What you seem to have forgotten is that Jesus broke bread with prostitutes, Levites, Samaritan, all manner of social outcasts. You might want to check out Mark 12:29-31. You claim to have the loving God part down. How about the other part? Ask yourself:
Do I love my neighbor as myself? Do I love my gay neighbor as myself?
There are no other commandments greater than these. If you can’t live up to these two very basic requirements, perhaps some soul searching is in order.
Then remember well Jesus’ admonishment in Matthew 7:1-6. In case you’ve forgotten it, let me remind you:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
You’ve stated that you’re spending your time and energy trying to stamp out homosexuality. Are you perfect? Well, who is? Should you not, then, be spending your time preparing yourself to be measured against the measure you mete?
And hey, watch it, we’re all getting splinters from that beam in your eye.
Priam, if I were not female and in possession of a surfeit of marriages, on the basis of that pair of well-written posts, I would ask you out to dinner.
(I would like to add that from my impressions of my encounters with your God, I bet He’s pleased as punch with you.)
I can’t say what I expect from Christians as a homosexual, since I am not a homosexual.
But, I can tell you what I expect of you as a Christian, since I am one of those.
I expect you to love your Lord, and to love your brother as you love yourself.
I expect you to refrain from judging your brother’s heart, because your Lord has told you not to.
I would expect you to deny anyone who claims the authority to condemn others, since your Lord has told you that He alone has that authority.
I would expect you to be living your own life in an attempt to be free of sin, and entirely devoted to love, because you have been told to do so by your Lord.
But, that is only what I expect. My opinions don’t matter. Only the Lord’s opinion matters. He said that only one sin lies beyond forgiveness. It wasn’t homosexuality.
It wasn’t even shopping.
Tris
“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13:13 ~
I apologize. I knew I was going too far. The objective was not primarily to call DrChuckie an idiot but to show how stunted a debate gets when someone uses arguments like the one he used (“Homosexuality is against God’s law. Period. End of Story.”). Nevertheless, I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.
How in the world do you know that Jesus never spoke about the issue? Just because it isn’t in the gospels doesn’t mean it wasn’t ever discussed. Remember how John ends with “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (NIV)
Paul’s epistles frequently discuss his two meetings with the disciples, as whether converts must observe the law or not was a pressing issue before that. Look for discussions of circumcision in Romans and Corinthians.
I’m not saying he didn’t speak on the issue. I’m saying we don’t know, and if he did, we don’t know what he said. So from a base of zero knowledge, we leap to the following two conclusions:
Jesus did speak on whether converted gentiles were bound by Jewish law.
No, I don’t think so. As I said, Peter and James knew Jesus. Besides, I think one can infer from the few actions of Jesus towards the gentiles in the gospels that because gentiles do not have the same importance in God’s plan of the time as the Jews, they presumably do not have the obligation of following the law of Moses set down to seal the Judaic importance. They are still important to Jesus because he acknowledges that they receive “crumbs”. Jesus doesn’t tell the gentile woman or the centurion to follow the law.
I got pitted for not contributing to a Great Debate thread on why homosexual behavior is wrong because the only answer I could have provided is “I don’t know, I just feel that it is religiously”, which is pretty unhelpful. But I think I can contribute something here.
Some gay posters here have said they want Christians to leave them alone. I, however, do not think people are free from prostelytising. For a long time I was annoyed by for example the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking at the door, or the ubiquitous Hare Krishna members in my stays in Budapest while young. But while I was serving in the Navy, I heard some pretty strong words about violence, a message that would seem bothersome to most people but really struck me indeed as if a blow. As a result, I asked for discharge as a conscientious objector, and moved on to university education and work with NGOs as a way of making my life meaningful. I think my life has gotten significantly better, and it is all because of one message that missed millions of people but hit me. I think that no one should be annoyed by people trying to communicate their beliefs with the goal of helping the world. You and many others may disagree, but there’s always someone out there that takes what he hears to heart and becomes a happier person (at least in the sense of “fortunate” if not “content”).
Obviously violence, and the Fred Phelps’ “There’s nothing you can do, you’ll burn no matter what” ways of speaking are unacceptable. I’m talking about honest protelytising with the goal of helping people.
Isn’t the bottom line here that gay people ask of Christians only that they act like Christians, which means following the Golden Rule? Do unto others; love your neighbor? Judge not; leave that to God. Worry about your own soul and let other people worry about theirs. If you’re so all-fired sure that gays are going to Hell, then perhaps the time you spend hating them or trying to ostracize them from society would be better spent doing good works, no? America is not a theocracy; therefore, Christians should respect the Constitution and not attempt to legislate their religious morality. I think if those few conditions were met, gay people and Christians COULD just live and let live without arguing or trying to change each other’s mind, which, frankly, ain’t gonna happen.
Well, I am a Christian and I’m by no means trying to ostracise gays from society. Quite the opposite, I would hope to engage them. While not Catholic (I’m an Anglican, high-church tradition) I agree with the statement in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that gays are uniquely called to god. I would prefer that gays who do believe would commit themselves to celibacy and think about giving the seminary a shot.
As for America being a theocracy, it’s not. But I think being able to propose your own personal beliefs as policy for a nation is a strong point of democracy. After all, it’ll only succeed if a majority of people wishes it so.
Ah yes, the immortal poetry of St. Joel, *I Lovest Thee Just The Way Thou Art. * Classic.
I have a question, though, about the issue of gay marriage. Now, I’m not a Christian, nor am I a politician or a lawyer, or a gay person.
I’m all for gays being extended the same legal rights as straights when it comes to the issue of marriage. I myself just can’t find a good reason why they shouldn’t be. I mean, in Michigan, at age 16, a gay person can get a driver’s license. At age 18, a gay person can vote. At age 21, a gay person can buy liquor. Gay people can get jobs. Gay people pay taxes.
And since marriage is, esentially, a legal contract between two people (ministers and priests are simply people who have the power to sign and validate a marraige license, the same way a judge or a justice of the peace can)…I just don’t understand why gays are denied this legal right. Gays are protected under the same Constitution that I am. I mean, it doesn’t say “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…except for gays. They can’t have it. Neener.”
But, if homosexuality violates God’s law, and gays are prevented from marrying because of that…well…it seems to me to be a union of church and state. Of course, murder violates God’s law too, and we still recognize murder as being illegal, but gay marriage just doesn’t have the same repercussions as murder, you know? And since homosexuality isn’t illegal anymore, and gay people actually have some laws on the books that protect them specifically (discrimination and hate crime laws)…well…just what is so all-fired wrong about allowing them to marry, the same way I’ve been married twice now?
It’d have to be a pretty large seminary. If you estimate that the homosexual population is about 2%, then in the US alone, you’re talking about 5,810,837 gay people. That’s an awfully big seminary. It’s also an awfully large group of people to ask to commit themselves to celibacy.
But a major aspect of a democracy is the protection of the minorities from the tyranny of the majority. For an excellent perspective on that issue, I refer you to John Stuart Mill, and his essay On Liberty:
Majority rule approved of slavery, disapproved of interracial marriage, disapproved of women voting, and so on and so forth. When it’s called upon to enact legal equality for minorities, the will of the majority shouldn’t be the only thing that the government takes into account. Justice should be considered as well.
The other thing to consider is that, once a democracy has voted to become a theocracy, there’s no way to vote democracy back into power that doesn’t involve bullets and corpses.
I guess what I would like most of all, is for the fundamentalists to understand this:
Gay people can’t become straight, any more than straight people can become gay. If you are straight, ask yourself, is there anything that I could possibly say that would cause you to become gay?
I think that if this point was finally realized, it would go a long way. For one thing, there wouldn’t be this fear that gay people are going to try to recruit your children. You would realize that when someone says “It is ok to be gay”, it is intended for the person who is already gay, and not meant to imply that someone should somehow become gay. Personally, considering the pain that being gay caused me in the past, the last thing I would wish on someone is that they feel unaccepted and unloved.
The other thing that would be realized is that trying to make a gay person straight does nothing but put an enormous amount of pressure on someone to be something that they just cannot be. You may be able to convert someone to Christianity but you cannot convert someone to heterosexuality. Every attempt has been a dismal failure. And by attempting to do so with a youth who is struggling with their sexuality, you are basically saying “Everything will be ok once you start being something that you are not”. Is it really that surprising that many a gay youth determines that death is more comforting a thought than trying to be something that they can never be?
If this much could be accepted, it would be a good starting point. Then we could move on to all of the other issues.
Do you believe that there should be a law which forbids divorced people from remarrying?
I mean, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. But he- and I mean GOD HIMSELF here- said with his own mouth that if you’re divorced for a reason other than adultery, you can’t remarry.
His4Ever, you divorced and remarried. I don’t see anything wrong with that- I think it would be horrible if people couldn’t get out of bad marriages.
But, we live in a country with separation of church and state. They don’t have that in Ireland- you generally can’t get divorced there, from what I understand. Thanks to your American freedoms, you were able to sort out your own problems, problems which concern no one but yourself, and find a solution that worked for you, and I say more power to you.
So why can’t you extend the same freedom to homosexuals? I don’t think you’d like to live in an America where it was illegal to:
1.) Remarry after divorce.
2.) Eat pork
3.) drink alcohol
4.) eat a cheeseburger
5.) Be a Christian
6.) etc., etc…
The fact of the matter is that if two men love each other and want to marry, that’s their business, not yours. You have no right to go micromanaging other people’s business. You have no more right to impose your religious beliefs on them than I have to impose my own religious beliefs on you. That’s what makes America great.
I suggest you read my tract entitled “Life in Our Anti-Christian America” and imagine what it would be like to actually live in such a country. I hope that then you will realize what people like yourself are inflicting on everyone else.
