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Anti-Semitism - A Circular Argument

With all of the talk about the upcoming "The Passion of The Christ" movie, is the attempt to associate the old bogus argument that the Jews bear the collective guilt for the Crucifixion of Christ.

What people fail to realize is that this is a circular argument that falls apart if they think it through.

Proposition: The Jews (i.e. all of Jewish ancestry) bear collective guilt for the crucifixion of Christ.

Problem: Jesus is Jewish, so Jesus bears the guilt for his own death. If Jesus is thus guilty for his own death, then Jesus sinned. If Jesus sinned, then he was just a man, and all of Christianity is a sham.

Conclusion: Those who say that the Jews bear collective guilt for the death of Christ are not Christians.

The Christian Perspective: All of humanity is responsible for Jesus' death. Jesus was sent to be a sacrifice for all our sins/guilt. If we accept this free gift, we have the gift of eternal salvation. I have heard few mention the fact that Christ rose from the dead. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, no one would remember him. He would be one of the nameless thousands who were executed by crucifixion.

The agents of anarchy who oppose the law of God, deny the reality of Christ's resurrection, and at the same time blame the Jewish people for his death. Any one who has accepted the resurrection of Christ, knows that they are the most guilty person in their own life for the death of Christ. Yet in spite of all that, he loved us enough to die for us.

Some try to paint Hitler and his Nazi goons, the KKK, and other racist groups as Christian. Those who twist Christianity to fit their own ideas are not Christian. If they would read the Bible without pre-supposition, they would see that Jesus did not teach the hatred of his own people. Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets. Both the law and the prophets testify that the Jewish people have a special purpose in God's eyes. To say that the Jews have lost this place, is to contradict the clear witness of Scripture.

The New Testament does use terms to describe the Jews in a negative light, but this is directed at the corrupt Jewish leaders who were more interested in keeping their power and position, not honoring God's law. This is the same argument when the leaders of a failed company are blamed, but many mention the whole company by name, such as Enron. If the problem was in the management of the company, it is easy to blame former employees of the company by guilt with association, but the guilt is on the leadershp. Guilt by association may be enough cause for investigation, but will not lead up to an indictment or a conviction.

NOTE:Many millions of Jews, along with many other ethnic groups, were slaughtered in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Any one who says differently is ignoring the detailed records the Nazis themselves kept of the process.

DEFINITONS:

RACISM: The false belief that their is more than one race of intelligent beings composing humanity. Scripture and DNA clearly agree that there is only one Human Race. The supposed "races" have only external differences in appearance that are accumulated by concentrations of people with the same characteristics in the same geographic area for thousands of years. This is evident in that my oldest son and the son of my cousin have a strong resemblance, even though my cousin's son is half Japanese, while my cousin and I are of English/Scottish/Irish descent. If there were truly different races, they would not be able to successfully intermarry. If there were no individuals who fit the stereotypes of a given "race", especially the negative stereotypes, the myth of race would be easier to dispell. It is the idea of generalizing the attributes of one person to everyone who looks like that person, that is the error. All "races" have people that are "good" and people who are "bad", as society defines those terms. Only focusing on one or the other only shows the bias that one has. Using individual behavior to blame and catagorize a whole group of people is illogical. One sees this in arguments like: "All X are bad, but Joe is the exception." The more appropriate argument is that all humans are capable of great good and great evil, some more than others. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
HUMAN LIFE: Human life clearly begins in the womb as witnessed to by Scripture and DNA. Take a DNA sample of a baby in the womb, and it will come back as human, not something else. The supposedly "open-minded" scientists who rely on "evidence" to favor abortion, say that the "fetus" is only a mass of tissue. The problem is that these same scientists will not argue when a woman wants to keep her "baby" that it is a baby. How come if a woman want to keep her "baby" it is a baby, and if she does not want to keep "it" is something else? Science is supposed to be logical and evidential. Yet too many in favor of abortion ignore these facts when they want to "justify" a woman's "right to privacy". My wife and I have lived through 10 first trimester miscarriages, AKA "Spontaneous Abortion". None of the doctors in this situation tried to convince us this was just a mass of tissue. One of the doctors at the family practice we went to when we had our fist miscarriage seemed to be of this opinion, from his lack of concern, but he did not try to convince us it was just "tissue". After our first miscarriage, we had our oldest son. At what point did he cease to be "tissue" and become human? Our youngest son is adopted, if his mother had chosen to see him as "tissue", we would not have had all the joy of getting to raise and enjoy his way of looking at the world. From an economic standpoint, if all the women who did not want their babies gave them up for adoption, it would probably be cheaper for them, since adoptive parents often pick up the medical bills, and it would be cheaper for many couples who try all kinds of expensive treatments to have a baby of their own. Granted it would put the abortionists and fertility specialists out of work, but their would be plenty of work in hospitals to care for women and newborns, and family practice to care for families.
MARRIAGE: Marriage is clearly intended to be between one man and one woman. Man and woman are clearly designed to be physically capable of joining. Other forms of physical joining are clearly not healthy producing problems with those parts of the body, such as bruising and tearing. Disease is more likely to be spread outside of a monogamous relationship. Again, turning to science, the only way to guarantee 100% protection from sexually transmitted diseases, is to not have sexual contact with anyone, or to be in a committed monogamous relationship that honors waiting until marriage.
Marriage is also the intended environment for raising children. If my wife were to die while our children were still young, my desire to marry again would be filtered through a desire for a woman who would be a good mother to my children. I am sure I could raise them to be health young men on my own, but my wife does and sees things differently than I do. With only a man's perspective on life, they would be missing something. In the same way, if I were to die, my wife would seek a man who would be a good father to our children. Again, she could do it on her own, but without a man's influence, something would be missing.
Gen 2:18 Yahweh God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." ¹⁹Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper suitable for him. ²¹Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²²He made the rib, which Yahweh God had taken from the man, into a woman, and brought her to the man. ²³The man said, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." ²⁴Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh. ²⁵They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:18-25 WEB)
NOTE: I chose the World English Bible for this quotation because it is in modern English and the author(s) of the translation have made it freely available to the world. I prefer the NIV in my regular scripture reading, but there are copyright restrictions that are better handled by avoiding them.

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