Child abuse or proper Christian teaching?

Post Reply New Topic

If Jesus stopped by, my humble opinion is that He would remove those children from those abusers, and as for punishment for the abusers, only God knows.

From the New Testament, in the words of the Apostle Paul:

Romans 1 :29-32 “Those filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hate for god, despite, proud, boasters, inventions of evil things, disobedience to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, unnatural affection, implacable or unmerciful nature: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death”.


He certainly did, if you believe the Bible:

And he [Elijah] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. 2 Kings 2:24b

Then, is the Old Testament irrelevant?

If so, then why did New-Testament teachers (including Jesus) preach from it? Why are modern-day clergy still preaching from it?

If only the New Testament is relevant, then why has slavery been made illegal?

Notice the distinction "worthy of death"; that doesn't mean they were actually killed. By God's standard, all of us are worth of nothing but destruction; He spares us because He loves us. In the end, those who still refuse Him won't be completely destroyed, just eternally separated from His presence.

Even if God kills people, He's the Creator of all life. As such, why would it be objectively wrong for Him to take it back at His own discretion?

Translation: 'If a god does it, that means it's not wrong.'

Samuel
"This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy [a] everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.' "

Hosea
"16 The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,
because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open."
Psalms
"8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks."
Matthew
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it. "

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I don't accept that any gods created life anyway. But playing along with your statement I'd say it would be totally immoral of a god to kill intelligent, living beings. Using your argument you could say that a mother and father are the creators of their baby and should be allowed to kill their child at their own discretion.

Which you, yourself, still use. So dont start obfuscating the matter. you have already giving tacit approval for the manipulation of young impressionable minds through the use of fear and justice of god, excusing your behaviour by balancing it with his very conditional love.

To quote



Your method is in my opinion more insidious than the ones you dislike. At least they are open about what they are doing, your approach is the carrot and stick, it bends young minds by stealth and subterfuge, it portrays a loving, reflective world where all is good and the adults around are supportive, but hidden just under the surface is the fear of hell and damnation, the balance you speak of is the loving god who will turn to merciless vengeance if you do not please him. You may think your approach is so much better, its not, all you have done is wrap up the kudgel in a thin layer of cotton wool.

I've seen the entire movie that this clip is from and it is to me at least a very disturbing documentary. The way they teach Christianity to children in this organization almost seems to promote violence against everyone who isn't Christian like them. I'd hate to think if these kids still hold the same mindset today.

Yes, the Young Earth Creationism nonsense is ridiculous. There are even living organisms older than 5000 years.
Fortunately it is only a fundamentalist fringe that believes this. Major groups such as the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans generally don't.

He's willing to have some bears maul to death a group of kids, for calling someone a name, and yet he does no such thing to some truly evil people in modern times who really deserve it. Is this kind of being worthy of worship?

Suppose a scientist creates life... tiny little people a few inches high and demanded that these little people worship him. What would we think of such a scientist?

Yes.

My parents created me, but we are probably agreed that they would morally be in the wrong if they killed me.

Using a scientist analogy again, if someone like Craig Venter created sentient life, I think he would be morally wrong to kill those beings.

The only "get out" clause for God is if he is taking those people to Heaven. I think the guaranteed existence of Heaven changes things somewhat. However, it would be wrong to separate those people from their families. Ending the world? That's cool.

I don't think Christianity, or any religious views for that matter, should be imposed on young children, particularly if it is fundamentalist. They should be free to choose to believe whatever they want to believe, and because young children are very impressionable, they will, most of the time, get stuck believing whatever religious beliefs they were told to believe if religion gets imposed on them. If fundamentalist religion gets imposed on them, that would usually limit their ability to think for themselves.

Religion can not only limit a person's ability to think for themselves, but it can actively forbid them to think for themselves! When I was a university student many years ago, there were a number of Muslims studying sciences at my university. They excluded themselves from all the classes on evolution and evolutionary biology because their religion forbade them to learn about it!

Looks like mental abuse and brainwashing another reason I am no longer a christian!

It's pretty far from being right, and I think that the woman in this clip is probably mentally unstable, but I don't know that I would say that it's actually child abuse. It's not good, but I wouldn't want the state to take the children here away from their parents, or anything like that.