I checked out Tim Challies blog today and noticed an entry called “The Osteen Moment”. I had to check it out:
Dr. Mohler: “Osteen’s statements, verbally cushioned in every way he could imagine, fell far short of the full wealth of biblical conviction. Nevertheless, he experienced what might be called the ‘Osteen Moment,’ when his entire ministry, in the public eye, came down to his answer to Piers Morgan’s forced question.”
So I went over to Mohler’s blog. He’s written quite an extensive article commenting on Osteen’s time on Piers Morgan’s recent show. Morgan challenged Osteen on whether homosexuality is a sin. Now, I think we all can agree that Morgan picked the hottest topic possible for a good show. In any case, it seems that Osteen squirmed until he finally had to admit it was. Morgan challenged him on being judgmental. “Is Elton John a sinner?” and so on.
One of Mohler’s conclusions from this interview is that Osteen’s statements,
verbally cushioned in every way he could imagine, fell far short of the full wealth of biblical conviction.
Mohler continues (and this is the sentence that caught my attention):
To his credit, Osteen did answer his question, and by staking his position on the Bible’s teaching that homosexual acts are sinful, he took the only road available to anyone with any substantial commitment to the truthfulness of the Bible.
The famous biblical scholar N.T. Wright admitted in an interview:
Interviewer: So a Christian morality faithful to scripture cannot approve of homosexual conduct?
Wright: Correct. That is consonant with what I’ve said and written elsewhere.
It is obvious by now that endless exegetical analysis of the scriptures will only take us so far. So many things besides what the text itself is saying, such as the culture, time, the ad hoc nature of the documents, the human aspect of the texts, etc., must be taken into account. We now realize that the biggest problem is our hermeneutic… our own biases, blind-spots, prejudices and ignorance as we approach the texts.
Case in point: In Mohler’s words, I believe I possess a “substantial commitment to the truthfulness of the Bible“, but Mohler and I differ on what that means.
Is it possible that things haven’t changed much since Jesus’ day: we are more concerned with the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it?
In keeping with this blog post, I came across another sad story about gay activist David Kato beaten to death in Uganda. American evangelicals visiting Uganda insist that a “strictly biblical” attitude be taken towards homosexuals. This is the result.
How “strictly biblical” do we want to be?
My name is David Hayward, and I am the nakedpastor. I am a graffiti artist on the walls of religion.
godless monster
what “cognitive dissonance”?
To reiterate a point I made earlier, why are Christians so obsessed with what other people do with their genitals anyway? Isn’t there some more pressing issue you could focus on, such as starvation, child poverty, homelessness or nuclear disarmament? You know, things that actually *do* affect the rest of us?
Barry: i hear ya.
Barry – perhaps the church’s depth is only skin deep!
Barry and Louise,
Great points! Read The God Virus. Religions always give you sex rules to go by.
Will do! Thanks Lynn!
@Godless, thanks for the link and for providing even better terms for what I had posted earlier, “mental gymnastics” and “cognitive dissonance”.
I stopped doing mental gymnastics, and just stopped calling myself a christian, because there were so many things I didn’t believe, that I wasn’t at all mainstream/orthodox, and so far from it, it seemed unfair to use a term that had meaning for people.
If we actually believe in the New Testament, and the teaching of the church fathers, from the writers of the apostles, of Paul, and onwards… then, ‘sin’ exists, and there is a lot said about the very topics I mentioned before homosexuality (thanks Tim, I had never realized that there was any direct NT teaching on it), living together, divorce, women’s role in the church, etc.
I fully appreciate that many loving Christians are still practicing a form of Christianity, and living/believing the ‘spirit of the law’/'new covenant’/'Freedom in Christ’ etc. I just don’t understand how they square it with pick/choose from the bible, and a rejection of the tenets that have made up the church since the first decades after Jesus’ death and onwards. Let alone how they square it with ‘God’ being the Christian God (which is the Jewish God) and which the link Godless Monster linked us to shows as being… um… horrible?
One of the biggest problems is the Bible in the first place. A bunch of writings over a bunch of time were then grouped together in various collections, and after a few hundred years the chuch fathers agreed on what was ‘cannonical’.
If one divorces Christianity from “believing” the bible, then a lot of problems get solved. I don’t even mean rejecting it’s inerrancy… but rejecting that the cannonical Bible is THE only Holy Text, and is not to be detracted from (I’d presonally get rid of Revelations first) or added to (gnostic gospels… more people should read them). I think that a bible with only stories of what Jesus actually said and did, with a big foreword saying “here is the stuff that people wrote down, years after he died, about what Jesus said and did… would be a lot more meaningful and accurate than what we have now. All the other books, non-cannonical as well, could be gathered together as “everything said before Jesus, by the Jewish writers, and everything post Jesus that was written about the early church, or early writings that were not specifically what Jesus said and did.
*shrugs*… I have a suspicion that god/dess/es don’t exist, but, I’m kind of fond of the idea of a ‘one god’ in a somewhat weird ‘emmanent/transcendent’ way (yah, I know, they don’t really go together, but that is kind of what I ses as… miraculous… in my little paradigm) that is not personal, but is intimate (I know, I know, another paradox)…and that most religions are some attempt at people trying to get their head around expressing that ‘one god’…
…of course, I CHOOSE to believe it, because I think its a nice and useful way to look at the world… but, I can as easily choose (and on some days do) to believe that there is no god or spiritual realm.
I think my preference for believing, is that I know that the Universe exists, and that matter can neither be created or destroyed by humans, and that energy exists. Sooooo… I can either go with ‘um, we dont’ know, its just there’, or a world relion, including ‘turtles all the way down’, or our own belief. My own belief gives me an explanation (sort of) for stuff existing, but it really isn’t any more provable/likely than “um, we don’t know” and any religion’s ‘genesis myth’ has pros and cons. *shrugs*… ‘turtles all the way down’ works as well for me as anything else.
/climbs down off of soap box, *clears throat*… I sometimes wonder why it even matters to me to share stuff. I figure that somehow explaining my thoughts or questions or whatever, to an audience of others, somehow helps me figure it out. That and/or I’m just needy and/or an attention whore. I truly haven’t figured out which (or blend of which) applies.
@ Louise… wouldn’t we all be going blind first?
Thanks Nancy. Great contribution.
Tim said: What DOES apply is the unmistakable admonition that in Romans chapter 1:
Mark says: Time, you skipped the first part of the passage:
“21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
When one takes into account Romans 1: 23 and Romans 1:25, the context for Romans 1:26-31 become clear. Paul is condemning idolatry. In fact, he even goes to the trouble of describing what the idols looked like in verse 23. Roman pagan idolatry is transforming people who can know god into people who do crazy things.
When one reads about Roman pagan religion, particularly the Cybele/Attis cult, one of Rome’s most prominent religions and Christianity’s biggest competitor, then it’s hard to extrapolate what seems to be a condemnation of paganism and apply it to gay people who are Christians. Gay people don’t worship “images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles” at all. Gay Christians worship God. They just happen to be gay.
Thanks Mark. Widening the context always is useful. Thanks.
barry
king henry the 8th, head of church/state in the 1500′s made homosexuality a hanging offense in the 1500′s. it stayed on the books for 300 years. apparently, for what ever reason society found it necessary to make homosexuality an evil, the church became a willing tool. the same way that for a milleium they found it necessary to subjugate women and the church reenforced this by making women responsible for the fall in eden.
consequently for 600 years homosexuality was made illegal, and the church reenforced it by making it a sin……………….one hand washes another. the church is the culture, the culture is the church………600 years of cultural influence handed down generationally.
so now this understanding has become society’s cultural identity. believing in christ means believing homosexuality is a sin.
the only problem with this is, that this belief violates the principles of the new covenant of christ, as layed down by scripture.
romans 9, 10, 11 also spoke out against antisemetism, but that didnt stop the church for a millenium from being antisemetic.
the halocaust was conducted by a christian country, the national religion 50% lutheran and 50% catholic, when a millenium of worldwide antisemetism was reaching its height in the 40′s and 50′s.
bottom line: it was christians who were responsible for the halocaust.
reedit
bottom line: WE christians were responsible for the halocaust.
You mean YOU Christians. I’m an atheist.
Nancy, well said. I refer to myself as “post-evangelical”. I’d love to be part of a church family again, but I can’t be part of any church where my brothers and sisters who are gay are condemned as sinners because of who they love.
As some have pointed out, how can we possibly take such an immovable stand on the issue of homosexuality, but we allow women to speak in church, to go about with their heads uncovered, we no longer stone people caught in adultery, we don’t crucify thieves… it’s just astonishing to think people pick and choose verses and chapters from the Bible to cling to.
I once thought that I believed that the Bible was the literal, infallible Word of God. Although it’s certainly the most important book to me, and to many others, I now see that it was written by human, fallible people. It was inspired, God breathed, but humans have a way of mucking things up, no matter how God Inspired those things are.
The letter of the law kills… the Spirit brings LIFE.
In the most challenging, daunting, frightening times in my life, even when I was a pastor’s wife (my ex husband was an Assemblies of God minister), my “church family” were the first people to abandon me. It was the people who were truly spiritual, truly connected to God, without pronouncing damnation on everyone else, who ministered to me and loved me through those dark days.
My current husband attends church and enjoys it, and I respect that, and he respects my choice not to go. He agrees with me as far as the issue of homosexuality (really, why is it even an issue??) but needs the fellowship of others in church. That’s fine. Live and let live.
Once upon an ugly time, slavery was considered to be approved of by God. Once upon an ugly time, women were considered less valuable than men. And once upon an ugly time, biracial marriage was taboo in the church. Those days are behind us, for the most part, and I believe one day, the prejudice and misguided judgment toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people will be just one more once upon an ugly time.
Doesn’t the church thrive by adapting to the culture? It has to, or eventually nobody will come. And bring their money.
Like divorce. If divorcee’s were shunned, that would be suicidal for the church. Maybe Joel Osteen has it figured out. You don’t get a huge following by insulting large groups of people. That’s why he waters down that ancient book and avoids the controversial parts. It’s like politics, right?
Of course you have the other types who major on the differences in people, so that they can create an in-group and an out-group. That can also make the church strong. But as huge as that audience is, I don’t think it’s as huge as it once was.
For example, imagine a preacher getting up there and telling you it’s an awful sin to marry someone of another race, or for a woman to work outside the home, or that slavery is Biblical. Those things simply won’t fly these days. It wouldn’t work. People start to think. They know what they’ve experienced, etc. So they reinterpret the Bible accordingly.
I like it that although Osteen had to come out and agree with his understanding of the Bible on gays, he also said he doesn’t fully understand it. That right there is a clue that to me says, “You know, maybe we can allow in a little biology, etc. on this issue. We can stop pretending that what the Bible says really lines up with reality.”
Just like he hinted that prayer doesn’t work recently. He basically said if you have a problem, don’t pray, go do something about it.
He’s dropping hints at the truth, which to me is that the idea of being gay being a sin is ridiculous, and that prayer is not effective for solving problems-something we all already know in the back of our mind. He’s slowly giving people permission to maybe accept those things more consciously.
I’ve only heard him a couple times, so maybe my impressions are incorrect. What do you think?
feetxxl: I wouldn’t be so quick to own the holocaust as a Christian construct. It was formidably shaped by the Masters of Suspicion (Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Hegel, etc.) to whom intellectual atheism owe their roots. Sorry Barry you are complicit too. The issue I have is not with what ideology created it, but with how various ideologies failed to respond to it. It is well known that antisemitism was alive in the cultural Christianity (as well as the written theology of Luther and others), I’m not debating that. But it took social Darwinainism to turn this racism into a project of genocide. It also took particular views of history that conflated our actions with Gods, but that is a more complicated connection for a blog response. So many groups of humans should own the genesis of these horrible events in history. My concerns are the churches that were complicit, even by non-action. The holocaust was a wake-up slap for the Church in Europe, and many gave up hope in the Church. But many didn’t and it changed the shape of European theology forever.
Here in our protected North American context we do not seem to have learned the lessons that Europe did. Saying we are responsible for the holocaust is an incredulous claim here. And if we relegate it to a particular religious tradition (or in this case a cluster of traditions) then we miss the point. The holocaust was the worst of humanity – and we are all capable of it. Worse we are all capable of the inaction that allows such things to thrive – and there are plenty examples in our own context such as our record with the first nations peoples. Like I tell my kids – it doesn’t matter who started it or who did it first, what matters is how we are going to resolve it. And that takes all of us regardless of our beliefs.
@Frank Emanuel: How exactly do you figure that I am complicit in the holocaust? That’s badly-worded at best, and offensive at worst. I have family members who would have been killed if they had been in 1940s Europe, and my grandfather fought against the Nazis in North Africa and in Europe.
If you mean that atheism is complicit in the holocaust, again you have a problem. Atheism is not an all-embracing philosophy. It’s just an expression of one thing that we don’t believe. Certainly atheism itself inspires nothing, whether good or bad.
Sure, some of the perpetrators of the holocausts may have been atheists, but the overwhelming majority were Christians. I’m sure they were strongly influenced by the writings of Martin Luther, who instructed that Jews should be put to death and their synagogues burned, far more than by the writings of Darwin, who never advocated the twisted ideas of eugenics and survival of the “fittest”.
Considering the fact that Hitler was a Christian, I don’t think we can blame the holocaust on atheists.
Barry: You are quite wrong that atheism inspires nothing, it is an ideology same as any religion, it just launches out from a different set of assumptions. And I’m not attacking Darwin – but social Darwinianism which was an aberration that we should all lament – and still has sway today in how we see the least of the least in, at least, North American Society.
But your first reaction needs some qualification. Part of the problem with things like the holocaust is our reaction to them. I was referring to your denial of complicity due to your atheism – and if you think Christianity without Nietzsche and company (really Hegel and his young interpreters) would have stepped over that leap into the abyss then you are mistaken. It wasn’t the individuals with their nationalistic forms of faith that gave rise to the holocaust – it was how this was shaped by ideologues who were undeniably influenced by the Masters of Suspicion.
But I would expand it further. I think that it is a human problem. So we are all complicit. That is the ugly truth of the matter. The more we deny that we are both victim and perpetrator the more we foster the problem. We can’t fix a problem we pretend isn’t ours to fix. And we can’t see the depths of it as long as we pretend if doesn’t affect us. So Barry I stand by my statement – but not to single you out or suggest you had a formative hand in it. But we all participate in ideologies that can be brought to bear on the problems that plague our species – evils of war, poverty, racism, hatred, genocide, marginalization, consumerism, the systematic rape of our planet to support extractive economies, etc. Whether you want to use the language of sin (such as some religious traditions do) or a more inclusive language of injustice, it matters not. The problem is we are all complicit in these things. And we pretend that they are not as bad as the holocaust – yet I think the poorest of the poor in the so-called Third World countries might beg to differ. I’m not trying to belittle anything – but bring the full weight of its gravity to my argument. We must do better. Pretending we are doing better makes it worse. Not standing up when we see the roots of it (including I would urge homophobia which is a modern antisemitism in Christianity) also makes us complicit.
Just let me close by saying that we are also all victims. I think we can miss that too. It isn’t like we are all bastards trying to screw everything up. Most people are quite well intentioned. But most of us also pretend that all of this has no bearing or relevance to our little existences – and I run into atheists like that just as often as Christians. This coping mechanism must stop. We are all hurt and we are all doing the hurting. So lets find a way forward.
Drew, Hitler was a lot of things. I’m not blaming the holocaust on any single ideology – but that it was a collection of ideologies that made the holocaust a possibility under the catalyst of a terribly charismatic leader.
Also many people claim to be Christians, does that mean we should simply blame Christianity for the Jonestown massacre? Auschwitz? Apartheid? the Violence in Uganda? Certainly we need to be critical of the ways that Christianity is evoked in these contexts – but we can’t assume any religion is monolithic and responsible for the actions of people who claim to be part of that religion. This is why I want to insist it is a human problem, not necessarily a religious problem (except in so far as our species has an incredible propensity for mythic navigation of its existential questions).
Frank, atheism is no more an ideology than asantaism is an ideology (I’m sure you lack a belief in Santa Claus and his Christmas Eve antics every year, yet I doubt you’d consider that lack of belief an ideology). Atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief in any particular deity (it technically doesn’t even deny the existence of a deity, it just doesn’t actively believe one exists, though I suppose we could get into the whole “weak atheism vs strong atheism” thing if we wanted to).
I should also point out that I’m not blaming Christianity for the holocaust. I am a Christian after all (even if only a religionless Christian). That said, the members of the Christian religion (along with members of most other religions) are a HUGE cause of trouble for the world. Not the only cause of trouble, but a large cause regardless.
@Barry. God deeply values us. EVERY part of us, even what we do with our genitals. He protects that part of us highly in the Bible. He cares more about us than we do.
Drew: Your assumption is that non-belief is actually a neutral concept. It is not. It is a presupposition about the nature of reality that has far reaching ethical implications. I’m not trying to defend theism or atheism – but simply point out the bullshit claim that atheism somehow has the moral high ground because it dispenses with God. It is yet another ideology that humans use to navigate their worlds. Ideologies are not necessarily wrong – in fact I would insist that the strongest ones are based in what is true – but they do shape the ethical orientation of individuals (and communities) in measurable ways.
About the problem with religions, Thomas Berry once said that religions cannot solve the worlds problems, but we cannot solve the worlds problems without religions. Atheism functions as a religion – not believing is a belief – and therefore should be a welcome partner in the conversations and actions that can change the world for the better.
drew
“I should also point out that I’m not blaming Christianity for the holocaust.”
a millenium of inquisitions, the church playing a major role(at least 7, the person who conducted the last one was made pope), containment centers( this same pope set up a containment center, which lasted 300 years, for the jews 300 yards from the vatican………..this same place which later became an all jewish ghetto is where the trucks came to take the jews to the death camps…….a containment center very similar in some ways to what the nazis set up in poland), a millenium of deportations, disinfrancisements, genicides, by christian countries, condoned by the church.
germany the first country(1500), to receive the bible in their own language, translated by their national hero martin luther. martin luther who in his late writings left a 400 year antisemetic legacy that was so severe that the 3rd reich used it to validate their treatment of the jews. “in dealing with the jews, no treatment is too severe”
@ Louise la Francofun
Definition of Rejection:
You go to masturbate and your hand falls asleep.
Also many people claim to be Christians, does that mean we should simply blame Christianity for the Jonestown massacre? Auschwitz? Apartheid? the Violence in Uganda? Certainly we need to be critical of the ways that Christianity is evoked in these contexts – but we can’t assume any religion is monolithic and responsible for the actions of people who claim to be part of that religion. This is why I want to insist it is a human problem, not necessarily a religious problem (except in so far as our species has an incredible propensity for mythic navigation of its existential questions).
i agree with you. the point is that christians as well as non christians were equally involved with what was antisemetic. the church was as much a willing participant as those powers that were secular.
the church is the culture. the culture is the church. no one lives in a purely religous bubble, or a purely secular one.
in using jonestown as an example, you are attempting to compare an occult mentality with main stream religious doctrine.
No, I’m illustrating a point that claiming to be Christian doesn’t defacto make one so. These claims are always contested – even when they come from established state churches. There have been many cases of anti-Catholicism, turning violent even!, in Protestant history that claimed Catholics were not “real” Christians. I threw Rev. Jim in there because he would be bound to evoke the sort of reaction that you gave it. This is the problem I wanted to illustrate – as long as it is them and not us that is their problem and not of our concern. German cultural guilt over Hitler drove some very creative and appropriate responses. But they come out of ownership and a realization that this must never happen again and if it does the Church, especially for the folks I’m familiar with, must never again stand by while injustice rears its ugly face.
@Frank: “Barry: You are quite wrong that atheism inspires nothing, it is an ideology same as any religion, it just launches out from a different set of assumptions.”
That is completely incorrect. Atheism is not an ideology. It is simply a lack of belief in any gods. There are as many different kinds of atheists as there are theists.
The only thing all atheists have in common is one thing we don’t believe in. You might as well call a lack of belief in the Easter Bunny an ideology. Abunnyism, perhaps?
@Ransom Backus: “God deeply values us. EVERY part of us, even what we do with our genitals. He protects that part of us highly in the Bible. He cares more about us than we do.”
If you believe that, fine. However, the problem comes when people try to impose their beliefs on those who don’t share them. Why should the fact that most Christians believe homosexuality is wrong be allowed to influence those of us who believe it’s natural and normal?
Plus, of course, it is clear to see that a great many Christians put far too much emphasis on what people do with their genitals, to the exclusion of much else. I don’t happen to be gay, but if I was I’d take exception to religious people trying to legislate how I live my life. Why shouldn’t gay people be treated without discrimination? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to marry?
frank emanuel
yes it is human issue in that it is about human evolvement. again the church is the culture. the culture is the church. it is about the evolvement we have progessed to since our caveman existence. scientifically it is called the “spiral dynamic”
for instance at the turn of the century, worldwide culture historicaly was unable to embrace that our neighbor was everybody else. that was true of the church as well.
yet today, this “everyone else” being our neighbor understanding is embraced culturally worldwide as well as by the church.
and this could only have been possible because of a century of the cultural revolutions about human rights, sexuality(individual expression), religion, etc.
Barry…I am fine with everything you have just stated. I just wish that homosexuals wouldn’t demand that the Church accept it. Unfortunately, imposing beliefs in this battle is a two way street. Personally I don’t tell homosexuals what to do. And I don’t think they should demand that the Church accept their sin as a good thing. They have heard our message before. If they reject it, that is on their heads. As for the emphasis? I don’t agree with you. I hear Christians discussing a wide variety of sins. I hear homosexuality mentioned maybe once or twice in a given year as I attend a church service.
Now if you are referring to the political battles and the media, that is a different story. AS for me, I have decided to let America have the sin they wish to indulge in. Currently I have a hands off policy when it comes to American politics. I have washed my hands of the system and I am letting the chips fall where they may. But other Christians insist on politicizing everything. Christ never told us to legislate the Bible. And personally I don’t think it is a good idea.
@Ransom Backus: I’m glad we’re on the same page with that. One thing I strongly disagree on, however, is your statement that homosexuality is a sin. I do not believe for a moment that there is anything sinful about the natural sexual orientation someone was born with. To a gay person, heterosexual sex is unnatural.
Until the churches accept homosexuals and stop calling them sinners, they are always going to be victimised and discriminated against in practice by Christians, even if in theory Christians say they love them. “Love the sin, hate the sinner” doesn’t work with gay people. To get an idea of how that works, can you imagine someone telling you that they love you as a person, but hate the fact that you are a heterosexual because it’s sinful and ugly? That’s what it’s like for gay people.
frank emmanuel
“if it does the Church, especially for the folks I’m familiar with, must never again stand by while injustice rears its ugly face.”
50,000 germans, out of a country of 30 million, who were christians, jews, atheists etc did speak out when they put their lives on the line to hide jews.
fact is that is that if one single credible person had spoken out worldwide, the death camps would have been closed down.
but worldwide antisemetism, the powers that were, could not even allow that, that was how entrenched it was.
and the reason the antisemetism ended was not out of some religous epiphany, but instead it was the day that the trade center was attacked and everyone realized that isreal and the rest of the world had a common enemy.
frank emanuel
consider that at the time of luther, there was not freedom of speech, everything was tightly theocractially controlled(responses to galileo’s theories). that luther was allowed to write what was antisemetic reflects the main stream doctrine of the times and what was cultural of those times.
the point of this whole discussion is, that yes, the church, believers got things seriously wrong. but that in no way takes away from what christ did on the cross, instead it affirms its importance.
that the church has been wrong about homosexuality for 2000 years is just one of a number of things it has gotten wrong throughout its history. being in christ is not about getting things right but about faith and redemption in and thru him.
John 8:36
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
That’s a pretty romantic understanding FeetXXL. North Americans seem to over inflate the importance of 911. Antisemitism is alive and well, unfortunately. And Muslims are not our common enemy, or even any enemy. And before you jump to the terrorist conclusion – Christians have long mastered fundamentalist forms of religion that foster systemic hatred.
The situation we find ourselves in is far more complex than an us versus them analysis will ever grasp.
Feet: your last post came in after my last one, at least for me. Although I’m not convinced that the censorship was as effective as you propose you are right that Luther was reflecting what were fairly normative views at his time. But IIRC the regrettable document of his came later in his ministry and he would have been a bit beyond censorship at that point.
I hope I didn’t come across as detracting from Jesus’ incarnation, death, or resurrection. Those are pivotal for me and my faith as well. But I think that this conversation was opening up the possibility of understanding that even people of faith, who mean well, allow their unexamined presuppositions to cause their participation in injustice. I personally think there is something that needs to be addressed in this – something that the platitude of “God will work it out” just doesn’t cut it for. I hope I am making myself clear that I don’t think this is only a Christian problem – but a human problem (and I think you get that). In Christian theology we use the language of sin to understand this – but too often sin is just a way of whining about things that make us uncomfortable instead of naming injustice and evil. But that’s the problem – we need to think deeply about what it is we say we believe and why we think we believe it.
frank emanuel
“he would have been a bit beyond censorship at that point”
that he would have this status, makes what he wrote all the more impacting.
i know of no common understanding in the next 400 years that luther writings were in anyway in the extreme.
in the south, post civil war, hangings of blacks by radical elements were commonplace. in fact justice black, in his early years in alabama was a member of the kkk, because membership was mandatory for political success. i know of no common understanding that alabamans were less christian than any other state.
@Barry…and I will never convince you otherwise. This is something God Himself showed me as I prayed. I have given up trying to do the job of the Holy Spirit which is convicting people of sin. If you disagree that this is a sin, then my job is done and it is then between you and God.
Barry…as for hating me for “being heterosexual.” I don’t consider myself heterosexual. Sexual desire is not what I am. I am simply a man, I have chosen to take a female wife in line with God’s plan for me. And if people think I am ugly and sinful for that reason, they would have a hard time showing me in the Bible how that is a sin as the Bible shows nothing but support for a male/female marriage. however I don’t see a single instance in the Bible where a homosexual relationship was encouraged, blessed, or endorsed by God.
@Ransom Backus: If God is that clear when you pray, ask him how to bring about world peace, how to cure AIDS and why so many priests are paedophiles, would you?
In my experience, people who think they hear the voice of God tend to find that God agrees with every one of their own beliefs. Funny, that. And yet there are so many different denominations. Anyone would think God was saying different things to different people.
As an atheist I don’t believe in God anyway, but if there was a God he would have to be sadistic kind of monster to create people with a naturally homosexual orientation and then condemn them for it. Then again, as this is the same God who supposedly created people knowing they would sin, and then condemned billions to hell because of his own mistake, that does kind of seem in character.
Barry….I have thought through all of the arguments you raise. I have had long discussions with atheists before about those very things. It always ends the same way, neither convinces the other. So I will just leave it at that. Be well.
Barry,
Your post above made me think of something I’d never thought of. The people who do hear from God could ask for some really useful information, like a cure for all cancers or something. How come he never tells them something like that? Or why do they never ask for something like that? We have to wait for some brainy science guy to figure out cures. It sure would make things better if God just told us.
Oh, and per one Calvinist I was reading, God made the non-elect and will punish them in hell for the purpose of demonstrating his love for the elect and for his glory. Yep. Unless I misunderstood, that’s what he said.
barry
you left out the most important part. every transgression has been done out of human choice. its not about what he created but what man out of free choice has chosen to do with it, because they have chosen ally themselves with something other than christ’s love……………… their own flesh, or powers and principalities(world and satan). christ came to freely deliver believers from these transgressions. you keep talking the cultural concept of condemantion, because the culture says that law is the standard of what is of god, when instead it is love, christ’s love……………love your enemy, do good to those who curse you, do not return evil for evil but return instead good.
barry
where do you see in that love regardless of their beliefs, friends and family abandoning homosexuals, society including the church rejecting them,subjecting them to assault, murder and incarceration, and even execution……………..yet believers as well as non believers have done this.
frank emmanuel
church is the culture and the culture is the church. the culture is a general consensus of what has been made as in romans1:20.
the church is the struggle of dealing with this consensus within as well as without in regards as to what is of christ.
Feet: You keep chanting that same mantra about church and culture – what does it even mean?
@feetxxl: I didn’t leave anything out. As an atheist, I don’t believe in sin. As long as what someone is doing harms nobody, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business.