I Think DrChuckie Needs His Very Own Thread

The BBQ Pit
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Just a couple of points – His4Ever and I are on two different boards together, and on the other one, she’s shown a strong capacity for explaining her views (though, if she’ll forgive me for saying so, a tendency to jump in with a “me too” post that doesn’t help whenever anybody says something like “I’m just standing on what the Word of God obviously says”) and some sense of compassion – I was pleasantly surprised to see her post in the GD thread saying that gay people need to be treated with love, not condemnation.

As a thought, may I suggest that there are a whole congeries of issues involved here – not merely the putative salvation of gay people according to God’s law, read as you wish, but also the questions of what’s ethical in our laws and in our schools. ChuckieBoy’s website seems to hold the view that teaching children that gay people deserve the right to be free from hostility and harassment is “promoting the abomination of homosexuality on innocent children” and needs to be stopped forthwith. May I suggest that a GD thread looking at the issues that website raises and debunking them where they’re in error, might be a useful thing in the fight against ignorance. I found at least six errors of fact on that website on a cursory check, as well as a tendency to despise one’s fellow man that would make Fred Phelps blush. But I do have to admit that there’s an internal consistency in those views – provided that you accept the premises on which they’re founded, which I don’t. Anyone want to take a swing at starting that debate?

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You know, I think that’s the first admission I’ve heard from His4ever that her interpretation of the Bible might not be absolutely infallable. Congratulations!

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“Christians’s attitude toward homosexuals should be one of loving correction, not harshness or bashing. Nevertheless, many aren’t going to accept that, no matter how loving or nice you try to be . . . Did you ever stop to think, CJ, that I and DrChuckie are showing compassion and it’s just not being recognized as such?”

–Well, my attitude toward religious people is also one of loving correction, not harshness or bashing. Nevertheless, many aren’t going to accept that, no matter how loving or nice I try to be . . . Did you ever stop to think, His4ever, I am showing compassion and it’s just not being recognized as such?

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Tracer, His4Ever is sincere, and caring – and when she and I can listen to each other without getting upset, we can have some excellent exchanges of ideas.

If she will forgive me a rather judgmental remark here, I believe that her ability to perform the sort of mental acrobatics involved in seeing the perspective of another person which is far removed from her own perspective, is not very well developed – and that the stance of the typical gay activist, the typical atheist, the typical Catholic, the typical explorer of modern theology – their stances are so far removed from hers that she is quite literally unable to see their perspective without careful attention in their posts to show her the differences starting from her perspective.

That’s not a condemnation of her in any way, shape or form – it’s tough for anyone to see things from someone else’ perspective. In three years I cannot count the number of times that my reaction to a given incisive comment (sometimes your own one-liners, Tracer) has been a satori-like “Ooooh! So that’s what he was talking about!” and a mental equivalent of picking myself up off the floor and looking in a new way at the place where I slipped and fell.

I often have trouble with posts by Shodan and TheRyan, among others (and I think Unu Mondo is going to fall into that group), because their perspectives are sufficiently skewed from my own to make grasping the point they’re making tough for me. Sometimes I agree with them, once I get myself twisted around to look at things from their POV; sometimes not – but I have to put forth effort to see it the way they do before I can decide which it is.

His seriously thinks, despite my repeated statements to the contrary, that I’m engaged in “watering down the Gospel” to suit the tastes of people here. She has a very difficult time taking the Johannine perspective of non-judgmental love and not the paradigm of law. She’s making a sincere effort to see things from that different perspective – but it’s not easy for her.

BTW, from my own experience on both boards, the deal with her divorces and remarriages is something best avoided – and I bring it up here only to warn against it. Because no matter how gently it’s used to illustrate God’s mercy and grace in her life, she sees it as being judgmental against her, not as a parallel to how she should see God’s mercy and grace extended to her gay brothers and sisters. Both CJ and I have tried a number of times to explain that in detail, stressing that we’re not judging her but calling on her to be consistent in giving the same mercy as she has received from Him – but it still comes across to her as condemnatory. And I have no desire to rub her nose in her “sins” from a legalistic standpoint, when I don’t even believe that that is the perspective God takes or the one He wants me to take.

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Not at all. I hope that nobody does.

Giving that kind of attention to these arguments is admitting that they need refutation. I’d no more argue homosexual politics with a raving homophobe like DrChuckles than I’d start a debate on race with MrNeoNaziSkinheadCreep. There are some perspectives which are so far from reality, in such direct opposition from human compassion and decency, that the best thing to do is to laugh at them and use them as examples of why such hatred is dying out.

If someone has a position on the subject that I disagree with, but still seems to have an open mind, I’ll happily engage them in debate. But with people who’ve got their ideas implanted in concrete, no matter how irrational or inhumane they are, the result of any debate, in their own minds, will be the confirmation of their beliefs. As was amply demonstrated by DocChuck here. The mere fact that we were arguing with him made us instantly wrong, and Hellbound sinners to boot.

That site doesn’t deserve a GD thread. I think it should be held up as an example of the banality of evil, of how easy it is to deceive people when you are telling them it’s okay to have hatred in their souls, and of how human beings should not behave towards each other.

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So what you’re saying, Polycarp, is that His4ever is incapable of criticial and/or abstract thought?

That’s really sad.
I’ve seen how she reacts to someone playing the Advocatus Diaboli, and she takes it literally, rather than a hypothetical situation.

:frowning:

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No, not at all. I’m saying that (IMHO) it’s tough for her to see someone else’s perspective – tougher than for the average person, I think. But everybody sees the world from his or her own perspective, and sometimes has a tough time seeing from another’s.

To give you an intensely personal example, think of your dustup of a couple of months ago with Manhattan about the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy in the sexual abuse of children by priests. Your perspective was of the Catholic Church as something basically good with some corruption going on in it – which needed to be purged – Manny’s was that of an institution rotten to the core, and with no special status that deserved preserving. And so you two flamed each other, more or less. I personally can grasp the idea of the Chair of Peter and the need to preserve “the faith once given to the saints” and to reform it to eliminate any corruption in it; but I can also see the perspective of a non-Catholic of an egocentric monstrosity that excuses and covers up evil lurking within it.

His has a really tough time of seeing God as loving Mr Visible and his partner, and not condemning the love they bear for each other – it’s contrary to what she understands God’s will as revealed in the Bible to be. And because we’re to first and foremost keep God’s law, she sees what they’re doing in considering themselves a couple as gratifying an illicit pleasure at the cost of their immortal souls, not as a love every bit as real, sincere, and blessed as that of her husband and herself. On the other hand, gay people sufficiently alienated from Christianity by the homophobic stance of much if not most of it, see her stance and that of other conservative Christians on loving God and doing His will first and foremost as a way to enforce their rules on people who don’t agree with them.

The sad part, IMHO, is that both are right in part, and wrong in part – and that’s a very tough thing to get across, as you know.

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Actually, Poly, I posted the OP against happyheathen, and manny was the first to reply. I had posted my OP as my last post of that night, then signed off and went to bed, or something. However, I did see manny’s reply, and just shrugged it off as being sarcastic.

The next day, I came back, it was two pages long, and locked. Everyone was flaming manny, who later came back and appologized. I accepted.

I can understand why people are against religion and that. I can see it. I just don’t agree with it.

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You know, I personally think the worst thing anyone could hope for on this MB in terms of someone agreeing with them on a matter of scholarship or religious matter (beyond the easy shit like “god loves you” and “there are ten commandments”) is His4ever popping in after a month’s absence (or so … I didn’t count the days, so to speak) to agree.

That’s just got to be the SDMB’s kiss of death.

Oh, DrChuckie, a point to ponder. Since I have started engaging in what you would probably call fornication, I have become much happier, healthier, and I think I just had a religious (polytheistic) experience last night. Whaddyamake of that?:smiley:

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[Dr. Frank N Furter]

Didja hear a BELL ring?

[/Frankie]

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Oh! Is that what that noise was last night!

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His4Ever (or anyone else), how can I read compassion into posts such as these by DrChuckie?

You cited Romans, Chapter 1; I’ll cite Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” You and DrChuckie don’t speak of your own sins, only those of others. Indeed, when your sins are mentioned, you get defensive, and, by not even supporting simple tolerance in schools and focusing on the particular sinfulness of homosexuality, in my opinion, DrChuckie is encouraging children to break the Commandment Christ clearly and explicitly gave us, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Adultery and disrespecting one’s parents are clearly and explicitly against God’s law (see the original 10 Commandments). Where is the outcry against this?

I know you’re trying to do what is right and obey God’s law, just as I am. The thing is, I know far too many people who have turned away from Christianity and to other faiths, in part because of the actions of Christians.

A very dear friend of mine was once probably at least as much as a Fundamentalist Christian as you are, if not more so. He then went on to become an Atheist. Once, when we were talking about those days, he told me that not only did he not believe in God, but, “if I did, I’d have to hate him.” While he is a man of great faith, he is in a religion other than Christianity now, because there were things done by men, not God (in my opinion) which he could not accept. Because of me, his opinion of Christianity has improved, and, in fact, he’s introduced me to people who are outright hostile to Christianity so that they can meet someone who’s more like them than the people who condemn them.

I don’t see myself as softening God’s Word. I see myself as starting with the basics and then moving up. If I were to teach someone how to knit, I’d start with the basics: This is a knit stitch; this is a purl stitch. On these two stitches hang even the most complicated of laces and cable work. It’d be a while before I started showing them how to do lacework in which what is a mistake for a beginner becomes an integral part of the pattern. Or, to put it differently, if I were introducing someone like me who doesn’t like spicy food to Tex-Mex cooking, I wouldn’t start with 4 Alarm Chili. Jesus was explicit about what the basics are: “On these two Commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
CJ

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Gotta love the fallacious arguments being presented by the capital H christians.

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See the way I read that was…even though he knows God considers eating pork an “abomination” just as much as sodomy, and even though he knows pork is being served every day to innocent school children in our public schools (shoving it down there throat, as it were :D), and that our government opens our airwaves to active promotion of “the other white meat” and that, flouting his role as a moral role model, a former president of ours actually got on televison and prclaim his sinful desire for pork rides…

…he, himself, personally, has decided this rampant, government endorced evil is not worth combating. Despite how dangerous God clearly considers it to be.

And yet he still want to claim divine mandate for his actions rather than admit to relying on his own subjective and (quite) possibly flawed moral reasoning.

Ya know, Jesus didn’t have anything nice to say about hypocrites :wink: .

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Hmmm…pork rides? No I guess that would be an entirerly different sin…:smiley:

pork rinds

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Water it down? Hon, yer pissin on it!
What you’ve got is a case of the “Whoever disagrees with me is rejecting God” disease.
Lots of christians have suffered from it; the only cure is The Straight Dope.
It cured me…:slight_smile:

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Vanilla, that was priceless! Thank you for being you! :slight_smile:

His, before you get bent out of shape, take a really good look at “what Scripture says” – specifically, Whom you’re supposed to follow and obey, and what He says are the most important things to do. Then tell me, honestly, how you see what Dr Chuckie is doing as in any way “showing Christian love” to his gay neighbors. I don’t care what Bible verses you can trot out to justify why having gay sex is always sinful in your view – what are you – and me and CJ and Copa and Dr Chuckie, and the rest of the Christians around here, supposed to do with regard to our gay neighbors? If you are following the Bible, fine; that’s your business – but stop denying that you’re worshipping it as your god – we’re doing what Jesus commanded us to do, as reported in the Book you say we’re “watering down.”

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Umm, uhh, errr, the Straight Dope board as a curative??? From what I’ve seen during my time here, I don’t think so. But you go right ahead, dearie.

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Mr. iampunha, I haven’t been here because I’ve been busy at other boards. I’ve been here to read some but haven’t posted. I’m not obligated to post every day or every week or at all if I don’t want to. If I’m here and see something I want to reply to, I will. If I don’t, I won’t. This isn’t the only board on the net, you know.

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I will say that although I agree with DrChuckie’s stance on homosexuality, he could perhaps find a way to soften how he shares that stance. That can be difficult to do.