Hi Bill
Sorry for my somewhat sporadic posting. I'm trying to spend less time on the box.
I enjoy reading your posts, even though I obviously disagree with your world view. I notice you started by talking about morals, but quickly shifted to values, equating the two. I've been around the block on this before, but do you think there can be any meaning to morality if there is no standard to judge it by? The Matthew passage presupposes that such a standard exists, but your application seems to render it totally meaningless.
The definition of murder that you gave, while lacking the important qualifier of innocent, is likewise meaningless unless you can establish what wrongful is. Both innocence and guilt require an ultimate standard if they are to be meaningfully measured. This is impossible to achieve, absent ultimate reality.
It's interesting to me that I would begin as a paneverything monist, and become a Christian, while you seem to have once been attracted by Christianity and then rejected it in favor of Monism. This very question of good and evil has been instrumental in my coming to the conclusion that Christianity is true. That's not to say that Christianity has an easy answer to the question of good and evil, but the monistic view simply amounts to a denial of the problem entirely. This cannot be lived, and therefore is a big red flag to me.
I am somewhat at a loss to see how Peter's binding and losing, leads you to the conclusion that moral standards change, since the clear teaching of the bible is that morality is determined by the unchanging character of a holy God. Are you confident that you have a good handle on the meaning of that passage?
Greg |
