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Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 5:33 pm
Do you think there can be situations where it is actually in someone’s spiritual and/or physical best interest to disobey their own religious laws? For example, if a Christian woman is a recovering alcoholic, and is married to an alcoholic man who is constantly drinking around her and keeping alcohol in the house, and refuses to change even though it’s for both of their good, is it in her best interest to keep enduring these tests and run the risk of falling back into her old habit, or is it better to divorce him and get on with what would probably be a better, cleaner life? Or if a young Muslim girl had been raised in the west by a pseudo-Muslim father who believed it was okay to have 300 wives and treat them all like garbage, that girls were worthless until they had children and that it was Allah’s will that he beat anyone who wasn’t Muslim to death, this girl is pretty likely to grow up resenting Islam unless someone shows her the flaw in her father’s way of thinking, and if she were to loose all respect for her parent’s beliefs, she would not longer be honoring them as Allah wanted. I could give other examples, but for now we’ll stop at those. What do you think? Can it be in the greater interest of someone to break a spiritual commandment, or would it simply be taking the easy way out for the woman to divorce her husband and for the girl to stop respecting what her father thinks?
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Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 7:38 pm
I think if your religious comandments get in the way of actually living a good life than your comandments need rethinking.
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Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 5:03 pm
Moonlite Symphony I think if your religious comandments get in the way of actually living a good life than your comandments need rethinking. I agree completely.
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Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 7:43 pm
I think it is important to separate the spirit of the law from the letter of the law. For the first example, she should probably get a divorce, but it should be the very last resort. First she get him to go to AA, find out if he is really incapable of change, and if so, then she should get a divorce.
"What God has joined together, let no man separate." In the worst case scenario, I would say that those two had never really been joined together, so separation is okay.
As a Christian, I really can't answer for Islam.
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Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 3:31 pm
I think the problem is not so much the commandments of the religion, but the way they have been interpreted by people. I think most religions are not there to prevent people from having a good life, or to keep people in bad relationships. People just take things too far sometimes.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 10:28 pm
RoseRose Moonlite Symphony I think if your religious comandments get in the way of actually living a good life than your comandments need rethinking. I agree completely. I think it depends on what you mean by a "good life". I mean, does that mean that it's okay to eat pork just because it's convienent? Or to steal clothes because it's easier than buying them? I don't think so, and I think for many religions, it's important to make lifestyle changes if that provides your life with religious structure in a way that it makes you constantly aware of the divine.
Now, when it comes to things like "oh you can't be gay," that's different. It's impossible to change things that are unchangeable. I can't just decide to not be a white person anymore than a gay individual can decide to "give up" being gay just to belong to a certain faith.
So yes, adherents to certain commandments are necessary.
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Posted: Wed May 16, 2007 7:20 am
roothands RoseRose Moonlite Symphony I think if your religious comandments get in the way of actually living a good life than your comandments need rethinking. I agree completely. I think it depends on what you mean by a "good life". I mean, does that mean that it's okay to eat pork just because it's convienent? Or to steal clothes because it's easier than buying them? I don't think so, and I think for many religions, it's important to make lifestyle changes if that provides your life with religious structure in a way that it makes you constantly aware of the divine.
Now, when it comes to things like "oh you can't be gay," that's different. It's impossible to change things that are unchangeable. I can't just decide to not be a white person anymore than a gay individual can decide to "give up" being gay just to belong to a certain faith.
So yes, adherents to certain commandments are necessary.By a "good life" I mean one that is happy and fufilled. Not necessarily easy, but one that allows you to be happy. That's probably different religions for different people. The Chasidic rabbi in town is very happy within his beliefs, but I would not be. I am very happy within my less orthodox beliefs (and I don't eat pork.
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