Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
I'm not smart enough to figure how Jesus in the NT says love your enemies, and says in Psalms 18:37 "I have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them: neither did I turn again till they were consumed."
And how Jesus in the NT says suffer the children to come unto me, and Jesus says in Psalms, "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."
... I find cognitive dissonance upon encountering these seemingly contradictions.
... So I... dismiss these contradictions like Lee did. I conclude that something non-Jesus was slipped into the Psalms.
|
I remembered
awareness' comments the other day, while reading Revelations 2:23, about the evil prophetess Jezebel in the Thyatiran church, that "I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds."
Wow! Striking children dead!?! How very not Jesus-like!
Again, one of the ways commonly used by Christians to deal with these seeming contradictions is to identify different levels of meaning, or different dimensions of spiritual reality.
Just because something doesn't read "spiritual" to you, doesn't mean it isn't spiritual. And if you do happen to read something "of Christ" into the text, don't think you have likewise exhausted all its possibilities.
Looking back, WL's teachings had some utility, the way "See Spot run" was new and exciting in first grade. I was advancing, learning to see meaning from these combinations of letters and words. But I certainly hadn't exhausted their possibilities.
And I don't say this as one who has "laid hold", but rather, as one who has recently realized that he wasn't supposed to stay in first grade forever. Second grade, and beyond, awaited.
Remember that WL's "dismissing these contradictions" led to him dismissing the scriptures.