Wednesday, September 12, 2007

An Odd Comment

Over at the Xanga version of this blog, someone called "TheVoiceReturns" responded to the "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule" I re-posted yesterday with this:
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"But God has promised us a new heaven
and a NEW EARTH, where justice will rule.
We are really looking forward to that!"
(2Peter 3:13)(CEV)-BibleGateway



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(The link is mine.)

My first thought was that passage reads like an argument for people traveling between stars to settle on new worlds. From a "new earth" around a different star wouldn't people gaze upon "new heavens" each night? On a "new earth" wouldn't the people there only settle with people who share their views? Wouldn't that make it so, at least for a while, "justice will rule," since they all share the same idea of justice?

I was going to be flip and ask about space travel and colonization, but the more I thought, the more I wondered how that passage relates to God not wanting people to kill people. So, not expecting any sort of a response, I wrote back:
I see nothing in that passage that says killing is necessary.

Is killing justice? Is that what you are suggesting?

Quoting a passage like this after I re-posted something that says God doesn't like people killing people leads me to think that's what you're saying. Without you giving me an idea to your interpretation of that passage, that's what I'm going to assume.

If you ever come back here, I'd like an explanation. Do you, or at least the part of you who blog as TheVoiceReturns, believe that God wants people to kill people and through the killing this new heaven and new earth will come to be?

I don't get it.
And I really don't get it. I'd like to, though. I want to understand how killing (or not killing) relates to a "new earth, where justice will rule," but I don't.

Do any of you?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ever play with a magnifying glass over an ant-hill? Imagine if you could aim only for the wicked ants ...

Jazz said...

Nutjob.

What's to understand...

That's all.

ticknart said...

AE -- Did you ever see that episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Dewey compares God to an angry kid near an ant hole who eventually gets fed up and squashing ants and then getting the hose to drown them?

Jazz -- I like to understand the thinking of nutjobs, when they think. And if the answer is something like, "The Bible tells us so." then even better.

Anonymous said...

No, I haven't seen that episode. My knowledge of Malcolm in the Middle is sub-par at best ... That's not the point ...

Notwithstanding that I know nothing and therefor candnot comprehend God, let alone compare the concept to humanity; you understand!

ticknart said...

AE -- What is it Bill and Ted said? "True wisdom comes from knowing you know nothing"?

Anonymous said...

Plato said that, or Socrates by means of Plato!

Thinking of those guys (Bill and Ted not Plato and Socrates), I had the most interesting conversation on temporal theory based on the 'Bill & Ted' theory vs the 'Back to the Future' theory.

Most enter-lightening!

ticknart said...

AE -- I thought it was Socrates by way of Bill and Ted.

And the time travel stuff, was it about paradoxes or loops? What?

Anonymous said...

Okay, so Socrates by way of Bill and Ted; let's stick with that--it seems reasonable here.

Bill and Ted follow the theory that time is indeed a river through which one can wade, though one cannot alter the past-present-future as all are linked: that which has been done in the past already affected your present. Or, if you will, 'We just have to remember to go back in time and get your tape recorder when we're all finished or none of this will happen.' 'But it did happen; hey, we did do it!'

As opposed to the Back to the Future tangent theory where Biff can travel back in time to 1955 and create an alternate 1985 ... Or marty altering his family period...

But weren't we questioning God's ethics here?

...

Questioning God's ethics ... I like that ...