses and Jesus? Or did Moses maybe have "God's will" wrong? If
Moses had God's will wrong in this regard maybe he was wrong about...
Don't take Moses' or Paul's word--listen to the Holy Spirit).

The Jews, like all people, explained and understood their contacts
with the Divine in terms of their own culture and their own
understanding. When there are breakthroughs there are
breakthroughs--but they are hard coming and they are always
resisted--and they rarely result in the "final answer". Many people,
even those in the Bible, ascribe events to God's will that merely
serve their own purposes, perhaps in the manner of using deception to
further their concept of good purposes.

When Jesus came along and tried to upset the cultural apple cart of
privilege among the Jews they resisted--just as you resist the obvious
truth that women are as valuable, spiritually, as men are and can play
any role in the church and in society and in a marriage that men can.
Yes, there was a time when only men could display the "sign" of being
one of God's chosen (if display it he chose to). But that was not
ordained of God--despite the claims of men who wrote the Bible that it
was. That was ordained by privileged men who wanted to keep their
privilege. The sign, now, has nothing to do with having a penis or
the condition it's in. It has to do with the outward manifestations
of the changed heart that has been reworked and conformed by the Holy
Spirit. Some Friends "shorthand" this sign as being the displaying of
the Testimonies--but this sign is characteristic of changed people in
all cultures and in all spiritual traditions.

But I really have to give it to you Timothy, your modern association of
ideas on women certainly prove another passage of Scripture quite
admirably.

Isaiah 8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than
your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Indeed!

Indeed, it's a thought that the men who controlled Judaism, and who
still control the apostate church through the teachings of Paul (and
those who wrote in his name) would also well have heeded (and should
heed today). Their (and your) thoughts of male supremacy are not
God's thoughts (even though you quote "God's" words, actually written
by men who have reason to talk up this ideology, to prove they are).
Their (and apparently your) way of relegating women to the social,
political, spiritual and marital margins for the sake of their (and
apparently your) own gratification is certainly not God's way. God
marginalizes no one. God certainly does not sanction exploitation.

You can quote Paul's words over and over--about women and about Paul's
special relationship with God--but that doesn't make those words true.
It just makes them Paul's words. Those have to be validated by the
Living God, in the hearts of believers, not by church councils and by
a paid clergy that has every reason to serve the political and
cultural establishment that under girds their power and control.

But these attitudes cannot be validated by reference to the Holy
Spirit. The attitudes of Paul vis a vis women (and slaves) can only
be upheld and "validated" through reference to dead words in a book
written, edited and compiled by men. Fallible, human, men; men who
had more than one agenda. These included Paul who had no more special
relationship with God than we are capable of having--if we choose to
replace legalistic forms and illusions with a living relationship with
God.

Now pick fault and turn up-sidedown this passage.

Actually it's about winnowing out the chaff and leaving the Truth,
it's about setting things right side up.

There's a lot of cultural baggage in the Bible, Jeff. To find the
Truth one has to do more than just read, accept, regurgitate and snip
and speculate away the contradictions and the obvious mistakes (about,
say, astronomy). One has to contend with the Living God. One will
not find God in the apostate churches with their pasted together god
that sells so many people into the bondage of empty forms and
controlling illusions, churches well adjusted to The World rather than
contending with it.

As early Friends might have said it, one does not find true love in
the bed of the whore, but by cleaving to the true bride of Christ.
Those who drink from the cup of the whore will thirst, and thirst, and
thirst--all the while thinking they are drinking the living water.

Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon








"Is there not a cloud of witnesses, who felt the Enemy thus reasoning
to keep us in the forms, fellowships, false worships and foolish
fashions of this world? But we felt as we were obedient, all these
things to be for condemnation, and that as we obeyed the pure
manifestation of the light of Jesus in our hearts, there was no
hesitation."

Robert Barclay
The Anarchy of Ranters and Other Libertines
1674
.

Relevant Pages

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  • July 23rd - St. Bridget of Sweden
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