This thread's purpose is to post and discuss shorter excerpts from the Bible on selected topics for those who wish to know what the Bible says. (Anyone who doesn't want to see it pop up every day can easily mute the thread.)
The Bible verses for January 8, 2014 are Matthew 5:43-44,New Living Translation (NLT).

Teaching about Love for Enemies

43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’[a] and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies![b] Pray for those who persecute you!

Footnotes:
a. 5:43 Lev 19:18.
b. 5:44 Some manuscripts add Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Compare Luke 6:27-28.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt%205:43-44&version=NLT

The Bible verses for January 9, 2014 are Matthew 6:24-34, New Living Translation (NLT).

24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

25 “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

28 “And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, 29 yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God[a] above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

34 “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Footnotes:

a. 6:33 Some manuscripts do not include of God.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt%206:24-34&version=NLT

May I ask why not continue the other one this way?

The other thread, that is?

Steephie, the other thread was a chapter a day, with long posts, and lots of scrolling. This one's going to be shorter excerpts on selected topics. My original intent was to post a chapter a day for the entire Bible, but I don't think that's how God is leading at this time.

Today's Bible reading is one of the "I Am" sayings of Jesus:

John 6:26-40
New Living Translation (NLT)

26 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. 27 But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man[a] can give you. For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.”

28 They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?”

29 Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.”

30 They answered, “Show us a miraculous sign if you want us to believe in you. What can you do? 31 After all, our ancestors ate manna while they journeyed through the wilderness! The Scriptures say, ‘Moses gave them bread from heaven to eat.’[b]”

32 Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, Moses didn’t give you bread from heaven. My Father did. And now he offers you the true bread from heaven. 33 The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

34 “Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day.”

35 Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But you haven’t believed in me even though you have seen me. 37 However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them. 38 For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will. 39 And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them up at the last day. 40 For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day.”

Footnotes:

6:27 “Son of Man” is a title Jesus used for himself.
6:31 Exod 16:4; Ps 78:24.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%206:26-40&version=NLT

"I don't think that's how God is leading at this time."

Is God talking to you again? Or are you implying that you are God since you changed your mind?
In any case, I applaud you on your continued mindless drivel contrary to a consistent lack of interest.

WTF?! Why the fuck do I have to keep muting these fucking threads! You said you would stick to one, God damn it!!!!!!!!

You said you would leave the forum and never come back, Draug.

Well this was ignored the first time I posted it on the Daily Bible Thread, so I'll try again here even though that conversation seemed to end since this aspect was never addressed.

"I am curious what your thoughts are about gay marriage in general. Is there a specific passage you find to be directly outspoken against it that is more powerful then some of the other sins that have become allowable due to the simple progression of society? I am of the personal opinion that being outspoken against people's happiness, goes against the general accepting and tolerant nature of the new testament. Even the new Pope seems to be encouraging the Church to be more accepting and tolerant of people who choose to live their lives differently, to stop focusing so much attention on such a small portion of the Bible's overall message, and to instead extend their mission to help bring joy into the lives of those who are joy and hopeless, like the poor."

Jmo, I did post my response to that question in that thread.

Zultar, yes, God communicates to me, and to everyone who searches him out. No, I'm not implying that I am God. As to a "consistent lack of interest," we had over 1000 posts on the first Daily Bible Reading thread and I think we have over 2,000 posts on this last one, although I'd have to go back and look. And these posts do seem to have your attention, my friend.

Jmo, here's a link to that page. I guess you weren't being ignored after all.
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?threadID=908993&page-thread=71#threadPager

How many of those posts are yours, Mujus? Just because there are posts does not imply there was a substantial or substantive interest. Moreover, many of those posts are against your thread and so forth, so please if you want to try to reason, do so intelligently. I have not posted or read any of your drivel until I saw this new thread.

I'll defend your right to post, but please let's stop pretending that your posts are Christian-like or substantive or compelling. I am fairly certain that your inane posts have driven more people away from Christianity and drawing anyone from it.

Good grief zultar, what's your problem? JMO asked for a question to be answered, and Mujus linked him to the page where he responded to it.

I don't understand what you are getting at, semck.

I haven't particularly engaged with Mujus and I haven't posted on any of his threads in about a year because he has, until now, posted away in his other thread, which if he had continued to do, many would be happy with.
However, he created another thread to post the same stuff as he had posted before, and I called that out. Mujus responded by saying that his thread had substantial interest by naming the number of posts. I can almost guarantee that 95-99% of those posts are his, and so it was a rather flawed argument.

Moreover, as I said, he can continue to post and I'll defend his right to post, but it doesn't preclude my opinion or others' opinions of what he posts. If we can discuss the inanity of other people's posts, then we can sure discuss the inanity of Mujus' posts. Just because it is religious doesn't mean it gets special treatment. Furthermore, I'm not even discussing what he believes in, merely the fact that he thinks his posts are somehow making this place a better one when, if we go back to look at the resulting posts, his posts have driven a number of people to react extremely negatively. One should always be aware of one's actions and intended as well as unintended consequences; ignoring all evidence to the contrary is probably not the wisest course of action.

Sorry zultar, I thought you were posting in response to his reply to jmo. Read your post in that context, and you'll see that it seems very odd. I did look for another context first, but somehow missed one of y'all's posts, so was confused. My bad.

I do think it's reasonable of him to start a new thread, since he is changing the format and the old title was no longer descriptive. It's not as though he does so very often, so I don't have much sympathy wiht those who are acting majorly inconvenienced by having to mute another thread.

I would also disagree with you that Mujus should feel that he has somehow accomplished something negative in the community by having the thread. It's true many people who post on his thread do so in a negative and attacking way, but much of it is on substance, and I see it as no more undesireable than any of the other OPs that get people arguing with each other on this site. Posting daily Bible verses on a single thread that can be easily muted is such a manifestly reasonable thing to do that if people actually get angry that he does it (as opposed to reacting to the substance of some of the content), then their behavior is a very sad commentary on the state of themselves and this community, not on Mujus's actions.

Anyway, sorry once again that I misread the context.

No problem, semck.

I don't mute any thread or any user, so this isn't really an inconvenience for me.

I disagree with you that there isn't a difference between Mujus's vacuous posts and others. Other posts do not claim righteousness or a saving message, while there is a sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit connotation of righteousness to Mujus's posts. They are, after all, religious posts. So while both types of threads and posts may both be a waste of digital words, one often isn't directly associated with a moral superiority or understanding while another does. There is, then, a certain hypocrisy that goes along with Mujus's posts than many others.

I do agree with you that getting pissed off and posting like it accomplishes nothing.

"I disagree with you that there isn't a difference between Mujus's vacuous posts and others. Other posts do not claim righteousness or a saving message, while there is a sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit connotation of righteousness to Mujus's posts."

I didn't say there wasn't a difference -- just not a relevant one. You single out an aspect here of Mujus's posts that you find particularly bothering, but everybody's posts have something unique about them that any given player could single out as more than usually annoying. And in fact, there are people here whose OPs I usually find annoying, moreso than Mujus's. But that's just because of what happens to annoy me.

"So while both types of threads and posts may both be a waste of digital words, one often isn't directly associated with a moral superiority or understanding while another does."

Haven't read many threads from progressives, have you? : )

"There is, then, a certain hypocrisy that goes along with Mujus's posts than many others."

Why is it hypocritical? Just because something claims to be morally superior does not make it hypocritical. It's only hypocritical if the morality it preaches is violated by the poster.

I think that having a discourse with you, semck, is more interesting than anything else on this thread. :)

While we can go on, I don't really see any reason to do so as I am fairly certain that most of our points have gotten across and while I do enjoy the arguing for arguing sake pastime, it's not something I think I should do on a regular basis. An old friend of mine in college called it "mental masturbation." He was talking about philosophy but I think you get my meaning. :)

That's all well and good, zultar, but we're missing the point here: should Mujus be silenced for spamming the forum since he agreed to limit his Bible thumping to his DBR thread?

Haha, zultar -- thank you. You put that much more kindly this time than last, I think. ; )

@2wl, Not that you were asking me, but it would certainly seem unreasonable not to let him occasionally update the thread. It's not like he's not restricting himself to a thread, anymore; he just changed formats and therefore also titles.

I don't think creating one thread every 1.5 years could be considered spamming. As long as he isn't bumping multiple bible threads every day, I have no problem with it.

Eh, I was just going by the agreement made with Mujus in his previous thread. Hopefully this doesn't become a trend. In any case, I'm going to remute this thread since I personally consider it spam.

It was my understanding that in return for Mujus remaining in one thread, people who didn't like his thread would mute it and leave him alone. Since I know many people use his thread as a platform to harass him, I actually think he's been fairly sporting in (mostly) keeping his bible posts to one thread.

No you're not 2nd, you're a mod now, you don't get to mute anything, sorry :)

Some people seem to have the idea that in return for (usually) keeping my daily posts to a single thread, I gave up the right to post on this topic in other threads. Anybody can go back and see that I did not make any sort of deal and instead argued (along with others) that this topic should not be somehow singled out to be limited. The reason I did limit the daily posts to a single thread at a time was because after being told so by some other players, I saw how it would inconvenience some people to see a different thread every day. 2ndWhiteLine, others, any talk of an agreement is just revisionist history. I also said that I would occasionally post verses of special interest. But… even if you thought I agreed to limit the daily posts to one thread--which I didn't--I'm still posting in just one thread on a daily basis. And Zultar, your numbers are really exaggerated.

As for claiming moral superiority, I have done the opposite and backed it up with this or a similar verse from three of the gospels:

17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

Christians are not better than anyone else in terms of original sin, daily struggles, etc. A well-known local pastor once said that people think of faith in Jesus and God as a crutch, but it's actually more like an iron lung (for those of you old enough to understand the reference).

Finally, in Matthew 11:28, New Living Translation (NLT),
28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest."

I have never claimed to be holier-than-thou. I just know I'm a sinner and I need help!

More words of Jesus: Matthew 7:24-29, New Living Translation (NLT)

Building on a Solid Foundation

24 “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 for he taught with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%207:24-29&version=NLT