The Bible says everyone is to preach the Gospel. That includes men and women. That doesn't necesarily mean from the pulpit, but we are to preach. Paul does give guidelines for roles that men and women should have in the church. He is not a sexist for saying men should be the spiritual head. Men are simply designed for that role. I'm not saying women can't do it or shouldn't do it. Women have thier role too. It is not less, just different. While I may not be able to say this for everyone, but at least for my pastor's wife when asked directly during a Men's Breakfast Meeting (she was passing by doing other odds and ends) if she felt better when my pastor truly took the spiritual lead of the family, she said absolutely.

A lot of people don't agree with 'wives submit to your husbands' and 'husbands love your wives' because it sounds sexist. But if husbands truly loved thier wives, they would do absolutely everything in thier power to make sure the wife's needs are met. And in that case, it should follow that the wife will submit to her husband. If not, there is a sin issue somewhere. This is true in the spiritual side of things of a relationship.

But that's a tanget going off the immediate topic. So should women preach? I believe they can preach behind the pulpit but that is a position designed for men. If men are to be the lead in thier family, they need the example of leadership in the church by a man. But there are many places were women can take the lead and preach as well. It doesn't have to be at the pulpit because Jesus tells us to just go and preach the Gospel. It can be in the family, in a women's group, in the street corner, or anywhere. And for you, Aslanisthebest, if God's called you to be speaker, he has a very specific platform in mind for you. It may not be behind a pulpit. As for me personally, (yes, I'm a guy) God has called me into youth ministry. Little did I know until three years after that call, that at least for now, that ministry is going to involve teaching in education. I stutter. I would not be qualified by 'normal' standards, but God has a place for me, even though I don't know it yet. So keep seeking the will of God and listen for his voice. He has something for you that you were designed precisely for. And when the time is right, he will show it to you.

Ithwilen, I think the point of having an interpreter is to interpret what the Holy Spirit is saying through the person. I've witnessed the praying of tongues a number of times, sometimes even in a large group setting. I've never heard the tongues translated. If the whole room is praying in tongues but not everyone present can understand and/or speak tongues, you better get an interpreter because otherwise I'm going to believe some people are doing it for real (good) and the rest are faking it to look holy (not good). The gift is to bring glory to God, not ourselves. Just a thought.

The Bible says everyone is to preach the Gospel.

This is why we have, or at least used to have, the Bible Society, responsible for the translation of the Bible into various languages, starting with Welsh. I believe that where the Bible has been translated into native languages, for example, those languages are less likely to disappear altogether, in comparison with similarly obscure languages where no such effort has been made.

There has been a tendency for dominant languages like English to swallow up other languages, as people no longer live in such isolation and need to communicate with those in the wider society in which they live. In big cosmopolitan cities such as New York or Sydney or London, many people speak different languages and it is important that everyone can speak English in those places, so they can understand each other. Sometimes such dominance has been enforced, such as the use of Russian, Arabic or Turkish, at the expense of languages such as Kurdish or Assyrian, itself a liturgical language in the Christian Assyrian churches. Sometimes this process has gone on so long that some languages have completely died out such as Cornish or Manx, or, like Scots Gaelic, are in danger of dying out.

However, do we still have the Bible Society and does it still translate Bibles into other languages? I haven't heard about them much recently.

I have witnessed the kind where people speaking different languages understand each other. Several families in my church adopted kids from Ethiopia during Ethiopia's civil war and famine back in the 90s. The kids arrived speaking only Amharic. We all learned a few words in Amharic before the kids arrived but speaking them seemed to upset the boys. One of the boys explained in Amharic that we were addressing them as girls. We found out that words are different depending on the gender you are addressing. Some of the people in our church understood what they were saying. And from then on some people in our church could speak in English while the kids spoke in Amharic and all seemed to understand each other. The kids picked up English pretty fast so it wasn't needed for very long, but it was amazing to watch while it lasted.

Its an undoing of the tower of Babyl. All people used to speak the same language but defied God. So now after Jesus has come the Holy Spirit returns the gift of universal language for spreading the gospel. Its beautiful.

It is also quite amazing that in the first century AD, let alone in the time of the Tower of Babel (which did exist by the way) there was no such language as English, which evolved from a Germanic dialect spoken by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who invaded Romano-Celtic Britain about 450 AD.

However, do we still have the Bible Society and does it still translate Bibles into other languages? I haven't heard about them much recently.

Tyndale is translating the Bible into other languages. They came to our church a couple months ago, and showed us some photos and video footage of some of their recent trips to other countries. They were translating Bibles, making audio recordings of scripture, and preaching sermons in the people's native tongues. And many fo the places they went were obscure places with languages only spoken by a small number of people. It was very interesting.

~Riella

Here's a bit of a philosophical question I've been wrestling with...

If Jesus is fully man AND fully God, He exists outside of time and is eternally experiencing the infinite punishment for sin (as well as every other moment of history/future/present). An amazing display of unparalleled love.

However...

The punishment for sin is separation from God, so it seems absurd that God could be separated from Himself, especially eternally.

The best answer I could come up with yet: It may make sense if Jesus as the Son of God was a separate being, half man and half God. The divine nature allows Him to live free of the sin nature while the man nature gave Him the right to be an acceptable sacrifice to take the penalty for mankind. The punishment for sin was put to death with the blood of Jesus' physical body (the slaying of the lamb), but death and hell could not do anything to hold God, and Jesus arose from the grace and returned to heaven to await His eventual second coming.

Supporting scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:35-58. Keep in mind I haven't done a whole lot of scripture research on the matter, though my Study Bible just arrived yesterday and I think it might have some literature on the subject.

Any solid scriptural evidence that Jesus really was both man AND God? It seems to me Athanasius came up with the theology to fit how he saw scripture. At this point I'm suspending judgement on the matter until I can find some evidence from both sides. So please, if anyone has anything, I would love you to share it with me.

Andrew, I don't understand what mean when you say Jesus was separated from God...when did that ever take place? He was never, in a spiritual sense, separated.

Hi guys. I was wondering, will we ever get the love and marriage thread back?

This is where the Trinity comes into the picture. God is Father, Son, and Spirit that are in such perfect unison that it is one God. It's tricky to explain but man is made in God's image in the sense that we are body, soul, and spirit. And since some people here have posted that they don't see the difference between soul and spirit, here it is. In our body we have our five sense: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. In our soul, we have our mind, our will, and our emotions. And in our spirit we have intuition, conscious, and communion. As a human we have all three of these parts and without all three of these parts, we are not a human. Same with God. He has all three parts, Father, Son, and Spirit.

But Jesus was separated from God briefly between his death and resurrection. This is what Jesus was refering to when he said "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

Now was Jesus fully man and fully God? Interesting question. Jesus said in John 10:18 that he had the authority to lay down his life and the authority to take it back. In order for Jesus to be the 2nd Adam according to Paul, he had to be 100% man. Not just physically, but in all he did. He had to do it as a man would have to do it. I would not consider it heresy to consider that Jesus did not use his powers of his position as God to perform his miracles. Afterall, we see in Acts the same miracles Jesus performed were also performed by the apostles. I see it as very plausible that when Jesus came to earth, he truly laid aside everything that made him 'God' and truly became 'one of us'.

How did he perform all those miracles? He became one in spirit with God the Father. He prayed regularly and said he only did what he saw his Father doing and said only what he saw his Father saying. The only thing that separates us from Jesus as he lived on this earth, is that Jesus did not have a sin nature. Did he have supernatural knowledge and understanding? It's clear he understood it better than we do and certainly more than the people of his time including his teachers. But it does make you think how was it that Jesus really lived. This I will say thought, Jesus said several times that he was "I AM" and at least once we was about to be stoned for it. So for Jesus to claim to be God means he was either a liar, a lunatic, or was dead on right. If either of the first two, we can dismiss everything he said and the whole Bible while at it because everything in the Bible points to Jesus. But if he was telling the truth, it means Jesus is God and we better listen to him.

Hi guys. I was wondering, will we ever get the love and marriage thread back?

I would suspect that the Love and Marriage thread will return in some form sometime in the future. However, the other mods and I still have not reached an agreement on how to handle future incarnations of this thread and until we do, it will continue to be postponed indefinitely. Sorry!

Andrew, I don't understand what mean when you say Jesus was separated from God...when did that ever take place? He was never, in a spiritual sense, separated.

The entire concept of sin and what Jesus did is seperation. In his own words, quoting from Mark 15:34, At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” which is translated, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?”

Sin cannot be with God, which is the entire reason hell even exists, but sin or evil by definition is separate from God. Jesus was bearing all sins ever committed by man.

Fencer, I think I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure if I can agree yet. The idea of Jesus being 100% man and 100% God seems to be a violation of the law of noncontradiction, something no sound person or religion can claim. I'm not saying I have any better alternative, I just don't completely like the answer. From what I understand, the only reason we cling to the idea in the first place is because Athanasius was so adamant in his assertion of the idea at the Council of Nicea, and the divinity of Christ would have been portrayed differently if he hadn't spoken up at the last minute.

As for your three L's reference, I'm not totally sure that my earlier post's explanation goes against any of that; it allows for Jesus to be divine and human, but only half human and for a short while. Let's take the first verses of John, where it talks about Jesus being with God, and being God, from before the earth was made. Einstein said the only reason time exists is to keep everything from happening at once, so for a God existing outside of time it is very likely there's no distinction between when things are happening from His point of view. Now get this, this could possibly mean that Jesus could be both God (since, with my reckoning, He becomes fully God after the ascension) and not fully God at the same time from GOD'S perspective without violating the law of noncontradiction to us.

Anyways, I'm going to have to do some praying, consulting, and reading on this sticky subject.

Now it's time for me to ask a question. And I'm sure it's been brought up before, but while I was here to witness it. it's something I've been torn on for a long time. Harry Potter. Is it something Christians should read? Everyone I know outside of NarniaWeb says it's evil. I'm not sure if it is or not.

It's true that LOTR and Narnia have wizards in them too. But the wizards in LOTR were actually Istari, a form of Ainur, or angel. So the "wizard" image was almost more of a disguise, in that case. And in Narnia, there is only one wizard, in one chapter, so it's not a theme that's prevalent. And even he is a servant of Aslan, and his powers seem almost God-given in order to serve. So what of Harry Potter, where the wizardry theme is a main focus, and they are not angels or servants of God or "Aslan"?

What do you do when it comes to fiction, or anything else for that matter? I know Harry Potter would not tempt me to be involved in witchcraft. But does that mean it's something I should be involved in? I enjoy reading a good story, which I hear HP is. But I also don't want to partake in something that is against God or that God is against. Are there things that won't cause us temptation that we should avoid anyway, just because of their properties? And if so, where is that line drawn?

~Riella

Wow, good thoughts, Ithilwen. I bet a lot of interesting discussion is going to follow, so here's my few cents...

And beware this probably won't make sense, as I can't quite formulate my thoughts on it myself. I mean I know what I feel about it but I can't quite put it into words.

I guess to me the magic/sorcery in HP is different then if there are "Wizards/witchs/warlocks" etc in our actual world today. In the world of HP,witchcraft or "magic" is just an everday thing and it's used for good and evil. Whereas in our world, it can only be used for evil as it only comes through Satan. Obviously it doesn't seem this way in HP, and obviously HP is a fictional world made up by JKR so it doesn't follow the same rules as our world (i.e. all "magic" is of the devil, so there's nothing known as "good magic"). In HPuniverse (and many other of those types of books) magic is a tool that can be used for good or bad, and usually the main characters use it for good.
While I'm not ruling out the possibility of people reading Harry Potter and getting sucked into the occult (actually I think I know of someone who did get interested in it after reading the books), I think most people can differentiate between the fictional world of HP and the magic therein, and the occult/magic that's in our real world.

So there's my slightly garbled thoughts Hopefully that made sense. And just FYI I'm definetly not condoning "oh it is allowed in this fictional world so that means it's OK to read about all the time!" or anything.

Ithilwen, you have raised these questions in such a respectful, intelligent, and thoughtful way and I want to thank you for that. Your post is so well-written.

I have read Harry Potter, so I'm biased toward the same side that Val is. My parents didn't want me to read it, but I begged them and my mom finally read the first one to me and later decided it was ok if I read all of them on my own--though they were never her first choice for my reading material.

I don't find the magic in LOTR all that different from magic in Harry Potter. Tolkien has said that LotR was never intended to be an allegory and even though there is very much a Creation/Fall outlined in The Silmarillion, there isn't really a omnipotent, omnipresent god of Middle Earth. I mean that Gandalf never really does anything in service of a god, it's in service of "good." I'm not presenting this because I want to tear down Tolkien's universe, but because I simply don't really see the distinction between the magic of Tolkien and fairy tales (which are widely accepted) and Harry Potter. Gandalf uses magic for good, Saruman for evil. The same is true for Harry.

I think Val made a very good point: The magic in Harry Potter is sort of genetic--it passes through families and then sometimes a regular person is born with it, kind of like a mutation. Then that person gets to choose how to use it. I actually find it a very good example for our own choices. We have power for good and evil in us--or at least access to both through God and our sinful nature. Harry and his friends have to choose daily whether to use their power for evil, or to do good. In our world, having supernatural ability comes only from the Spirit and without Him, we can do nothing beyond our own strength. To have supernatural powers like Harry, you must rely on Satan to try to become like God in your powers. In Harry Potter, the characters are simply born with magical abilities, they aren't trying to become God. In fact, when characters attempt to gain abilities beyond the lot of mortals, they are considered evil.

I won't deny, there are still parts of the magic which feel uncomfortable to me that show up later in the series--divination class and occlumency (fortune telling and mind reading) sit a little too close to home.

Those are my ramblings, hopefully they made some sense.
I'm afraid, Riella, that this may be a kind of one sided argument, since the people with much to say have already read the books and therefore, think they're more or less ok. Do you know anyone who has read the books who still thinks it's wrong Riella? I don't say that because I am accusing anyone but because I would love to hear their perspective.

Ithilwen, you have raised these questions in such a respectful, intelligent, and thoughtful way and I want to thank you for that. Your post is so well-written.

Aww, thanks!

Tolkien has said that LotR was never intended to be an allegory and even though there is very much a Creation/Fall outlined in The Silmarillion, there isn't really a omnipotent, omnipresent god of Middle Earth. I mean that Gandalf never really does anything in service of a god, it's in service of "good."

Well, Eru Iluvatar is pretty much the God-figure of the book. (Even though something's not an allegory, it can still have a God figure. Just like Narnia isn't an allegory, but it still has Aslan and the Emperor-Over-the-Sea.) Since Olorin (or Gandalf) was a an Istari (which is a Maiar, which is a kind of Ainur, or angel), technically he'd be doing it in the service of Eru. (Sorry. A bit off-topic, but as a hopelessly avid Tolkien fan, I couldn't help pointing it out. )

The magic in Harry Potter is sort of genetic--it passes through families and then sometimes a regular person is born with it, kind of like a mutation. Then that person gets to choose how to use it. I actually find it a very good example for our own choices. We have power for good and evil in us--or at least access to both through God and our sinful nature.

Ah, I see. So... it's kinda like superhero movies. Superheroes have "powers", but they're not anything Satanic. And the characters who have these powers (such as Spiderman) have the choice of using them responsibly, or abusing them. Would you say that's a good example of the HP stories?

I'm afraid, Riella, that this may be a kind of one sided argument, since the people with much to say have already read the books and therefore, think they're more or less ok. Do you know anyone who has read the books who still thinks it's wrong Riella? I don't say that because I am accusing anyone but because I would love to hear their perspective.

Talking to people who are pro-HP is fine with me. Because, really, pretty much everyone I know in real life hates Harry Potter. So much so that when commercials for the movies come on the TV, my parents tell everyone to look away from the screen. Keep in mind, though I feel very different about it all, I come from a household that believes fairy-tales are a sin, and that believed for years that Narnia was sinful as well; which is why I wasn't allowed to read Lewis books until after I was 15. And even that took a lot of talking and consideration. Talking to devout Christians such as yourselves who hold the opposite view, I think, provides a good balance. Although, it would probably be a better balance if the Anti-Harry-Potter crowd, who I've seen write articles on the subject, at least used more sensible arguments to prove their points...

In fact, most of the people I know who hate Harry Potter have not read a single sentence of the books. They go by the fact it has wizardry in it (Which they believe means it's Satanic, no questions asked.), and they go by stuff they've heard from other people -- usually people who claim that the author is into the occult, and whoever buys the books will have demons enter their house. Some people I know got an e-mail documenting "an account" of a girl who used to believe in Christ, but "The Harry Potter books showed her there was no such thing as Christ". But seeing as most of these sources also bash LOTR, Narnia, Bridge to Terebithia, rock music, Christmas trees, and basically... everything, I don't find their anti-Harry Potter opinions that worthy of my time. Which is why I came here instead. I have found the people here to have a good head on their shoulders, which is why I often trust you guys's opinions.

So, what about all the other stuff in HP? Like the palm reading and mind-reading? That is a bit closer to the real thing. Do you think that's enough to make it off-limits to Christians?

Really, what I'm wondering about goes deeper than just Harry Potter. I want to be able to find a mindset, or belief system, or something that I can go by to tell if something is off-limits or not. Otherwise, a bunch of things will always have a question mark hanging over them. And I don't want to make guesses when it comes to right and wrong. I want to be sure. The Bible is the standard, but it doesn't really say anything overt when it comes to fiction, and a few other things. There are verses you can use that may indicate stuff like HP is okay. But there are also verses that people use to indicate the opposite. :/ Question is, which side is right?

And it's so easy to sway from one extreme to the other -- allowing everything or allowing nothing. There's freedom in Christ. All things are lawful. But not all things are profitable. Even if something doesn't cause me to join the occult or anything, that doesn't mean Satan can't use it to harm me in other ways. For example, I was listening to a song called "Hush" today by Inhabited; and the words make the point I'm trying to get across: "The junk we let in will affect us in time, and sooner or later, no, we're not the same. The voices in our head, yeah, they're driving us insane." (Not that HP is necessarily "junk", but I'm just making a point about how stuff that goes into our head and heart through our eyes can affect the way we think, feel, or act.)

I remember the movie The Haunted Mansion. We watched it in our house a couple times and nothing happened. But one time we watched it, and while watching it we felt... bothered. Later that night, we had... problems. As in, demonic activity in the house. And although that doesn't necessarily mean it's the movies fault and that everyone should burn their DVD copies, it was still something Satan used to get to us. And that's not necessarily something I want to encourage again. :/

But how does one know what things will cause that to happen? I mean, stuff in HP like the palm-reading might do it. But lots of other people read it, have no problem with it, are even encouraged by it. God has used Harry Potter to even bring people closer to Him. But how does one tell which way to go, when it seems there's a 50/50 chance it will either help you tremendously or seriously harm you? *sigh*

It'd be so easy to just take a "better safe than sorry" attitude and avoid it. But frankly, I want to read Harry Potter. I love good stories, and as an author of Speculative Fiction books, reading fantasy novels helps me with my own writing. But good fantasy books are hard to find. And when there's a good fantasy book out there... and then I find it might not be a good thing to read... It's just hard to decide when: I want to read it, all the people on here I respect have read it, I know it would help my writing, but at the same time, I know it would disappoint my parents, I know it might cause problems, plus I still am unsure whether it's right or not in God's eyes. I'm torn.

Any further input and opinions are appreciated. And thanks everyone for the input given so far.

~Riella

Hi guys. I was wondering, will we ever get the love and marriage thread back?

I would suspect that the Love and Marriage thread will return in some form sometime in the future. However, the other mods and I still have not reached an agreement on how to handle future incarnations of this thread and until we do, it will continue to be postponed indefinitely. Sorry!

Sorry, I'm afraid I ruined that for everybody, rushing in as a newbie without considering the standards of the forum.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

Heya Ithilwen the Interrogator

I was raised in similar circumstances, where there was no rock music, no (or very little) fantasy movies, and certainly no magicky sort of books. CS Lewis escaped because he was what my parents considered a great Christian apologist and the Chronicles were stuffed with Christian symbolism (which they are) and LotR, which they allowed because Tolkien was Christian, although they felt that it skirted the boundaries of acceptable. So believe me, I understand where you're coming from.

I've only read the first HP book and thought that despite Rowling's obvious gift for storytelling the book was overrated and suffered from characters who were kind of two dimensional...Harry is the same person on page 5 that he is on page 250, and kind of a troublemaker. But is that enough to make me prevent my child from reading it? There is that stigma attached of it being about witches and warlocks and magic and what not, but then if one goes that route they run directly into the LotR and CoN conundrum...if it's ok for the latter two then it must be good for HP. The magic in HP has pretty much nothing in common with the witchcraft used by modern day witches and Wiccans. Then of course came a day at work where one of my coworkers was telling the story of how his daughter (of unknown age but below 10 I'm thinking) was a fan of the book or movie and when told to go to bed by her parents decided to cast a spell on them, which really gave me pause. Had I done that it would have put the fear of God into my parents and there likely would have been the mother of all spankings and a book burning in the back yard not long after.

HP is just storytelling with fantastic and magical elements about it, just like LotR and CoN. For that matter so is D&D, which is basically the same thing as the above but different in that a character you dreamed up is the hero of the story rather than it happening in a book. But it also has a huge stigma against it although I thought it was quite fun and a mental playground for imaginitive people. *shrugs* Overall I think they're all ok provided they don't replace one's love for God as the primary drive for us, and once you accept that you'll start to see where the narratives of many of these stories mirror closely the Divine story in many ways set before us in the Bible. There's nothing wrong with that.