I'll see if I can't take the temperature down here, maybe I'm crabby this morning and it's just me. Apologies, sincerely.
Is there any reliable way to determine the distinction between regular intuition and divine communication? It sounds like you think the answer is somewhere near 'not really.' And god doesn't always communicate in subtle ways, right? The burning bush, telling Abraham to drag his kid up on a mountain and kill him, Saul's road to Damascus experience...so were all these versions of mental illness?
That's very true!
And I do understand that referring to voices in the head can easily be associated with Saul and Abraham hearing God's voice which was not gentle in these particular cases. So no offense taken.
What's true is that God doesn't always speak to everyone the same way. It might depend on the individual, or it might depend on the circumstance.
I'll give an example, as I've fallen into this theme myself.
Typically, what follows after conversion is hearing the gentle voice directing the believer towards a calling. The callings differ per individual, but a common theme seems to be that the calling is both often desirable, but seemingly impossible to achieve. It's possible most Christians don't achieve fulfilling their calling to the fullest. But, I'm responsible for my own calling, so I don't delve too much into that.
The problem is that sometimes natural reasoning gets in the way, and the believer will try to compromise, or play down the calling. Here's a scripture that conveys this idea, although it's not specifically about a calling.
John 11:23-24
New International Version
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
Martha compromised Jesus' claim by suggesting He simply meant her brother would arise in the after life so to speak. But what Jesus was saying basically was no, when I say he will arise again, I meant right in the here and now.
For some reason, Martha used enough logic to suggest a miracle, but with a limitation. She couldn't, for whatever reason, grasp the concept of life returning back to a human after a few days.
I've had the same problem. God's guidance started out gentle, but as I procrastinated moving towards a calling, the voice became more persistent. This is why you might hear some preachers say they actually tried to run away from their calling, only to end up submitting to it because they could not run away from God's voice, even though they may have removed themselves from other believers (which at one time I did). We can also see that the case with Jonah running away from God's calling was very extreme.
To attempt to paint another picture, say a believer hears the call, whatever it might be (ministerial, or a particular profession) that involves traveling around the world. The receiver of the calling might reason that they don't make enough money to travel, but they live in an area that's an ethnic melting pot. So, similar to Martha, they may reason that what God actually meant was that by interacting with immigrants from different nations in a big American metropolis, they are (in a sense) traveling the world. But, what God actually meant was no, you're going to get your happy posterior on a plane.
In both these scenarios, there was enough logic and reasoning to accept a divine calling, and a resurrection in the afterlife. But the logic and reasoning became stifled by an unproductive counter-reasoning. The problem with a calling (from a human standpoint) is that although it may be desirable, the impossible elements require complete dependency on God. The natural human tendency is to try and achieve goals we feel we can do on our own strength.
Great, then we can drop this one, as many Christians DO believe you need god for morality, even if you don't think he's real. If god isn't responsible for morality, we can cross that off the list of benefits to believing in him I guess.
Someone helping their neighbor out, who they like, would certainly be a moral, or a humane act. The problem is that Jesus might raise the bar if that person's a believer, and lead them to help the neighbor who is rude, and not deserving of any help. So on one hand, the person is not immoral for not helping one who doesn't deserve it. On the other
hand the person is not obeying the leading of God to show kindness to the undeserving. So the person's morality might be said to at least be limited.
Did god ever change his stance on not judging them? The whole "should a man lay with another man as he lay with a woman, they are an abomination and shall surely be put to death" thing. I know there's a whole shift to "love everyone" popular in modern Christianity, but there sure seem to be plenty of Christians who still think it's a sin to be gay, and the opposition to gay marriage is exclusively religiously based. I don't think the bible features a passage that cancels this command anywhere NEAR as explicitly as the passage that condemns it.
God never changed his stance. And the command to love everyone never changed. Sin is judged in the afterlife (so to speak). The NT is just as severe towards sin as the OT,
because it speaks directly of judgment at the time one is face to face with the Creator. Thinking it's a sin to be gay seems to be equated with persecution. Many, many Christians perceive homosexuality to be sin, and don't display the slightest signs of homophobia.
As you know, I live in the San Francisco area. I encounter gay people fairly often. The majority of the time they are some of the nicest people. I
recall preferring to work with one simply because he was a lot more pleasant to work with than some of the macho knuckle-heads I've had to work with. I understand the
cultural intrigue of the gay community in San Francisco which helps make the city unique. My temptation is to never say anything that might offend them. And I actually don't say anything unless they ask. Ironically for me though, for me to not say anything per my temptation, would actually be unethical (per my belief).
Interesting question raised by your subsequent sentence though: if god decided to change your mind, or took away your power of control to say no, or coerced you, would that god still be moral?
I actually have plenty of Christian examples, but I used Islamic terror to get us both on the same page (religious extremism supported by a reading of the holy text) and use a very recent and very visible example if the phenomena I'm talking about. Do you think Islam played NO PART in 9/11 somehow?
I don't know enough about Islam to say. I know that far more Muslims condemned the attacks than supported it. I tend to view it as more of a factional affair. But, I'm not an expert.
Why not just give the Christian examples?
There's plenty of less acute Christian examples, from recent times, too. People using Christianity as an excuse to threaten Planned Parenthood, or as an excuse to scream in the face of a 15 year old on the way into an abortion clinic. Or standing along a soldier's funeral procession with sings that say God hates fags. I don't think these are the FAULT of the bible: I think people that want to be assholes will find any excuse to do so, or none, but you can't deny that these folks CITE THE BIBLE as a reason. They have clearly derived a permission structure from the book, because they think if they don't do it, they're disobeying God's will at peril to their own souls. Sounds like...coercion. How you call this observation absurd is beyond me, I mean these are well documented. Google them. These nuts with the guns going into polling places? LOTS of overlap with evangelical Christianity in that community dude. How's that far from Islamists declaring fatwahs based on the Quran?
I don't agree with threatening planned parent-hood, but are you aware how brutal PP is? They've had people leave people them because they got sick from witnessing the brutality of an abortion. So while it's wrong to threaten, it's not as if there's no reason. When a minority is murdered by a police officer, this has lead to protesting, which lead to looting, violence, and threats. While I'm sure you acknowledge that the reactions are wrong, do you equate the protestors with Islamic terrorists?
And of course your example naturally includes the Westboro Baptist Church. Whenever any sort of documentary is made to paint a picture of
religion (or Christianity), it will always without fail include the WBC. The most fringest of the fringe will always get the publicity. The small urban church that provides room and shelter for countless homeless will get zero recognition. That's the nature of the beast.
On a side note, video-documentaries on religion are so predictable. As i said, they always include the WBC. And they seem to target sermons from very conservative southern preachers.....and spooky or dark music. gotta have that spooky music.
Books aren't dangerous in and of themselves, they are totally inert. If no one reads them or no one thinks they're real, how's a book do any harm?
I agree that books aren't dangerous in and of themselves. But you sort of gave a read-between-the-lines comment by inserting If no one reads them.
What if someones does read them?
And here it does appear that you believe that the book could cause immoral behavior.
I think it gives potentially dangerous people an excuse to do things that they normally wouldn't do
