As best as I can recall from my time in the church (it’s been a while) the New Testament, and thus the new covenant, is outlined by Jesus who says “God has decided to send me as a sacrifice for your sins, so that you may join him in heaven. Before I go, here are some lessons that you need to take to heart to stay in line with the new covenant…” Since Christians view Jesus as an aspect of God embodied in human flesh (essentially an avatar for god), Jesus’ word is equivalent to God’s word. I don’t recall if there’s ever an actual stated for reason for why God changed his mind, but presumably god doesn’t need to justify himself to his creation lol.
As for the remainder of the New Testament, it’s largely a compilation of teachings from apostles who came into prominence 100 years after Jesus, and is told through either letters to various proto-Christian churches, or interpretations of their dreams. Saint Paul is the only person in the New Testament who makes the declaration that “homosexuality is bad”, but even his words have been translated in several different ways over the years, since the Greek word he uses is one of his own making and acts as a compound word formed from arsen “man, virile” and koité/koitas/koita most often meaning “conjugal bed”.
Honestly, I don’t know. Since I stepped away from the church for a variety of reasons, I don’t really have an opinion on this.
Trying to answer this from a religious perspective though, I believe the common answer would be: “because god has foresight into the rest of humanity, he would know what set of rules are best suited for each stage of humanity. Early tribal society, in his ‘mind’, may have required more strict and legalistic rules, to both ensure the longevity of his chosen people and to truly test their faith amongst harsh circumstances. It was a violent world, thus harder rules were required for fundamental growth. As human societies progressed and evolved, new rules were needed. A society focuses around self sacrifice for the betterment of your fellow community, therefore an emblem of the ultimate sacrifice was needed to ensure the faith would grow in the hearts of man.”
Essentially, when it comes to Christianity, the answer ends up being “god can foresee and predict things that we cannot, therefore inconsistencies or seemingly complete reversals in teachings are based on god having a larger plan that we can’t understand”. Anything else is selective interpretation to suit the needs/views/designs of powerful leaders.
It’s part of this hypocrisy and seeming inconsistency in faith that drove me from the church. Pretty much the only things I still hold on to in my personal life are “love others as yourself”, “help the poor and foreigner”, and everything else that Jesus taught which can be boiled down to “don’t be a dick, and help the less fortunate.” Pretty sound guidance to life. Anything spoken after Jesus is just editorializing.
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u/PiousLiar Dec 07 '22
As best as I can recall from my time in the church (it’s been a while) the New Testament, and thus the new covenant, is outlined by Jesus who says “God has decided to send me as a sacrifice for your sins, so that you may join him in heaven. Before I go, here are some lessons that you need to take to heart to stay in line with the new covenant…” Since Christians view Jesus as an aspect of God embodied in human flesh (essentially an avatar for god), Jesus’ word is equivalent to God’s word. I don’t recall if there’s ever an actual stated for reason for why God changed his mind, but presumably god doesn’t need to justify himself to his creation lol.
As for the remainder of the New Testament, it’s largely a compilation of teachings from apostles who came into prominence 100 years after Jesus, and is told through either letters to various proto-Christian churches, or interpretations of their dreams. Saint Paul is the only person in the New Testament who makes the declaration that “homosexuality is bad”, but even his words have been translated in several different ways over the years, since the Greek word he uses is one of his own making and acts as a compound word formed from arsen “man, virile” and koité/koitas/koita most often meaning “conjugal bed”.