11 ms·

The comparison with Mr. Rogers is instructive. Both shows seem rooted in a minister's desire to encapsulate ideals derived from the Bible. But while Mr. Roger

The comparison with Mr. Rogers is instructive. Both shows seem rooted in a minister's desire to encapsulate ideals derived from the Bible. But while Mr. Rogers is New Testament, the Thomas books are Old Testament. Henry, for example, gets punished for the sin of VANITY -- he doesn't stop in the tunnel in order to shirk work, but rather to avoid getting his nice new paint messed up. To see the difference between the shows, just try to imagine Mr. Rogers presenting a puppet show about bricking a character up in his room as punishment for not wanting to get his new suit wet in the rain. And imagine him, in that Mr Rogers voice, saying "I think he deserved that punishment, don't you?"

humanrebar 9y ago
I think the New Testament disagrees with your characterization of the Old Testament. Pretty much the entire New Testament goes on about how the Old Testament is a series of stories about how cycles of rule making and rule breaking do not lead to real justice, peace, or life. In particular, both Romans and Hebrews (though not exclusively those books) cite Old Testament stories to make the case that the Old Testament (a.k.a. the law and the prophets) is largely misunderstood to be about a world full of crime and punishment. For example, Romans 1 talks about how people (not a vengeful God) set up the worst consequences for themselves. God's "wrath" is unfiltered humanity. Romans 2 goes on about how there's plenty of blame to pass around (so there's no room for "good people" to blame "bad" ones). And Romans 4 holds up Abraham, an Old Testament character, as an example of how life should be lived, in faithfulness to a forgiving God. All through this passage, and in the rest of the book, a case is built from the Old Testament itself. Anyway, I don't have strong feelings about Shining Time Station, but I think the Old Testament is more humane, sensible, and subtle than people seem to appreciate. At least the apostle Paul seemed to think so.
- linkregister 9y ago
  This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament. I will name some examples of God personally meting out the death sentence en masse as punishment for sin in various books of the Old Testament. 1. The Great Flood (Genesis), 2. Sodom (Genesis), 3. The Plagues of Egypt (Exodus), 4. The Exile of the Israelites from the Promised Land (Exodus). Redemption, mercy, and forgiveness are primary themes in the Gospels, and further continue as major themes in the rest of the New Testament. Aside from the Lake of Fire (Hell), which is worse than being killed for being a first-born Egyptian child, references to punishment are secondary. As for Paul's opinion of the Old Testament, that is fine, he wrote that opinion. There is no shortage of contradictory and conflicting opinions and facts in the Bible since it is a work compiled, edited, and written by humans. That said, the mainstream Christian opinion that the Old Testament is vengeful and the New Testament is merciful is prevalent for a reason. Paul cannot retcon, try as he might, the events of the Old Testament.
  - geowwy 9y ago
    > ...the mainstream Christian opinion that the Old Testament is vengeful and the New Testament is merciful... That's not mainstream Christian opinion. It's called Marcionism and it's universally condemned by mainstream Christianity.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      Your characterization of my viewpoint is highly distorted. No credible mainstream Christian rejects the Old Testament.
      - Godel_unicode 9y ago
        The "it" to which gp refers is not the old testament. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism
        nl 9y ago
        Yes, but saying that @linkregister's views are Marcionism does misrepresent their views completely. Marcionism is nothing like what linkregister is claiming.
    - nl 9y ago
      That's not mainstream Christian opinion. It's fair to say it misses many subtleties of mainstream Christian view, but it is still more true than untrue. The theology of sanctifying grace[1] and the mercy of salvation[2] are both New Testament ideals which are the core of mainstream Christian theology. It's called Marcionism and it's universally condemned by mainstream Christianity. Marcionism is a whole other thing, involving two gods: Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. The idea of there being two, separate gods is what made it heretical. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_in_Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_in_Christianity [2] https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-mercy-72461 https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-merc...
- geowwy 9y ago
  Agreed. That characterization of Old Testament vs. New Testament is one of my pet peeves. There's some horrific brutality and violence in the Old Testament. But the overall story is one of Yahweh's love and compassion for his people in a world where everything is falling apart around them. The same theme carries through into the New Testament. If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians.
  - ux-app 9y ago
    dude, c'mon get real. I've read the old testament. It's brutal. Yahwe loved him some genocide.
    - geowwy 9y ago
      I know the Bible pretty well. I couldn't get realer.
      - ux-app 9y ago
        https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_kil... seems pretty fked up to me :) I don't know anything about rationalwiki.org, it's the first site that showed up when I googled "old testament character punished" Each statement is linked to Biblical verses though, so any objections would be to the spin they put on it rather than disputing whether those passages are actually there. Basically, old testament Yahwe is a weird dude. Very thin skinned with a hare trigger temper. He's a sociopath who "tests" people by murdering their family among other atrocities. He does have his bro's back though. He sent 2 bears to maul 42 youths to death for mocking Elijah's bald head.
        arethuza 9y ago
        "In the late stages of the Second World War, Evelyn Waugh was trapped in Europe in the company of Randolph Churchill, the boorish son of the wartime prime minister. "In the hope of keeping him quiet," he wrote to Nancy Mitford, "Freddie and I bet him £20 that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud... or merely slapping his side & chortling 'God, isn't God a shit!'." We were taught the bible every day by our splendid primary school headmaster, who had been a Spitfire pilot in WW2, and he seemed to focus on the most unpleasant bits of the Old Testament - even at at tender age this did not create a particularly positive impression of G. Years, later I did wonder if old Mr C was being just a wee bit subversive with us.
jdietrich 9y ago
"You've made this day a special day, by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are." - Fred Rogers Rogers might have been a seminarian, but he taught the dharma.
coldtea 9y ago
>Henry, for example, gets punished for the sin of VANITY -- he doesn't stop in the tunnel in order to shirk work, but rather to avoid getting his nice new paint messed up. Vanity is a sin in the New Testament too. And, religion or not, is a silly sentiment that ticks other people off, leads to bad decisions, makes people unhappy, and life itself punishes in several ways anyway.
gadders 9y ago
I think a better reading would be that the stories encapsulate attitudes in 1940-50's Britain. The social cohesion that was necessary during the war effort, the threat of the cold war etc.
darepublic 9y ago
I think snl or a YouTube parody channel could run with your description of evil Mr. Rogers

humanrebar 9y ago

I think the New Testament disagrees with your characterization of the Old Testament. Pretty much the entire New Testament goes on about how the Old Testament is a series of stories about how cycles of rule making and rule breaking do not lead to real justice, peace, or life. In particular, both Romans and Hebrews (though not exclusively those books) cite Old Testament stories to make the case that the Old Testament (a.k.a. the law and the prophets) is largely misunderstood to be about a world full of crime and punishment. For example, Romans 1 talks about how people (not a vengeful God) set up the worst consequences for themselves. God's "wrath" is unfiltered humanity. Romans 2 goes on about how there's plenty of blame to pass around (so there's no room for "good people" to blame "bad" ones). And Romans 4 holds up Abraham, an Old Testament character, as an example of how life should be lived, in faithfulness to a forgiving God. All through this passage, and in the rest of the book, a case is built from the Old Testament itself. Anyway, I don't have strong feelings about Shining Time Station, but I think the Old Testament is more humane, sensible, and subtle than people seem to appreciate. At least the apostle Paul seemed to think so.

linkregister 9y ago
This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament. I will name some examples of God personally meting out the death sentence en masse as punishment for sin in various books of the Old Testament. 1. The Great Flood (Genesis), 2. Sodom (Genesis), 3. The Plagues of Egypt (Exodus), 4. The Exile of the Israelites from the Promised Land (Exodus). Redemption, mercy, and forgiveness are primary themes in the Gospels, and further continue as major themes in the rest of the New Testament. Aside from the Lake of Fire (Hell), which is worse than being killed for being a first-born Egyptian child, references to punishment are secondary. As for Paul's opinion of the Old Testament, that is fine, he wrote that opinion. There is no shortage of contradictory and conflicting opinions and facts in the Bible since it is a work compiled, edited, and written by humans. That said, the mainstream Christian opinion that the Old Testament is vengeful and the New Testament is merciful is prevalent for a reason. Paul cannot retcon, try as he might, the events of the Old Testament.
- geowwy 9y ago
  > ...the mainstream Christian opinion that the Old Testament is vengeful and the New Testament is merciful... That's not mainstream Christian opinion. It's called Marcionism and it's universally condemned by mainstream Christianity.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    Your characterization of my viewpoint is highly distorted. No credible mainstream Christian rejects the Old Testament.
    - Godel_unicode 9y ago
      The "it" to which gp refers is not the old testament. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism
      - nl 9y ago
        Yes, but saying that @linkregister's views are Marcionism does misrepresent their views completely. Marcionism is nothing like what linkregister is claiming.
  - nl 9y ago
    That's not mainstream Christian opinion. It's fair to say it misses many subtleties of mainstream Christian view, but it is still more true than untrue. The theology of sanctifying grace[1] and the mercy of salvation[2] are both New Testament ideals which are the core of mainstream Christian theology. It's called Marcionism and it's universally condemned by mainstream Christianity. Marcionism is a whole other thing, involving two gods: Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. The idea of there being two, separate gods is what made it heretical. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_in_Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_in_Christianity [2] https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-mercy-72461 https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-merc...
geowwy 9y ago
Agreed. That characterization of Old Testament vs. New Testament is one of my pet peeves. There's some horrific brutality and violence in the Old Testament. But the overall story is one of Yahweh's love and compassion for his people in a world where everything is falling apart around them. The same theme carries through into the New Testament. If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians.
- ux-app 9y ago
  dude, c'mon get real. I've read the old testament. It's brutal. Yahwe loved him some genocide.
  - geowwy 9y ago
    I know the Bible pretty well. I couldn't get realer.
    - ux-app 9y ago
      https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_kil... seems pretty fked up to me :) I don't know anything about rationalwiki.org, it's the first site that showed up when I googled "old testament character punished" Each statement is linked to Biblical verses though, so any objections would be to the spin they put on it rather than disputing whether those passages are actually there. Basically, old testament Yahwe is a weird dude. Very thin skinned with a hare trigger temper. He's a sociopath who "tests" people by murdering their family among other atrocities. He does have his bro's back though. He sent 2 bears to maul 42 youths to death for mocking Elijah's bald head.
      - arethuza 9y ago
        "In the late stages of the Second World War, Evelyn Waugh was trapped in Europe in the company of Randolph Churchill, the boorish son of the wartime prime minister. "In the hope of keeping him quiet," he wrote to Nancy Mitford, "Freddie and I bet him £20 that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud... or merely slapping his side & chortling 'God, isn't God a shit!'." We were taught the bible every day by our splendid primary school headmaster, who had been a Spitfire pilot in WW2, and he seemed to focus on the most unpleasant bits of the Old Testament - even at at tender age this did not create a particularly positive impression of G. Years, later I did wonder if old Mr C was being just a wee bit subversive with us.

jdietrich 9y ago

"You've made this day a special day, by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are." - Fred Rogers Rogers might have been a seminarian, but he taught the dharma.

coldtea 9y ago

>Henry, for example, gets punished for the sin of VANITY -- he doesn't stop in the tunnel in order to shirk work, but rather to avoid getting his nice new paint messed up. Vanity is a sin in the New Testament too. And, religion or not, is a silly sentiment that ticks other people off, leads to bad decisions, makes people unhappy, and life itself punishes in several ways anyway.

gadders 9y ago

I think a better reading would be that the stories encapsulate attitudes in 1940-50's Britain. The social cohesion that was necessary during the war effort, the threat of the cold war etc.

darepublic 9y ago

I think snl or a YouTube parody channel could run with your description of evil Mr. Rogers