(snip)

> True. That's also another meaning of the Greek word in question.
>

Hmm... but if it does mean to "preach more fully", that implies that the previous rendering of the Law was imperfect or incomplete and that the new one replaces the older one, right? So it still at least leaves ambiguous (in this verse) what the status of the older Law is.

(snip snip)

> > But many of the pragmatic reasons no longer apply (if I cook pork the right way it's highly unlikely for me to get trichinosis)...
>
> And other diseases would require you to turn your meat into charcoal, by which time it's unpalatable.
>

True, but those diseases tend to be rare. (No pun intended.) At least right now I don't feel that frightened that my ham's going to kill me. I haven't heard of that many people who've died that way.

Now, following the vegetarian diet Daniel and his buddies did because the meat was consecrated to idols, *that* makes sense and probably would allow me to live much longer... if I had the willpower and inclination to do it. Oh well.

BTW, the disease that's making all the splash right now (besides foot-and-mouth, which isn't contagious to humans) is BSE (which, to be fair, isn't contagious to humans either, but could become so; see what happened with that mutation of scrapie), which comes from beef, even when cooked kosher.

> > ...and to be reminded of spiritual truths in this way, though beneficial, is not essential. (God condemned many times such potentially beneficial things as phylacteries,
>
> Oh, tefillin? The complaint was that some people, especially the leadership, had started to make them big, and their tzitziyot long, as a means of saying, "Look at me!"(Mt. 23:5; they are mentioned in no other place) He also mentioned making your prayers long(obviously, if a prayer needs to be long, you pray long) by repititions and such, basically to say the same thing.
>

I think a similar argument can be extended to buying a big, impressive leather-bound Bible and carrying it with you everywhere even when you have no intention of reading it (no joke; I have Christian friends who do this "as a witness"). And prayers that do things like use archaic language (no, "thee" and "thou" were never divine pronouns in English, and they didn't have any such thing in Biblical Hebrew or Greek) and follow certain formulae.

Basically I think Jesus was talking about how religion became ritualistic status symbols rather than any sort of relationship with God.

(snip)

> > There was an incident where Jesus defended not the hard-to-define "work" of performing miracles but the fairly prosaic work of carrying one's sleeping mat down the street (the Pharisees were *very* strongly of the opinion...
>
> Key word, that.
>

"Opinion"? Well, you have a point. I'm not entirely sure how to define "work" myself, but I think the best definition in this context is "something that you do for yourself that you could reasonably avoid doing out of respect for God". Hence brushing my teeth on Sunday (or Saturday) morning isn't work, but finishing up my big term paper probably would be. (Not that it keeps me from doing it... *sigh*. Still far from reaching the goal.)

(snip)

>
> Not arbitrarily, no. Everything He does has a purpose, even if we don't understand it. (I'm sure you know this already.) Somebody wanted to follow Him, but He had to show him that he was too greedy. Had he been willing to change right there, I'm sure Jesus would've accomodated. But he went away sad. Now, did he become a disciple later? It's possible. It's not recorded one way or the other.
>

I agree completely. I wasn't speaking of people who water down the Gospel and try to railroad people into salvation, which I think is the worst kind of dishonesty. (Come to our service, where there's singing, snacks, and lots of fun people to meet! And try out our free eternal life plan while you're at it!) I don't think the integrity of the Gospel should be sacrificed so we can get more converts. (To paraphrase Jesus: "What does it profit the Gospel if the whole world should convert to it but it loses its meaning?")

But I think when the Gospel has been presented to a person, they should have the chance to consider it and accept it. I don't think anyone should be forced to make a deathbed decision (by human beings; God has his timing, but we don't).

BTW, I think the rich young man did get what Jesus meant; otherwise he wouldn't have been so depressed after he left Jesus. If he'd thought Jesus really meant disciples couldn't own anything, then he probably would've thought "What a freak, it wasn't worth it" and just left. (And it would've been an inconsistency, because the apostles kept a treasury and some of Jesus' followers were wealthy; he was criticized for that latter fact by the Pharisees, actually.) I think he was aware of the inconsistency in his values and the emptiness in his life from the moment he went up to Jesus, or he wouldn't have asked the question.

(snip)
>
> The problem there was that they were requiring it for salvation. Or that they were getting people circumcised basically for the numbers.
>

True. But Paul said, IIRC, that there was no value in physical circumcision of Gentiles (though there was no condemnation of those Jews who were circumcised). Galatians 5:6.

(snip)

> Zapped, no. Set things back a bit, though. Or seemed to.

Of course. Murder is never an easy thing to get away with in any earthly society. But it ended up being part of God's plan in the end. (Of course, everything does in the end. But still, it's convincing evidence of mercy's central place in God's will.) I wonder how he could've become the Deliverer if he'd stayed in Egypt and grown up to be an Egyptian noble. It's conceivable (after all, he'd be in a position of power and have the ear of Pharoah), but might've been less effective; greater conflict of interests for him personally. (Which there already was, though I think the movie _Prince of Egypt_ may have exaggerated it.) And he wouldn't've had the growth experience in the desert that gave him the strength to lead. And, of course, I think God preferred to do it *his* way, freeing the Israelites using some nobody out of the desert everyone had forgotten about, forcing Pharoah to back down with power and miracles, rather than the human way with politics and negotiations etc.

Sorry, that was a tangent. Moving on...

(snip)

> Bleh. And to see what is being done with the land... They're gonna do a Sabbath year, but they're making deals to purchase enough food from the surrounding nations. The whole idea of the Sabbath year is to trust that God will provide from their ground enough to last the year before the Sabbath year, the Sabbath year itself, and the year when things are still growing. And they're leaning on the nations. *sigh*
>

Really? I hadn't heard about that. Funny how often "trust in God" for the Israeli government has become "trust in our UN allies" and "trust in our superior weapons manufacture".

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I'm wondering just how close the modern Israel comes to God's intention for the nation of Israel. I remember from my history reading that some of the greatest protest against the 1940s Zionist movement came from Orthodox Jews who were appalled at the idea of making Eretz Yisroel a secular state, established by decree of the UK rather than the coming of the Messiah, with laws based on the US Constitution and UN human rights bills rather than the Law of Moses.

I don't know where I stand on that issue, though I find it funny that most of the culturally non-Jewish Jewish (or half-Jewish or quarter-Jewish) friends I have are ardently pro-Israel ("Palestinians are nothing but terrorists who should be expelled; Israel deserves nuclear capabilities; people who criticize Ariel Sharon are secretly anti-Semitic") while my (admittedly limited) communication with more conservative Jewish people who are more in touch with their culture shows them to be more ambivalent. (At the very least they criticize the Israeli administration about as often as the average US citizen criticizes the American administration.)

On the other hand, that's probably because the latter group are the ones who've actually read anything about Israel and know anything about it, while the former group is kneejerking. It's kind of that way with Americans, too. (Most (*not* all) of the jingoistic patriotic "USA Rocks!" people I know are the ones who know the least of anyone about US history, culture, politics, etc.)

(That was another example of a tangent. Please ignore it.)

(snip)

>
> More like a matter of who actually declared it to be the Sabbath. The Lord of the Sabbath didn't; the standard texts that seem to say that the apostles changed it, well, don't... In fact, no part of the NT says that the day to be considered the Sabbath was changed.
>

You're right; AFAIK it wasn't changed until after the closing of canon as part of the transition from early Church to Roman Catholic Church (and some churches never changed).

(snip)
>
> Well, yes. If someone can, in good conscience, consider Sunday to be their Sabbath, that's fine. The only thing that would "bother" me a little would be if he felt he could dictate it as such for the rest of the world, or even for the rest of the Christian/Messianic community.
>

I agree. That's why I don't take sides in that particular argument. For crying out loud, at my church recently one of my friends came under heavy fire because his girlfriend's church has services on Saturday, which qualifies that church as a "demon-worshipping cult". They were kidding, of course, but the fact that that attitude exists enough that people can use it to make jokes bugs me. Divisions in the church... *sigh*

(snip)

>
> Hmmm... I *might* be able to hook you up with some, if you're interested... but I don't know if they're like mine(tries to keep the Law, including the Sabbath and the feasts and the kosher laws as a show of love for God, but don't condemn anyone who does otherwise), or if they make Law a salvation issue, or if they (*cringe*) make Talmud a salvation issue.
>
> Or if they require membership if you want to wear a prayer shawl there...

Actually, I might take you up on that (I'm open to new experiences, and I'm not crazy about the church I'm at), except that as a minor I'm still technically under my parents' guardianship and they want the whole family to go to the same church and their view on the matter is quite different from mine.

Once I do reach the age of majority, I don't plan to live in this area anymore, but I'm not quite sure what area I will be living in (yes, still undecided about colleges, and it's getting late).

Actually, I wouldn't mind wearing a prayer shawl and yarmulke, (someone invited me once to a conservative synagogue where they give you a yarmulke to wear if you don't have one, IIRC; I don't remember exactly because I ended up not going, having other plans for that night) except I have a horrible fear that I would look very silly, being Asian and all. :)

(No one tell the joke about the Japanese rabbi now. I *mean* it. No one.)

(snip)
>
> Oops, the "just" threw you. Perhaps I should've put "ETC." in caps, eh? :-)
>

I often have the same problem. (To overstate or understate? That is the question.) But yeah, I see where you're coming from, and I don't have any quarrel with it.

(snip)

> > I'm glad we agree there. SDAs are actually the group I have the least quarrel with among the ones I mentioned, because their difference with mainstream Christianity seems to be mostly in their eschatology and not in their understanding of the core Gospel. Even so, they verge on embracing concepts I don't like when overapplied; the significance of works, the power of humans to change God's timing, etc.
>
> You mean, "saved by works" as opposed to "saved unto works"? Yeesh. It's a double-edged problem; people believe that you earn salvation by works, and others are so afraid of that doctrine as to become what I call "works-shy"; afraid of doing works lest some human come along and judge them as trying to earn their salvation.
>

True. The latter is a problem and results in the spread of liberal churches that teach that basically everything you do is OK as long as you have a Bible in your house and pray once in a while and try to be a generally spiritual person.

But still, I think common sense would keep most people from embracing that totally. "Because the Law is dead now, God doesn't mind if you shoot up your school and rape women and get addicted to illegal drugs or anything!"

I think the problem isn't so much people who are afraid to try to do good deeds as people who are afraid of naming bad deeds as bad deeds to be accused of "judging". But the Bible does make a distinction between judging a person (you're bad and deserve to go to Hell) and judging an action (that was a bad thing to do and deserving of Hell).

(snip snip)

> Depends vastly on the circumstances; if the one in question had shown remorse in the... what? Year or more? It might have been multiple years, now... I *might* feel differently. This guy, however, had he gotten off would likely do it again. Okay, so it doesn't keep *other* murderers from killing. But it makes sure that one doesn't again. (A futile exercise, to be sure, as the only way that all the murders will cease is when time's up on the eschatological clock.)
>

Hmm... I would agree that knowing there was a murderer loose and not doing anything about it would be a tragic sin of omission. I never said there should be no consequences for murder or that McVeigh should've been acquitted.

But wouldn't life imprisonment keep him from killing again? (It's not 100% certain in the way death is, but nothing is 100% certain; we do have the resources, though, to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that we can lock someone up so he can't get out. From what I've seen of the statistics the number of prison escapees in the recent past has been greatly exaggerated in the media.)

It seems to me that if one doesn't see it as a matter of justice (which we have differing opinions on) but merely of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, then life imprisonment is in most ways superior to the DP. Less total cost to the taxpayer per prisoner, less harm to the prisoner himself and more chance for redemption (obviously), less of a potentially damaging psychological effect on the victims' families (I *know* not everyone sees it as "let's get him back and make him suffer", but enough do that it disturbs me)...

And I don't think McVeigh's lack of remorse proves much of anything, considering he was there for only a few years and during that time he was riding high on his wave of notoriety and publicity mostly generated by the death sentence. (As someone else said, most of the lifers seem to fade from the media rather quickly, while the death row inmates linger in the camera interminably... How many magazine covers was he on, again, just because he delayed the execution with an appeal?)

There are examples of condemned murderers who have shown remorse and who (at least IMHO) had a chance of becoming productive citizens again. Charles Colson is a lifer right now who has a productive ministry out of prison. Jeffrey Dahmer, IIRC, repented and became a Christian on death row and went so far as to request death because of the guilt he felt. (No, I don't consider that a pro-DP point; many people have requested death, that doesn't mean they should get it. See King Saul.)

(snip snip)

> > Ar"hopes he sounds better now that he's (relatively) well-rested"thur
>
> Nyper"Much better"old

Ar"Why, thank you"thur