Lily Philips - can she be a 'true' Christian?

[mids2019]

https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/lily-phillips-has-been-baptised-i-pray-its-accompanied-by-change/20772.article

This article made me think about what it means to be Christian especially about the concepts of sin, judgment and redemption.

In my view Lily of course is a Christian being baptised but to not give up a lucrative adult film career possibly does cause angst amongst more traditional Christians.

We are taught not to judge 'Let those without sin cast the first stone' and to accept the universal unconditionally of forgiveness. (We pray every day about the forgiveness of sin) so it is difficult thologically to condemn others.

However does any fellow Christian need to remind Lily she makes money from a profession where many women with less choice are coerced and manipulated for thr gratification of men? Wr have moved away from a less judgmental Christianity but how do you view participation in Christian life with such a job?

Quote " If you lived in a town you might have had a better notion of time due to shadows sunrise/set etc.
If you live in a desert then one day was much the same as the next."

No sunrise/sunset in the desert then ? No mid day sun ?

And while this is going on in bibleland, The Greeks are plotting the planets, and the people in Britain were building stone circles to align with the seasons. At least that is what one of their functions appears to be.

@mids2019 Those of a conservative religious bent will silently wish the production of pornography is prosecuted under law but they aren't going to get their wish. To a a Christian production of pornography may be a worse crime than doing 72 mph on a motorway but this is not the way society perceives it.

Maybe, maybe not.

It isn't only some Christians that object to the concept of porn.

Gail Dines who is a Jewish Marxist Feminist has produced some interesting material on this issue.

https://in-sightpublishing.com/2026/01/26/radical-feminist-perspectives-on-pornography-an-in-depth-conversation-with-dr-gail-dines/

What is your point?

You are making excuses for the Bible, to such an extent that you are suggesting there is no sunrise/sunset outside of towns. Or at least not at that time.

Instead of the obvious alternative. That it was written by Iran Age man inventing a God.

I agree maybe feminists and Christians have some common ground with this one. However I think for Christians pornography production may fall within a natural sense of morality rather than having a specific Biblical teaching against it. I think the deposit argument is that open objectifies and exploits women but what if a poem actress is the one in control and is making significant amounts of money through a career she views as free choice?

I think you have a heady argument between liberal sex positive women, the religious and feminists. I think it's a feature of modern society.

I opened the article, and read a fair bit of it.

You say she is a "a Jewish Marxist Feminist", but I see none of that in the article. I see an academic talking about a subject she appears to be an expert on.

So what is the relevance of her faith/culture/politics got to do regarding her subject ? Or are you assuming she is inserting one or more of those things into her discussion ?

The article looks perfectly secular to me. And if she is a Marxist, then it's no wonder because she will likely be atheist.

If she was the Reverend Dr Gail Dines, would you see the exact same article differently ?

You are making excuses for the Bible, to such an extent that you are suggesting there is no sunrise/sunset outside of towns. Or at least not at that time.

I didn't say that. So don't write nonsense. I think that ancient man had more to worry about if he was trying to eke out a living in the desert. He went to bed when it was dark and he got up when it was light.
I doubt any of it the days were recorded at that time.
So people's ages were a guesstimate.

Do you know how ancient man, living in the area that is now Iran/Iraq, (later called Mesopotamia) used to function, because I don't?
I do know they had many gods, not just one.

You can find the answers quite easily from Wikipedia - Dines was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Manchester, England,and attended King Davis School. When she was 18,she abandoned Orthodox Judaism and became a radical feminist, later calling her relationship to feminism "a passionate love affair"

But I don't need to know those things to read the article.

If she was inserting some God or political ideology into what she was saying, then yes, that would prompt a look.

OK, please yourself.

You mean the Epic of Gilgamesh, that has a flood story that pre-dates Genesis ?

Yes, the first part of the story discusses Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing his people.

So there were already gods there, so no pressing need to invent another one, as you have suggested.....

Why did God tell him to rape his slave though? I don't think I want to worship a God who thinks that's alright! Either rape, or slavery.

I read some posts about the fires and why didn’t God intervene.
I read a BBC article that the fires were caused by a mixture of things.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3v0wl2reqqo

Talking of fires I know a church which was burnt, not by the fires but by accident or arson.

God does give us free will and as humans we haven’t looked after the world right. Natural disasters can happen and not be the fault of God.

God can intervene and the question how do you know when he hasn’t or has.
I was watching Song of Praise once quite recently a BBC presenter who was a Christian-as a child said their mother got an instinct to tell their child to move away from a tree and it catastrophe hit it. I think it was lighting and injury could have happened if the child stayed their and the family think that God spirit’s was telling to move and helped to protect them. The presenters name is called Simon Thomas. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xjzr

Other people may feel that God protects them for spiritual purposes to.

I often see complaints about Christianity. I do not see though ex Hindu’s or Muslims being so vehement against their faith when they think things go wrong. Rishi is a Hindu and he has got a strong faith I read and I have not read a comment of him complaining about God's actions. His colleague Kemi Badenoch who has her own mind speaks out about the faith about God letting people down she feels.

Standard response - “free will”. Another example that this god doesn’t actually have any powers or do anything to help people.

I thought this god was loving and caring but no he’d rather people’s homes get burned down, communities destroyed and people and animals die.

She’s running out of headlines. That is all

You may have missed the point about how do you know that God never intervened in the case of fires. He could helped people have motivation to help anybody or a Christian he could have given an instinct to leave a place that could burn down soon. God's Holy Spirit is there to try and help protect Christians. A tragedy can happen to a Christian to though. I read on here before by GarlicSound or Found that somebody had instincts in the Kings Cross fire to direct the people to safety and it sounded like God's spirit to me-even though the person was not a Christian. They called this the inner man and they helped to save life..

You obviously don’t listen to world news - many countries are struggling with out of control fires, communities are under evacuation orders loosing their homes, businesses and wildlife.

Where did this almighty god help- or perhaps he was diverted to help those in other natural disasters like this week’s earthquakes - he doesn’t seem keen on protecting the planet.

So you're attributing a non-Christian's actions to your God? That's convenient.

What do you think of the fact that God endorsed slavery and rape? (Regarding Abraham.)

For a supposedly benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent deity, he’s doing a dreadful job of giving the remotest impression of having any interest at all in his creation.

More evidence of his non existence.

Does this help, I wrote it a few weeks ago on a thread started by someone else.
If it doesn't answer the question can you refer directly to the scripture you mean. I may have missed the discussion. Btw, I think we all have a spirit which can communicate with God and to send prayers to.
....
About slavery-

I think that there was some very needy people at that time and they didn’t have a benefit system or a free NHS like many countries have today. What you may perceive to be a slave is not always the same as what the Bible perceives this to be. I know relatives abroad who have taken on destitute people in their lodgings and provided a place to reside to them and food to eat and this need for care exists today in some countries for helping with house work etc..

I can say that God never condoned any person a bondswoman or man to be treated in a criminal manner if they were within the law.

God’s treatment of Haggai shows that God wanted her to be treated fairly by Sarai although she was a bonds woman.

The thing is as well Israelites didn’t always listen to God and did not to Moses to several times and they at times would do what they wanted to captives. This had ramifications to as well.

They had different laws to-if a man abused a woman sexually, he may be held to marry them. This was seen as being justice as they would find it difficult to be married having gone through this crime back then.

God views were clearly written in (Leviticus 19:33-34) ,all people to him were equal although he severed Israelites for himself. The giving of his Son and (Galatians 3:28) express God views today that we are all equal. In (Isaiah 9) Jesus Christ came to put slavery to an end.

You cannot ignore the social background that existed at that time to and apply modern to an ancient world. There are many sources which support to the idea of servitude so I am not alone with this. The people themselves though underwent many hardships and it was all to get to Jesus Christ. Jesus reflects God the Father's views.

www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

"The Lord has never promoted nor approved of people owning one another. But slavery was a part of life in those times. Almost every country practised it. And in this case, though not an ideal situation to be in, bondage to the Egyptians was the best answer to the Israelite’s dilemma of how to become a nation without becoming a threat to other nations while they grew in numbers."

https://gospelstudy.us/why-did-god-allow-israel-to-be-slaves/?srsltid=AfmBOooZGwBFds2LaBn5xD<u>0XYIrleYN6275TCpzkQuZbsBXe0kbk-7k

God was a punisher on rape.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_Hebrew_Bible

No, none of that changes the fact that God endorsed the ownership of people (free board and food for unpaid work, fine, perhaps, but they should have been free to leave whenever they wanted), and the rape of women who were owned (and unable to consent). And forcing a woman to marry her rapist so he can keep raping her in perpetuity isn't actually a good thing, BTW. It's abhorrent.

You can talk about the social background and the customs of the time all you like, but the fact remains, if God was against it, he could've said so. He wasn't constrained by the customs of that time. He could have punished them, like he did with the floods. But he didn't. He endorsed it.

So really, what the Bible shows is that God is morally lacking.

I thought you were may be referring to local news. We still have no idea how God's spirit may have helped some people personally.
We have spoken before about end times and natural disasters are a part of end times in Matthew 24 and nobody will know when that will be except God the Father.
I have still sought God's intervention through prayer for things like peace in some countries.
Btw, I read in the Bible that one of the signs of the end of times which you may have seen today...the post runs quite quick. All this fire did make me think, but I don't that we are there yet.

(Revelation 6:12)
"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood."

New Gods are being invented all the time. Effectively every split in a Christian Church is a new god.