How far off track do you let someone go? Part2

[mr-pirk]

How far do you let some go before you try to offer some correction?

I have been having a few conversations with my brother Robert about the bible. Robert is a truck driver. This affords him a lot of time to listen to talk radio. He mostly listens to Christian talk radio. The preacher Robert likes to listen to the most, has some sort of off-beat understandings of some scripture. An example would be his teachings concerning the dietary restrictions under the law.

The preacher teaches that the dietary restrictions should still be followed today. The line of reasoning he uses is that God put all the beneficial foods on the permissible list and all the "œnot good for you food"� on the forbidden list.
An example of this is his views on eating rabbit. Since rabbit is on the forbidden list then eating rabbit is a waste of time because it has no food value. If there was any food value to rabbit meat then God would have placed it on the permissible list.

The preacher reinforces that view point by citing accounts of people dieing from rabbit starvation.
(Rabbit starvation occurs mostly in survival situations where the only meat a person can gain access to is rabbit meat. Wild rabbits are normally so lean that if you don"™t eat the organs as well you won"™t get enough fat in your diet to stay alive. Eating a diet of only lean rabbit muscle for a month, a person will starve to death.)

I have explained to my brother that the dietary restrictions were given, not because there is anything wrong with eating rabbit, but to the contrary, the restrictions for eating rabbit were given because there is nothing wrong with eating rabbit.

There is nothing wrong with wearing clothing made of two different kinds of cloth. Yet we find restrictions on that very thing. The clothing restrictions were put in place because there is nothing wrong with wearing clothing made of two different kinds of material.
The restrictions were put in place to teach the Israelites to follow God"™s rules, even if there was no apparent reason for the rule.

The lesson was to follow all of God"™s rules, not because they must seem logical to you, but simply because God said so.
To many Israelites it was perfectly logical to pray to other gods. The restrictions taught that even if something seems logical to do and God says not to, then don"™t do it.

The above understanding is lost on my brother. He has his own view point concerning the dietary restrictions and the reasons for them. For me I don"™t see it worth arguing about. It doesn"™t bother me if he chooses to restrict his diet. What bothers me is that he always chooses to bring up an argument about it.

He has many other very narrow understandings of scripture, but so far to me they seem harmless. As long as they remain harmless I try just to let him be.

The problem is that Robert won"™t allow the conversation to move past arguing about those narrow understandings. Lately I have found myself intentionally turning the conversation away from the bible simply because arguing about those views is all that he wants to do when discussing scripture.

What it puts me in mind of, is discussing scripture with Mormons or Jehovah Witness. Most of their view points are harmless, many are even noble but at what point do you step in and start correcting them?

Thanks
mr-pirk

[Leafrivermac]

Lol, Mr Pirk arguing with family over Scripture makes fo a nice get together huh? As long as your arguing with him anyway you may as well try to pull him back on track.