| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"Carl" |
| Date: |
02 Aug 2007 08:05:33 PM |
| Object: |
Coals Of Fire |
Here is a brief yet good explanation of what "coals of fire" refers to in
regards to Romans 12:20.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
---
"Coals of Fire"
by Rev. Sam Harris
Question: How do I understand the meaning of Romans 12:20-"But if your enemy
is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so
doing, you will heap burning coals upon his head." I understand the first
part, but not the last section-"the heaping of burning coals." Help me
please.
Does sound a little strange, doesn't it! You have to consider this verse in
context with Romans 12:14-21, which speaks of Christians and our
relationship to those with whom we come in contact in the world, especially
those who might be considered enemies. We are already warned in Scripture
that we are going to be met with opposition for our Christian beliefs.
Remember these words of Jesus in John 15:20? "... If they persecute me, they
will also persecute you.." Paul begins this series of verses with: "Bless
those who persecute you, bless and curse not." Obviously, we can only do
this under the controlling power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Notice Paul's admonitions beginning in verse 17:
.. Never pay back evil for evil
.. Respect what is right in the sight of all men
.. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men
.. Never take your own revenge-leave that for God
.. If your enemy is hungry, feed him
.. If he is thirsty, give him a drink
.. verse 21: "do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
Now the "burning coals." Notice that these same words are found in Proverbs
25:21-22 and repeated by Paul here in Romans 12. People who are offended by
our Christian walk and actions do not know how to respond to acts of
kindness on our part. This confuses them. They expect "an eye for an eye!"
They may be looking for vengeance being our response to them, but, as
Christians, we must know and believe that "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,
says the Lord." (Vs. 19)
Our words and/or response of kindness will reap a burning sense of shame on
them-symbolized by "coals of fire." Here is the paraphrase of this verse
from the Living Bible: "Instead, feed your enemy if he is hungry. If he is
thirsty give him something to drink and you will be 'heaping coals of fire
on his head.' In other words, he will feel ashamed of himself for what he
has done to you."
Hope this is helpful.
I heard Dr. Joseph Stowell speaking recently on Matthew 1:23, which reads,
in part, "They shall call His name Immanuel, which means 'God with us'."
"God with us" means literally that! He is with our men and women currently
in Afghanistan, patients in ICU units in hospitals and their families in the
waiting room, children in schools, those in prison, and everywhere else.
This passage is a tremendous picture of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God. His
is the fulfillment of all of the promises made to Israel; He is the Lion of
Judah and the Root of David. He is the one whose sacrifice redeemed us from
sin, and he still bears the marks of His sacrifice in heaven. As Paul said,
death is swallowed up in victory! Jesus is the one with all power and all
knowledge who will conquer all and whose all seeing eye no one can escape.
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| User: "RedFox" |
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| Title: Re: Coals Of Fire |
03 Aug 2007 07:03:41 PM |
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In article <f8tv0u$huo$1@news.utelfla.com>, "Carl" <saints@nettally.com> wrote:
Here is a brief yet good explanation of what "coals of fire" refers to in
regards to Romans 12:20.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
---
"Coals of Fire"
by Rev. Sam Harris
I think this below is a far more interesting and relevant "Sam Harris"
A Dissent: The Case Against Faith
by Sam Harris / Newsweek
Reposted from:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15566391/site/newsweek
Religion does untold damage to our politics. An atheist's lament.
A Toxic Mix? President Bush, himself a born-again Christian, courts
religious voters at a church in New Orleans
Nov. 13, 2006 issue - Despite a full century of scientific insights
attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the Earth,
more than half the American population believes that the entire cosmos was
created 6,000 years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years
after the Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect
presidents and congressmen‹and many who themselves get elected‹believe
that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's Ark, that light from distant
galaxies was created en route to the Earth and that the first members of
our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with
a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.
This is embarrassing. But add to this comedy of false certainties the fact
that 44 percent of Americans are confident that Jesus will return to Earth
sometime in the next 50 years, and you will glimpse the terrible liability
of this sort of thinking. Given the most common interpretation of Biblical
prophecy, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly half the American
population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world. It should be
clear that this faith-based nihilism provides its adherents with
absolutely no incentive to build a sustainable civilization‹economically,
environmentally or geopolitically. Some of these people are lunatics, of
course, but they are not the lunatic fringe. We are talking about the
explicit views of Christian ministers who have congregations numbering in
the tens of thousands. These are some of the most influential, politically
connected and well-funded people in our society.
It is, of course, taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs. The
problem, however, is that much of what people believe in the name of
religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable and incompatible with
genuine morality. One of the worst things about religion is that it tends
to separate questions of right and wrong from the living reality of human
and animal suffering. Consequently, religious people will devote immense
energy to so-called moral problems‹such as gay marriage‹where no real
suffering is at issue, and they will happily contribute to the surplus of
human misery if it serves their religious beliefs.
A case in point: embryonic-stem-cell research is one of the most promising
developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic
breakthroughs for every human ailment (for the simple reason that stem
cells can become any tissue in the human body), including diabetes,
Parkinson's disease, severe burns, etc. In July, President George W. Bush
used his first veto to deny federal funding to this research. He did this
on the basis of his religious faith. Like millions of other Americans,
President Bush believes that "human life starts at the moment of
conception." Specifically, he believes that there is a soul in every
3-day-old human embryo, and the interests of one soul‹the soul of a little
girl with burns over 75 percent of her body, for instance‹cannot trump the
interests of another soul, even if that soul happens to live inside a
petri dish. Here, as ever, religious dogmatism impedes genuine wisdom and
compassion.
A 3-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst.
There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the
brain of a fly. The embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do
not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to
believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. The truth is
that President Bush's unjustified religious beliefs about the human soul
are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens
of millions of human beings.
Given our status as a superpower, our material wealth and the continuous
advancements in our technology, it seems safe to say that the president of
the United States has more power and responsibility than any person in
history. It is worth noting, therefore, that we have elected a president
who seems to imagine that whenever he closes his eyes in the Oval
Office‹wondering whether to go to war or not to go to war, for
instance‹his intuitions have been vetted by the Creator of the universe.
Speaking to a small group of supporters in 1999, Bush reportedly said, "I
believe God wants me to be president." Believing that God has delivered
you unto the presidency really seems to entail the belief that you cannot
make any catastrophic mistakes while in office. One question we might want
to collectively ponder in the future: do we really want to hand the tiller
of civilization to a person who thinks this way?
Religion is the one area of our discourse in which people are
systematically protected from the demand to give good evidence and valid
arguments in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs
regularly determine what they live for, what they will die for and‹all too
often‹what they will kill for. Consequently, we are living in a world in
which millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent
sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales. We are living
in a world in which millions of Muslims believe that there is nothing
better than to be killed in defense of Islam. We are living in a world in
which millions of Christians hope to soon be raptured into the
stratosphere by Jesus so that they can safely enjoy a sacred genocide that
will inaugurate the end of human history. In a world brimming with
increasingly destructive technology, our infatuation with religious myths
now poses a tremendous danger. And it is not a danger for which more
religious faith is a remedy.
Harris is the author of the New York Times best sellers "Letter to a
Christian Nation" and "The End of Faith."
2006 Newsweek, Inc.
Posted: Sunday, November 5, 2006
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