Comments

With all due respect (which isn't much), I don't care how gracefully you tell me I'm a sinner for wanting to be in a committed, loving relationship with another man-- you're still a bigot and I want nothing to do with you.

You are allowed and should answer to a culture that distorts truth about life and sexuality, but we should do so with humility and grace. But our message about life issues and sexuality will likely not be heard over the hypocricy about life-issues beyond abortion and other contentious issues that biblical Christians should value.

Its a little early to start complaining that evangelicals aren't being heard on abortion and gay marriage...

What's the best possible way that Christ-followers can impact their communities... eg. abortion-rate, family-strength, crime statistics, education, and economics?

Can anyone think of a better answer than... the Church actually carrying out the Whole Commission, as Jesus charged us to do?

But who (really) is calling for 2008 to be the year that the Church steps up its effectiveness... perhaps by working more TOGETHER than by working separately through political alliances?

Aren't we sidestepping the (real) issue by only thinking of community well-being in political terms? Is one candidate or another going to stop or slow down the Church in its (real) mission?

This article raises an interesting question: What is the church's most pragmatic approach to Gay Christians, at a time when a younger generation is increasingly supportive of their Gay friends, family members, and co-workers?

According the Barna Group's recent study of evangelical youth, 80% said Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians.

I would suggest the reason for this is that evangelical youth are capable of making a moral an ethical distinction between monogamous Gay couples and promiscuous Gay individuals, rather than simply saying it's all just wrong, wrong, wrong. It is becoming increasingly obvious that Christians are beginning to see the benefits of embracing their Gay brothers and sisters and encouraging them toward lives of monogamy and commitment, rather than simply pushing them off to the side, and relegating them to lives of loneliness, depression, and promiscuity.

Too many Christians, especially older Christians, still cling wistfully to the notion that Straight people get to date, get engaged, marry and build lives together in the context of monogamy and faithfulness to one other, that this is a GOOD thing ... and yet for Gay people to do exactly the same is somehow a BAD thing. The young evangelicals that the Barna group cites in its survey fortunately are realizing that this is a poor value judgment.

Here's more from Rick Warren so you can put the above in context:

"I want to restore credibility to the church. Part of my feeling is for the last 50 years of the church the hands and feet of the Body of Christ have been cut off and we’ve just been a big mouth. We’re known more for what we talk about than what we do, and we’re known more, at least evangelicals, are known more for what they’re against than what they’re for. I’m just tired of that, and I intend to change it. …

"Our brand has been co-opted by politics. And I’m actually opposed to that. People ask me all the time, are you left wing or right wing? I say I’m for the whole bird. I’m for the left wing and the right wing. … Washington needs both wings. … That leads into the civility issue. Our civilization is losing its civilty. We’ve just become quite rude. And just because you disagree with someone doesn’t give you the right to demonize them."

There's a lot of wisdom there.

I will start giving what you people say some respect when you abandon the "gay is bad per se" argument in favor of a "promiscuity is bad" argument. I can tend to agree with the latter, but the former lacks any reasonableness or nuance in favor of a simplistic "good" versus "evil" that is clear not consistent with how the world actually works.

Your "Good Reasons" link wasn't graceful at all. It was smarmy slander...unless the Family Research Council is suggesting that only straight adult men are capable of consensual relationships...then that raises the question...with whom?

Perhaps Andrea Dwarkin, if memory serves, was more correct than I have given her credit...all sexual acts with straight men are rapes?

Heterosexual marriage, then, would be socially legitimated rape, rape in which the male was capable of adult contractual consent, the woman subservient to her legitimated husband. All other sexual relationships are illegitimate rapes...where no entity is capable of legitimate adult consent...on pretty much about everything?

Is that what the Family Research Council is really saying? I'd think then, that they not only have contempt for their gay neighbors, they have the same contempt for their wives, their daughters, all women, as well.

Not to mention, come to think of it, the conservative evangelical movement's past in defending slavery and Jim Crow. The eras when adult black males were always illegitimate or delegitimated in the eyes of the legal system. Their sexuality given the treatment given gays today, slanderous like the hyperlink Weblog gave, fetishised as exotic, of excess, ftaboo, illegitimate, inherently sinful and animal like. Their relationships devalued...and legally forbidden under slavery.

In the slavery era, no black child was a legitimate heir to anything, even if their father was a rich "white" man...as many a child was. In the Jim Crow era, well, many of us are old enough to remember that era...even if conservative evangelicals would rather younger people forget their roles in perpetuating it.

This again says to me that they church should get out of the marriage business. There are legitimate reasons for allowing civil unions or other similar arrangments, equal protection, basic civility, etc. But when they church starts insiting that the state defend their religious concepts then I get concerned. Why shouldn't the church just start refusing to perform "legal mariages". Then the church can have their own religious ceremonies. Couples can go to the courthouse and get the legal stuff taken care of. That way the church can encourage the type of marriage they want. And "marriage" as the church conceves it is not hindered because all the legal stuff is a matter for the state. The religious significance, of which there is much, is preserved for the church to be concerned with.

Did you really link to an FRC post that prominently features the unbelievably stupid argument that same-sex marriage will lead to interspecies marriage? I can't believe that such idiocy needs rebuttal, but since you link to it, I guess it's not dead.

So here goes: same sex marriage will not lead to interspecies marriage because animals cannot enter into contracts, because there is a compelling public health interest against it, and because animals are accorded no legal rights except for protection from cruelty. That that doesn't go without seeing leads me to conclude that the "man on box turtle" crowd is either dishonest or stupid. I won't presume to say which.

I noticed that you had an advertisement on this page for a "back in stock" sale for Christian History and Biographys. The example magazine on your web advertisement shows a picture of G.K Chesterton, perhaps one of the keenest and kindest minds in modern Christian history. He was also noted as a very graceful and incisive writer. Here is a man who was winsome yet powerful and obedient in his defense of what Jesus taught us, and in this instance the godly view of sex. The argument here is that sex is to be used however we feel like it. Yet the gift God gives to us always have a wonderful purpose behind them; nothing is ever given to us without that purpose in mind. It is we who often miss it by being wrongly shamed by those who misuse it and seek to vulgarize it. Chesterton hinted that Christians were to have a higher view of that gift when he said: "When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea." Sex is a gift from God, a powerful gift with a powerful idea behind it : intimacy. It's not that stopping at the door of physical feeling, but putting our hand on the doorlatch, opening it and walking through. Chesterton goes on to explain this similarly: Sex is an instinct that produces an institution; and it is positive and not negative, noble and not base, creative and not destructive, because it produces this institution. That institution is the family; a small state or commonwealth which has hundreds of aspects, when it is once started, that are not sexual at all. It includes worship, justice, festivity, decoration, instruction, comradeship, repose. Sex is the gate of that house; and romantic and imaginative people naturally like looking through a gateway. But the house is very much larger than the gate. There are indeed a certain number of people who like to hang about the gate and never get any further."

When once we have understood that, we understand how much more often in our sinful state we go looking for the sacred in all the wrong places; places that only serve to give us a distorted picture of God and His gift to us. When you look back on the scriptures in Corinthians and elsewhere and reread the prohibitions on the structure of godly sexual relationships, you begin to see God's wisdom in this. That is why God pleads with us "Do not be misled (or deceived). For whatever a man is sowing, this he will reap." (Gal. 6:7) This is not just pointing to what happens to us physically when we go in the opposite direction from God, but what happens to us emotionally and mentally. Our thinking even begins to change on what we have been taught and know to be true from Him. It begins to take on the appearance of the world and their attitude and desires. Yet God has told us that we are to be transformed from this world's way of seeing things. In that place is what we are searching for when we look for love in all the wrong places. God is not unaware of the very desires He has put in us. But he also wants us to find exactly what those desires are meant to lead us to: Him. He works through the relationship that is godly and no other. When a relationship is godly, it follows the way God has outlined in His word and no other path is going to do that. The question is: do you want to surrender to that or miss out and all of its wonderfulness entirely because you refuse to trust His way is better than any misdirected desires you presently have? Beligerance can get you what you want right now. Of course, no one denys that. But it is only the beligerant who will miss out on the very thing that they sought, all the while working it out in themselves what eventually always fails to fill the desire so that it has to be more and more, and different and different to achieve less and less. Dear brothers, do not let the world shame you into its mold and focus on what "looks" kind and loving. Seek God and what he has told us is love: Himself who does not tolerate these things. Respectfully, Melanie Reed

Past Warren,

Have you or the christian community ever considered who your audience is? Primarily your audience are your fellow christians. But what you preach does not have any effect on their lives, what you preach has an effect on the lives of gay people who are not a part of your audience. Happy and healthy gay people would not agree with your message which is highly offensive. There is no kind and loving way to show someone, who has not asked for your opinion, that you would destroy and invalidate their intimate lives. How would you like it if you were treated this way? Christianity today is an absolute turn off!

"Christianity needs both the mainstream emphasis on issues like relieving poverty and the evangelical emphasis on personal salvation."

Having gone to college in the Bible Belt,.my observation, at that time, was that the emphasis on personal salvation was to distract people from an emphasis on justice and the Golden Rule.

Seeing Christian TV today and reading Christian magazines and journals, I see little reason to revise the observation. Even charity seems to be laid out to normalize injustice, rather than address it.

Brothers, from having read respectfully all your comments, it makes me wonder this: would you have from God what is not Himself and his unchangable nature that places boundaries for our good? Is joy only that which makes us feel comfortable for the moment and pleasured in the body? What do the scriptures consistantly say to this? Is progress something that casts aside everything we have known to be true because it is not popular anymore? Didn't Jesus say that the gate was narrow and few would be the ones finding it? Why does He say this if the only goal it would seem would be to make the Word of God fit every lifestyle so as to offend no one? For those of you who woud wish to be our leaders, I am concerned. IF I follow you and your thinking tomorrow, and Jesus returns to inspect us, and at that time He says you are wrong, then what should I say to Him about why I might choose to disregard what He has written in favor of your interpretation of what God said about the "golden rule" and justice in light of His other scriptures about those that woud not be accepted into heaven. Have I missed something? I am trying to picture the scene inn my mind, for Jesus is one who upholds our Father's word, all of it. We are not under law, because the law was kept out of fear of consequence for many, by obedience from those who loved God. So then Paul in finishing that argument, tells us a new way to look at the law: we are now free to obey God out of love in holiness, not under compulsion of the law because now (if our transformation has taken place) it is written upon our hearts. So how is it, that God tells us that there are certain activities that would bar us from heaven and somehow our changed nature does not want willingly to obey Him and stop doing them? Can we argue and cajole God as children who want to willingly disobey their parents often do? How many of you are parents on this board and listen to such excuses from your children? Is God not allowed to discipline us since we are His children and require certain behavior from us if we love Him? Did Christ die for nothing that I should behave any way I wish to so that I can tell you or any other that they are being mean to me if they don't approve of it? What happened to the Holy Spirit giving us strength to bear up in love, seeking not our own pleasures which the world freely does and flaunts in God's face, but the love of God? I am not immune to feelings and lonliness, but to offend God and disregard His Word and pretend I didn't fo it and then to try and shame those who in love try patiently to remind me of my wrong course is not something God will overlook in me should I persist in doing it. IF He gives me up to it without reminder (as the scriptures talk about can happen with disgraceful appetites), I am lost for good and I hope that never happens. Let me say this, there is nothing that seems so important now that we give up for the kingdom, that God can replace to you and I in a godly form to enjoy if you and I would only exercise faith that He can. And it would seem that Jesus words are so important to this point when we recall that he said it would be hard to find the faith in the last days. In all humility, dear brothers, those of you who think that one cannnot live with out the companionship of homosexuality, it is not your lonliness for another human that is in need but your lonliness for God. Please seek Him in truth and he WILL give you the desires of your heart in a godly way rather than what you have replaced Him with. Please hear Him. We need you.

Hi-

To all who have posted in support of gay marriage (especially angry John K.) - the Bible clearly states in multiple places in both the old testament and the new testament that homosexuality is wrong. But as usual, when we want to sin. We not only want to sin profusely in blatant rebellion to God and His Word, but we want to make a lifestyle out of it and then push it on others so as to legitimize it. You want to live in rebellion to God, go ahead - if He isn't going to stop you, then none of us certainly have the right to do so - but don't push your lifestyle on to us and pretend it's normal. It may be common to some dgree (though if you look at society as a whole. it certainly can't be classified as even common), but it's not normal. Also, I don't intend fool with this "love the sinner, hate the sin" nonsense. That's just code for "I hate you". I actually AM going to love you - but I won't try to force you to comply with my beliefs. I'll simply point you to the One whom I follow - and to His Word. In the end, if you refuse to repent, than that's your choice, not mine. You must deal with God on that one both her and when you pass from this world.

The Bible DOES NOT "...clearly state* in multiple places in both the old testament and the new testament that homosexuality is wrong." The word "homosexual" wasn't even coined until about the time my grandfather was born, and it's a rather obsolete scientific theory now.

In any case, while there is an antipathy towards same-sex sexual activity in the Bible, the clobber verses have to understood in the context of tribal identity, priestly purity and the idolatry of the area at the time.

Except that there are new forms of idolatry for our society to concern itself with, like celebrity worship, for instance, perhaps, the clobber verses have very little to say about being gay today.

There are antipathies towards a great many things in the Bible, some of them quite valid today, others are head scratchers of the "what were they thinking?" mode to today's people.

I'm mystified on how people can know God's nature. I would think, to paraphrase a medieval rabbi, that if one could know God's nature, one would actually be God. Is that idolatry?

I feel so sad reading all of this hostility in both directions! It seems to me that evangelicals make a mistake in agreeing to talk about homosexuality and homosexual marriage, as above, rather than talking in terms of the myths that (a) everyone has a right to have a sexual relationship, (b) sexual desire is a sufficient reason to have -- or necessitates having -- sex with someone, and (c) life without marriage and/or sex is a horrible, horrible thing. Biblically speaking, (a) is a myth of our culture, since God so clearly limited the sexual expression of those who call him Lord (Jews and Christians) to men and women who are married to each other within the community of believers, and told Moses that men laying together with men "as with a women" (and, by extension, women with women) is an abomination. Given (a), (b) is obviously false. Finally, regarding myth (c), life without marriage and/or sex is not the horrible, horrible thing that people who want to have sex outside of marriage would have us believe it is. Paul, in fact, recommended it!

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that anyone and everyone can choose whether or not to have sex in or out of marriage. God forbade it (in the Law) for any man and any woman who had not been married to each other within the synagogue/church; Jesus did not nullify that Law. There isn't a trace of evidence in the Bible that God approves of or blesses same-sex sexual activity or marriage, and there isn't a trace of evidence that He approves of or blesses heterosexual extramarital sex. The only difference -- and thank Jesus that the difference exists -- between now and the time before Christ is that now we who believe in him have the Holy Spirit, who empowers us to be obedient, if we want to be obedient. Jesus said that if his believers love him, they will do what he says, and that he and the Father are one. Believers doing what he says would include limiting their sexual activity to that member of the opposite sex to whom they are married. Believers who do not limit their sexual activity in this way are simply not being obedient. So, if anyone wants to disobey God, go ahead, but at least admit to yourself that you are choosing to live a lifestyle that is not pleasing to God, and please don't try to say that you're not sinning. I include in "anyone" all believers who call those who disagree with them "Raca!" and are, thus, disobedient -- whether we're gay or straight -- as well as those who refuse to act on Jesus's instruction that we care for the sick, the thirsty, the poor, the powerless, the oppressed, which includes many of us.

Stan Guthrie started this off with the plea that we be gracious with each other. Let's give it a try!

Believe as you will what is correct in the sight of God, regarding our personal behaviors and choices. There is no justification in the scriptures for trying to force non-Christians to behave as though they were members of your sect, and shared your understanding. Apostles were instructed to spread Good News, not co-opt political systems to try to force the culture to adopt 'Christian' mores.

If you wish to prevent abortion in your community, encourage abstinence, and support young mothers, but get out of the court. If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't marry a gay man, but at the same time, please abstain from harrassment and persecution of your fellow humans. There is no way to reconcile hateful behavior with the teachings of Jesus Christ.

As Christians are we not commissioned to preach the good news of Christ "teaching them all the things I have commanded you"? We all know what those things are. There are no "clobber" texts. There is God's unchanging truth which is always relevant and wise. There is only God's Word that is "...able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Listen to what you are saying in your acceptance of what God calls wicked, namely "men who lie with men." That is in Revelation and Acts. These are not approved. Brothers and Sisters, I plead with along with the Christ "be reconciled to God" on this matter. We are warned by God's Word not to be deceived in these last days. We live in an age when we are awaiting Jesus inspection. Will he find his "bride" ready? Will he find the faith? Whether you or I die tomorrow or whether we live till that time, that is the point at which God's mercy will no longer be offered to any of us. Please be honest with yourselves because the time is growing short. If you cannot exercise self-control when it is the "day" what will happen when it becomes the "night"? 2 Timothy tells us "don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels." (2 Tim. 2:23) Has it come to this? Paul tells us to keep testing as to whether we are in the faith and approved. You who are using words to make a way for practicing what God condemns "men who lie with men" and women also "who changed the natural use of their bodies" please remember we serve a God who had servants whom he loves who died (Hebrews 11) rather than renounce these words to please those who wanted to falsely shame them. These texts have been very plain to those whom God has given his spirit to understand all this time in history...till now in a time that the Bible characterizes "when they will not put up with the healthful teachings." You all know and have read these words of God. If they do not stir your heart with greatfulness of "having been washed clean" to obey them, then how will you in turn preach them when someone questions you about them? How can we be sincere about loving God if we cannot obey Him? If such a little thing as the eating of meat made a man stumble on the word of God and Paul was ready to give it up, what excuse do any have for continuing in what is expressly condemned in His word? You who have listened to the argument of feelings, please let us keep in mind after we have "gently instructed" then we must "..hope that God will grant them repentence leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do their will." I am sorry and offer my apologies to any who have grown up without having their proper God-given desire for family love fufilled in a godly way. But I know this from personal experience, that whatever God allows us to go through in this life, He will always make a way out for us in order to stand against the temptation. He is faithful and you just must simply believe this and exercise faith in it. Keep on asking and you will receive it. This world is not the end stop for a Christian. It is our testing and our God has not lied to us about that. There will be hard times and hard lives but that is because of our own struggles with sin. I guess what you and I are seeing on this board is the choices people are making, how the Word does have the power to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart, and display it for all to see. God is being found ever true. Don't you see that every time we have these arguments, in reality this is "the wrestling with the wicked spirit forces in heavenly places."? If the enemy gets us on this, how can we stand firm in later times when our lives may be in question? How can we even give in to arguments that are merely hinged on the outcome of someone's physical pleasure rather than need when we have dear brother's and sisters, even at this moment, who are dying for the faith? I pray for us all to be granted unity on God's word and never may we compromise our conviction on that.