Re: Outdated customs -- Tithing

Again, I agree with a lot of what you say, but I still disagree on at least one major point.

I do not for a second buy that the Bible is the Word of TRUTH, the LORD, JESUS, GOD, or anyone else but the fallible human minds that produced it.

If it is true (and I don't mean to imply that the entirety of the Bible is false, for there is no better way to promote lies than to dress them with truth) that by the fruit it bears you may know the tree, then the religion of Paul and the Bible that carries it forward deserve no consideration at all, for the fruit that that particular tree has born is the most foul of all.

Your assertion that it's the flaws of men and their (mis-)interpretations of the perfect Word of God that make Christendom the insanity that it is is no different than our anonymous Islamic friend's similar assertions about the corrupted goverments that spring up around Islam and corrupt its teachings, and inviduals who call themselves Muslim who promote extremist and/or terrorist views, contrary to her claims (and those the few American Muslims I've spoken with) of what Islam really is.

What makes your claim the correct one and not hers?

Let's turn the tables for a second and really think about this. What if it isn't that the Word of God was inspired by God and written by men, but that the alleged Word of God is used to inspire men to commit atrocity after atrocity and call it the desire of God?

Doesn't that sound like something evil would do? Do you understand what evil really is?

And doesn't that sound a lot more like the actual fact of Christendom? Kill, kill, kill, war, war, war, kill, war, terror, inquisition, fear, force, fear, kill, terror, kill, war, death, destruction, dismemberment, kill, war, war, war...

It isn't that there aren't decent, well-meaning people in Christianity. But it isn't Christianity that makes people decent. Decent people is the only thing that makes Christianity worthwhile -- Christianity needs decent people; people don't need Christianity to be decent, except insofar as they believe the Bible's insistence that it is so.

And so evil uses your decency to continue to advance its agenda, because you cling to the very source of inspiration that has been used, and will continue to be used, to justify every manner of true evil committed by one group against another.

Now, you don't interpret the Bible that way, but do the majority of Christians share your views? As evangelicals advance the adoption of their interpretation of the Bible, how much evil will be done? They pray for the rest of us to be subject to their end times fantasies and work diligently to create that situation here on Earth (no God required!), all the while proclaiming it's God's will, because they (like you) accepted as true the assertion that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the way they're reading it is the correct way to read it, because the Word is infallible, and it could only inspire them correctly.

You, too, insist that your way is the only correct way to read it. And, like a lawyer, you've got it down to contract-like precision.

But does it really represent God?

The God I believe in is too simple to be explained in a book. Contracts, micro-management, and law after law after law are the work of enslavers, the real evil in this world.