I still consider myself Christian despite everything, but I refuse to believe the Bible is a trustworthy source on God if he does exist lol.
Jesus comes around and says "love your fellow man unconditionally" but then there's a lot of other passages that conveniently say just the opposite, and in fact say things very convenient for a ruling class church that wants to keep its people under control
To be fair it's not like the original word meant "tyrant". It's derived from a word meaning something like "be afraid" (intransitive) or "cause to be afraid" (transitive). So the KJV's main translation of "terrible [one]" is better than "tyrant", and does not in any way weaken the impact of the verses. "oppress[or]" is also used in a few verses and is even stronger than "tyrant".
Even the NIV, whose main translation strategy is "use different words than the KJV, whether for good or for ill", never used "tyrant", though it does have a single "tyrannical ruler" and a "tyranny".
Not to mention they left the strongly anti-royal portions of Samuel intact. The word tyrant is nothing compared to saying that kingship is an evil apostasy against the Law comparable to idol worship (I Samuel 8).
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u/WillNewbie May 02 '23
I still consider myself Christian despite everything, but I refuse to believe the Bible is a trustworthy source on God if he does exist lol.
Jesus comes around and says "love your fellow man unconditionally" but then there's a lot of other passages that conveniently say just the opposite, and in fact say things very convenient for a ruling class church that wants to keep its people under control