Old Testament Doesn’t Matter?

Today’s bitching is about the lack of emphasis on the Old Testament in most modern Christian teachings. Actually, lack of emphasis isn’t the right way of saying this. They flat-out teach you that the Old Testament doesn’t matter. DOESN’T MATTER!? Okay, granted, the OT is pre-Jesus AND made up of Jewish religious texts, but why keep it in the Bible if you don’t have to care about it?

If you’re not Christian you might be wondering what I’m talking about. Well, here’s an easy way to find out for yourself: Open the Old Testament to any page, any at all, and memorize a verse. Now go find a Christian and ask them what they think of the passage. The majority won’t know what you’re talking about. You respond this ignorance by saying, “Well, it’s in the Bible!” and you’ll most likely get, “It must be in the Old Testament, then!”. This is what I got from 6 people inside of a month!

Yes, I admit it was a little experiment I was observing, but I had a reason. The reason was that I was at a friend’s house, who happens to be Baptist, and she was explaining to me all about the never-ending love of her God in order to get me to go to church with her. I responded by saying that I believe in everyone having freedom of worship as long as it doesn’t derail MY freedom of worship, and that I couldn’t ever worship or devote myself to a God who condemns gay people, and I refuse to take that statement back. She told me that God doesn’t condemn gay people, and that God loves us all equally. I pointed out that in Leviticus 18:22 it says clearly that it’s an abomination and Leviticus 20:13 says that they should be put to death. What she said next would change my view of her forever, as well as strip me of any lingering respect I had for her religion. She said, “Oh, that’s just the Old Testament.”

So, having heard this from her, I asked her what that meant? She told me that the OT doesn’t count, because it was written before Jesus came. … … huh? Well, I had to find out if this was her opinion or if this was widely believed. I have to admit, this is a part of Christian beliefs I had no idea about.

I tried this a few more times, with different Christians only to find, to my shock and horror, that it wasn’t an isolated case.

The last time was yesterday, on the road home with the woman who I ride in to work with every morning. She’s got it in her head that she’s going to convert me, so every time I talk to her the subject somehow gets back to weither or not I believe in God, even though she knows I’d like to stab her God in the eye with a spork. Once again, an OT verse came up and I’ll be damned if she had no idea what I was talking about. And, of course, her reasoning was that it was from the Old Testament. This time I said something. “Why do you bother reading the bible if you don’t believe in half of it?” I asked. “I do believe in it, it just doesn’t really matter now that we have the New Testament.” she responded. “So, ” I retort, “if it doesn’t matter, why not just take it out of the bible?” “Well, ” she said, “That’s just what I’ve always been taught.”

Not that you can listen to this chick, anyway. She was Catholic half her life and now she’s just “christian”, and she THINKS she wasn’t christian when she was Catholic, lol. Yes, pagans and aethists, it’s funny to me, too.

I was talking to Laota at home afterwards, and we’ve come up with a few good questions about this rediculous belief:

• If God and Jesus are one and the same, and God ‘wrote’ the Old Testament, does that mean that God was full of shit back then but he’s OK now?
• Jesus, for those of you who know things and read stuff, was against the tainting of Judaism, he himself being an advid Jew. The Old Testament is part of what he was trying to keep whole and sacred. If the Old Testament is somehow wrong or out of date, does that mean Jesus was WRONG?
• If Jesus is God, and Jesus is wrong, does that mean God was WRONG?
• Why don’t you guys think your religion through and stop leaving these stupid loopholes that can be used to hang you with? Or just stop persecuting people so nobody’ll try and hang you with loopholes, lol.

Rant done for the moment.]]>

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