Well Dane500, It is true, this will be my last interaction with you because I now see what you are about. First of all your initial comment was quite lengthy and so my reply to each of YOUR points may have seemed lengthy but I was limited to addressing only a few of YOUR ORIGINAL comments.
Second, you completely ignored my point that Christianity is a refinement to the “Law” and so things allowed in the “Law” are not part of Christianity, like war, sacrificing animals, etc. I completely disagree that Ecclesiastes 9:18 is even remotely recommending weapons of war as a means to protect “good accomplishment.” That is twisting scripture and when someone does that even after it’s been pointed out to them, then I will excuse myself from the conversation.
I‘m not interested in debate with you and I think I made my response to YOUR comments perfectly clear. It seems to me that you keep asking the same question. Yawn!!
Driven you touch on an important point in that the depth (or superficial) level of one’s thinking can make a ’truth’ out of fiction. Worse, that such fiction is a product of one seeking ‘permission’ (justification) to pursue a course of action that is questionable. Where, and from whom that permission is granted is irrelevant, so long as the ethos to continue in a certain way is acquired or sanctioned by another. (I should say that I have no idea what Dane is speaking in favour of, but that his/her methodology in argument is like an open book - and that it’s not the bible).
What you reveal in your note to him, is that the bible is about faith and example, love being the governor and as rightly pointed out, the attributes far away and exceed the previous law pertaining to the Jews, and introduce the governance of the Holy Spirit - what the brothers and sisters in jail in Russia are living on. There is a proof in the pudding, in that which one of us will be will be more likely to be saved by knowledge that we make of our own understanding or by the love developed in us by the Spirit, because that is what we seek first. We have I suppose, the scripture about the spirit guiding our way to the left or to the right. As you point out, it is not of our making, but as a consequence of what and whom we seek inwardly and whether we are guided by that spirit or ourselves. Why the scripture “miserable man that I am, for that which I should do I do not” . I think it is difficult, (it certainly is for me) to follow the ethos of the bible when we live in a sea of oppression. It is a blessing that we are tried by our own desires. If we were tried by the desires of others …..!…but then we are …. It is a long road.