8 But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. 2 The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, 3 and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had abated, 4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.
6 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made 7 and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. 10 He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. 11 And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. 12 Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.
13 In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. 14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out. 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” 18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. 19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark.
— Genesis 8:1-19, English Standard Version
And here is some truly fascinating testimony about the nature of Hell, and how very few Christians are ever actually going to see Heaven:
4 Comments
And that video accurately describes the problem that we non-Christians have with Christianity, we cannot love (selflessly). The only things that keep us marching onward are duty and hate. This “selfless love” we don’t get, we only know that we owe to others as they have done to us. Extend every courtesy and kindness to those who have been good to you, to those who have wronged you return the favor with interest.
This is how the majority of mankind has lived since well before recorded history, these “selfless love” types…they are mutants (moral…and quite possibly, genetic). If the Abrahamic god is true we are fucked, worse we were fucked from the very beginning.
This is a mistaken understanding. The Christian position is very clear: Jesus loved us unconditionally, and died for us. We are to emulate Him. But, because we are flawed, Fallen, and broken, we cannot do it – we keep sinning and making mistakes. That is where forgiveness comes in, which we receive if we ask for it sincerely, and truly repent of our sins. We are then to “pay it forward” by forgiving others when they sin against us.
This is the precise opposite of “do unto others as they do to you”. It is, “do unto others BETTER than they do to you”.
Furthermore, you make a mistake in thinking those who forgive – which is what selfless love involves – are moral mutants. Keep in mind, the only reason we have advanced industrial civilisation today, is precisely because of Christian nations. Christianity raises the moral and intellectual level of societies it touches. Everything else either keeps them the same, or makes them regress.
Your last point I am not so sure on…for centuries the Chinese were more advanced then the west, and these advances came well before Marco Polo was even born. The only reason I believe that the West became technologically stronger then the Chinese is that Genghis Khan gave us an unintended leg up by inflicting so much damage during his invasions of China.
That “do unto others BETTER than they do to you”…I think that is part of why the west is declining (aka from the 1960s onward) to be honest with you. We spent trillions on savages (and losers, remember it was the defeated Africans that were sold to the west) to “improve” them, that is the very spirit of your quote and look what is has wrought. Pagan Rome in our shoes would have simply spent a few million dollars and constructed a new “Appian” way stretching from D.C to New Orleans.
The Chinese were advanced, yes, but they stagnated thanks to their own Confucian philosophies and values, which have always stressed conformity and blind obedience over innovation. The Mongols did not in fact destroy China’s history of innovation – they integrated into Chinese culture within a single generation, and maintained its traditions and philosophies throughout their relatively brief time in power.
The real advantage the West possessed, was a willingness to push boundaries and explore the Universe – which comes directly from first Jewish and then Christian ethics. It is not an accident that Western science traces its roots back through the Church, and its preservation of the works of “virtuous pagans” like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, among many others.
The social problems you outline come from a deliberate and very stupid misinterpretation of Galatians 3, and that in turn comes from a substantial weakening of Christian strength from the time of the Enlightenment, which tried its best to do away with the anti-blasphemy laws of the time (many of which are actually still on the books in more than a few Western nations right now). Prior to this, and the secularisation of the culture, Christian nations fought for an end to slavery, but did so while preserving their own ethnos. That is the bit the West is missing today – secular ideology has tried to replace the void filled by Christian morality and ethics, but you cannot fill nothing with nothing.
The only way to stop the very problems you outline, is to return to a society rooted in faith, with moral guiding principles. And the only set of moral guiding principles that actually works consistently, is the Christian one, rooted in the Ten Commandments and capped off by Christ’s sacrifice.