Details in Paul's Epistles that Get Ignored

[Scarlet_Teardrops]

Hmm...I think I should spend a little more time on this...

Sister Cristobela

They would start noticing: these guys don't eat certain things. "Where's the bacon?" "Uh, it's prohibited in the Law, let me show you." There was ample opportunity—by what was preached in the synagogues, what was read from the law and the prophets, down to how they lived. No one would let them sin (if they loved God and their fellow neighbor as themselves); not unless they were only hanging out with Gentiles ignorant of the law—that's not what you'd find in the synagogues, especially on the Sabbath.

This is a fair point.

Sister Cristobela

He wouldn't have to repeat himself seeing as Paul addresses "what food is" in his other epistles. This chapter is just tackling the issue of meats sacrificed to idols, not whether it was an animal consecrated by the word of God or not.

I do not think you adequately addressed my comment about unbelievers and what they eat. My point was this: If Paul was concerned about unbelievers, who wouldn't adhere to the Jewish dietary laws, serving unclean food to the believers, he would have mentioned it, and it would have been a reasonable concern. But he doesn't.

Please feel free to address this further.

Sister Cristobela

Jesus declared all foods clean, not all animals clean. Jesus had to sound redundant and state the obvious because the Pharisees' traditions started prohibiting even clean animals if food was being prohibited / considered unclean if they didn't wash their hands beforehand. Jesus had to state the law: all clean animals (seed-bearing plants) a.k.a. foods are foods. Even if you don't participate in the hand-washing ritual, that doesn't change what our Father commanded/defined as food.

I'm still not convinced that that is what is meant in Mark 7. I can see how you could view it that way, especially with the nuances of Jewish laws. I simply don't think that is how the Scripture is supposed to be read. I think it could have been more nuanced if it literally meant clean foods were clean even if no handwashing was involved, such as "Thus Jesus declared that dirty hands did not make food unclean" rather than "Thus Jesus declared all foods clean." I still think that my argument stands.

Sister Cristobela

Until you acknowledge the subtlety of how the bible defines food and how the phrase "unclean food" is non-existent, we will continue to disagree on what Mark 7 and 1 Timothy 4 says.

I can see the subtlety you speak of. I am just not certain that the Old Testament Law given to Israel applies in the manner of dietary restrictions, based on my understanding of the other Scriptures and my understanding of the Law given to Israel.

Sister Cristobela

Those who take part in the first resurrection (those who died in Christ) get raised to life at the start of Jesus' millenial reign. But then, after the 1000 years, there are people coming against his city, and these people get devoured by fire. Death is still around...

Assuming that the Classic Premillennial view is the correct interpretation of Revelation (which it may not be).

Additionally, in the context of the rest of the Isaiah passage, which reads:

19I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
and the cry of distress.
20
No more shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.
21
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy[c] the work of their hands.
23
They shall not labor in vain
or bear children for calamity,[d]
for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,
and their descendants with them.

On the contrary of your interpretation of this Isaiah passage, the Lord does seem to be talking about those who dwell in Jerusalem, not outside. Isaiah is speaking in contrast to the present time, when people live but a few days. But they will live a hundred years. They. They. They. This is something that is repeated in this passage. "No more shall there be in it..." and then it continues. In it. In the city. In Jerusalem.

Also, you did not address the childbearing passage. Do you have an explanation for it? It seems to be that these things are symbols given to the Jewish audience to reflect paradise and communion with God, as other details in the chapter demonstrate.

Sister Cristobela

You said a whole bunch of nothing with this, lol, because I agree. Not only do they not contradict, but they teach the exact same thing.

You claimed that I made Paul contradict himself, and made the New Testament teachings contradict the Old. My claim is that I do not see this with my interpretation. You don't agree with me. So, no, I didn't say a whole bunch of nothing. My point was that I did not, based on my interpretation, see them contradicting each other at all, despite what you said. I also don't think you adequately demonstrated it, but that is in part because I disagree with how you're interpreting them.

Sister Cristobela

May the Holy Spirit empower me to grow in this area so that no one will have any excuse to detract from what I said because of how I said it.

I hope so, but not so that no one will have any excuse but rather so that you will become more like Christ with a spirit of peace and gentleness.

I hope you're not implying that I'm using your crassness as an excuse to not listen to you, because what I was really doing was gently rebuking you for what I considered to be less than Christlike behavior. That someone is acting rude does not mean they are not correct. I do not fall for such fallacious thinking.

Sister Cristobela

The council—like the Pharisees, and like us today—have no authority to add or take from God's Law.

I agree. I was not saying that they had such authority. Now let us consider how you responded to me at one point. Should I claim that you are saying a whole lot of nothing and laugh about it? How would that make you feel? You might consider that to be rude or condescending.

Do you see what I mean by your being snarky?

At any rate, there are times when you must agree to disagree. Are you saying that if you disagree with someone on Eschatology, you ought to separate from them? Division is from Satan.

Or is it only when you think someone is sinning? That would be the context of those passages.

The lack of appearance does not necessitate its lack of existence in principle. The word "Trinity" doesn't appear in the Bible, so saying that such phrases do not appear in the Bible doesn't mean that the idea cannot be deduced based on what is said in the Bible, such as what is found in 1 Peter 2, and commands to love the brethren and avoid quarreling over things that aren't as important. So really, there is a time when one must agree to disagree with believers. It may not be this time, in your opinion, but you cannot throw the whole thing out the window.

Many believers eat meats that you claim remain "unclean". They are not pagans. They love the LORD and bear the fruit of the Spirit. Is it not possible that those who eat meats you claim, and not without reason, are still unclean are genuine believers?

Sister Cristobela

We will be judged for everything we did in this body and to this body (it's not our own; this body belongs to God); this is the holy temple of God's Spirit. Would YHWH have allowed people to graffiti the tabernacle? It's vandalism.

There are theologians who claim that God does not literally dwell within each individual but in the corporate body as a whole. So this argument wouldn't work against them. They might argue, therefore, that tattoos are not condemnable for that reason.

I don't believe that myself. But I have a point, and it is this: our interpretation could be faulty. In other words, it is entirely possible for theologians to agree to disagree.

Sister Cristobela

"Much like"...? Not at all similar.

Actually, if you follow my logic based on my understanding of how to interpret the passages, yes, it is much like that. Cultural context is what I'm speaking of, and cultural context is important when interpreting the Prophets. That was the point I was making.

As for the Genesis passage, it's not the thrust of my argument. I was merely making an observation.

Sister Cristobela

We are joining Israel.

Define what you mean by joining Israel. We, the Church, are the true Israel.

God bless.
 

[oiu251]

cristobela

may i ask, though i agree with unclean animals warned for us by God to refrain from putting inside of our body; and this matches up with why our hormones (having to do with unnaturally produced sexual responses through disruption in our hormones for the most part) are screwed up when we put dead animals into our bodies

is the iron we need in meat for energy not true that we need at least to get a fist of meat into our system in order to function well?  

[cristobela]

oiu251

may i ask, though i agree with unclean animals warned for us by God to refrain from putting inside of our body; and this matches up with why our hormones (having to do with unnaturally produced sexual responses through disruption in our hormones for the most part) are screwed up when we put dead animals into our bodies

is the iron we need in meat for energy not true that we need at least to get a fist of meat into our system in order to function well?

About Iron:

I'm not a nutritionist, but I would think that the answer to that—in general—is, "no". It is not necessary to eat a fistful of meat to get your source of iron; you can get iron from foods like beans and spinach. Though, again, I'm not a nutritionist and "different bodies, different needs". If you have a disease or take a medicine / a nutritional supplement that inhibits the absorption of non-heme iron (what is found in plants) then yes, you probably would need to eat heme iron (iron coming from animal foods). I know, for instance, that calcium supplements inhibit non-heme iron absorption.

I suppose if people wanted to get a NATURAL source of vitamin B12 (as opposed to fortified cereals), even then, you could consume milk and eggs instead of "a fistful of meat". :P But if you have a milk or an egg allergy then you're back to eating meat (seeing as B12 only comes from animal sources, naturally). Unless you choose a B12 vitamin or B12-fortified foods. Again, different bodies (& different preferences), different needs.

Biblically, we do have examples of people who refused to eat meat and they looked just as healthy, if not more healthy than meat-eaters (i.e. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah).

• Daniel 1:8-16 (NIV)
  
  8 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. 9 Now God had caused the official to show favorand compassion to Daniel, 10 but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your[a] food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”
  
  11 Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, 12 “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” 14 So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.
  
  15 At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. 16 So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.
  
  Footnotes:
  
  a. Daniel 1:10 The Hebrew for your and you in this verse is plural.

So, no, you don't have to eat meat to be healthy. But it is acceptable if we follow our Creator's instructions.



About hormone disruption:

I'm sure eating decomposing / rotting animal carcass—or the animals who have rotting carcass in their system, because they fed on it—has negative consequences, as I covered in the other thread [Details in the New Testament that Get Ignored]. But I haven't looked into its effects on sexual responses.

All I know is that our Heavenly Father gave us those commands for our own good (and quite possibly the good of the ecosystem). If we're eating those unclean animals, and thus are not allowing those animals to clean up the environment of carrion / rotting corpses lying out and about, like they are designed to do, nor are allowing them to filter out pathogens from the environment (like bivalves [e.g. oysters, scallops, etc] and crustaceans do; [link]), then out of the animals and plants that God DOES consider as food for man, those animals and plants alike could be negatively impacted. If one part of creation is not doing its job, the whole system gets affected. Perhaps that's why such high levels of mercury are found in tuna (a clean animal): not enough bivalves in the ocean to filter out the mercury? So, not only does eating the unclean animal pose a risk for us directly, because of their function in creation, but removing them from the environment could/does affect us too.

And I don't think it's just the consumption of unclean animals and unclean plants (animals and plants not consecrated for our consumption) that are affecting our hormones. A big culprit, without a doubt, would have to be the synthetic chemicals in our food, and the synthetic things we touch, that are doing damage to the hormones in our brains.

That, and even the deliberate hybridizing of plants (which YHWH prohibited us from doing on purpose).

• Leviticus 19:19 (NIV)
  
  19 “‘Keep my decrees.
  
  “‘Do not mate different kinds of animals.
  
  “‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
  
  “‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

I came across this website recently that meditated out those precepts found in this command fairly well [Mix not…what does this mean?]. I'm convinced that this wave of gluten-sensitivity is due to man's disobedience to the agricultural commands and thus causing the degrading of nutrition in our food, and turning our food into sources of disease. I never knew that hybrid seeds were more profitable. And thus this deliberate "mixing of seed"—in disobedience to our Father's commands—going on. The love of money really is the root of all evil. Can't worship money and YHWH at the same time, you will either love the one or hate the other, keep the commands of one and hate the commands of the other. And if you don't love God and his commands, then you will cause distress on humanity.

• 1 Timothy 6:10 (NIV)
  
  10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
  
  
  
• Matthew 6:24 (NIV)
  
  24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
  

I also read that hybrid seeds can cause disease in the soil :l

Quote:

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

[...] But the reason of the prohibition was probably deeper: for those who have studied the diseases of land and vegetables tell us, that the practice of mingling seeds is injurious both to flowers and to grains. "If the various genera of the natural order Gramineæ, which includes the grains and the grasses, should be sown in the same field, and flower at the same time, so that the pollen of the two flowers mix, a spurious seed will be the consequence, called by the farmers chess. It is always inferior and unlike either of the two grains that produced it, in size, flavor, and nutritious principles. Independently of contributing to disease the soil, they never fail to produce the same in animals and men that feed on them" [Whitlaw].

http://biblehub.com/leviticus/19-19.htm

Unhealthy soil (caused by hybrid plants), the hybrid plants themselves are less nutritious, ergo unhealthy animals and unhealthy people.

In short, no you don't need a fistful of meat to get iron. And it's not just the introduction of rotting carcass into our system that is affecting our body—but the violation of all those agricultural commands too.  

[oiu251]

cristobela

there's so many things i don't know that i've learned a lot from your post
everything has been corrupted by humanity's touch since the beginning
it's good to know not needing to eat meat to be healthy is clearly supported in the bible
i just feel like a glutton when i consume meat