Non-Christian Neighbors
Some Christians recognize the problem when another religion is using coercive power to promote its goals, but find it less objectionable when their own religion does so. But, as the saying goes, power corrupts.
Some Christians recognize the problem when another religion is using coercive power to promote its goals, but find it less objectionable when their own religion does so. But, as the saying goes, power corrupts.
The preacher at the memorial service no doubt thought he was giving a message of comfort to those who had lost a loved one. The central thrust of his message was that it was Jim’s time to go. It was apparently the kind of message he had repeated many times before.
There is a better way than adopting the literalist readings of either Dawkins or conservative defenders of everything ascribed to God in biblical stories. Just as we might acknowledge that a biblical writer can have an overly anthropomorphic view of God, we can say that a biblical writer can have a view of God that is morally deficient, which comes from common ways of thinking about deity at the time.
When I was young, I was taught to read the Bible as a message directly from God. It was recognized, of course, that the message came through human writers.