Does His4Ever have a point? (I think... maybe)

But Drastic, they keep saying that the gift of salvation is available to me, worthless piece of human garbage that I am, through adherence to their beliefs, specifically the belief that Jesus is Christ. Suppose I don’t. That means that my error of faith will condemn me to Hell, the same as anyone who has done real bad stuff in addition to not believing that Jesus is Christ. Am I right?

Regarding good, decent folk being condemned to an everlasting Hell…

While both these statements were directed to gobear, I feel (for whatever odd reason, wishful thinking perhaps?) reassured by these statements.

First off, Great Debates is not the place to discuss the behavior of His4Ever or those who reacted to her posts. That’s what we have the Pit for. I’d strongly suggest that threads regarding who did what, with which, and to whom be opened over there, since there’s a lot of bitterness present on the board regarding that. I’m not a moderator to compel that, but I strongly suspect that is what they’d insist on, so I’m suggesting it before they are forced to put their hats on.

Second, the thread seems to be a direct assault, and defense in counterpoint, on my vision (and that of those who in general share my POV) of what Christianity is – so maybe we need to take a good look at what that entails.

And rather than arguing against literalism or fundamentalism (two slightly different -isms) or even His4Everism or JoeCoolism, let me direct us back to the basic questions:

Does God exist? Well, in my view absolutely so, and the world in general and various things in particular testify to His existence. However, I am quite aware that that view is based on faith, not on overt inductive sequences. You can’t say, “2+2=4, therefore God exists” or “marble is metamorphosed limestone, therefore God exists.” And for many people, the “proof” is what they “know in their heart” rather than overt objective evidence. I believe this to be valid evidence, but only valid evidence for them.

Among overt evidence, then, we have a coherent, physical-law-abiding world that may or may not be that way because it was so created by a Creator. Both sides can advocate this: the nonbelievers because they see the physical laws as absolute, and therefore having no need for a cause to be what they are. Protons weigh 1837 times as much as electrons because they do, not because they were made that way in accordance with a scheme of things in the mind of a Creator. On the other hand, that self-coherence and structure implies to the believer the hand of a Creator behind it. A world in which combining sodium hydroxide and muriatic acid usually produces brine but sometimes Kool-aid, sometimes crude oil, and occasonally Cthulhu is not envisioned by either side – except that the believers think that the reason this doesn’t happen is that God chose otherwise.

Now, the Bible is advanced as a proof of God. But the Bible is, to the unbiased observer, one collection among many of the religious beliefs of a given culture. What differentiates it from the Zend Avesta, the Granth, the Eddas, or the Five Classics?

In my view, the answer to that last question is that it was inspired by the God whom I have come to know. But what I mean by inspiration and what a more conservative Christian mean by it are two different things. I believe it to have been written by fallible human authors, who were open to God speaking to them but who mixed in with His word their own personal prejudices and worldviews, so that we have a document which speaks of the four corners of the earth, the waters above the firmament, a great urn that is exactly three times as long around as across, and so on. They tend to view inspiration as a more direct process, which may be caricatured as God dictating and the human authors writing down what He said – in some cases this is seriously believed, in others it is a reductio ad absurdam of a view that He was active in their composition of the text. But the ultimate outcome is that of a book on which the conservatives believe they can place utter certitude.

I place my utter certitude in God and His promises, not in a collection of writings.

To defend this utter certitude, they are forced to great lengths, including denying what they have claimed. For example, the genealogies in Matthew and Luke state that Joseph, the putative father of Christ, was both the son of Jacob (Matthew) and of Heli (Luke). In order to get around this internal contradiction, it is claimed that either Matthew shows the inheritance of the kingship of Israel – a figurative parentage – while Luke shows the blood descent, or that Matthew shows Joseph’s ancestry and Luke Mary’s. Either statement denies the literal truth of the words of the Gospel writers, in order to prove that both are literally true. (Maybe somebody could write a book about this, and call it “Joseph Had Two Daddies.” ;))

By the same token, Ezra and Nehemiah were quick to condemn the taking of foreign wives by the Jews. But Ruth (which internal evidence shows to have been written down in the form we have it at the time of Ezra) makes the telltale point that not only is the taking of a foreign wife not necessarily wrong, but that the doing so by Boaz resulted in the kingship of David, who is the focus of Jewish patriotism. (Nobody ever notes why Boaz might have been predisposed to look favorably on a non-Jewish girl, but one can identify who Boaz’s mother was from the Bible, and the answer is very telling.)

Okay, in my view the Bible contains the word of God, rather than being it. So the “all parts” argument becomes false.

Then how do I figure out which parts I should pay attention to? Well, by context. The main reason that I have a big problem with the quoting of “No one comes to the Father but by Me” to support the need to actively convert to Christianity as a prerequisite of salvation is that Jesus was not teaching this in some discussion, complete with parables, on what one must do to attain eternal life. (What he said in that case was the Two Great Commandments, by the way, not what evangelicals will tell you is required.) Instead, he was comforting a disciple who was broken up about His just-announced departure and wondering how he would ever find the Way to the Father if Jesus was gone. “Stop looking for the Way, dummy – you’ve walked with Me, you know what I would do – the Way is not some mystical Tao – I’m the Way. I’m the active Word, made flesh, that leads people to the Father; nobody has a different Way than that.”

And what I find in Jesus is:
[ul]
[li]A command to humility[/li][li]A command to live a moral life[/li][li]A command to refrain from judgment[/li][li]A command to teach others about Him[/li][li]A command to love God with all that is in you[/li][li]A command to love others as yourself[/li][li]A willingness to forgive, to have compassion, and to love[/li][li]A denouncement of those who make religious rules[/li][li]A denouncement of those who sit in judgment[/li][li]A willingness to shape religious rules to show compassionate love (“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”)[/li][/ul]

Which leads me to the conclusion Gobear draws above.

The God in whom I believe is one whose love is overwhelming, and whose other characteristics, which Joe Cool has rightly pointed out are there, are centered on shaping people to do exactly what Jesus commanded us to be and do, and what He showed us how to be and do by being and doing them Himself.

Some years ago, with a real burden on my heart, I turned on the local country music station, and for the first time heard a song by George Strait called “Love Without End, Amen.” Despite the title, most of the song is not overtly religious – the first two verses deal with a little boy expecting punishment from his father and receiving disciplined love instead, then growing to manhood and finding himself in the same role as his father had been in with him as regards his own son. The chorus, first attributed to his father and then repeated by him, is:

The third verse deserves quoting in full:

I’ve never seen or heard a better definition of grace.

Now, what is required to accept that love?

Not a thing except to be willing to accept it.

God will work within the person who answers His call to lead him or her into the paths He wants. If you accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, you have to mean the “Lord” part – to be willing to do His will. And that will involve giving up the sin in your life. (Christian jargon for realizing this is “the conviction of the Holy Spirit.”)

But as a Christian it is emphatically not my place to decide who is sinning or what their sins are, or to put obstacles in their path to that grace. I personally don’t think the lawgivers of Leviticus (which as Jersey Diamond pointed out is not applicable under the new covenant of grace anyway) or Paul and Jude had any idea what life as a gay person is like. So, even if I did believe that gay sex was always and in every circumstance a sin, it would not be my place to tell a gay man or woman that he was required to abstain – if the Holy Spirit wants him or her to abstain, He will both convict him or her of the sinfulness and give him or her the strength to remain celibate – and there’s ample testimony that He is not doing that. Which means to me that those who insist on the idea that being gay is sinful are themselves falling prey to the insidious temptation to play the Pharisee – and it is oh, so easy to spot somebody else’s sin and point fingers. As Shodan was kind enough to gently remind me that I myself was doing towards those I thought were playing the Pharisee.

But that in a nutshell is most of what I need to say. Because Nahum happened to envision God as a pissed-off patriarch doesn’t mean that’s who He is. If you want the truth, you go to the horse’s mouth. And the witness of Scripture is that Jesus is God the Son incarnate, so if anybody is going to know who and what God is, it will be Jesus.

For better or worse, I follow Him.

Obviously you’re in the “continue in sin that grace may abound” camp, right Libertarian?

And I’ve noticed that you and gobear like to throw around the word condemn very casually. Feel free to show me where I’ve condemned anyone. All I’ve done is report that Jesus himself said that those who reject him are condemned already.

Predictably, all the atheists want to respond “see? You just condemned me!” But I’ve still condemned nobody. If somebody rejects Jesus, he condemns himself with his own words.

Joe, I for one do not condemn you. I respect your point, though I disagree. But I do challenge you to explain in what way the gay people of this board are to answer Christ’s call, remembering that if one sins in one’s heart, one sins as badly as committing the actual deed, based on your understanding of things.

I feel that you have sinned against them by placing your understanding of what a Christian walk entails in front of them with no message of encouragement or hope accompanying it. And, though I mean no insult to you in so saying, I don’t feel that I can in good conscience back down from that stand, for effectively the same reasons that you gave me for your own stand. (And for your measured response, thank you sincerely. I am very glad that we can discuss and debate without anger.)

Probably the only fair response to your accusation, given the above, is what Jesus said to the woman taken in adultery: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”

Joe_Cool wrote:

When did you stop sinning?

Has Jesus sought out your counsel to help Him identify who has rejected Him?

Are you sure you don’t mean if somebody rejects you? Do you know what is around the corner for any atheist? I used to be one. Did you not know that the last is first and the first last? Will you complain when those who come in at the end of the day are paid the same as you?

Anyone going to watch the Master’s this year…

Bear with me for a second…

I love golf. Like to play it. Like to watch it. I’ll really miss watching the Masters.

But I can’t do it. Not because those guys at Augusta are keeping ME down with their discriminatory policies, but because they are being discriminatory. I’ll never have the chance to join Augusta - why should I care? Because supporting a discriminatory system is as bad as being discriminatory yourself. (Actually, I believe Augusta has the legal right to be discriminatory in this manner - I just can’t support them being such jerks about it).

Joe Cool - you are not condemning anyone, but you are a willing and eagar participant in a system which you believe is condemning people to eternal torture. And why are you participating? Perhaps, because to do otherwise will result in your own damnation - in which case you are being selfish. Or perhaps because your faith brings you great joy - in which case you are being selfish.

(Oh, and don’t use the word rape that way. Ended up walking out of a meeting the other day shaking when my boss threw that word out. And my experience is far in the past and wasn’t violent).

Unsurprisingly, when I slink back to the thread to which I posted in anger, I find -

Those I had the temerity to rebuke, are back to their usual ways - bringing strength to their arguments and glory to our God by demonstrating the love of God in what they say and think.

You know who you are. And I don’t think I have anything further to add to this thread.

Regards,
Shodan

gobear, although you and I will never give up this fight for the sake of our liberties and rights, I will remind you of what I sometimes need to remind myself in these debates - we do not believe in their religion. It is sometimes helpful to remember that to make it easier to blow off their opinions (which is, after all, all that they are).

Esprix

Well, near as right as any of us worthless pieces of human garbage can be. :slight_smile: But still, the Hell-condemning bit isn’t so much rejecting the gift as it is what prompted it–namely, the state of being hopelessly flawed pieces of creation (any and all frowning questions of what exactly that implies about the alleged creator face a furiously waving signal flag into Mysterious Ways Avenue).

It’s a hell of a view, pun fully intended.

I recently visited some good friends and their new son; he’s a week or so under four months, already very prone to smiles and starting to work out exactly how that laughter thing works out. That hell view is one that, faced with those wide blue eyes hungrily eating in sight after sight of everything new, with delighted gurgles turning into laughter at those big looming mobile bodies playing peekaboo, looks back at that face and believes, indeed, knows deep in the heart, “You deserve to burn for what you are.”

It occasionally surprises me when I reflect that followers of that view actually aggrievedly wonder why exactly it is they have bad PR.

Surely some fundies do support what we might call anti-gay bigotry. Just as surely, many do not. Some fundie acquaintances of mine would describe it as hating the lifestyle, and they feel that homosexuals are the victims of that lifestyle. If intentions matter, and they are an integral part of the definition of “hatred”, then I don’t think they hate homosexuals. So let’s see the list, and see if the effect is malign even though the intention isn’t…

Marriage has had nothing to do with love for most of its existence. Until a couple hundred years ago, marriage was mostly an economic venture, a way for the peasant class to support themselves and the upper-classes to acquire and organize property. Both property and family structures were strictly gender-based, so the concept of marriage would have held little to offer gays. Only now that marriage has taken on the connotations of love and commitment is it really something that would be worthwhile for gays to pursue.

Is it the fundies preventing an enactment of gay marriage law? In part perhaps, but they alone could not hold it back. The biggest factor slowing acceptance down is simple inertia. It was only 20 years ago that equitable property distribution finally became a staple of divorce orders, and that same period that alimony was de-genderized. Many non-fundie people have hangups about altering marriage because the institution is so pervasive in society that an alteration’s consequences are hard to predict.

Probably a factor in this is money, not morals. The companies purchasing insurance for employees might fear the additional expense.

True, the states could alter their intestacy laws (dying without a will) to cover a gay life partner. There would have to be some formal connection however, because the state would surely worry about many people stepping up to claim they were the partner, a thorny issue to resolve without gay marriages. So I’d say the states’ hands are tied on this until marriage comes around. Meanwhile, you can specify whoever you want in a will as a devisee, so it’s not impossible to devise your property to a life partner.

Well, sexual orientation isn’t listed either in the FHA (housing) or in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If you want to change that, you can. The problem with enforcement would be that while the other classifications listed in those acts are overt (race, gender, familial status, usually national origin) sexual orientation is not. You would face the same problem as people do who try to claim discrimination on religion, proving intentional discrimination by someone who knew you were a member of that protected class. The courts would be flooded with meritless claims if the McDonnell-Douglas burden shifting test (puts burden on defendant to show non-discriminatory reason if claimant is member of protected class) were introduced into situations where the class status was not overt.

Well, nobody can deny that some of them do these things. However, very few actually resort to real violence. According to the DOJ, there were only 17 “hate-motivated” murders of any type in 1999, no telling how many of those were anti-gay. Sure, every one is one too many, but it hardly supports an accusation of malignancy against all fundies.

Your passion on this issue is surely understandable. You perceive these people as frustrating your goals. You are, however, overestimating the influence that fundies have on your current position in life, and mischaracterizing the true positions of many of those people.

I suspect many non-fundie people resist the gay-rights movement not because of their idea of morality, but because it appears a fringe element to them. The wilder looking marches are the ones that tend to make the news, and “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” probably strikes some as abrasive. March silently down the streets of Washington in business suits carrying simple signs, get some bills introduced in Congress, you’ll win eventually. There simply aren’t enough fundies in the country to stop you.

Well, yeah, but even if it is just mythology, one still wants to be liked.

Oh, puh-LEEZE! “Hating the lifestyle”–would someone please tell me what "the homosexual lifestyle " is? And if somebody hates the way I live, they way I love, the music I listen to, the books I read, everything that I do, they can’t say they love me. That’s BS.

In any event, Joe_Cool and his droogs have borne out everything I’ve said.

Many states, counties, and/or cities have such laws, though (Such as Oregon, I believe). Havn’t heard anything about courts being flooded with meritless claims…

I’m sure they have laws adding sexual orientation to the list of classes prohibited from discrimination, and that itself wouldn’t cause frivolous or meritless claims. What I was referring to specifically was the burden-shifting test introduced in the McDonnell-Douglas case to apply to race under Title VII, that reduces the plaintiff’s prima facie case to merely proving that they are a member of the protected class. This is an additional way of pursuing a discrimination claim, an alternative to the traditional method of producing “smoking gun” evidence of discriminatory intent (such as bigoted remarks made by defendant to plaintiff or others, documented evidence that such discrimination was part of the decision-making process, etc.) That burden-shifting test has been expanded little by little through subsequent caselaw. Here in the 8th circuit, meritless claims wouldn’t be such a problem, since that prima facie case also requires that defendent knew plaintiff was a member of that class. That element would require something more than merely a statement by plaintiff that “I’m gay” to survive a motion for summary judgment, but with the burden-shifting test that would indeed be all that was needed.

Why isn’t anyone calling him on this? Joe_Cool, you admit that the meaning of words depends on context. The Bible is made of words. Take the next logical step. What can we infer from this?

**Jersey Diamond wrote:

What really amazes me is that you think that for people that know the loving and just God, (note that I said loving and just, very important) that they would want something else. To us, nothing else exists. Other religions aren’t an option because why would we want beef jerky when we can have a 20 course steak dinner when we are hungry.**

Just remember, to many people, that 20 course steak dinner bears a strong resemblence to a stale hamburger and 19 cold, greasy french fries. Conversely, what you see as beef jerky, they see as ambrosia. YMMV

The important thing to remember is that Christianity is only one of many religions. If you’re dis-satisfied with Christianity (or the people practicing it) you can look elsewhere and find something that will satisfy you spiritually.

Christianity is not the only game in town, no matter how often the Christians say it is.

While I agree with everything that you wrote, I guess we still differ about what Jesus’ example would have been - I would contend that Jesus would help (and does help) people to turn away from behaviours that harm relationships (both with God and with other people) - whether homosexuality is one of those behaviors is a moot point. To follow Jesus’ example then, is to try and do the same for the people around you…
Libwrote:

Touche!! :wink:

Grim

Gobear wrote:

I like you! :slight_smile:

Polycarp, I have to tell you that I like your style. (I don’t care how popular or self-confident anyone is, I believe everyone needs a little positive reinforcement.Even if they’re a captain of their own crew!! ~grin~ )

I cannot predict the future, so I cannot tell you that I will someday decide to search for more spirituality in my life, but if I do, it will be someone like you who could sway me to their point-of-view.

You express your beliefs with class and charm. I admire your ability to do so.

PS - gobear, I don’t even know you and I like you too. I like how you write. And I like your humble approach.

I wrote somewhere else a lot time ago, that individuals form their worldviews first, then find a religion - or some interpretation thereof - that fits them.