Reply #6: He never mentioned it, which should tell people something.

[No Elephants]

He never mentioned gays, either.

Once or twice, in the entire Bible, in the King James version, it says something about gays being an abomination to God. However, as I understand it from a Hebrew scholar, the word can mean a male prostitute.

In any event, the Bible never says that people should shun gays, or disown them, or treat them as dead or enact laws against them. That was all gloss thought up by humans who love to play God.

The Bible also says that gossip is one of the things God hates most. (In that list of things God hates most, gays are not mentioned.) Yet, as far as I know, gossips are allowed to marry, adopt children, etc. The Bible also says that God loves a merry heart. Yet, we have no laws against being depressed.

According to my Bible, God is a very big boy and quite capable of doing whatever he wants about the things he dislikes. And, both the old and new testaments strongly suggest we leave things like that to him.


ETA: I think I can be confident in saying had Jesus been one of those doctors, he would have saved the mother.

She died because of a legalistic rule about a fetal heartbeart. Jesus very clearly condemned strict adherence to religious rules when net harm results. He also condemned taking religion to an extreme.

The NT contains, for example, a story about picking corn on the Sabbath in order to eat it, which no Jew of his time would have done. Not because the Bible prohibits picking corn, but because the Bible declared the Sabbath a day of rest and, by Jesus's day, people already had taken that simple statement to extremes.

Offhand, I cannot recall if Jesus picked the corn or he did not chide his disciples when they picked the corn. Whatever it was, the religious extremists of his day counted it against him.

I think the moral of the story is that you don't let religious legalism or religious extremism stop you from meeting the basic physical needs of humans.