"Remember that it is not hasty reading, but serious meditation on holy and heavenly truths, that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the mere touching of the flower by the bee that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time on the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove to be the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian." (Thomas Brooks)
Labels: Contemporary Christian Issues, Government, politics
posted by Doug E. @ 4:35 PM
5 comments
My desire is not merely to know theology, but to live it. But you can't live it if you don't know it!
5 Comments:
Your comments seem to ask your viewers to not call you and others who believe as you do discriminatory when you seek to enforce laws that do indeed discriminate against consenting adults of the same gender who seek to get married. You say that this is to support the definition of marriage and that the definition must be changed if the law is to change and you state that no one would seek to change this definition if asked to do so. This is discrimination for it enforces the opinions and the way of life of others as the one and only way to live and to love and that is discrimination. With all due respect, your parable simplifies the issue since we are talking about the deep longing of union and the spiritual and social recognition of that union even if it goes against your own deep longing or experience. One powerful way to seek to receive guidance on what is right to do is to ask, "What would love do?" I feel that love would direct that this definition of marriage, that denies the longing for union of members of the same gender and does not allow them to marry, should change and that to not do this is discriminatory.
John,
You have simply continued to beg the question. You give your definition of marriage by asserting that it is the "deep longing of union." Based on that definition, I assume you would be fine with the idea of marriage between a six year old and a 42 year old. Or if a father and daughter longed for a marital union they should be able to do so also. And I'm sure you would be for polygamy if a man and three women longed for the same union. Because according to your understanding, to prohibit any of them would be discrimination and forcing upon others your opinion as the only way to live and love.
After all, "what would love do?"
Now of course we have laws for all of these and I'm guessing you have no problem with it. That's because you actually believe that there are some limits to what defines a marriage.
No one has prohibited any homosexual person from finding someone of the opposite sex and marrying them. There is no discrimination. Regarding forcing opinions on others, is it discriminatory to tell someone that 2+2 isn't 5? This isn't about mere opinions, it about the reality that is called marriage which has been held through the history of mankind as between man and woman.
Doug
Principle is not bound by precedent. The past does not dictate all that is possible or can become possible in the present or the future. All innovation in our civilization has come from finding and unfolding the hidden potential so that a new thing has come about. From this we have the innovation of flight, the innovation of ships not only be made of wood, etc. The past of marriage always being between a man and a woman denies the principle of love as an expansion from the known to the unknown. Please remember that I spoke only of the union between two consenting adults of the same gender and I will now add that they not be blood related. Your examples do not speak to the expansion of love for they are fear based contractions of love that distorts and corrupts love and brings pain and not joy. A father who abuses the father daughter love relationship to sexually abuse his six year old daughter is not fully expressing love and the expansion of love for it does not overcome his fear of union with an adult woman who is not blood related. What other explanation is there than fear that he cannot have a full sexual union with a non blood related adult that would lead to such sexual abuse? The same is true if the daughter is an adult for why is it that he cannot find union with a non blood related adult woman if it is not fear that no other woman, who is not blood related, could love him? Love is an expansion that casts out fear. The same argument about fear and how it contracts love and its inherent expansiveness can be made for polygamy for it is impossible to have true depth of intimacy with more than one other person. To say that a man wants to have love from multiple women is to say that he does not want true depth of intimacy with only one woman and his fear of intimacy leads him to diffuse, limit and spread out his affections in a superficial manner across multiple women so that he does not have to face the fear of exploring the depths of intimacy with only one woman as such an exploration may provide a mirror to his own depths that he also fears to know.
To ask, "what would love do?" is to ask what would love, without fear, do to unfold what has been hidden as a potential that has yet to manifest in human experience. Your examples of 2 plus 2 be argued to equal 5, as a matter open to opinion, would require that the number 2 not be the definitive number that it is and that it has hidden nuances and potentials that could make it also be the number 3 and not just the number 2 so that unfolding that hidden potential of 3 will lead to the sum of 5. This is not the case for numbers do not have such hidden nuances and potentials as we human beings have. We have depths of potential and possibility to unfold and to know this is to realize the Spirit of the Law and not just the Letter of the Law and this is the abundant life or life lived by the overcoming of limits that would seek to deny the joy of union when such union brings no harm to the other consenting adult who is not blood related.
Yours in the Love of Christ,
John
John,
Here is a section from an earlier post of mine which addresses some of you arguments. And as to progress, it is never right nor safe to progress outside of God's will.
...The Biblical definition of marriage and the natural understanding of creation and the family have never included same-sex couples. In fact, scripture itself testifies that someone who embraces homosexual lusts and does not fight against them has been handed over to their lusts and are receiving the due penalty for their perversions.
Rom 1:26-27 Because of this, (denying God and degrading their bodies), God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Now I realize that those who support homosexuality as compatible with Christianity tend to read this as saying they changed their natural desires for unnatural ones. Meaning that if someone was heterosexual, they became homosexual which was unnatural to them, or if they were homosexual they became heterosexual because that was unnatural to them. This however is not found in the text. The text only states that men went with men because it is unnatural to do so, and women with women. There is no indication that the text includes homosexuals becoming straight. Further, it would make the text meaningless because this unnatural lust is actually a penalty, and what penalty would it be if someone who was homosexual actually started to desire being with someone of the opposite sex. This goes to show further that the term "natural" is not speaking of the "desires" but the design of bodies. Men’s bodies are not designed to go together in sexual relations and neither are women’s. A simple lesson in anatomy makes this clear.
This brings us to your assertion that we should love our neighbors as Jesus said, and denying them the right to marry actually fails to do this. Instead, as you say, it would be to hate them. I am sure that you are aware that when Jesus was asked, "what is the greatest commandment," He said to love the Lord your God, and then when He was asked the second greatest, He said, "to love your neighbor as yourself." I also assume that you understand that He was making the most basic summary for the first and second tables of the law. And I also assume you understand the first and second tables of the law are summaries of the entire law, and included in the moral aspects of the law we find laws against homosexuality (Lev. 20:13). Now it is true that all of the ceremonial laws and many of the judicial laws of the Old Testament have been altered by the coming of Christ, but Christ did not alter any of the moral aspects of the law. And the continuation of the immorality of homosexuality is clearly evidenced in the New Testament. It is found in Romans 1, which was just stated, and many of the other passages of scripture that speak of sexual purity. There would be no justification in the New Testament that when it speaks of sexual purity that it would include homosexual acts, which have been so clearly denounced in the Old Testament. If someone does this, it is clear that they are letting the current culture in which they live dictate their interpretation of scripture instead of letting scripture dictate their culture.
All of this is said to make the final point that when Jesus said love your enemies, He no doubt expected us to look to the moral law to figure out how to do this, because this is what He was summarizing. To love someone is to do what is best for him or her. It is not loving to encourage someone to live a sinful lifestyle. On the contrary it would actually be hateful to encourage someone to act in a way that would bring the judgement of God upon him or her. A parent does this all the time. If a child desires to do something they think will make them happy or something they think they need, a loving parent should deny it to them if they know it is harmful to them no matter how much temporary dissatisfaction it would bring them.
"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9-10)"
-Doug Eaton-
Despite the depth of reasoning and referral to scripture of your response, I must state that it remains unclear what the Bible had to truly say about homosexuality when you have to wonder if what is known about relations between members of the same gender is what was known to the ancient world. Did they really have a word and a concept comparable to homosexuality as it is known today. One of your scriptures uses the word, but is that truly an exact translation? Having raised the foregoing questions, I must now raise the further question about why would a loving God have to condemn same sex relations? You point to anatomy as nature saying that it is not possible and I would counter that it is just possible in a different way. As a Christian, I do challenge myself in what I can possibly truly know about the Will of God when That which we call God is so very much more than what we could possibly conceptualize or understand. This leads me to have more questions than answers and some of the answers that ring true to me stem from an examination into the fruit of the experience that is at question. If two consenting adult members of the same gender seek to love and honor each other, to unfold the highest potential within them and the fruit of the love that they share and are not harming each other or anyone else, what could be wrong with this? What true harm results from this? As a flawed human being, I can see no harm. As an Omnipotent and Omniscient Being, what harm can God see in this? I cannot imagine myself to have more mercy and more compassion than my Creator. It is the height of love and devotion to question as we grow spiritually. The child is simply told, "no," do not do this or that, while the adult is given the reason and I cannot see a reason that would lead us to say that love between two consenting adults of the same gender is harmful. I would further argue that the Old Testament was very much a speaking to a young race in which "no" and the consequences was the rule of the day. The New Testament is the Prodigal Son's coming home to the Father and calling Him, Abba, as a growing more mature child who can now question and reason with an all loving Father who rejoices in the questions and the inquiries of His ever unfolding creation.
Yours in the Love of Christ,
John
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