Is hate learned?

[tdogg]

Originally Posted by Dash

Dear Tammy's not doin' so good these days.

Dash, yes, it's so sad. I love Tammy Faye. She has been through a lot and is one person that truly has the light of Jesus shining through her words and actions. And she is suffering so.

Yes, Jesus is a rebel!! That's probably why I love him so!!!

Dana and Zerbie, that is what I think too. Emotions (such as anger, loneliness, disappointment) can lead, over time to hate. But I don't see hate as an immediate emotion. More, I see is as a state of being over time, probably brought on by a myriad of negative emotions.

Is hate the opposite of love?

[DanaH]

Originally Posted by u-dog

I would be interested in hearing (reading) how you seperate the doctrine of Original sin from a literal reading of the Garden of Eden narrative? (maybe you don't see the need? I don't know) But how do you understand Orginal Sinfulness if there was no LITERAL Fall? If you read my anthropology post above you know that I believe that we humans evolved to be the people we are (evolution being a tool in the hands of a sovereign God, of course, but evolution nonetheless). I don't believe that the world was created in seven literal days or that the world is only 4,000 plus years old. So how do I make sense of the Fall in that context? I DO believe in a Fallen world, but I'm not at all sure HOW I do. can you help me,Dave

I hope Zerbie forgives me for delving into this discussion

My take on original sin, the garden of eden, and evolution. Mind you, just my opinon, we all know what that is worth.

OMG - I'm already flinching before I write.

I don't think that eating the apple was the sin. If I read that literally, how do I find a literal tree of life, or a tree of good and evil? Could the original sin have been sex, they did have children shortly after, and Eve's "punishment" was to bear children in a greatly multiplied sorrow. In addition, was the tree of life, or the tree of good and evil an analogy for man becoming aware? Evolution?

I read once that Darwin was a Christian who developed the evoltion Theory while trying to make some sense of the Bible.

OK, maybe I'm up to 6 cents.

Bottom line, nobody will ever really know evolution vs creation, or a beautiful combination of the two by a divine creator. (OK, I added some passion to the statement :-) So, is the purpose of the discussion to learn something about ourselves? Perhaps if not reading literally, one can see that possibly the author of Genesis had some of the same questions?

Another thought - The Jews had always claimed to be the chosen people. (excuse me if I show my ignorance here, just thinking out loud) In my childhood, I always wondered, was there a parallel going on, evolution and creation whereby the Jews were the created? Don't SCREAM - it was just a childhood thought.

Thanks for playing.....

[alakazoom87]

Originally Posted by BrentRichards

FORFEIT? The law has not been forfeited, it has been FULFILLED. Christ's work was COMPLETE and SUFFICIENT ... he didn't just give us a "boost" so we could climb up ourselves ... The law only brings death. Paul's argument in Romans is detailed and developed. As Pablo suggests, you are only pointing to the "problem" section of his argument, and failing to move on to the solution part, which is the only reason Paul lays out the problem at all ... so he can point to the wonder of the solution in Christ!

I know what Paul was talking about in Romans and I know the differences between The Law and Grace. However, my Romans passage was simply displaying Paul talking about his sinful nature.

Hope I don't get attacked every time I bust out scripture.

Is hate the opposite of love?

Interesting enough, as I thought about this question for a few seconds. It came to me that anything less than love is the opposite of love. What do you think?

[tdogg]

My thoughts are:

Hate is a state of being, an attitude, probably from hanging on to negative emotions for a period of time. Love being a state of being, an attitude probably from positive emotions over a period of time.

I'm not sure that anything less than love is th opposite. There is indifference - definitely not hate, but not love either. Somewhere in between. I also believe that love is what we need to strive for. Love is releasing all boundaries that hold us in and prevent us from feeling fully our postive emotions. Believe it or not, sometimes positive emotions are more difficult to handle than the negative ones.

Zoom87, I don't think anyone has anything against you posting Bible verses. Just be careful and trod softly. You see, we have all been through a lot. We have been looked down on, preached to that we are going to hell, even disowned by those who do it in the name of Christ and proudly recite Bible verses to 'back up' their action of disowning us and condemning us. So, when folks that obviously think we are sinning just by being gay (or as you might say acting on our gayness), start reciting Bible verses, it's not going to be all that embracing for us.

It's fine to quote the Bible if you want. You might want to have it be relevant to the conversation. You should avoid using the words "homosexual" or "gay" and "sin" or "sinner" in the same sentence. I guarantee you will get a lot of ruffled feathers your way quickly. You would do well to avoid using the terms choice and lifestyle in relation to gay as well. Put yourself in our position, try to think how we might feel, before using various words, terms or phrases that have long been used to condemn and hurt us. I'm glad you're here. I think there is a lot to learn.

[andrewlittle]

Originally Posted by alakazoom87

I know what Paul was talking about in Romans and I know the differences between The Law and Grace. However, my Romans passage was simply displaying Paul talking about his sinful nature.

Hope I don't get attacked every time I bust out scripture.

Not attacked, zoom, just emotionally discussed. Quote away but, like any good Bible study, expect significant discussion. I may yet come back in more detail on your selcted passage but, for now, I'm playing catch up. If I do pick up that thread, it won't be to bust your chops, okay.

Originally Posted by alakazoom87

Interesting enough, as I thought about this question for a few seconds. It came to me that anything less than love is the opposite of love. What do you think?

Interesting! I might semantically nit pick it a little, but I can very much appreciate your thought here. So, instead, I might just proffer that anything less than love stands in opposition to love. In case there's any doubt, overall I a in full agreement with you on this one.

Originally Posted by u-dog

Interesting sidelight: In High School English my kids were exposed to a fascinating essay that suggested that several of the ancient Genesis narratives were originally from the pre-historic era during which hunter/gatherers and the new agriculturalist communities were in conflict. It raised up particularly the stories of the Garden of Eden and Cain and Able. I could probably get the info from my kids if anyone is interested.

I don't know for sure, Dave, that your kids read an essay by Daniel Quinn, but this is a consistent message of his. Quinn (in books like Ishmael, My Ishmael, Story of B, etc) examines the Genesis accounts as core cultural myths (myth=storytelling explanation, not necessarily fabrication).

Many biblical scholars and critics alike agree on one particular point. Whether it is meant to be literal history or historical metaphor the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is not a common type of document. The old adage goes, “victors write history.” More correctly, it should read, “dominant cultures write histories that generally reflect well on themselves.” Rarely have subservient cultures found the opportunity to record their history. Non-dominant history is almost always passed on by oral tradition that is, many times, intentionally metaphoric in order to hide the details from their dominators. The Hebrew Bible is a document produced by a society that was rarely, if ever, the dominant culture. It also many, many times does not reflect well on the Hebrews. Quinn, and many cultural anthropologists, have speculated that this is a hallmark of oral traditions whose main characters may be other populations. It is possible that the early part of Genesis is a story told by the descendants of victims and witnesses.

Agriculture, the generally accepted beginning of civilization, began in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia). The first agriculture was cultivating, which replaced gathering, followed by herding, as opposed to hunting. There was, in fact, a separation of centuries between the development of each method of farming, as well as a geographic and ethnic separation. Caucasian inhabitants developed cultivating in the north. Early Semitic tribes in the south began herding at a later time. Cultivation begins with the planting of the first seed, but herding takes generations to develop. Radically different lifestyles are also associated with each agricultural type. Cultivators would tend to accumulate in villages, while herders are essentially nomadic as they move with the seasons and availability of flora. As has generally been the case when cultivators enlarge their territory, the herders (Semites) were driven out repeatedly in order to lay claim to their lands.

Quinn suggests that we need to unpack the Cain-Abel story before we can see its correlation to Adam. He suggests that the brothers are “emblematic” figures – those that represent different times and cultures. Cain, the “forger” or “spear”, was the first-born and the cultivator. Abel, the “breath”, was the herder and the second-born, possibly by centuries. Abel’s offering to God was acceptable while Cain’s was offensive. Cain, jealous of God’s favor, kills Abel. As the Semites saw it (and it is of course their version of the story that we have), the tiller of the soil Cain was irrigating his fields with the blood of Abel the herder. Unpacked, Abel the herder functioned within the “creation” without substantially changing it to suit his needs, while Cain the cultivator saw fit to recreate “creation” by clearing areas for planting and laboring over the soil to control the output.

The Semites had not been in the Fertile Crescent to witness the dawn of cultivation, but some centuries later were witnessing the problematic behavior of their neighbors from the North. Something had happened that caused this people to labor intensively in their fields as well as to murderously invade neighboring territories. In recreating a story, developing a myth, about what had happened the Semites may have put together what they knew and filled in the blanks with what made sense, or even interpreting divine revelation in terms they could understand. There must have been some occurrence that caused such behavior that went against tribal customs held by the Semites to be normative. Enter Adam.

Adam, humankind, must have done something wrong – but what? These people appeared to know better than God what creation should look like, since they cut down forests and rearranged what God had made. Could they know what God knows? That must be it – they somehow acquired knowledge that should only be limited to God. How would they come by such knowledge, unless they did something that God told them not to do? From here, we can speculate further about how a story of a personification of mankind as a whole ate from the fruit of Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, thereby sinning against an edict of God.

Whether or not you buy into Quinn’s analysis of Genesis, or even place any stock in Genesis at all, there are some items that are generally accepted as historically accurate. According to historian Frank E. Smitha, the Semites did not inhabit Mesopotamia – they literally lived to the south. The inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent were, in fact, Ubaidians, a Caucasian race. It was around 4000 BCE that a people called Sumerians moved into Mesopotamia, perhaps from around the Caspian Sea, but certainly from the North. By 3800 BCE the Sumerians supplanted the Ubaidians, who moved further north, and had built better canals for irrigating and transporting crops by boat to village centers. And the Sumerians grew in number, the increase in population the key element in creating what we call civilization. The Sumerians continued to push to the south, eventually displacing the Semites.

Genesis describes the location of Eden as:

Gen 2:10 A river flows out of Eden to water the garden [placed in the east of Eden], and from there it divides and becomes four branches.
11 The name of the first is Pishon; …
13 …The name of the second river is Gihon; …
14 …The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

This would place the Garden of Eden in the Fertile Crescent, north of the Semites and in the area that contained the Ubaidians and the later Sumerians.

[BrentRichards]

Originally Posted by alakazoom87

Hope I don't get attacked every time I bust out scripture.

You didn't get attacked, but you will get called on it every time you "bust out" Scripture and use it in a way that I believe misrepresents the overall message, which the "forfeit" comment suggested to me. In order to "forfeit" the law, you have to assume it still binds us, which I cannot accept as consonant with the NT's radical message of grace. Christ's work was not insufficient.

The three primary rules of Biblical interpretation, as I'm sure you're aware, are CONTEXT, CONTEXT, and CONTEXT ... similar rules apply here ... in the context of your previous comments here, I couldn't help but feel that your particular use of this particular passage, and your comment on "forfeiting" the law, was not merely pointing out Paul's comments on his sin nature. Instead, it reads like a pretty clear slap at we who have, in your mind, forfeited the law.

I'm mad at myself now, because from the first post I read from you, I promised myself I would not get involved in this discussion with you. But I did. Shame on me. So I have one question. Is there any chance at all that you might change your mind about ANYTHING through your interactions here? If not, can you tell me what you do intend by being here?

Feeling defensive and angry and angry at myself for it ...

[alakazoom87]

Originally Posted by BrentRichards

I believe misrepresents the overall message, which the "forfeit" comment suggested to me. In

I was playing Devils Advocate when I said: Should we forfeit the law?

[Progo35]

I do think that Matthew's post needs to be read in the context of our discussion: we're talking about original sin, and in my opinion, Matthew's passage fits right in. From my reading of this passage in context, it seems to me like Paul is saying that even as a Christian, he has times when he relies on the law to guide him instead of the Holy Spirit who inspired that law and fulfilled it with the Resurrection. I feel that in this passage, Paul IS contrasting the grace of the Gospel with the law that brings death, because we can never follow it. Thus, when Paul does the things that he wishes he didn't do, which we all do, he knows that the law would condemn him as a sinner but that Christ's death made it possible for sinners to be reconcilled with God, which is the Gospel message in a nutshell.

[tdogg]

Originally Posted by Progo35

I do think that Matthew's post needs to be read in the context of our discussion: we're talking about original sin,

Actually, this thread is "Is Hate Learned" and nothing about original sin. But I think there is another active thread that is specifically geared towards original sin, so his post perhaps is more relevant to that discussion than this one.

[Progo35]

Okay, prior discussion about original sin in the context of whether or not hate is learned or inherited...

[tdogg]

Now that I read that post (original sin), I would say his post isn't too relevant there either! Interesting discussion over there...

Yeah, whenever verses such as these are posted, the poster is definitely going to be questioned. I don't see the relevance, but if you and the poster can, then cool.

[tdogg]

I meant "thread" on original sin (not a single post on this thread). Sorry!

[Daniel]

From South Pacific, by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pacific_(musical)

Youve Got To Be Carefully Taught

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

[Zerbie]

I always think of this song during these conversations!!

GMTA.

[BrentRichards]

It also reminds me of this (I am a sucker for Sondheim):

[u-dog]

[QUOTE=BrentRichards;31577]It also reminds me of this (I am a sucker for Sondheim):

OK... Well, now my Goose Pimple's goose pimples have goose pimples.

[DanaH]

Originally Posted by Daniel

From South Pacific, by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pacific_(musical)

Daniel, thank you for this. I've never seen it, but I love it.