This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015
He was divine
Phil Brown, in defending Dr. Bill Cummings, says Jesus never claimed to be divine. Contrary to this assertion, Jesus repeatedly claimed to be God. When people brought a paralytic to Jesus by letting him down through a roof, Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven. When the scribes rightly asked, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Jesus demonstrated His authority to forgive by healing the man.
In that passage, Jesus referred to himself as the "Son of Man." Thus, he laid claim to be the "Son of Man" in Daniel 7:13-14 who came to the Ancient of Days and was given an eternal dominion that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him.
In his dispute with Jewish religious leaders, they said they had Abraham as their father and asked if Jesus claimed to be greater than Abraham. Jesus responded, "... before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). This is an assertion of eternal existence, something only God has. It is also a reminder of what God told Moses to say when Israel asked who had sent him. "Say this to the people of Israel, I AM has sent me to you." (Ex. 3:14).
Jesus demonstrated His divinity in multiple ways, by walking on water, calming a storm with a command, multiplying loaves and fishes to feed thousands, healing multitudes and rising from the dead.
Brown rightly reminds us of Jesus' saying that we will know them by their fruit. What is the fruit of Dr. Cummings' teaching?
— David P. Fortson
Macon
Divinity in scriptures
In the Dec. 13, issue of The Telegraph's Viewpoints page, Phil Brown, in defending Bill Cummings and responding to David Mann, wrote that "Jesus never ever claimed to be God." My purpose is not to enter the ongoing debate, but provide your readership with selected scriptures where Jesus openly declared His divinity.
Jesus said: "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). "I am in the Father and the Father in me" (John 10:30). Jesus testified that he was preexistent with God, saying, "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58).
Further, the gospels and Pauline epistles attest of Jesus' divinity: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God — and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1: 1-14). "For in him dwells all fullness of the Godhead" (Colossians 2:9). "He who existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, being made in the likeness of men" (Philippines 2:7). There are many other scriptures.
In closing, Thomas, the doubting disciple, exclaimed to the resurrected Christ: "My Lord and my God."
— Billy Powell
Fort Valley
No presumption of innocence
First, I am not a Trump supporter, for reasons which are not germane to this email. I am also agnostic, but I try to be tolerant of other's religious beliefs, except when they invade my freedom or safety. Nearly all religions are very missionary, but some are much worse than others. My moral compass is based on behavior, not beliefs. Behavior which contributes to the preservation of the human species is moral; the opposite behavior is immoral. It doesn't matter what you believe, it only matters what you do.
More importantly, I love America, with all its faults. No system of government is perfect, but one has to admire a system that has generated such a high standard of living for so many people, compared to any other system in world history. Not all white people are "rich" either, as the article written by Rekha Basu implied. Far from it.
My question for Basu is, "Why does she hate America?" She lives and works here, obviously, but throughout the subject article, her hatred for someone who has achieved success via this system comes through between every line, via the carefully crafted verbiage obviously intended to generate an emotional response rather than reason.
The article's point about "presumption of innocence until guilt is proven" applies to people formally accused of a crime ... due process. That is very different from steps necessary to protect our citizens from radical terrorism based on religious beliefs. The California terrorists didn't commit a crime until they killed 14 innocent people in an attack that at the least is uncivilized and at worst, inhuman.
I know of no other religion that prompts human beings to behave so pathologically. A little racial profiling might well have prevented the 9/11 attack which claimed so many lives, an act celebrated by Muslims worldwide, including a TV interview of American Muslims who said "we just wanted America to get a black eye." I cannot comprehend someone comparing the deaths of so many innocent people to a "black eye." That is inhuman as well, and certainly gives reason to distrust those people and take steps to monitor their activities, lest some of them decide to follow the California couple's example.
If I had been in Boston and seen someone in a big crowd putting down a backpack amid a group of bystanders and walking away, you had better bet your life I would have screamed an alert and tried to get everyone away from it. As a human being, we are all ultimately responsible for our own safety as well as society's.
The article's analogy of the movie "Being There" certainly applies not only to Trump perhaps, but to our current president. If you claim to be black, (even though you are half white) you get 100 percent of the black vote and if you speak without coming across as an "angry black man" you get enough votes from liberal whites who gave him the election, in part to prove they are not racist.
What is Basu's opinion of all those white voters who put him in office and kept him there? Voting demographics do not lie.
— Richard Jones
Warner Robins
This story was originally published December 15, 2015 at 5:47 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015 ."