My favourite one was about 8 years or so ago someone re-translated from one of the oldest original texts from the bible, and they re-translated about 70 pages, one of which puts an entirely new light on one of the most well-known times in world history, "The Burning Times"

The command "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" should actually have read "Thou shalt not suffer a liar to live"

Whoops!!

I met a man in the US who had dedicated his whole life to studying all religion and he had 2 rules for life:

Treat people the way you want to be treated.

But his golden rule was: Don't treat people the way you wouldn't want to be treated.

If only more people would live like that.

Thank [insert personal deit(y/ies)] we have differing outlooks and opinions.

Thank (in no small part) your soldiers that you are free to express and discuss them here.

FWIW the service issue bible has #6 as "Thou shalt not kill unlawfully".

The world would be a pretty boring place if we all shared the same opinions which is why the human race is so diverse and interesting.

what does it matter what a soldier believes in

being a ex soldier i can tell you this, when the [LIFTED] hits the fan your only god is black and green and spits metal vengeance

Agreed.

As someone I can't remember once said, "Ain't no such thing as an atheist in a fox hole". The point being that when hot, fast lumps are coming at you, your particular brand of faith or otherwise is rather insignificant compared to the need to not get dead.

No contempt was intended. I was sort of implying that any particular group of "Christians" will more often than not claim that any other group of "Christians" are not really christians at all. They all follow what their leaders tell them the Bible says they all want to go to heaven and they all jump through whatever hoops are set before them.

Jehovahs witnesses, Seventh Day adventists, Roman Catholics, Pentacostals to name but a few don't see eye to eye over very much. Strange that there should be so much "room for error" in something that is meant to be the highway code of life from an infallible god.

However that is far from true and is somewhat insulting to no theists too.

You mean "implies".

To infer something is to take meaning from something that someone has said.

To imply something is to put meaning behind something you are saying.



As for the whole are soldiers Christians thing. TBH, I'm not that bothered what they are. Most of it is made up anyway and like Caz said, the best way to live life is to treat people how you would wish to be treated.

Being a soldier and a christian are two mutually exclusive positions. One has little to do with the other. Soldiers do not become christians to aid their soldiering, and christians do not become soldiers to aid their belief. The only occasions that this can happen is when a country staples some religious dogma to it's patriotism in order to hoodwink the believers into fighting for it. Would I fight for the UK in a religious war against Iran? Of course not. Would I fight against Iran if they threatened my country directly? Of course I would.

Where one should worry is when a country....the USA springs immediately to mind....positively encourages religion within it's ranks. Hoping that your armed forces are religious, simply to gain a feeling of community, common purpose and righteousness amongst your troops is abhorrent. I find that more offensive than "sexed up" dossiers about missile attacks in 45 minutes....

If there were a god, he'd be either on everyone's side or no-one's side....

SPAG police. Sorry Oli

Kev, I'm interested as to how you think they're mutually exclusive. There are clearly a great deal of Christians in the forces. Just as there are people of other faiths. All of this arose from the question of "holy" wars. There's nothing wrong with having a faith and going to war. The problem occurs when going to war in the name of one's faith.

Bingo!

I mean that to be a soldier you don't have to be a christian and to be a christian you don't have to be a soldier. I can't see how being either would make you more or less inclined to also be the other There are a great many good soldiers who are christians and lots of christians who would make good soldiers, and I don't mean good at killing lol.

We are fortunate in the western world to be pretty much secularists. That doesn't mean that we are faithless, it just means that none of the western world imposes one faith above all others. And as such, fighting for a cause need not involve offending or pandering to a particular dogma. So we are able to draw a nice big divide between our personal beliefs and the systems set to run our lives, without fearing that we are upsetting the status quo or going against the system.

Mutually independent.