Sorry, been out of the loop since Sunday night. But you can take your bible and shove it. Plenty of people have been killed in the name of the God you say gave rules that thou shall not kill. Hypocrite much? Your God doesn't exist. And even the old testament told of a vengeful God. You can't have it both ways. new Testament is a bunch of bullshit made up about a peaceful guy. Quite a departure from the first chapters wouldn't you say? But please, eviscerate away. And I'll go on record saying until a life can support itself, it is not a person. So outside of the womb if you need a definite timeline.
Pointing out sin and immorality is not a sign of hatred. It's just a very touchy thing with the plank in our own eye and all. Stoning someone for sin is certainly a sign of hatred, which is why we're told not to do it. You are right about God's Law, and you are right about redemption for failure to follow it. It's for believers, and not for unbelievers. So to is turning the other cheek between believers.
We get pretty caught up thinking of Jesus as this sinless Prince of Peace, and forget that he came to bring the sword and division. You can see that division in this very thread. You can see how his very name became a curse word, and that the redemption he offers is a rock of offense exactly as it is written. You can no more convince someone they are in need of salvation than you can convince an alcoholic to stop drinking. You can only guide people to discovering the truth, and I am not good at it at all, so I don't play. I was a very arrogant young man. I wasn't a nihilist, but rather believed we would have to answer for the way we lived our lives. I did not come to see myself as a sinner and in need of redemption till I witnessed the physical manifestation of the power of Christ. It took that to reach me, and to realize what I was and that there was no way out.
Maxduty seems to think we're all enslaved to our beliefs, and he's not wrong. It's just that he thinks he's "free", and he isn't. He thinks it all comes from inside him, and that outside of his mind there is no actual good and evil, but that it's all just a point of view, and for each person to decide on his own. Ergo, anyone pointing out the immorality of the act of another is a charlatan. Hypocrisy defines the human animal. We know right from wrong and we still choose wrong. Fundamentally that's what sin is. If we couldn't obey the only rule, how are we going to obey a bunch of them? Being forgiven for what we are, and seeking to be free of being a slave to our wants and desires (our sin) just isn't possible. We are trapped in what we are, and there seems to be no way out. We thirst, and we hunger, and we want, and having faith doesn't stop those things either. Absent that faith, and the "why" we try to be good, why should it matter from whence it came? Because saying murder is wrong, and you want to murder that makes us bad? I'm trying to tell you what to do with your life and how to live it by saying you can't go around killing innocent human beings? Go ahead. Revel in it and think you're free and we are in some sort of prison in our own minds. As I said, you're not wrong. We all serve something greater than ourselves even if we don't know it. We are all slaves. It is just that we consciously decided what to serve instead of being tricked into it and believing we are free.
Obviously you will go to any length to keep believing your are free, including murdering your own son or daughter, a human being that is literally half of yourself. I can't imagine what that feels like. Honestly, it would probably ruin my life unless I found a way out and was forgiven for it.
So, yea, I'm a hypocrite, which is to say I know right from wrong and sometimes choose wrong. My wrong is no better or worse than your wrong. I just acknowledge my wrong, and I repent. Practically, in this shared reality, you don't see the utility in knowing yourself and admitting how flawed and imperfect you are? This somehow makes me less qualified to point out evil rather than more qualified? If me telling you not to murder innocent human beings is "telling you what to do", and "how to live" then the ramifications of me being wrong and you being right really do make this whole existence and consciousness meaningless and pointless. I cannot imagine being that alone in a sunless place where despair is my only company.
You don't need religion to know that murdering human beings (especially babies) is wrong...or maybe you actually do? People who molest children justify it to themselves and others and seek out places where others will praise them for it, not as an evil, but as a good. Are they wrong? Is that different? If so, how. Or is there no wrong and right? Honest questions, because I did not bring religion into this except as a tangential issue, and it is tangential from someone who not only doesn't believe, but scoffs at it. I think it's very important to determine right and wrong from a Socratic point of view rather than a received religious one, because it's pretty obvious that the religious point of view is not only in the minority but shrinking fast.