Post #15 - Scripture as a Weapon

Stop that.  Just bloody stop it.  Both sides.  Everybody.  Just friggin' stop using scripture as a weapon!

Pick any hot-button issue: Conservatives will quote some scriptures to justify their beliefs.  Moderates will use other scripture, and Liberals yet even more scripture (and by Conservative, Moderate, and Liberal I refer to one's standing in Christianity, not politics).  Non-Christians will either point at all the Christians who disagree with each other while reading from the same book, or whip out some OT scripture that was done away with in the New Covenenant (shellfish being an abomination and stoning disobedient children are favorites, usually) to discredit Christian opinion.

All are well within their rights to do so.  All are also making themselves look like myopic dingleberries.  The Word of God is immense, all-encompassing, and impossible for our tiny little monkey brains to apply with 100% accuracy - this is why we all need His grace for salvation.

Example:  There is a verse in Deuteronomy which says any non-virgin who gets married is to be put to death, yet in Hosea (still in the Old Testament, mind you) God himself instructs Hosea to marry a prostitute.  Inconsistent?  Hypocritical? Try progressive.

Yes, the Word of God is progressive!  Back in the Deuteronomy days, humans were quite stupid and needed stark and simple rules with clearly delineated consquences (costs, benefits, rewards and punishments).  As time moved on through the OT, God would on occasion ask some of his prophets to do what would be considered blasphemous by the established leaders (or in Hosea's case, even against His own written law) to serve as an example of man's progress throuh God.

God cannot break God's law, He can only rewrite it, which is obviously what He did with Hosea.  He later sent Jesus to turn Old Law on its head by establishing the New Covenant which is composed of two parts: (1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and spirit, and (2) Love your neighbor as you would love yourself.

Why would God do this?  Because He only gives us as much freedom/responsibility as He knows we can handle at one time.  Had He opened with The New Covenant, those Deuteronomy-days mouth-breathers would have just humped each other all day long and only given praise to God during climax.  By establishing straightforward cause-and-effect dos-and-don'ts, He gave the Deuters a framework with which to move the culture of His chosen people ahead.  Of course, they still screwed it up, but they progressed much farther much faster than the rest of the world did.

As progress continued, God gave examples through leaders (a la Hosea) that it is time to shed some of the strictness and take the next step toward complex thought.  The New Covenant was a bloody quantum leap in freedom, so He in His wisdom gave us both the ultimate teacher in Jesus and the Holy Spirit as a guide, and that is where we are right now.

So let us Christians consult the Holy Spirit within to express what is right or wrong, sinful or blessed - some scripture flat out doesn't apply anymore, and the only way to know which verses are obsolete is through meditation and prayer. 

PRIVATE prayer!  Don't send me off on another rant...