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by themodelplumber 1610 days ago
There's no reference to any Code of Ethics in the linked space above, though. Contextually the blessing text is completely subjective.

(PS Are you also saying they have objectively measured the existence of God, or the divinity of Christ...?)

2 comments

I'm saying that Abrahamic faiths generally don't leave any room for "my truth" being different from "your truth." There is only one Truth with a capital T, because there is only one God with a capital G. So if two people differ on some point of doctrine or ethics, one of them must be Right and the other must be Wrong. Mere mortals might not be able to determine which is which with perfect accuracy, but the One True God certainly can.
Notwithstanding that, because of the fallibility of humans, subjective matters of conduct arise. For example: because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed divorce, but from the beginning it was not so; David was an adulterer which was punishable by death, but repented and was forgiven; mercy triumphs over judgement. As Jesus said: be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. Unfortunately, we’ve all already failed.

No scripture is a matter of one’s own private interpretation, but many matters beyond that are, because we complicate matters for ourselves by our imperfection. A lot of the stuff in Paul’s letters he wrote to help resolve such matters.

That still leaves the human realm mired in subjectivity. I think "there is no true ethics system" and "there is a true ethics system but we can only access hints toward it" go together quite well.
That's not how almost everyone I know interprets and practices them, and the scriptures themselves are frequently vague and inconsistent.
If two people differ, they could both be Wrong, of course. (Imagine a case with three people, all mutually differing on a point. Now take two of them whom you conclude are not Right and...)
Gotcha, in fact I used to preach that style of position from my neo-Abrahamic pulpit. Slightly different in that I was preaching that God OR his special representatives like me could tell you what the right truth was. Funny memories.
I can't speak to Judaism or Islam (the latter in particular seems quite legalistic), but Christianity has the concept of "Christian freedom." TL;DR: A Christian is allowed to partake in any activity that is not outlawed by Christ as long as doing so does not cause the Christian to stumble or cause others to stumble. So whereas Islam or Judaism forbid consumption of pork, Christianity allows it insofar as it does not cause someone to stumble. Or take alcohol: it's not explicitly outlawed (though debauchery is), yet the Christian should probably have more self-control than to drink to the brink of debauchery. It's just a matter of personal governance.

So IMO, Christianity does indeed have quite a bit of subjectivity, but it's all calibrated around creating good and forging a tight knit relationship with Christ so we can better emulate Him to the world.

There may be one perfect truth but humans can only try to achieve it and being imperfect, none of us will. So we may come to different approximations of one truth.
I mean, if that's your standard you have to provide the same capital T truth standard to science and, well, pretty much everything else.
> PS Are you also saying they have objectively measured the existence of God, or the divinity of Christ...?

There's only one objective reality/truth, regardless of human ability to measure it. It's like arguing that the stars' existence is subjective because you can't count them.

> There's only one objective reality/truth, regardless of human ability to measure it.

This way of thinking doesn't respect relativity enough to be settled. Sure if you go meta enough you could say there's only one universe, but maybe that's an imaginary descriptive construct and two particles whose light cones don't intersect aren't actually in the same "reality".