Proverbs 10-12

[wolfpurplemoon]

Why is a good son a joy to his father but a bad son causes grief for his mother? I guess the father says 'my son' when he's proud and 'your son' when he's not happy with him.

We haven't had a good abomination recently, apparently you should not cheat people with inaccurate scales because God hates it, not because it is just wrong to be dishonest in business.

And then we have a list which basically repeats 'good people are good, wicked people are wicked' over and again using several examples.

I wouldn't disagree with a lot of these examples of good and bad behaviour, though the proclamation that the righteous will live and wickedness leads to death is not even slightly true.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Why not righteous live and wickedness leads to death. Christ tells us over and over, old testiment, new testiment that not all are going to heaven. Scarey vesre from Christ "Depart from me I never knew you". You best be having a "personal" relationship with Christ, as first your savior and Lord!

[wolfpurplemoon]

Because good people are just as likely to die as wicked people so it's not true.

[(Anonymous)]

They don't mean "die" on earth in the literal sense. Christians believe that if you're a follower of Christ, after you die on earth, you continue living in heaven. So when they say wicked people will die and good people will live, they really mean, "continue to live with Christ in heaven."

I hope this helps.

~Kevin

[wolfpurplemoon]

That's fine, except Jesus hasn't turned up yet!

[kevinswitzer.livejournal.com]

What do you mean? Turned up as in his bones? Or as in returned for the apocalypse?

[wolfpurplemoon]

It was your comment that 'live' means 'live with Christ in heaven' and at this point in my reading, Jesus hasn't yet been born so that's probably not quite the meaning meant in this chapter!

[kevinswitzer.livejournal.com]

OH! Gotcha.

Yeah, I don't know. I think even before Christ was born and died for our sins, they still knew about heaven.

And I just had another thought. Maybe they don't mean "die" in the literal sense. Maybe if you're wicked, you're "dying" because you're not living a life worth living.

Like I said before, and I'll say again and again, I've only been a Christian for 2 years. I still haven't read the entire Bible, so I definitely don't have all of the answers. But I'm learning a lot from your questions because they're really making me think. Thanks again for doing this. It's totally awesome!

[wolfpurplemoon]

I can see that the writers meant something other than the literal meaning of 'live' or 'die', I often take things very literally, which I know isn't usually appropriate for understanding the meaning of bible verses.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but what were your beliefs before you became a Christian?

[kevinswitzer.livejournal.com]

I was raised going to church with my mom. I said I was a Christian, but I didn't really know what it meant. In high school, I went to youth group because my girlfriend was in it.

When I got to college, I was taught to question everything. So I did... and when I asked questions of other Christians on campus, they were not very nice. They actually got upset that I would ask questions about their faith. So I decided if being a Christian meant being a complete jerk, I was done.

After I met my wife (who had been a Christian for a long time), she was going through a really hard time and wanted to go to church. So I agreed and we found a church that I actually didn't mind going to. Through meeting a lot of people there and realizing that Christians are supposed to be compassionate, loving, and welcoming, I decided to renew my faith.

There's a theory by Blaise Pascal called Pascal's Wager. It says, "even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose." Basically, even if Christians are wrong... at least they led good lives. I believe that. That's not to say that non-Christians can't lead good lives, though. Of course they can.

But my mission once I became a Christian was to prove to people that Christians didn't have to be uptight, judgmental, and pushy. I want to love people and treat them with respect, and hopefully by me living my life this way, I can bring others to Christ, as well.

[wolfpurplemoon]

Thanks for sharing your story with me, it's good that your family has found a friendly and welcoming church, I truly have nothing against churches that are a focal point for community cohesion. And good luck with trying to project a more positive impression of Christians to the rest of us, I can see why you would want others to find the same joy you have in your faith.

I must say I've never seen Pascal's wager worded like that before. It's always given me the impression of being a 'hedging your bets' sort of mind set, that you should just say you believe in God (though it's never clear which one of course) to get the reward in death, because if God doesn't exist then you won't know and if he does and you didn't believe then you're in trouble.

But just changing 'say you believe' to 'live as though God exists' gives it a much more positive spin. Of course my humanist outlook is that we should lead a good life because it's the only one we have, but although each viewpoint comes from an opposite perspective, whichever one people subscribe to we'll still be making our world a better place.

[kevinswitzer.livejournal.com]

I actually just copied that straight from Wikipedia.

By the way, I should say that I'm not here to try to get you to become a Christian. Your religion, or lack thereof, is totally your decision to make.

I just hope that I can show you that there are non-judgmental and open-minded Christians out there. I love what you're doing with this blog, and commend you for even reading the bible without being a Christian. :)

[wolfpurplemoon]

You are doing a good job of being non-judgemental and open minded. The conversations we've been having are much nicer than ones I've been having with some other Christians who've commented here.

death

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't read all of the comments so I apologize if this was said towards the bottom of the comments but "death" in the bible is seperation from God. if you die without Christ or in the old testemant without doing Gods laws and works with a joyful heart your death would result in seperation from God for eternity.

[(Anonymous)]

It is true because it is not this word life but life after for which the wicked will not have chance.

Cross reference for this verse

[(Anonymous)]

Read 1 Peter 16-19.
Maybe this will give some insight to your question
On Proverbs 11:31.

Correction- 1 Peter 4:16-19

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for any confusion. We are praying for your project
Wolfpurplemoon.