Re: Lying is wrong, deception not always wrong

On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:35:35 -0600, "S McFarlane"
<nothanks@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


<qspirit@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:26d9u153kmkbr3jpctblltidr4qqn511et@xxxxxxxxxx

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.

a few points here.

Firstly, I'd like to ask you to consider whether your use of 'apostate' to
describe the more conventional flavors of Christianity might not convey more
than you wish. I believe I understand why you choose that word, and I am to
some extent in agreement with you, assuming that understanding is correct.

The basic meaning it has to me is to describe the church of the
covenant of grace, the brand of protestantism that set so many seeking
elsewhere in the 17th Century and the type of church that survives
today. It's marked by authority of clergy as intermediaries (through
sacraments) and a belief that the Bible is the Word of God in the
sense that it is the source of direction of our lives--as opposed to
the Holy Spirit/Spirit that is present to actively guide us.


However, I have to admit that this particularly charged word makes my
stomach tighten almost every time I come across it. I'm afraid your usage
is no exception.

I know. It's a toot I go on and I do it too much. It's a turn off.
But it is important to me to distinguish traditional Friends' beliefs
from Calvinistic Protestantism. These are not the same things and in
the interest of "can't we all get along" this is sometimes lost to the
point that there are many in the Society of Friends or who associate
with it who don't know the difference.

I'm not going to condemn people who want to believe that there has to
be a priest of some kind, and that forms of worship are important, or
that the Bible can be perused on a daily basis as the supreme guide in
any situation. I am convinced, as Friends originally were, that there
is a better way than this, a way to a genuine relationship with the
Divine and that it is available for those who want it. Don't want it?
Fine. But it's there and all should know it and what it's about.


I am not 100% in agreement with all Quaker thought. For that reason, I will
likely never seek membership, despite my enormous respect for the Quaker
tradition (in fact, I perhaps _would_ seek membership, were a 'traditional'
body to be found in my area!) One aspect of Quaker thought that I agree
with without caveat is the idea that we should look to that of God in
everyone. That fairly complex concept carries a lot of punch for me. It
has the ring of God in my ear. The very idea of apostacy seems in
opposition to it.

perhaps it does but it didn't to early Friends who used this word
often. It ranks with similar frequency to other negative words like
"whore"--in the sense that while one found "true love" with God/Christ
one only received a pale and tawdry and unsatisfying substitute
through the worship of "forms" that was offered by Calvinists and
Catholics. It was these who they believed not only strayed from the
teachings of Jesus/the Spirit but also drew others away with their
apostacy.

Quakerism was not orignally, not matter what it has become in some
places, the idea that one could believe anything and be a Quaker and
that everyone else has the obligation to respect without question or
confrontation any thing that anyone wants to believe.

In the 17th Century what was known as Calvinism and what was known as
Quakerism were absolutely irreconcilable.

Secondly, it would be possible to go too hard on Paul. I agree with you
completely that Paul was not acting as some creature blown infallibly on
God's very breath. However, there is no denying that he was a man
exceptionally devoted to God. I don't mean to suggest that you believe
otherwise, but I felt it good to interject that as food for thought in the
current discussion.

I have said and I believe that Paul was a spiritual giant. I do not
disagree with what you write above.

Many people seem to think that if someone is wrong about something
that discredits everything they ever said or did. I don't believe
that.


I have never met a man who was more devoted to God than Paul was, even by
the accounts of his critics. The same man who was by modern standards
almost certainly a misogynist (but not by his own culture's standards), also
wrote some of the more beautiful bits of Scripture. Bits that also have the
ring of God in my ear:

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I
have become a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of
prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowlege; and if I have all faith,
so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give
all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be
burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous. Love does not brag and is
not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own, is not
prevoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in
unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. Bears all things, believes
all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done
away. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it
will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when
the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason
like a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things. For
now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part,
but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is
love."


It's ironic that this passage became the cliche of weddings throughout the
'Christian' world. It is such a wedding cliche, that I have difficultly
seeing through that association to the beauty behind Paul's writing.
Weddings celebrate a love that is in some sense selfish. It is a narrow
love that is the focus of a wedding. Paul was not talking about a narrow
love, and IMO his writing here comes as close to expressing what God yearns
for us as anything I've read anywhere.

Yes, but he is a man who taught that being married was, at best, a
necessity for those who couldn't hack a celebate life style.

Whatever his reasons for writing that, it's dynamite to "respect" his
writings to the point that one follows him off of a cliff.

But, again, the fact that Paul's view of women and marriage is in
error does not invalidate evertything he ever did or said.


I can forgive the man who wrote such a passage his human failings (being
careful to not attribute to him what certainly doesn't justify attribution.)
The man who wrote that was either a gifted charlatan, or a man who heard the
small voice more clearly than most of us have. Not inerrantly, but....

Bingo. Not inerrantly. And we have the responsibility to wrestle his
teachings when they conflict with leadings of the Spirit--the living
Spirit who writes its "law" not in books but in the hearts of people.

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.

You are absolutely correct here. But I would like to emphasize that, IMO,
Paul _did_ have a more special relationship with God than most of us in fact
do; you are perfectly correct in saying that we are all capable of having
such a relationship if we choose to. But it should be remarked that most of
us don't, despite the potential. Paul did. That bears some measure of
respect. It was not dead words in a book that lead Paul to lead the life he
did.

I agree with everything said, above.

But it's the dead words in a book that is the guide for the "scripture
is supreme" ideology that has recently been contened with in this
thread.

Paul wrote letters to specific chruches at specific times and for
specific purposes. He was not writing scripture when he did that, at
least I doubt he thought he was.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Spirit animated Paul, Paul
walked with the Spirit. But Paul also misunderstood at times or went
beyond the light it gave him, at times, and he without doubt
substituted/mixed in the worldly wisdom of his time for that Light.

It should also be kept in mind that Paul should not be held accountable for
what his writings have been made into by later Christians.

I am not holding Paul accountable in any way. I am not one to be hard
on people because they could not escape the limitations of their
times. I do think, though, that the point to be made about what his
writings were made into and, as you point out below, the writings done
in his name, is that these are tools of what I refer to as the
apostacy--the church's moving away from it's role as the bride of
Christ and into the role of political "player," fooling around (to
continue the marriage analgoy) with lovers like worldly power and
pride. Worldly concerns, such as protecting the institution of the
church from the state (by sanctioning state actions and cutting the
"rough edges" off of the gospel so as to not give the state any
concern about it's influence on those governed), and powers, such as
the spirit animating many who have used the institution of the church
to try to control the state for secular advantage, too often have
influenced so called "revelation" or "inspiritation."

And this is a contemporary thing. A local church here in Portland, a
strict Bible believing church, has a reader board outside that urges
God to bless our troops. This is an institution that pays the price
of blindness for turning its back on Christ (at least in this one
regard) for tax exemption and quite probably to keep from alienating
members whose spiritual condition is compromised by their
political/cultural conditioning.

But just because a church is gone astray in some ways doesn't mean
that it's completely useless or that it won't change in the future.
"Apostacy" isn't an all or nothing thing, in my view, any more that a
person's condition is.


It should be
kept in mind that much of what is attributed to him most likely had little
to do with him personally. Significant to this thread in particular, the
frequent quotes from Timothy and Titus are almost certainly not from Paul.
These days mostly only the adherents of inerrancy and status quo stick to
that theory, for obvious reasons.

Right. And I am holding *people today* accountable for adhering to
Paul's words and using them as a dead hand to control people in the
present.

Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon


"But when you step off of a cliff your life takes a
definite direction."
Terry Pratchett
.

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