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Hebrews 13:17

Obey your leaders, and accept their authority. They take care of you because they are responsible for you. Obey them so that they may do this work joyfully and not complain about you. (Causing them to complain would not be to your advantage.)

1 Peter 2:13-17
13 Place yourselves under the authority of human governments to please the Lord. Obey the emperor. He holds the highest position of authority. 14 Also obey governors. They are people the emperor has sent to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. 15 God wants you to silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing what is right. 16 Live as free people, but don’t hide behind your freedom when you do evil. Instead, use your freedom to serve God. 17 Honor everyone. Love your brothers and sisters in the faith. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

We have discussed the authenticity of the bible several times before, so you would know that while I do not consider the bible as a whole as authority, I do find it full of gems.

I see on other threads here a childish argument regarding the authenticity or otherwise of biblical events. If possible, I do not wish to descend to that level: does the bible inspire you, day in and day out, to become a better person and seek God? if it does, then it is the best book in the world and I care not to what degree its content is factual or otherwise.

Scripture needs to be read with proper guidance, how more so when it is ancient and written in a different context, a different language and for different people, whom it presupposes to have certain knowledge which we do not.

It is too easy to misinterpret scripture and read into it one's own wishes, Hindu scripture too: they say that the Bhagavad-Gita has over 1500 different interpretations. I only read a few, but it is especially striking how Mahatma Gandhi's translation and interpretation (which he wrote in prison) is so different to the others in order to suit the text to his all-too-famous political and social agenda.

So rather than questioning the correctness and source-of-inspiration of the bible, I rather challenge whether you are reading it using an authentic translation and in the same context as it was written. Regarding translations, I can help when it comes to the Hebrew of the OT, but I am helpless with the NT as I do not know Greek.

«No government would exist if it hadn’t been established by God.»

Was the French Revolution and storming of the Bastille not established by God?
What about Moses' defying Pharaoh?

It is foolish to complain of the past, claiming retrospectively that China's communist rule and oppression of religion was not ordained by God. Yes, we have been punished for our sins, but how can we tell that our sins have not since expired and now we are pardoned?

To Yuyutsu.

When talking about what is from God and what isn't taking a source as an authentic or authority on God's message is a practical measure. Therefore when quoting psalms as reason to trust God; the same can be applied to quoting other books in the bible under the same authority. Otherwise all it is is picking and choosing what suits you, instead of seeking what God says, or even what is actually from God.

With this in mind trusting God and having no fear of the world can also be related to trusting God, and obeying Him. If it's the New Testament books that's the issue, (going on the line of thought that The Jewish books before Christianity are inspired by God) then consider the book of Daniel. In that book the Israelites were faced in exile from their home as punishment from God. The book, following Daniel mostly, showed a bit of that time in exile. But it does not show rebellion against the Babylonians.

If there was any time to justify a rebellion against the government, the three instances in the bible to do it would be in 1) Egypt (Moses didn't lead a rebellion, but warned the pharaoh to let the Israelites go); 2) Babylon (exiled in a godless country); and 3) under Roman rule when Jesus came. Neither Moses, Daniel, nor Jesus taught to rebel.

If under those harsh conditions it wasn't taught to fight against the wicked rulers, then I highly doubt any revolution in modern times is any more justified then the conditions the rulers placed on the people that lead to an uprising are considered justified.

On a side note revolutions do happen and are part of many nation's history, as well as shape their identity. What is over looked is the death toll in each of those revolutions. I do not think that much active murder in the name of war and Revolution can be justified easily.

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

Actually the book of Daniel is an exception, the only book in the OT not written completely in Hebrew: half of it is in Aramaic!

I have no "issue" with the NT, except that I cannot read the original text and detect translation errors.

«When talking about what is from God and what isn't»

Could there be anything that is NOT from God?

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." [Isaiah 45:7]

So better ask:

What leads [me] TO God and what doesn't?

Expanding on that:

OK, all writings, good and bad, come from God, but which writings are good [for me to study and follow] and which are bad [for me]?

Further expanding:

While all inspiration comes from God, man was given the free will (also from God) allowing him to distort the content of their inspiration: which writings then were, and which where not, distorted by the author's own egoistic ignorance of God?

I quote passages from psalms because I appreciate these spiritual gems. While I think and hope that I can appreciate a spiritual gem wherever I see it, I am aware that for you it helps a lot if you can find it in the bible, so why not?

Yet even when a passage is correct, one should always be mindful of their audience, making sure that quoting it would be helpful. I would avoid for example publicly quoting a list of people who will go to hell; I wouldn't quote [Psalms 137:9]: "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.", even if it once had some therapeutic value for some exiled people; and I would not quote [Isaiah 64:8]: "But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" to someone who had an abusive father.

[continued...]

[...continued]

Regarding rebellion, murder and war, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" [Ecclesiastes 3:1].

Surely one should obey God. Surely there are times and places when those who listen to God are told to abstain and surrender to kings, but there are also other times when certain people are called for action.

The Israelites did end up rebelling against Pharaoh, so their baby-boys were no longer drowned in the Nile, but Pharaoh's whole army drowned in the Red Sea.

Interestingly, some are called to the opposite than others. While God approved of the Israelites singing and dancing in Exodus 15 over the drowning of the Egyptian army, the Talmud claims that the angels too were singing at the time, but God reprimanded them: "The creations of My hands drown in the sea - and you sing ?!" http://www.sefaria.org/Megillah.10a?lang=bi

Chapter 12 of 1 Kings, speaks of a successful rebellion of most of Israel against the foolish new king Rehoboam. The bible speaks quite positively of this rebellion and in fact, God sends His prophet to instruct Rehoboam to not try to quash that rebellion.

Later, the prophet Elijah was sent by God to murder 400 priests of the idol 'Baal', who at the time were part of the establishment.

The Maccabean revolt of the Jews against the oppressive Greek regime was not included in the canonical OT, but is considered a miracle. The Greeks outlawed circumcision and the study of the Torah, forced Jews to eat pork and desecrated their Jerusalem temple. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/antiochus-the-madman
When is enough enough? If your theory was correct, then we should all, and so would our grand-grandchildren, still be enslaved to corrupt and torturous Middle-agean European lineages of kings. Why, you might even agree with China that Taiwan is a "rebel district"? And what about all those who were killed, maimed and raped because they refused to convert to Islam when conquered by the Islamic State? Were they too disobeying God?

To Yuyutsu.

There are gems of mankind, but those are different from gems from God.

Some gems of mankind are good points and offer some sense of wisdom to consider, or they are beutiful and thought provoking, or just show some raw talent that is enjoyable. However what is from God is a different catagory completely. You seem to show the same distinction in some way when you say words that have been corrupted and distorted due to free will or misinterpretation. I'd just stick with saying it simply.

Some things are from God, and some things aren't.

The problem is that for the most part people aren't the best at intuitively knowing even what is true and what isn't. How much more can you say we would know by intuition what is from God and what isn't. It's with acknowledging this factor, that we can face a second problem. A self seeking bias to look for things that you already agree with only. Then mistaking those gems we find that we already agree with and call them as great wisdom (whether they are wise or not) or call those gems from God (whether they are from God or not).

As for my theory. It's not a theory. It's what's written in the bible. Romans 13:1-6, Hebrews 13:17, 1 Peter 2:13-17. The context of each of these being under Roman rule and regular Jewish oppression. (Probably the same state of situation for all the nations the Romans had conquered). If under that context, the message had to be repeated, instead of saying when it's OK to rebel, then that is what's written. It's not my theory. It's just a hard lesson.

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