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Opinion
Perry, Kendra
2012
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GAYS AND THE CHURCH
Previous Articles in the Series:
Sabbath and Same-Sex Marriage, Part 1
Sabbath and Same-Sex Marriage, Part 2: Separation of Church & State
Thank you again for continuing to read and share your thoughts on this topic. I still have some more thoughts that I’d like to address on the decline of marriage and how this can be addressed in society and the church, so please look for one final column (coming soon!) on marriage and sexuality. But I’m continuing today with my promised follow-up on gays and the church.
If same-sex marriage were to be legalized, how could this impact the church? In response to my initial article, many people expressed concern that if gay marriage is legally recognized, that the church would be forced to hire, provide spousal benefits to, or even ordain married gays. Others were concerned that Adventist pastors could be forced to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples against their conscientiously held beliefs.
I believe there are several different questions here. First, there are clearly institutional hiring questions. Second, there are questions of church-recognized marriage. Third, there are questions of membership. And finally, there are questions of who is welcome to participate in local church activities. We’ll look at each of these areas separately, but the common thread we will find in each of them is that separation of church and state benefits not only individuals who are able to act according to their conscience but also church institutions. When the church refrains from influencing the government to act according to its morals, the government in turn cannot force the church to act against those morals.
1) Institutional Hiring and Benefits.
In the comments on my previous column, several people raised the issue of Adventist institutions being required to hire people in same-sex marriages and/or provide benefits to same-sex spouses. Again, I think there are a couple of sub-categories here.
Hospitals seem to fall into their own category because they accept payment from federal funds such as Medicare and Medicaid. There is almost no question that, were same-sex marriage legalized, Adventist hospitals would be required to comply with federal non-discrimination laws and employ people in same-sex marriages, as well as provide benefits to same-sex spouses of employees. However, I don't see this as a major issue. Adventist hospitals already employ many people who are not Adventists and who do not comply with Adventist lifestyle standards. They would simply continue to do so, as they have already done in the past.
Churches and schools, on the other hand, have much wider latitude in personnel decisions. Legal decisions continue to show that private religious employers have great freedom to hire and fire according to standards that they deem appropriate, and employees have little legal recourse. As long as adequate separation of church and state is maintained, Adventist churches and schools would be able to make hiring and firing decisions based on what conduct they believe to be appropriate for church employees.
Here we see that protecting the separation of church and state is a value to the church. It protects our institutional freedom of conscience as well as that of other minorities.
I do want to raise a question here, though. In response to my original article, one poster expressed concerns about being required to hire a homosexual individual for a teaching position even if that person were not currently engaged in a same-sex relationship. The concern was that s/he MIGHT become involved in one in the future. In response, I do wish to pose the question: do we avoid hiring single heterosexual teachers because of concerns that they MIGHT become involved in inappropriate relationships in the future? No, we make decisions based on the individual’s education, references, rapport with students, etc.
I cannot see any reason that a person who has same-sex attractions but is living a single, celibate lifestyle should be excluded from church employment any more than a single, celibate heterosexual individual. Of course, both would be subject to church discipline and/or changes in employment status if they would choose to enter into a relationship that the church deems inappropriate. Nonetheless, it does not seem right to me to discriminate in this case based only on sexual orientation. We need to stop seeing LGBT individuals as their orientation alone and recognize that they are PEOPLE first, with thoughts, skills, abilities, and a life experience beyond just their sexuality.
2) Church-Sanctioned Marriage
A number of other commenters on my original article expressed the concern that Adventist pastors would be forced to marry same-sex couples. This is another case in which strong separation of church and state is an ADVANTAGE to us.
Pastors presently have the ability to decline to marry any couple, for any reason. My husband (an Adventist pastor) has a requirement that couples he marries must participate in premarital counseling. He has had several couples refuse to do this, and he has declined to marry them. He is free to do so; it is his freedom of conscience based on his view of the sanctity of marriage as a serious lifelong commitment requiring careful consideration and preparation. Where same-sex marriage to be legalized, Adventist pastors would, of course, be free to decline to marry same-sex couples.
Apparently some rumors and news stories have been circulating that military chaplains are already required to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples in states where this is legal; however commenter Gregory Matthews assured us [I have combined and copyedited a couple of his comments for clarity here]: “I am a retired US Army chaplain. As such, no one could tell me that I had to marry any couple. This is accurate in my present position as a VA Chaplain. In both positions I refused to marry some couples and I performed the marriages of others. The decision was mine and no one else’s. Those who claim that Federal chaplains could be forced to perform the marriages of homosexuals totally misunderstand the situation. … The military chaplain is required to act within the constraints of the denomination that endorses the chaplain. I once served on the teaching faculty of the U.S. Army Chaplain School. As such, I taught the young chaplains that they were not part of a Federal denomination. Rather they retained their denominational identity and they must follow the requirements of their denomination. If they could not perform the service, they should refer. As such, I have obtained the services of a Roman Catholic priest to serve Catholics in a manner that I could not.”
Once again, strong separation of church and state preserves our freedom of conscience to decline participation in same-sex marriage ceremonies while also allowing freedom of conscience for those who do support it to participate.
3) Membership and Ordination
If same-sex marriage were to be legalized, a strong separation of church and state would also continue to guarantee the church’s freedom to deny membership and/or ordination to those not living in accordance with existing lifestyle standards and/or fundamental beliefs.
Women are protected under equal rights in the United States and have been for many years; yet the government has taken no steps at all to force the Adventist church to ordain them. All steps toward women’s ordination have originated solely from within the church, and legal action has had no part in it.
Please note that strong separation of church and state benefits the church in ALL cases.
4) Local Church Participation
But who should be welcome to participate in local church activities? Must we all be fully sanctified before stepping through the doors on Sabbath morning? Should those who visit or attend the church also be in compliance with Adventist lifestyle standards?
If our mission is to reach the world with the everlasting gospel, then the answer must be a resounding NO. Jesus came to the world to seek and to save those who were lost, and the church’s mission is to continue that work. The church on Sabbath morning, then, should be a place where ANYONE seeking Jesus should be welcomed enthusiastically JUST AS THEY ARE.
Many respondents cite to me the story of the woman caught in adultery, stating that they want their attitude toward the GLBT community to be that of Christ, who told the woman caught in adultery to “go and sin no more.” But let’s look carefully at that story (John 8, if you would like to read it directly from the Bible).
Before Jesus told her, “Go and sin no more,” he got down in the dirt next to her, created a space of safety where she was protected from her accusers, and assured her that he (the one who legitimately COULD accuse her) did not condemn her. He, the omnipotent, sinless God of the universe, looked into her heart and recognized not only the selfishness or lust but also the societal forces, the unmet emotional or financial needs that had driven her into that man’s bed that morning. And HE DID NOT CONDEMN HER. Instead, with compassion he set her free from her past.
How can the church (both as a corporate entity and as individual members) better embody this attitude in our dealings with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals?
Isaiah 42:3 says that while the Messiah is establishing justice, he will do it with utmost care. It says "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out." His government is not one like Chairman Mao's, in which societal change is forced through by dominance, brainwashing, and re-education.
It is one in which change takes place gently, through the full cooperation of those being changed. “In His plan of government there is no employment of brute force to compel the conscience. The Jews looked for the kingdom of God to be established in the same way as the kingdoms of the world. To promote righteousness they resorted to external measures. They devised methods and plans. But Christ implants a principle. By implanting truth and righteousness, He counterworks error and sin.” (Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 77)
The gay community is FULL of seriously bruised reeds. The louder and more militant they are, probably the more bruised they have been. They have been bruised by a secular society that mocks them for not fitting into its rigid gender stereotypes. In many cases, they have been bruised by friends and family who could or would not understand and accept their explanation of who they are. And in SO many cases, they have been bruised by Christian voices calling them an "abomination" and the downfall of all that is good and right in the world. PLEASE STOP BRUISING THOSE REEDS. What gays need, just like all of us, is to know the healing love of a Savior who accepts us JUST AS WE ARE. That will do far more to restore righteousness to this nation than keeping same-sex marriage illegal.
If we want to truly minister to those who struggle with same-sex attraction, we will be the voice connecting them to Jesus. If our message of “go and sin no more” is so loud at the gate, few people will cross the threshold to learn that they are not condemned.
We need to provide a safe space where people of ALL orientations and gender identities can meet Jesus and build a relationship with him. And in the stillness of that relationship, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to work, in his own divine time, in his own divine way.
If we feel sincerely that the Bible speaks against homosexual intercourse, fine. But we need to approach that as gently and lovingly as we would (I hope!) the health laws with someone who cooks barbecue pork ribs for a living. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the first thing out of our mouth when we meet them. We can look for other areas of common interest and belief FIRST and build a genuine, caring friendship EVEN IF THERE ARE THINGS WE DISAGREE ON AT THE MOMENT.
Now, this article has action steps. Beyond just thinking and responding, I want you to prayerfully consider taking one of the following concrete actions.
For my straight Christian readers, please consider doing one of the following:
1) Read the book Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community by Andrew Marin.
2) Invite an LGBT friend to tell you about their life experiences: how and when they understood their identity, how they have been treated by others, how they came to live in the lifestyle they have chosen. LISTEN ONLY. Respect their privacy if they choose not to share with you.
3) If you don’t have an LGBT friend, ask yourself why not. Think of something you could do to build a bridge of community and caring with an LGBT acquaintance or a former friend who has come out.
4) If you have the opportunity, consider seeing the documentary film Seventh-Gay Adventists, which tells the story of several LGBT Adventists and how they reconciled their sexual and spiritual identities.
4) Prayerfully ask God to help you see his LGBT children through his eyes.
When we listen to their stories, we may not agree with the conclusions they all reached, but we should listen with open hearts. They may be the stories of someone sitting next to us in church. They may even be the stories of our children.
For my lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender readers, please consider doing one of the following:
1) Consider telling part of your story to a straight Christian friend. I truly believe that a lot of prejudice stems from ignorance. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.” If you’re not comfortable sharing your story with someone in person, consider sharing anonymously in the comments section below.
2) If you grew up in the church but have left it, or are interested in the church but feel barred from it, please know that no matter what any PERSON has said to you, Jesus loves you JUST AS YOU ARE. And he will NEVER reject you when you seek him. Also, please know that, slowly, the church is creating space for you. Please visit the websites of these different ministries to see if one of them might meet your spiritual needs.
http://www.knowhislove.com/
http://gladventist.org/
http://sdakinship.org/
Let me be clear: we aren't here to persuade each other. We are here to LISTEN and to grow in understanding.
If we understand each other, we all win.
Please listen respectfully and honor each person's experience, even if you disagree. Perhaps thank them for daring to share this sliver of their soul on this corner of the Internet?
Asking honest, respectful questions is always a good thing.
These are ways we can make God's love visible. Right here, right now.
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Thank you for the courageous call to not just say something about it, or impress value judgments, Kendra, but the call to ACTION. In some sense we seem to fail to do this with the difficult issues (speaking as the broadest iteration of the body of Christ) like abortion. Instead of marching, screaming, hating, or throwing blood in peoples faces, we 200 million American Christian families, if we stood up, our 35 million orphans would have family.
It is not enough to believe; you must act.
It is not enough to act: you must love.
it is enough to love, for love inspires belief, and belief, action.
If we understand each other, we all win.
Please listen respectfully and honor each person's experience, even if you disagree. Perhaps thank them for daring to share this sliver of their soul on this corner of the Internet?
Asking honest, respectful questions is always a good thing.
These are ways we can make God's love visible. Right here, right now.
We could easily deal with having to perform marriages we disagree with simply by not performing marriages. Many SDAs in Australia are not married in church anyway, so not a huge problem. We could easily include a blessing in the church service just as we do with the dedication of babies, etc. There is in fact no reason, legally or theologically, why we could not hold a separate service as we sometimes do for ordinations and baptism.
No governement that is even vaguely democratic will interfere with church membership or ordination. AFAIK, China is the only country today that controls ordination and membership.
The local church is free to do as it will. It can, and does, accept or reject people on any or no basis. No law will change that. I think we still face an uphill battle when it comes to getting people to see a difference between accepting sinners and accepting sin, but that is unaffected by any legislation.
If this debate leads to the church considering how it treats people, a serious discussion of marriage - what it is, what we want it to be, and how we practically support marriages - and also, ideally, a discussion of religious liberty and on what basis we take part in political/social life, then I think it will be worthwhile. I am not really hopeful on any of those issues short-term.
One observation someone made elsewhere on another topic - that we are not having an 'honest' discussion in the sense of wanting to understand various points of views and concerns and then work together on arriving at the best outcome, but rather it is about 'winning' with our arguments at all costs - also applies to this debate. In fact, it seems to apply to most dsicsussion both in society and in the church. I don't see us solving any of our problems while we continue to do this. I hope that fora like this do help, even thought the evidence seems to be against it.
What about SDA faculty and students? Can they discriminate with faculty but not with students? Do they ask each potential teacher or student about her orientation?
What about recognized legal same sex marriages: will they be recognized by the church? Can they refuse to accept as trasfer members? Can the church dismember a young person when that individual discovers his orientation? Is there such a history of church action in these cases? Has any member been excommunicated because of sexual orientation? Will the church have a "Big Brother" committee to determine such cases?
Membership decisions are always made at the local church level. This means that the local congregation in business session will always have final say over who will be accepted into membership by baptism, transfer or profession of faith. Similarly, a vote of the church body is always necessary to censure or disfellowship existing church members. Thus, I imagine implementation could (and probably already does) vary widely depending on the views of the local congregation.
I believe you are being preferential towards Homosexuals and you are kind of giving them a pass into adventism. I believe before a person is baptised they are made to vow now to be involved with harmful grugs, both in intake and distribution. There are some things that should be renounced prior to membership. Your definition of a "safe place" leaves a lot to be desired it seems you are insinuating a place where people can practice sin without reproof. Reproof is also a biblical principle and to ignore that is to be unbalanced.
I admit and concede the fact that many Adventists and christians are unloving in their reproof and correction towards LGBT but to advocate acceptance of the lifestyle in whatever form is unacceptable. I believe we can be tactful and each approach would be different from each Lgbt individual. But to equate a Barney the dinosaur kind of love with the love of Christ is wrong.
I believe Seventh Gay adventist is not a balanced take on the issue and subtely suggests that homosexual behavior should be compatible with Adventism. It also denies the biblical concept of victory over sin. I would have loved to see a story of how one got the victory over the practice.
It is good to talk, share ideas. listen to each others stories etc. but how do we move on from here? We do not want a scenario where we are talking about this for the next hundred years or until Christ comes at some point paiful decision will have to be made so that we can move on.
To be totally honest, I am very confused about the whole issue of homosexuality and the Bible. Part of the reason for my confusion is because, after some research, it is clear that there really are no stories of people being 'cured' of homosexuality. A leading proponent of the 'curing model' (sorry I can't remember his name), has recently come out and apologised for his earlier position, which he now admits upon further research was wrong.
Re homosexuality, even assuming the 'act' is a sin, I would like to here from Tapiwa (or anyone who shares his views) whether he agrees that there is no sin per se in a homosexual orientation, which is just the 'temptation' towards a homosexual act. For example, would Tapiwa have any problems with a person with homosexual orientation, but who was celibate, from being active in the Church? I do know people on the 'other side' will castigate me for even saying this, but I am just trying to enter a dialogue and see where the limits of Tapiwa's prejudice might go.
P.S. My understanding is that the OT does not prohibit Lesbianism - go figure.
The stories in the Bible are not so much about overcoming, but of walking with God in an extended experience of progressive transformation. Too often we measure a person's spiritual status by some external measure and conclude that anything less than total completion according to our standard of measure is failure. Such an attitude reveals not the failure of the one being measured, but how poorly the one doing the measuring knows God and His power to save.
The Gospel is not about sins, but redemption from sin. In Hebrews, Paul declares that God is able to "save unto the uttermost all who come to Him by faith." How inclusive is "all?" How far is "the uttermost?"
I am assuming even Tapiwa would have no problems with an openly homosexual person from merely attending church, given it is meant to be a hospital for sinners, not a place for the righteous (which none of us are anyway)? For example, I know there are SDA churches who allow convicted paedophiles to attend church services (albeit under close supervision).
Finally, I would like to know if Tapiwa is just as strong on other sexual sins, including adultery, pre-marital sex, polygamy and the most common sexual sin these days - divorce. We seem to go pretty easy on divorce these days, at the same time we are ready to stone the young fornicator or the homosexual. Perhaps just a little hypocricy, given divorce is the sexual sin of choice for those middle age churchman in power?
I do normally get castigate for my 'middle' approach comments, which both 'sides' of debates do not appreciate. However, I guess it is good if at least someone asks these questions and put them out there.
Thanks for sharing your concerns. Nowhere in the article do I state that the church should baptize or accept into membership anyone practicing an active homosexual lifestyle if the church believes that it is sinful.
However, ALL PEOPLE should be welcome to attend and participate church for the purpose of developing a relationship with Jesus. Period. I hold to that strongly, and that goes for anyone involved in any type of sin, whether homosexual, heterosexual, or non-sexual sin.
I'm curious what you mean by "getting victory" over this type of sin. There really are, as far as I know, no examples of people who have been converted from a homosexual to heterosexual orientation. Change therapy has a terrible track record, even among people who really seriously want to be "converted."
There are a number of people who have been involved in an active homosexual lifestyle who have chosen to become celibate; the first two links I provided for LGBT readers do in fact advocate this approach quite strongly.
However, as I stated in the article, if this is the first thing with which we approach the LGBT community, we may set up unnecessary barriers to meeting Christ. We must first help them meet the Christ who loves them (as he loves all of us), who died for their sins (as he died for all of ours) and then let HIM do the work of convicting their hearts (as he must convict all of ours).
If you have time, please take a moment to go back to Part II of this series and read the personal story of Tim, who grew up Adventist and now is an atheist. The way he was treated in the church because of his sexual orientation is what pushed him away from Christ. A little empathy and compassion go a long way, and we don't need to compromise our principles to empathize with the difficult life situation in which gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people find themselves.
WOW you said "but I am just trying to enter a dialogue and see where the limits of Tapiwa's prejudice might go."
Limits of my prejudice???!!!! That statement in itself is prejudicial I'm sure you can find better words to express yourself but for the sake of dialogue let me expound on the "limits of my prejudice"
The bible makes it clear that temptation is not sin but it is the cherishing and or acting out the temptation that becomes the sin. Would I have problems with someone who was a homosexual celibate? It would depend on the individual. If there are genuinely seeeking the grace of God which teaches us to deny all ungodliness then I have no qualms. however if the person makes it known that this is a form of silent protest I would start to get uncomfortable or they make it known that they see nothing wrong with the practice then I would have issues.
I am as strong on other sins as I am on homosexuality? Certainly, we need to guard against inconsistency and preferentialism (my word). The difference, you would agree, is that you rarely find adulterers projecting adultery as compatible with christianity. there is no "adventist kinship" for those who engage in pre marital-sex. it is interesting to note however that in my experience it is those who are proponents of homosexuality who are actually soft on divorce, adultery etc.
"it is those who are proponents of homosexuality who are actually soft on divorce, adultery etc..."
Interesting, the use of "proponents"....but I won't touch that; it stands on its own "merits", as well the "et cetera"...
But I will observe that many are they that would bar the church doors and refuse entry to others, on any basis.
Borders on blasphemy to so speak-and act-for God, when his royal command upon which hung all law and prophets, called for something else-something we the church have yet to embrace.
And I will not ask TM if he believes Sam has gender-confusion issues (because, apparently, he is soft on adultery...;~)
If the church wants to be involved in serious discussions in this area, perhaps it would not hurt for it to educate its members - and particualrly its clergy and administrators - on some basic consepts and terminology most people involved take for granted. Otherwise we come across somewhat like hillbillies at the opera. No offense to either hillbillies or opera goers intended - my experience is that both groups include some fine human beings, but do not necessarily mix well. The comparison works just as well the other way around. Our ignorance is largely self-chosen - it isn't that hard to find good, basic introductions to the whole issue of sex, gender and sexuality on the web - so we are really without excuse.
BTW Timo, my frustration is not personal - it extends so much more widely than just you or just this issue.
According to your standard, those who are attracted to the same sex have NO opportunity to companionably date, express attraction to, be involved in any level of physical relationship with someone to whom they are attracted. Realistically, if someone is expected to adhere to that standard, it seems to me that that does, indeed, call for a whole separate level of social support such as Kinship, GLADventist, and Know His Love, and other LGBT ministries provide.
To be frank, I had to walk away from the keyboard in order to avoid going out in a textual blaze of glory here. I know I'm supposed to say something about respecting your perspective or whatever, yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda, but I don't -- I actually think you're rather dull -- and I don't feel like being dishonest about that. In any case, I feel compelled to address a couple things:
The bible makes it clear that temptation is not sin but it is the cherishing and or acting out the temptation that becomes the sin. Would I have problems with someone who was a homosexual celibate? It would depend on the individual. If there are genuinely seeeking the grace of God which teaches us to deny all ungodliness then I have no qualms. however if the person makes it known that this is a form of silent protest I would start to get uncomfortable or they make it known that they see nothing wrong with the practice then I would have issues.
First of all, human sexuality and companionship aren't "temptations." They're fundamental dimensions of our very humanity. One isn't "tempted" to fall in love, or "tempted" to express his/her love sexually, or "tempted" to form long-lasting mutual romantic relationships. Temptation is what happens when you tear open a box of Godiva chocolates and, after enjoying the United States Recommended Daily Allowance of sugars and saturated fats, you find yourself compelled to have one more. Temptation is "oh gosh, I know I just had 2 chocolates, but man, I really wanted to try that white chocolate truffle. Look at it, sitting there, all silky and delicious. Oh geeze, oh gosh I wish I could have just one more. I don't want to spoil dinner, but oh Heavens to Betsy one more won't hurt, will it?" That's temptation. Do you see the distinction? If you need further clarification, please let me know and I will be overwhelmingly thrilled to provide you with additional examples. I get so sick of hearing Christians talk about human sexuality as a simple temptation. It's a first century notion based on a first century book repeated ad nauseam by first century minds. That's not an effort to be nasty on my part -- that's cold hard fact. If that bothers anybody, there's an easy solution: start thinking for yourself.
Secondly and equally infuriating is the supposition that homosexuals should live lives in pious celibacy. This is where stupid people holding the stupid idea that sexuality is a temptation is very problematic. It's reasonable to ask somebody to deny temptation and put the box of chocolates back in the cupboard. It's laughable -- laugh out loud funny, actually -- to ask somebody to deny a fundamental dimension of their beings simply because you think it pleases an invisible space giant. I fail to understand how an ostensibly reasonable, functioning human being can hold such a belief. In fact, it would please -me- if those who held such beliefs would themselves lead celibate lives so as to avoid procreating.
One is fair to ask of someone, the other is not.
That's exactly right. Couldn't've said it better.
Once again, you've forced us to thoughtfuly consider difficult issues that challenge our prejudices and force us to discover deeper dimensions of the God's character. Thank you.
While Chaplain Matthews obviously has a long history of service as a military chaplain, there appears to be some contradictory information about requirements placed upon military chaplains. Two with whom I have had conversations in the past year (both Army and at two different installations) each described to me having received a policy directive from the Secretary of Defense declaring that they were prohibited from refusing to may same-sex couples because it was considered an act of overt discrimination which could result in them facing a court martial.
The state cannot legitimately sanction unions that God never created. The state may attempt to do so, but it is only a charade. The state can no more legitimately call two men married than it can call a man and a fly married. The state has never been delegated more power by God (see Rom. 13) than to declare a man and a woman married.
I appreciate your perspective. Thankfully, us homosexuals aren't overly concerned with what you want to call it -- we're mostly only concerned with what the State calls it. Please continue to feel free to call same-sex marriage whatever you'd like.
If I can help you decide on what you'd like to call us, please let me know and I'd be happy to assist. "Hababashoo" has a nice ring to it. "Navitacharary" kinda rolls off the tongue, don't you think? "Two men in mumphakazoolity" is rather entertaining. Just throwing a few ideas out there. Take care.
You use the term LGBT in your article, and there are similarities in how each of these groups is viewed by conservative Christians. However, what do you think of their differences as relates to same-sex marriage and their relationship with the church? It seems like there may be different issues surrounding gays and lesbians versus transgender individuals, for example.
I do not know what the church's general stance on this is (there is not an official statement on this like there is on homosexuality), but I do know of at least one case where the local church allowed an individual to transition and remain a member in good and regular standing under the condition of future celibacy. The individual was expected to refrain from marriage even after legally eligible.
If a biologically male transwoman is attracted to men, pre-transition she would not be eligible to marry a man due to current restrictions on same-sex marriage.
Post-transition, upon meeting whatever the state's criteria are for legally changing sex, she WOULD legally be eligible to marry a man.
Theoretically there is always some aspect of same-sex relationship involved, both pre- and post-transition:
If involved in a relationship with a man pre-transition, they are biologically the same sex.
If involved with a woman pre-transition, they are mentally the same gender.
If involved with a woman post-transition, they are mentally and legally the same sex.
If involved with a man post-transition, they are still genetically (and biologically, to some degree) the same sex.
So that's pretty much a no-win all around. I don't know WHAT the church wants to do with that.
As I stated, the church in the situation I am aware of resolved it by making clear its expectation of continued celibacy, but it does seem a pretty harsh standard to be cut off from all possibility of ANY committed relationship with ANYBODY, EVER because you were born with your gender identity not matching your body parts.
On the other hand, an individual could be biologically male, mentally female, and attracted to women. This would be "straight" pre-transition, but "gay" post-transition.
All of which is to say that gender identity and sexual orientation are really two separate issues, and you are right that it's not quite fair to conflate them with the relatively straightforward issues faced by gays and lesbians -- except that they ALL do run afoul of our rigid sense of the gender binary.
I didn’t even know what it meant to be gay as a kid but what I did know is that there was something very different about me. I can’t tell you specifically why, because I don’t remember, but I knew that whatever it was that was different about me was not “okay.” I knew to never talk to anybody about it. So my only option when I was ten years old was to talk to God. Everyday I would beg him to please make me different than I was. I begged him to please just make me like everyone else. After praying variations of the same prayer for six years with no results, I concluded that one of two things must be true: A) there was no God, or 2) if there was a God, he was so evil for making a kid struggle the way I had struggled, with no results, that I wanted nothing to do with him. At the time God and the church were one in my eyes, so I walked away.
I dated girls throughout the Academy. I was in a three and a half year relationship with a girl post high school but still nothing changed. I did not come out to my parents or even pursue a relationship of any sort with another man until I was 22. My life did not get better just because I had come out. I had spent so much of my life lying about who I was; it had become a way of surviving in what I considered to be a very evil world. Ironically, what I perceived as evil was The Church, Christianity, the Bible, and God.
I eventually began my search for God again, in spite of my experience growing up in Berrien Springs and at Andrews. I get how and why people struggle with this issue. I don’t think anyone understands it better than myself, except maybe my family. Without needing to question, it’s easy to accept what one is told the Bible says, especially when this has become such a divisive issue outside of the church. In authentically questioning one thing, many other things can come into question and that can be very scary.
What I keep going back to is Jesus and his message and those who followed him. Those that I saw as “leading” the church while I was struggling and to this day, do not reflect the Jesus that I see in the Bible whatsoever, with a few exceptions. And by leading I mean any person of authority, friend’s parents, Sabbath school leaders, teachers, pastors, etc. Where the church stands on this issue doesn’t really impact me now. I don’t have a desire to be a part of any faith community that doesn’t love everyone without judgment, even when we differ. Often it is in those perceived differences that we experience God at the deepest level and that I welcome, but it’s a two way street.
Same boat, almost to the letter, minus the re-finding faith thing, in which I have precisely no interest. Glad to have another one of us around here.
Some people do get what you are saying. The sad fact is that you don't have to be gay to discover you are different and therefore 'not OK', or that God does not answer your prayers to change you. I guess I am at a similar place to Todd, in that I don't expect church members to understand or even care why or how I am different. Life works best if they ignore me, and I get on with life without expecting too much from the church. I do sometimes wonder why we see so little genuine Christianity in a church full of good people with good intenetions who seem genuinely to want to eb good Christians, but some questions are best handeled by putting them aside. While I can't say I understand why God doesn't answer prayers, I do believe if he chooses not to change someone that he also chooses not to hold them not changing against them. Sometimes I envy people like Tim who can simply walk away. I like to imagine that that makes life much easier, but maybe it doesn't. But then I don't understand why I continue to pray that Tim and people like him will find God - or be found by Him. Some invisible space giants are worth getting to know, even if they do keep questionable company (like me :) ).
Christianity has to continually revise, reinterpret and rationalize its own belief structure in order to avoid becoming irrelevant in the modern world, and that very much includes the SDA church. Radio-carbon dating? "Oh, well everybody knows God didn't literally mean seven days." Evolutionary theory? "Oh, well like... God didn't mean he literally created a guy named Adam. It's a metaphor for the fall of man, you know?" Study after study after study after study after study after study demonstrating precisely zero empirical evidence in support of prayer? "Oh, well duh, you have to have faith, not test God with science," or alternately, "Well it doesn't matter what science says, I know prayer works because I've prayed before and God's answered my prayers." And when God doesn't answer prayers? "[insert a hundred or so excuses here, up to and including 'ours isn't to know why sometimes']." Zero empirical evidence of a Biblical flood? "Naw, I mean.. it wasn't literally a flood that covered the world.. it just meant Noah's 'world,' you know, like.. his part of the 'world' and stuff. Besides, it's really just a metaphor anyway." The unnecessary pain/suffering problem set? "Oh well like.. I mean God believes in free will, so he doesn't interfere." What about unnecessary pain/suffering when the sufferer is desperately praying for intervention? "Naw man, seriously, free will and stuff. It's chill dude, it's like... freedom and stuff. He cares but like he doesn't want to interfere you know what I'm saying, you know what I mean man?" Contradictory Biblical passages? Either "naw man, you're not interpreting it correctly" or "well like, the Bible was inspired by God, but written by fallible men, you know what I mean man?"
To drive my point home, I read a news article last year that I never could quite shake.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/03/us-drowning-manure-idUSTRE7024GV20110103
A 4 year old boy, while chasing his dog, drowned in pig excrement. Now when people drown, it's actually a pretty slow thing -- we're all more comfortable imagining it's similar to what we see in made-for-TV movies where people just sort of go wide-eyed, jerk a few times and stop moving. It's actually a rather protracted, horrific thing in which people eventually inhale (reflexively -- they can't help it) but don't die right away. Instead, the foreign material in the lungs is just incredibly painful. Very quickly, bronchospasm sets in, in which the body in an effort to protect itself seals off the trachea. This is, ironically given that it's a protective measure, generally irreversible without medical intervention (an emergency tracheostomy). But despite this, in a desperate effort to "suck" air into the lungs, the drowning person ends up swallowing whatever it is in which they're drowning, since the esophagus remains open. Thus, the boy in this case, after inhaling pig excrement and going into bronchospasm, would have swallowed the pig excrement as well in great gulps which would have almost immediately led to gagging and vomiting. So this boy died vomiting, fully conscious, in more terror and agony than any of us here are capable of comprehending even in part. Not a soul was around -- God could have intervened without a single soul knowing -- even the boy, if he'd simply say, sealed the hole in the fence through which he passed -- and yet God chose not to do that. God watched while this boy drowned vomiting pig excrement, alone and in mind-bending pain and terrified. God did nothing.
Go ahead and try to rationalize that one to fit with the omni-benevolent invisible space giant that you think you know. I defy you -- not Kevin, explicitly, but any one of you. Go for it. I'll wait.
And now, as much as I love Kendra's series here and very much appreciate her thinking on the topic, it's really, at the end of the day, just more of the same reinterpretation of existing doctrine. It turns out sexual orientation is an innate human trait, at least in part founded in our physiological makeup? "Oh, well like.. homosexuals aren't bad people, God loves everyone, you know? We just have to pray for them and who really knows what God will do, you know?" So... you know, I appreciate the sentiment -- pray if you'd like, even though we both know you're wasting your time. As much as I wanted to believe in that omni-benevolent space giant, I can't, and I don't. As much as I believe Jesus was a wonderful human being, and as much as I'd have liked to have met him, he died 2,000 years ago, and dead he remains (though his teachings obviously live on).
In the meantime, my purpose here is to correct misunderstandings where they occur in an effort to help the church do as little damage as possible as it struggles to remain relevant in today's world.
(I am paraphrasing Jurgen Moltmann's argument from The Crucified God).
Furthermore, perhaps God is indeed impotent for some reason (perhaps free choice restrains him). Perhaps as images of God we are His agents on this world. Thus, when bad things happen, they happen because we let them. When prayers are answered, it is because we answer them for someone else. We are God's hands in this world! Gideon is the biblical example.
(I am paraphraising Dorothee Soelle).
Finally, in wars, bad things happen to innocent victims - that is the nature of war. We see it every time we switch on the TV. Even in 'just wars', like the defeat of the Nazis, numerous innocents died, including countless German women and children. However, does that mean the war was not justified, or that say the world would have been better off if America had not entered the war - hardly. Job's innocent children are the biblical example.
God may well be a delusion, but for me, it is a delusion worth having. Science can tell us why we have cancer and how we are going to die a horrible, drawn-out death, but it can't give us any hope. If we don't have hope, then what is the point of living? On that basis, I make a conscious decision to believe in man who said he was God, who died and who supposedly rose from the God - even though I can't prove it.
(Finally, I am paraphraising Karen Armstrong in the History of God. Her story especially might interest you, if you are not already aware of it).
Again, I am not trying to convince you - just sharing how I can look at myself in the mirror in the mornings without wanting to top myself because of the cruelties of the world.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything, either, but.. I cited this sentence of yours because it sums up our differences. I truly understand the comfort that comes with believing in God -- I had it and cherished it for a long time. But it wasn't sufficient for me -- I won't settle for anything less than the truth, whatever the truth may be.
"when bad things happen, they happen because we let them."
How's that for blaming the victim? You have cancer because you let it happen; Your baby got sick and died because "we let them."
It's really all our fault when bad things happen.
Better yet: don't blame yourself; and especially don't blame God, because if you don't believe in the God described in the Bible, you won't be blaming Him.
It is so relieving to stop asking "why" and accept that this is life and make the most of it. Change what we can, accept what we can't change, and try to gain wisdom to know the difference. As we grow and mature we will cease to worry over what can't be changed. Asking God "why"? and seeking answers is the most futile of all exercises. If Christians truly believed that God was omnipotent and omniscient, they would not be asking at all. They cannot allow themselves to admit they doubt. Those of us who used to doubt, no longer doubt.
Some of God's closest friends questioned him. David questioned repeatedly in the Psalms. I love the book of Job because Job brutally questions God, expresses anger, confronts God with his unfairness. In the end, he doesn't get all his questions answered, but he DOES get a face-to-face encounter with God. And God says that Job spoke rightly because Job was speaking TO him, while the theologians who spoke platitudes ABOUT him were wrong. Dead wrong.
God wants more than anything to be in relationship with us, and his heart is big enough to handle our anger, and our confusion, and our doubts. He understands, and he cares enough to let us know he's there for us, even if he can't explain everything just the way we'd like right now.
It's okay to doubt, as long as we don't allow our doubts to disconnect us.
Elaine, you are grossly oversimplifying the argument of Dorothee Soelle. I also feel you have somewhat misrepresented me. Soelle said, as best summing up her view:
"God has no hands except from our hands."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_Sölle
So re cancer, if you have a sick baby and it died because say you have a government voted by people who refuse to allow universal health care, then yes, you and your fellow countrymen may be more to blame than God. When Gideon complained to God as to why there were no miracles and that the people of Israel had been in slavery, God replied 'Am I not sending you'. Sometimes random innocents do suffer, but often we human beings do cause it or don't do enought to stop it - and yet we blame God!
Furthermore, to be fair, I think you were cherry picking what I was saying. There are other theodicies, such as the free will defence, or the cosmic battle view, that do address innocents suffering. When Job's innocent family died, presumably they were 'collaterial damage' in the war between God and Satan. When the Tower of Silas killed those people, Jesus made clear they were not sinners - just innocent people living in a sinful world.
Maybe that is my problem - I ask the hard questions from the inside. I guess I start with God's existence because I believe he has been active in my life, and I have not only seen him work but heard him as well. Now, the fact that I have a mental health plan may explain some of that, but to me God is real and all else follows. And I do have trouble at times reconciling what I have seen and heard with what the church teaches. In the end, we all have to make our choices. I choose to believe in God, and I believe he wants me in this church. At times (and this is one of them) I have really wanted to walk away. But I don't believe I can choose to believe in God and then pretend he doesn't exist. Yes, believing in the goodness of God is at times incredibly difficult, but I suspect the idea of a God who is there to protect us and shield us from all harm is more a projection of our own desire than anything God has promised. The story of Jesus should warn us against assuming any story will have a happy ending, or that any part will be happy. I used to believe that if you did the right thing, God would make sure nothing bad would happen to you. Life taught me otherwise. To paraphrase Stephen Ferguson, believing in God helps me face life without pretending it is other than it is. Which is why I get frustrated when the church wants me to ignore reality and believe what it says. It is also why I choose to at times ignore what it says. Same-sex marriage is one area where I believe a lot of refusing to face reality goes on. It's certainly not the only area, but one that is very topical right now. I think many of our answers are simply shallow efforts to make ourselves feel better and pretend we know more than we do. The question of the goodness of God and how he can allow all the suffering in the world is one issue to which I don't have an answer. I prefer to remain silent rather than give some weak answer that doesn't even convince me.
You've made several comments in which you suggest you're educated in the social sciences, which is my area as well. You know as well as I do that, then, that when you say you've "seen him work [and] heard him as well," it isn't of much evidentiary value, to put it mildly. For instance, in a laboratory setting, through nothing more than conversation alone, we can convince approximately 60% of subjects to not only believe in a false memory, but to describe the false event in vivid visual and emotional detail and expand on it beyond what the researcher originally described. By stimulating specific regions of the medial and mesial temporal lobes, the posterior right superior temporal gyrus, et al., we can specifically induce A) an out of body experience, B) the preception of a benevolent presence, C) a mirror image hallucination in which the subject sees his/her own body, or D) the presence of another being directly behind and just off to the side of the subject (out of view). Elsewhere in the temporal lobe, petit mal seizures can induce profound spiritual experiences in which the patient is crying with joy as he/she describes what he/she is feeling, which is inevitably a "closeness to God," and this feeling terminates along with the seizure. Capgras syndrome, a very rare disorder thought to be caused by disintegration of the amgygalae with the rest of the brain, can cause one to believe that friends and family are impostors, identical to the originals but not the same people. On and on it goes -- change blindness, blindsight, the Asch conformity experiments, et al. And don't even get me started on split brain patients. Actually... hell, since I'm on the topic, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFJPtVRlI64
(If you aren't familiar with him, Dr. Ramachandran is one of neuroscientists in the world and an insatiable appetite for research.)
I used to say exactly what you said in your post here, but so have people throughout history. As we learn more and more about ourselves and about the world we inhabit, what was once attributed to some nebulous work of God is replaced by knowledge. People used to attribute the very sun rising and setting to God. We now know differently.
My intent isn't to go on some anti-theistic crusade here, but I just can't help myself when I see something like, to paraphrase, "yeah, I know all these questions are outstanding, but I just believe because I do." Our minds are capable of better than that.
My studies and my experience lead me to reject certain understandings of God as untenable. I can't believe in a God who is merely Santa Claus working 24/7, or in a celestial police-man, even though those seem to be the two main competing paradigms in western thought right now. In some ways my interest in the origin of religious experiences is academic - what interests me in real life is what is helpful for me. So in a sense I believe religion usually comes down to an act of faith. There may or may not be evidence, but I doubt there can be proof. Most of the 'proofs' people give for religion really do require you to believe certain things before they work. I can live with that. If others can't, they are free to make their own decisions. Ask me in 12 months time and I may give you a completely different answer :)
I have read about the brain studies you mention and have a file on the subject. However, I don't see how they negate God. I found them to be in keeping with SDA belief on the nature of the human soul. We don't recognize out-of-body existences and other brain phenomena as spritiual or religious. They are the results of brain chemistry.
We all have to deal with life and God in one way or another. We can pass him off as nonexistent to avoid all the questions and/or become an evangelical atheist and dwell on all the cruelty and wickedness that exists.
Or we can believe that he is who he says he is--good and love, and then seek to defend, look for the positive, other explanations, etc. I have chosen the latter for many reasons, one being it's healthier and it makes more sense to me. I don't have all the answers, but the ones I have chosen work for me. I do like answers, and like the rest of society, churches grow in their knowledge. Truth progresses. There is a good vs. evil war, and a good God makes the evil all very temporary and will not be remembered in a new world. Perhaps the out-of-body experiences are merely God's way of helping those who need an escape and can't cope with the dying experience. That doesn't mean it is more than a biochemical reaction. God works through his laws and methods having made the human body. It may be that a child dying is more fortunate than those of us who live to reject God. The child's next moment will be resurrection for he knows no passing of time.
If it is comforting for some to ignore the cruelty and wickedness in the Bible, some of which God ordered and focus on the love, mostly found in the NT. However it is rationalized it may work for them but trying to explain to others the reasoning can't always be bought.
Others have long ago stopped questioning "why" and focus on enjoying all the wonderful and beautiful experiences in life with serenity and peace with no reason to question.
If there should be questions, it would be: "Why were we so fortunate to have been given life here and now?" Life happens regardless of one's beliefs; what is believed affects the attitude. Not expecting either hell or heaven is left for others; it realy doesn't matter after all as we know nothing about life after death.
I genuinely appreciate your thinking, for what it's worth -- I usually say that in a perfunctory effort to start out positive, but in this case, I actually mean it. ;) Yours strikes me, as much as I'm in any position to discern such things, as more grounded thinking than most are willing to engage in.
But that said, we're always going to disagree on some fundamentals. Don't take it personally.
We all have to deal with life and God in one way or another. We can pass him off as nonexistent to avoid all the questions and/or become an evangelical atheist and dwell on all the cruelty and wickedness that exists.
We all have to deal with life, whatever we might interpret that to mean, but we don't have to all deal with God for the same reasons we don't all have to deal with the Tooth Fairy. I believed, once upon a time, because I was indoctrinated to believe -- in my adult life, I see no evidence for any God and as such neither believe nor have to deal with Him/Her/It.
Your second point is a common misconception that many religious people have with respect to atheists, and to be perfectly honest, it's one that I myself held when -I- believed as you do now. I don't dwell on life's cruelty and human wickedness -- quite the contrary. I firmly believe in the insurmountable power of love, kindness, compassion, patience, forgiveness, et al., just as you do. There difference, as far as I've been able to tell in my life, is that whereas many religious people prefer to outright ignore these things, I face them head-on. I don't rationalize their occurrence. All things being equal, I very much prefer to dwell on the better things in life, just as you do.
Or we can believe that he is who he says he is--good and love, and then seek to defend, look for the positive, other explanations, etc. I have chosen the latter for many reasons, one being it's healthier and it makes more sense to me.
I don't look down on you for your position. If it works for you, great. But I don't agree with your rationale. I disagree that -any- delusion, which I believe religiosity to be, is "healthier" than basing one's beliefs on observable evidence. More comforting, certainly, but comfort doesn't equate to health in my book. The world around us makes more sense to me -- if belief in an old book and invisible deity makes more sense to you, that's fine. We'll agree to disagree.
Perhaps the out-of-body experiences are merely God's way of helping those who need an escape and can't cope with the dying experience. That doesn't mean it is more than a biochemical reaction.
I apologize for not being more clear -- that it's merely a biochemical reaction was precisely my point. There's no need to default to some mystical, spiritual experience to explain the phenomena. We may not understand precisely how it works, but there's obviously a physiological explanation that requires no belief in spirits / souls / etc.
God works through his laws and methods having made the human body. It may be that a child dying is more fortunate than those of us who live to reject God. The child's next moment will be resurrection for he knows no passing of time.
Well, hell, if what's in store for people like me is worse than dying while fully conscious and vomiting pig poop while unable to breathe and in abject terror, capable only of screaming in my head while thrashing about as my life slips away from me (for all eternity?), then I respectfully propose you reconsider your notions of a "loving" or "merciful" God. I've got quite a temper myself, but I wouldn't wish that on my very worst enemies. One would hope an omni-benevolent God would be better than I am in that respect, and "well, I gave you a whole buncha chances, buddy," doesn't work for me.
And to be clear, that you believe the kid's next moment will be some sort of ressurection doesn't address the question of why God didn't intervene in the first place when he very clearly could have without a single soul knowing, including the boy himself.
You assume that the child died like that, but not experiencing it yourself you don't know. I believe God does intervene as I said before. (Most people don't die that way anyway) . Having just read of one who experienced drowning and came back, it was nothing like you described.
Actually, as some religions do, we focus on the physical sufferings of Christ's death, we miss the whole point--many humans have gone through worse. Though it was said by our founder, it is also inferred in the Bible (the second death of Revelation), Christ suffered the death of everyone in some dimension; also he did not see that he would be resurrected at that moment. This takes very deep study, and willingness to know and appreciate the spiritual. It is an experience just as when certain prayers are answered; but if unwilling to consider such things and reject God, then we commit the only "unpardonable sin" of rejecting God's spirit. Of course it is unpardonable because we don't want it forgiven. But that can be turned around with one cry of the heart.
You said: "The world around us makes more sense to me --" [than the "old book"]. Of course, and there is a lot of beauty and love in it that wouldn't exist without a Force or God of goodness. Maybe it's not so much, why evil, as why so much good on this planet. Where did that come from giving the selfish nature of humans? To me there is very much a polarization of good and evil in the world. Some very "religious" people can be evil; and others who are not religious can do a great deal of good and be on God's side in the controversy. By the way, when you refer to yourself in the past as believing, I don't think this ever represented a mature spiritual relationship, so you really don't have a credible comparison. I know, life is a journey, and I am sure I have a good many years on you. I have studied science, phyics, quantum mechanics enough to know them from a layperson's perspective; I have quite a library of books on them. But life is more than science--the spiritual is way beyond it, and we really know only a small particle about our universe and its beginnings.
You assume that the child died like that, but not experiencing it yourself you don't know.
Well, it's possible that the kid died peacefully by drowning in a partially frozen pond of pig excrement while fully conscious, but if I were a betting man, that's not where I'd put my money.
By the way, when you refer to yourself in the past as believing, I don't think this ever represented a mature spiritual relationship, so you really don't have a credible comparison.
Welp, turns out you and I are finished and have nothing else to talk about. :) Pity. Don't bother responding -- I'll neither reply nor read any of your posts from here on out. Good luck and godspeed, ma'am.
Kendra,
Your wrote:
"The reason I'm an Adventist (as opposed to some other brand of Christian, or a Buddhist, or an atheist) is because I believe that God is love (1 John 4:16), and the Adventist belief structure is the one I've found that best sums up and reveals that love."
Unless you grew up in a Buddhist or atheist home, this is likely not quite true. Most Adventists; even most Christians, are of the same religious belief solely because of their heritage: they grew up in a Christian home and were introduced to their parents' religious belief long before school age.
Had you been brought up in a Buddhist or Muslim home you would have been taught all the beliefs, rituals, special holy days and more and only had you later been converted to Christianty would you even have been willing to hear about Adventism.
So many take for granted their heritage, and yet it is absolutely essential to their particular beliefs. When one grows up in a nation where Christianity is the most commonly accepted religion, there is no difficulty in accepting one of the many different denominations. But if one is first a Muslim, by the time of adulthood it is very unlikely that he will ever change. The same can be said for Christians--unless they become atheists. Gratitude should go to one's parents and family heritage for her beliefs.
For those who have left both Adventism and any organized religion, it is as major a step as converting from Christianity to Islam or vice versa.
Calling sin "an experiment" and that God is not in control of this world is to blame humanity for the horrible conditions. But did the devil cause these? Or did God turn this world over to the devil for his playground? Either way, God is responsible for the conditions under which we now live.
Having heard this cliche all my life: "Our only hope for ending such tragedies is to do whatever we can to hasten Jesus' soon return" is to again, blame people and that we are in control of the timing of Christ's return. What can we do to hasten His return? This is contradictory to His own statement: "No man knows the day or hour." When did Christ ever say that it is up to us to hasten His return? What were we given to do to ensure that soon return? Religion gives the gift that keeps on giving: guilt.
I can only say that I don't see things from such a bleak and blame- or guilt-ridden perspective as you do. I see things from a relational perspective that leaves me overwhelmed with the beauty of God's love in all things at all times.
I see a God who loves his creations so much that he gave us free choice to love him or not love him, to obey him or not obey him -- and when Lucifer used creativity and free choice to defy him, didn't just destroy him peremptorily but gave him a place to demonstrate whether or not his way of running things would, indeed, be superior. He gave humans a chance to opt in or opt out of the experiment. We chose to opt in.
But even so, he didn't leave us alone in our defiance. He sacrificed himself so we could have a way out of the experiment, back to the original goodness and love he intended for us. He walked with us at many times and in various ways, and finally face to face in the flesh to show us the truth of the love that we can have if we only choose it (Hebrews 1:1-3).
You're absolutely right that no one knows the day or the hour at which he will return. But we do know that "this Gospel will be preached in all the world" (Matt. 24:14) before the end comes. So by letting people know about the way out, I'm not only sharing the good news of what God can do for them, I'm also helping prepare the way for him to do it sooner. That's not guilt -- that's opportunity!
It's all love -- from beginning to end.
I have studied what critics of the church say; I have investigated other options available to me. In this process, I discovered that, were I to leave the Seventh-day Adventist church, I most likely could not remain a Christian. This is the brand of Christianity that has the most biblical integrity (though it certainly is not flawless!). Atheism does not make sense to me. Were I to leave the Seventh-day Adventist church, I would in fact probably become a Buddhist.
Nonetheless, through my study and investigation, I have found that Adventism is what makes the most sense to me. I am not here out of tradition or cultural inertia. I am here because it is what I have chosen and what I believe, because it is the belief system that best unifies around the central tenet that God is love.
Kendra,
I have chosen as my personal belief that God is love. Not because of any religious persasion but because it is part of having a positive attitude about life, that everyone who know me realizes that is part of my personality; a born optimist.
After researching and studying both Adventism and the history of early Christianity as foundation for a master's thesis, I found that all religions are, and have been a search for god and have invented many different ways to appease and believe their god. To claim any one is superior to another is comparable to a lover claiming that his lover is superior; or a parent who feels that way about her children. There are no tests to show who is "right" in such decisions.
Jack Miles' God: A Biography is a most informative history of man's search for God. Karen Armstrong, one of the best Christian historians, has many excellent books, including The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Religious Tradition; and A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Those are only a very few that have helped in this search.
Early Christians formed the major doctrines: Incarnation; Trinity; human/divine nature of Christ and more, now accepted as doctrines of Christianity including Adventism, were formed by men who took more than 300 years of fighting, arguing, and even excommunicating bishops and taking them back like a yo-yo.
Lastly, neither Jesus nor God ever established a religious institution as all are man-made. I respect all those who have thoroughly investigated all religions and have chosen one. Sadly, the majority of all religious believers have never done so and their choice is not usually based on an education but by default.
The reason I'm an Adventist (as opposed to some other brand of Christian, or a Buddhist, or an atheist) is because I believe that God is love (1 John 4:16), and the Adventist belief structure is the one I've found that best sums up and reveals that love. If you look at Adventist beliefs through that lens (as I do), I think you'll agree that my present series is not at all a re-interpretation, but a natural extension of the belief system. I wrote about this in more detail in my debut column for Adventist Today here: http://www.atoday.org/article/36/columns/perry-kendra/2010/the-heart-of-adventism
I agree with both of you that suffering, particularly the suffering of innocent children, makes it very difficult to believe in a fair and loving God. However, we do have to remember that this world is no longer under the control of that fair and loving God. We are currently in the middle of the "sin experiment." The horrible events that you point out show just how awful life becomes when we (collectively, as a human race) separate ourselves from God. Our only hope for ending such tragedies is to do whatever we can to hasten Jesus' soon return. I wrote more extensively about this topic in a previous column, which you can find here: http://www.atoday.org/article/494/columns/perry-kendra/2010/the-suffering-of-one-child
Finally, I'm wondering if either of you have read C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity or Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ? Those are the two books that helped me make the most rational sense of my faith.
There are still questions I don't have the answers for (radio-carbon dating is one -- I have a couple of theories, but ultimately that's one that I'm saving for eternity -- seriously, God, what's with that?), but the experiential reality of God in my life far outweighs these. And I wrote a bit about how to take the next step of faith with God -- no matter if you're starting from absolute zero -- in this column: http://www.atoday.org/article/767/columns/perry-kendra/2011/the-heart-of-faith
I hope this doesn't come off as arrogant or as though I think I have all the answers. I happen to have written about these issues because they are things I think about as well. I hope that sharing my thoughts is helpful and opens things up for further conversation.
You're the last person that needs to worry about arrogance -- I think a few of us here including myself have a monopoly on that one. ;)
I'll get to reading your other articles you list here shortly, and no, haven't read Lewis or Strobel's faith-related work. Doing so isn't going to do any good for me in terms of faith -- that ship has sailed. To be as gentle about it as possible and without trying to be rude to you or anybody else here, it's sort of like finding out there is no Santa, then having people try to convince you otherwise despite having no evidence of Santa themselves and routinely catching mom and dad putting presents around the tree Christmas after Christmas. You can't re-believe in Santa, just like we can't go back to believing the world is flat or that our health is controlled by the four humors of Hippocratic medicine.
I don't mean to pull us away from the topic of your article, though -- somehow got off on this thing about belief in general, and I hadn't set out to do that. To circle back, yes, your thoughts *are* helpful and interesting in their own right, and particularly in that I think your concept of a way forward for the SDA church with respect to same-sex marriage is 1) as good as any faith-seeking homosexual could hope for, and 2) as rational and reasoned as a faith-based position can possibly be.
I don't want to get off on a huge tangent here, either, but I do just want to briefly point out that I think we might be able to be deluded by our brains into believing in the existence of the invisible space giant, but we CAN'T be deluded by our brains into believing in the existence of the historical figure Jesus. He really lived.
And while he lived, he claimed to be the Son of God, the physical manifestation of the invisible space giant, come into the world to reveal what the invisible space giant is really like.
C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity that, since he made this claim, we cannot accept him as just another moral teacher. “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
And here is an overview of some of the evidence Lee Strobel presents for the resurrection (the book, of course, goes into much greater depth): http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2005/05/The-Resurrection-Of-Jesus-An-Interview-With-Lee-Strobel.aspx
So, the reality of Jesus does leave us with a stark question of faith: to believe or not to believe. And if we accept Jesus, we must accept the rest of the Bible which pointed forward to his birth, death, and resurrection, and which he taught. Including the invisible, omnibenevolent space giant. Who created those spots in our brain to be able to perceive him (at least that's what I believe). :)
With respect to your Lewis citation: I think that's a pretty clear false dichotomy. Lewis suggests that either Jesus was everything he claimed to be, or he was a fool. With all due respect to C.S. Lewis, I would expect any High School student to see the third option: that Jesus was a great man with many wonderful, poignant and enduring ideas about life and humanity, but that for whatever reason, he was deluded into thinking he was something he was not.
What you believe about Jesus and what I believe are almost identical -- he was a great man, truly, perhaps even the greatest man -- but we simply disagree about his extraterrestrial origin. I wish everything he said was true. Unfortunately, I only think most of what he said was true.
You have encapsulated much of what I have been trying to get across on this site for years, my friend.
The historicity of Jesus permits no middle ground when it comes to Him, His beliefs, His teachings, and Who/What He represented.
Tim,
(For what it’s worth, I have essentially agreed with Kendra on this same sex marriage/civil union issue from a civil or “separation of church and state” perspective.)
Your view of Jesus, in my admittedly not sufficiently humble opinion, is a copout. He was, in your view, delusional, right? Well, what brings you to that conclusion? Could it be that He claimed to have existed before Abraham, or that He was God’s Son and was sent by God to save the world, and that whoever believes in Him would live forever?
Dude, let’s be real, if anyone else had ever seriously made those claims, we know that they would not be responsible for anything else they said; and that we would not be considering them great.
The other piece of that is that we both apparently believe that Jesus had “many wonderful, poignant and enduring ideas about life and humanity,” which have been recorded.
The thing is the source(s) by which we access these “ideas” are also the same sources which reported and/or recorded the numerous physics-defying occurrences in which He participated.
It’s true, “the fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” I also believe that despite your protestations to the contrary, you sir, are no fool.
Dude, let’s be real, if anyone else had ever seriously made those claims, we know that they would not be responsible for anything else they said; and that we would not be considering them great.
Yeah, that's probably true, particularly in person. I'd have probably been the first to say, "oh come ON, get the heck outta town. Is this guy for real?" As you know, we have a natural tendency to stereotype, and when it's not being used to perpetuate our hatred for one another, it actually serves a functional purpose (which is why natural selection has sel... err, that is, which is why we were created that way): it's fast and it's efficient. That's why we don't have to stop and listen to a ranting lunatic on the street corner for 5 minutes before deciding it'd probably be best to move on -- you know madness when you see it and your judgment is almost immediate. But there are two caveats: A) Even ranting lunatics can have meaningful, even insightful material to share despite our tendency to not give them a chance to share it, and B) a person's reputation is extremely powerful and can easily override that initial "he's crazy, keep walking" mechanism -- all the moreso when you have the benefit of reading a story at your leisure. If I can be presumptuous, I'm guessing you weren't introduced to Jesus blindly: you either grew up having been taught that he was the real deal or you knew a whole lot about him and his claims before you so much as cracked your first Bible. At no time in your life did you say or think to yourself, "Jesus who?" Even if Jesus had ultimately claimed that he's actually the senior butler for a gentle, giant pterodactyl from the planet Picklewagon in the Andromeda galaxy, you'd still have finished his story and, I dare say, given great weight to his words (just as I certainly did and probably would have in this case as well). Such is the power of his reputation that each of us has known since we were very small.
At this point, a reasonable question to ask would be that while we have the benefit of reading about him with a very well-defined preconceived notion of who and what he was (or is, as you guys would say), the people he managed to convince of his divinity in person had no such thing. What of them? Obviously, not having been there, I have no concrete answer, but I can look at the world around us and make some educated guesses. It's in the nature of man to desire to believe in the kind of story Jesus told, so much so that people will hurl themselves away from reason and rationality just to maintain their grasp on such a thing, no matter how tenuous its claims may be. Human history is a litany of examples of this -- a recent one that comes to mind is Harold Camping and his appreciable sect. If you've got charisma and a badass story to tell, you're going to find yourself with an entourage whether you want it or not (heck, even if it's just a weak story but one that people really want to hear -- look at the rise of the mega-church pastors in the US preaching the 'prosperity' gospel). Once Jesus ditched carpentry and hit the road, he had both of those things in spades.
Your view of Jesus, in my admittedly not sufficiently humble opinion, is a copout. He was, in your view, delusional, right? Well, what brings you to that conclusion? Could it be that He claimed to have existed before Abraham, or that He was God’s Son and was sent by God to save the world, and that whoever believes in Him would live forever?
I don't think Jesus would have intentionally lied about it, which doesn't really leave much room for anything but delusion however well-meaning he may've been. Yes, the stories about him include miraculous happenings (though some are inconsistent between gospels), but in the 2,000 years since, we've seen precisely zero occurrences of any such thing. What's more likely -- that the synoptic gospels, written by even the most generous estimates 30-40 years after his death, included embellished stories of a great man highly revered, or that miracles were indeed performed for which we have not only have no other evidence besides the stories in this one book, but for which we've seen not one comparable event in the span of 2,000 years since they were said to occur?
Note that I'm not claiming that they didn't happen, nor am I even claiming that Jesus wasn't everything he claimed to be. My only claim is that I see no evidence for it, and since there is no evidence, I can't believe it. Perhaps my parents should have named me Thomas Webster. There is as much empirical support for the divinity of Jesus as there is for the existence of Atlas, Zeus or Thor.
Also note that I'm not trying to convince you or anybody else of anything at all -- this isn't some "evangelical atheism" on my part, as somebody else eloquently put (think I'm gonna steal that one!). I'm simply explaining where I'm at... and barring the production of any compelling evidence, where I'm very likely to remain.
Alright, time for bed.
Supposition that similar miracles have not been recorded/repeated can be viewed as evidence of a unique connection to Divinity. If miracles such as are recorded in the gospels were common subsequent occurrences, doubters would identify that as evidence that He wasn’t unique. It’s hard to have it both ways.
The fact that some gospels may have been written only 30-90 years after Jesus is more evidence of reliability not less. I don’t know how old you are, but as is the case with most people, you’re certainly younger than I am; and I can tell because you make 30-40 years sound like a long time.
JFK and LBJ have been dead less than 50 and 40 years respectively. Recent biographies of their lives and careers are certainly not ancient history by any stretch. (I personally remember both of them well.)
As for charisma, that charisma thing didn’t work for many of Jesus’ contemporaries Tim. As you no doubt recall, Jesus had very powerful contemporaneous detractors who were, shall we say, somewhat influential in His demise. He was considered to be a blasphemer; but apparently neither crazy nor a charlatan.
His reputation, I would contend is the result of the facts of His life (but equally—certainly for all Christian believers—because of Ephesians 1:21 and Philippians 2:9).
I certainly don’t claim to have all of the answers, but I do know that we are not God; and that our brains function and hearts beat involuntarily.
The fact is, top athiest scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawkings and the smartest men on planet earth cannot explain how the universe came about, and where all the energy was before the Big Bang. Modern science recognises that time and space are in themselves created things - so what existed before even time and space? The closest they have come to is that there are endless series of multiple universes, but that still doesn't really answer the question of where was 'In the Beginning'.
For me, the 'In the Beginning' is the term we call God. You can call it whatever you like really but this thing we call God (or more appropriately, the I AM) which existed before existence is obviously real or we wouldn't be here.
All I want -- all I've ever wanted -- is the truth. Nothing less, nothing more.
As for the rest of your post, you're not reasoning correctly. I can say exactly what you're saying here about all sorts of things. If this were the year 1500AD, I could say:
The fact is, top athiest scientists and the smartest men on planet earth cannot explain where babies come from, and how a baby can be formed in a woman's body. Modern science recognises that the four humours determine a person's composition - so how do those four humours come together to form another human being? The closest they have come to is that God takes of the man's humours during coitus and uses it to form the baby with his bare hands inside the woman, but that still doesn't really answer the question of 'how' does God do it?
That we cannot yet explain something does not mean that "well, it must be God then" is a reasonable answer. A very large part of human history is specifically the replacement of "god does it" with concrete knowledge -- to date, there hasn't been a single instance of the inverse, and there is no sound reason to believe, going forward, that there will be (though, as always, I remain open to the possibility if only there were a single shred of evidence).
Yes, that's true, but my point was and is that there isn't a single shred of evidence beyond the gospels that those miracles ever took place. If old stories are good enough for you, that's fine. But as far as I'm concerned, to quote the illustrious Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If 2,000 years from now future archeologists drudge up some diaries detailing the "miracles" Pastor Benny Hinn conducts during his ceremonies, why shouldn't that be taken on faith? Because Hinn didn't claim to be the Son of God? What about Robert Tilton, or Pastor Peter Popoff? They all not only claim to perform miracles, but their followers actually believe, even being otherwise rational people, that those 'miracles' have genuinely occurred.
You don't read about Jesus' miracles and therefore believe in Jesus. You believe in Jesus and therefore believe in his miracles. Food for thought.
The fact that some gospels may have been written only 30-90 years after Jesus is more evidence of reliability not less.
Elvis Presley has been dead for 35 years. His body was seen by dozens of people and an autopsy was performed. Despite this, 5-9% of the United States population truly believes that Elvis Presley may still be alive. Tupac Shakur has been dead for roughly 15 years, and his death, too, is/was a matter of verifiable fact. Despite this, googling "tupac alive" yields nearly 10,000,000 hits, including a plethora of news articles reporting on the speculation despite the fact that such a thing is patently absurd.
My point was that 30-40 years is plenty of time for a story to go haywire, for heroes to be deified and for villains to be demonized.
As for charisma, that charisma thing didn’t work for many of Jesus’ contemporaries Tim.
Jesus: "Hey, what's up guys."
Peter + Andrew: "Not much man. Just fishin'."
Jesus: "Come with me and I'll make you fishers of men."
Peter + Andrew: "Ok." *leaves nets / entire source of livelihood behind*
If that's not charisma, I'm not sure what is.
He was considered to be a blasphemer; but apparently neither crazy nor a charlatan.
That's just not true. He was accused of being crazy on a regular basis. I don't need to dig up and quote the passages to you -- I'm certain you already know it.
Please cite a few of them when you get an opportunity to do so.
Note that demon-possession was thought to be the cause of insanity during Jesus' time.
Mark 3:20-22 -- "
20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family[b] heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
22 And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”The list goes on and on. Don't have time to reference all of them.
I certainly welcome you and really enjoy your contributions, I was just trying to understand why you would waste your time discussing your disbelief in God on an Adventist Christian website?
I used to be an Adventist, as I've said, which is why I'm here and not over at Catholicism Today. If the positions of the Church remained internal to it, I wouldn't be here -- frankly, I don't much care whether you all decide to start believing in magical elves or bring back phrenology. But what the religious believe has, unfortunately for me, a very real impact on secular society, since you guys vote just like the rest of us.
I'm here to help humanize the LGBT perspective, to provide a real perspective -- snarky and occasionally confrontational though it may be -- that until Todd arrived you'd all be discussing in the abstract. That's all. I've no intent to create confusion; it's to my direct benefit that you understand the issues LGBT'ers face as clearly as possible so you don't run off and start believing something stupid (i.e. that homosexuality is a choice or some such nonsense).
It is SO important -- essential, perhaps -- to take this beyond an academic debate and to realize that this issue is about real people whom Jesus loves with all his life. The only real question is how we can best make that love visible to them. Thank you for being here and being a real person.
I am so very glad you did not leave the Adventist Church...we NEED more chrisitans like you! We need people who are willing to embrace these topics and encourage such discussions. And unveil the truth of Christ's good news. We are commanded to love one another, that's all... No one person on this earth has been commanded to judge anyone- period.
Thank you for opening this forum. I have learned much, not just from your articles, but from all of the people who have lended to the content of the follow-up postings.
Yes, Philip, how about we listen to an expert:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alan_Rekers
We have to be careful of [sic] how we search for evidence with preconception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spitzer_(psychiatrist)
You proved your point. Be careful!
It's time we look at this from a biological standpoint and keep our religious views out of it.
We live our lives based on standards that have been developed during our formative years and also possibly some inherited traits of character.
When we make decisions based on these conditions the results may or may not be in our or society's best interest.
Quite often there is a difference between our opinions and how we view things and the reality of the situation.
Many times we make decisions based on feelings instead of sound reasoning.
For example, let's look at the biological difference between males and females. We can see that the functions are different.
Let's suppose that if all the men and and boys in the whole wide word lived and slept together and all of the women and girls lived and slept together.
What would happen to the human race?
We would cease to exist in a few short years.
So, based on biology alone, and deviation from the basic functions of men and women is not conducive to the survival of the human race.
'The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."'
This might sound like a completely crazy question, but I have often thought (perhaps only in my head quietly), whether this may in fact be a veiled reference to homosexuality.
In Jesus day, we all know of eunuchs who were 'made that way by men'. But who are the ones 'born that way' - could they perhaps be homosexual persons? Does anyone know if and what statistics exist for actual celibacy from any sexual activity, or is sexuality a near human universal?
I am just putting the question out there - please don't be harsh.
"Dr. Robert Gagnon, prolific anti-gay, evangelical Christian author, admits on his website, that “born eunuchs” in the ancient world were probably gay."
http://www.gaychristian101.com/Eunuchs-Are-Gay.html
Again, not sure if I entirely agree but just putting it out there. If it doesn't mean homosexual people, who would be the eunuchs 'born that way'? Especially given the other two categories, being 'those made by men' (i.e. physically casterated) and 'others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom' (i.e. the celibates in the RC monastic sense) are quite clear - so this third category must be something different.
prolific anti-gay, evangelical Christian author, admits on his website, that “born eunuchs” in the ancient world were probably gay.
At the end of the day, I do not struggle with homosexual identity, so this whole discussion is rather academic to me. However, I do realise that those who do struggle with it, and have to live it, these sorts of questions are not merely academic but very real.
The only case in the gospels that may refer to homosexuality is the account of the centurion requesting help for his sick servant. I know a number of Greek experts believe that the account at least alludes to a homosexual relationship between the Roman officer and his servant. Theologians tend to line up according to whether they believe Jesus could have commended a man in a homosexual relationship for his faith. Apart from that one incident, there is nothing in the gospels to indicate that Jesus had anything to say on the subject, or how he intended his statement on 'eunuchs' to be understood. We can only conclude that a certain conclusion is probable given what we know about the language and the culture, not that one conclusion or another must be correct.
Just Got Back From an outreach programme in a very remote area over the weekend. God was good to us we had over 40 baptisms and planted two churches. the simplicity of the Gospel was very refreshing! I had some time to think and reflect and I have two questions,should a person's story or experience take precedance over what the bible calls sin? I have observed interesting reinterpretations to suit the experience of individuals. It is sort of "if God can't change me then I will change certain attributes about him to siut my lifestyle, experience etc.
I always thought christianity was about denying self and taking your cross things I rarely ever hear from those with a low view of scripture. Every one of us has sins they are struggling with with and maybe the reason so many of us fail to get the victory is becuase we want the victory for all the wrong reasons! To be accepted in society, to avoid victimisations etc. These reasons in and of themselves are not bad but I believe once we come to the place where we realise that sin hurts God and God hates sin and we want to him to give us the victory because we love him and want to vindicate his character then I'm sure we would hear more stories of how God truly delivers people.
I am yet to find a single bible text that speaks positively about homosexuality and how is is compatible with christianity. I have been called names, belitttled but without evidence from the bible to support arguments of proponents of homosexuality. I would rather oby God rather than men!
To ask adventism to be compatible with homosexuality is a bit disingenuous after all Christ came to save us from sin not in it.
The point is, I think Jesus made quite clear in his notion of 'as it was in the beginning' that polygamy is in effect not a God-endorsed relationship either. Yet, the cultural context of the OT (as it is also perhaps today in Africa) sees a permissive-will rather than perfect-will approach to that issue. God does allow a degree of permissiveness to sexuality, as Jesus noted in Moses allowing divorce, which was not God's perfect will.
My wider point being, it is very difficult to talk about homosexuality in a cultural vacuum, as you may be attempting to do now. For example, many people who practiced homosexual acts in the ancient near east (ANE) did not have a homosexual orientation at all, but really were just overtly promiscuous. Furthermore, the Bible doesn't really seem to address the situation of monogamous homosexual couples. Moreover, in the ANE homosexuality was often associated with pagan worship, and with as an act of denigration (e.g. prisoners of war were gang raped by other men as an act of humiliation - to be made like a woman). Finally, just to make it even more complicated for you, in a moral role reversal, in many ANE societies, it was considered morally ok for a man to have a relationship with a boy but not another man - so again, it may be that type of relationship to Bible is primarily addressing and condemning.
It is very important that we read the Bible in context, and compared oranges to oranges, not oranges to apples. It is also important that we are not hypocrites, showing leniency to out own pet sexual issues (such as divorce and polygamy, which are more issues for the middle aged generation in power) but showing outright harshness to others (such as de facto relationships and homosexuality, which are more issues for young who have little power in the Church).
If we remember these things, I am not otherwise necessarily disagreeing with you.
Hi again, Tapiwa. I hope you're well. I appreciate you sharing your perspective. Couple gripes on my end, though, which I address below. Note that your comments are italicized.
I had some time to think and reflect and I have two questions,should a person's story or experience take precedance over what the bible calls sin? I have observed interesting reinterpretations to suit the experience of individuals. It is sort of "if God can't change me then I will change certain attributes about him to siut my lifestyle, experience etc.
Ok, I'm not entirely sure where to start with this, so let me kick this off with a link to somebody who says what I want to say but with much, much more eloquence than I possess:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzctUr8Cu8w
Now, for my comments: No, a person's experience/story shouldn't take precedence over what the Bible calls sin. Reality should take precedence over what the Bible calls sin. The reality is that sexual orientation is in large part innate, even to the point where people of differing orientations demonstrate vastly different physiology. The people who wrote the Bible had no way of knowing that in the first, second and third centuries -- are we to defer to their knowledge over what we know now in the 21st century? By all means, you can if you'd like, but I sure as hell won't, and if I can give you a personal glimpse of the future, over time, the vast majority of the world won't, either.
I always thought christianity was about denying self and taking your cross things I rarely ever hear from those with a low view of scripture. Every one of us has sins they are struggling with with and maybe the reason so many of us fail to get the victory is becuase we want the victory for all the wrong reasons! To be accepted in society, to avoid victimisations etc.
Sure, to be accepted in society, to avoid vicimization (?), etc... fine. But how about this one: to avoid going through life alone. Didn't your God also say that, quote, "It isn't good for man to be alone."? Yet you suppose homosexuals should do precisely that.
Sadly, and to me enduring and more profound regret than you'll capable of comprehending, this is exactly what I believed growing up. That is, I figured, well, if the Lord wants me to be alone all my life, I guess that's OK -- I don't understand why, but I'm willing. You may be patently unable to see the cruelty of the installation of such a belief in a child, but I lived it. One I fell in love for the first time -- not by choice, mind you -- I struggled for awhile and then, thankfully, before I committed suicide, I eventually stopped. If in the end God would condemn me for merely not wanting to go through life alone, so be it. If that's who God is, if that's his nature with respect to his own creations, I'll be the first to openly spit in his face, and I'll do so proudly and with great pleasure.
These reasons in and of themselves are not bad but I believe once we come to the place where we realise that sin hurts God and God hates sin and we want to him to give us the victory because we love him and want to vindicate his character then I'm sure we would hear more stories of how God truly delivers people.
So... your implicit point is that we'd hear about more homosexuals being "converted" to heterosexuality if only homosexuals truly loved God. You may not have been around to see my previous posts, but I mentioned in a few places -- or at least strongly alluded to the fact -- that the religious can transcend mere hate and actually be dangerous to people like me. You illustrate this rather well. To blame the homosexual for his/her inability to change and not your own fantastical, invisible, magic diety is the very height of absurdity. It's absurdity instantiated.
Sadly, and to me enduring and more profound regret than you'll capable of comprehending...
That -should- read:
"Sadly, and to my enduring and more profound regret than you're capable of comprehending..."
I've been awake for roughly 30 hours studying for an exam tomorrow, so if anybody feels compelled to ask for clarification on anything, it's probably warranted.
Perhaps polygamy is more preferable, than, for instance, an NBA player fathering numerous fatherless children, nameless one night stands with mood-altered consensuality, or outright white-knuckled celibate repression...perhaps, same-sex relationship is another testament to our human nature and its needs when god uttered (think about this, on the heels of "it is very good") 'it is not good he be alone'. Perhaps the historicity of the OT reflects the functional realities. Perhaps polygamy, and a different cultural acceptance of our own sexualities circumvented same-sex iterations of human relational needs. Perhaps present same-sex pressures on culture are a direct result of a puritanical obsession with repressing healthy expression...undoubtedly, some fundamentalists will misinterpret the above to mean i am "soft on scriptural truth" ;). So be it; I am more inclined to work within the problems than participate in blame assignation from a personal high-road stance. None of this is about value judgments, or my personal choice. My own views and choices are as heterosexual monogamous husband; a higher order is the personal decision to permit another make their own choices without my needless and tiresome meddling.
A few cultures around the world actually create community where EVERY man is considered father of each child. One in particular requires that numerous male relatives of the groom have sex with the bride before the groom does...precisely so paternity CANNOT be established. Functionally, this community has NO orphans, and NO fatherless children. (If interested in more, read the book
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, co-authored by Christopher Ryan, Ph.D and Cacilda Jethá, MD )
None of this suggests I am for polygamy, or same-sex relationships, so please lets try discuss without all that. Is there a model for a better way? Does biologic imperitive for procreation trump the psychosocial needs? Does societal/cultural "consensus morality" have right (or should it) to reject-or sanction-individual agency in these matters?
BTW Tim, just noticed your reply, responded, clarified my statement on Watsons "Trial of Blessings" column. Read it if you like, after you get some much-needed rest!
Thanks for your input. I am from Africa and the issue of polygamy is one that we encounter more often than not. I am against polygamy as apractice but Let me give you a practical example.
We regularly go on outreach programmes in remote ares we call these ZUNDEs in my country. from time to time a polygamous family accepts the truth. When they become privy to the fact that polygamy is not God's ideal they ask for guidance in how to move forward in their desire to conform to God's ideal.
We suggested that the man anul the marriages to the other wives and remain with one wife. However we also recomend that he continues to support them in every other way financial and otherwise. And you think Homosexuals have it tough!! I have seen people make outrageous decisions simply because they love Christ! I somehow get your insinuation that if we Africans accept polygamy we should leave you developed countries to Baptise homosexuality in the church.
Here at least in my country we are against homosexuality, polygamy, incest, bestiality and all other acts that are inconsistent with God's ideal. It is actually interesting you mention polygamy. Most proponents of Homosexuality are ironically or even hypocritically against marital polygamy! there's is a far stronger case biblically for polygamy than Homosexuality! That's why I actually respect Kendra, she was honest enough to admit that If homosexuality is accepted it basically means open season on almost all sexual pervesions e.g sterile incest
I will study further on your assertion on ANE but I think it is a stretch to suggest that they did not have homosexual orientation but people who practise sodomy conviniently do. Its either the orientation is a fallacy or It is the driving force behind the practice
I do think there is a very real difference between people with homosexual orientation who are in long term monogymous relationships, which the Bible doesn't really address at all, compared with a mass of a population who is ordinarily hetrosexual or bisexual and chooses to engage in casual promiscuous behaviour, including sodomy and other practices.
Furthermore, just to complicate it further (and not meaning to gross anyone out or embarass our gay contributors), but my understanding is not all gay people engage in sodomy (as defined in the dictionary - look it up). Thus, again, it is difficult to pass judgment without understanding some of the complexities of the situation.
P.S. Aplogies to our gay contributors - they are no doubt much better placed to discuss some of the complexities of homosexual behaviour, and I certainly do not intend to be an expert. I am more than happy to be corrected.
Homosexuality is a special case throughout most of the African continent -- there isn't really anywhere else on the planet where homosexuals are more deeply hated. I say that not entirely as a layman -- I've traveled extensively. Whereas there are fringe sects in many places that advocate for the extermination of homosexuals, only in Africa do we see this in entire nations and cultures. My family is South African, and thankfully, SA is relatively progressive with respect to this topic, but... that's far and away the exception, not the norm.
Whatever Tapiwa has to say on the matter should come as no surprise. I don't want to denigrate his/her (I don't even know his/her gender -- pity the Bible didn't say anything about gender ambiguity online so I could quote a passage or two) beliefs as unsound, necessarily -- I'm sure they make perfect sense in his/her head -- but we're all products of our culture in some respects, and he/she is no different.
Most of the world works on a basic belief that there is a cosmic order in which everyone has their place. Sex only occurs with someone lower, so unless the other person is female or younger or of a lower class/caste, the act of sex between two males risks upsetting the cosmic balance. That is why there is a widespread belief that the 'active' partner is a 'real man', but the 'passive' partner is in some way 'female'. A brief account that risks being too brief and there fore inaccurate, but it can be confirmed fairly easily with a bit of googling. Some cultures do allow sex between males who are equals (usually in military situations for some reason) such as Alexander and Hephaistion, or Achilles and Patrocles, or Sparta or the Sacred Band of Thebes (some would add Jonathon and David), but there is still the expectation that both men will marry and father children. Those men who preferred women had the option of concubines or heterai, etc. That is where Christianity gets compicated (or simple) - it denies the vailidity of all such arrangements as additions or alternatives to marriage according to the orthodox interpretation.
When modern western culture made marriage primarily about companionship and mutual support, restricted it to monogamous dyads, and moved to view homosexuality as a valid expression of sexuality, it was inevitable that things would get messy, and conflict with conservative Christianity was/is virtually unavoidable. It also made conflict and misunderstanding between the west and other areas with different views on marriage and sexual mores very likely.
Tapiwawa, to be clear, it is not helpful, logical, or christian to slip in your veiled insult of Kendra via projections that anyone is a proponent of such things as "sterile incest". This is an incredibly obtuse.
Despite that you mouth the words "you respect her".
At the articles outset she asked you, her reader, to respect the purpose of her column, and not a value-judgment bashing.
I posit this suggests you do not understand what respect means.
Do you understand that God respects human free moral agency? Hence, choose well for yourself.
Welcome back, and congratulations on the success of your campaign. Thanks for continuing to share your thoughts and contribute to the discussion.
I find it very interesting that you are willing to engage in theoretical, academic, theological debate with other Adventists on this topic, but you seem to be very studiously avoiding responding to Tim, the actual homosexual person with personal experience and feelings on the topic.
He has sincere questions and concerns about how he should reconcile God and God's word with his life experience. Can you respond to those in any way? What do you believe is God's attitude toward someone such as Tim?
edited to remove inappropriate comment
Apparently there in your country you're also against understanding slippery slope fallacies.
If you define sin as an action that the Bible/God forbids, then those who do those things are sinners. But we have tended to define sin as action and being (we are all sinners even if not sinning in act right now), which is why this issue becomes particularly difficult. Even those who believe sin is primarily a matter of disordeered being fall back on sin as action for this, but that ignores that homosexuality is not just a choice to act any more than heterosexuality is. But if it is being, is that sinful or not? Can you truely hate the sin but love the sinner if the sinner is defined by the sin? I doubt our church is ready for that discussion yet. It seems there are way too many discussions we are not yet ready for.
Contrary to Onjuka I was not insulting you in anyway. I actually respect your honesty and consistecy to take your premises to their logical conclusions.
I would love to engage Timo in dialogue but he is condenscending, rude and elitist. He wants to fight and I don't think that would not be good for both of us. I understand he has got genuine grievances but becomes difficult to sort it all out from the ad hominem.
God's attitude towards all people including LGBT is love. I know MOst of you think I am some uneducated blood thirsty african clad in lion skin baying for LGBT blood. From Where I come from people think I am actually to soft on LGBT! Because almost everyone is convinced God hates Gays.
The hate to LGBT is probably cultural but so is its acceptance. What you are asking me to do is to supplant my culture for a western one but I want to follow God. It was not easy to say pubicly in my country to say God loves gays and he wants to save them kust like everybody else. Almost got me censured! Most people thought I was a Jesuit/freemason/illuminati etc.talk about being a target for conspiracy theorists!
However to conclude that I am already a bigot preempts any effective dialogue hence the silence to Tim. Calling me names and disrespect for my people and country is not Going to help me understand their struggles if anything it would send me back to my God hates gays days and I do not want to go there. I still maintain that there is no biblical mandate to incoorporate Homosexuality in christianity nothing thus far short of extremely speculative interpretations has been given.
Tim
You do not really do yourself justice by unfairly castigating the opposition. With an attitude like that you don't really need enemies. I sugggest if you want to change people mindsets you must Go out of your wat to be the nicest, warmest person and I'm sure people would more open and it would disarm their natural prejudices.
Kind regards
The "dull"one
Oh, that's nonsense. Everybody knows homosexuals don't have any blood circulating in their sin-addled sodomy-bags.
From Where I come from people think I am actually to soft on LGBT! Because almost everyone is convinced God hates Gays.
The hate to LGBT is probably cultural but so is its acceptance. What you are asking me to do is to supplant my culture for a western one but I want to follow God. It was not easy to say pubicly in my country to say God loves gays and he wants to save them kust like everybody else. Almost got me censured! Most people thought I was a Jesuit/freemason/illuminati etc.talk about being a target for conspiracy theorists!
Yeah, so, ah... hey, folks? For those of you still confused as to why a former Adventist and homosexual with an E-ticket to hell is floating around this forum (i.e. yours truly) taking a pointed interest in what people think and believe, this is why. The horrors that can be justified in the name of religion -- whether Islam or Christianity -- are never quite as far away as one might suspect, and it's all the more frightening that such horrors are juxtaposed with the word "love." Note in this case, "...but I want to follow God" can justify anything. Anything at all, so long as I "believe" my God approves.
However to conclude that I am already a bigot preempts any effective dialogue hence the silence to Tim. Calling me names and disrespect for my people and country is not Going to help me understand their struggles if anything it would send me back to my God hates gays days and I do not want to go there.
What the moderator deleted wasn't me calling you a name -- it was me stating a fact. *glances sideways at moderator* Err, stating a fact, ah... less diplomatically than I could or probably should have, but a fact nonetheless.
I'm also not calling you a bigot -- you're doing that to yourself. You dislike (to put it mildly) homosexuals and homosexuality because they doesn't fit within the boundaries of what your religious text authorizes as pleasing to your God. That's what bigotry is. It's not like I'm sitting here arbitrarily calling you names -- the words I'm using have definitions. You can even look them up right here online: www.dictionary.com.
I'm also not "disrespecting" your country or culture -- a careful reader would have noted that my family is itself from Africa, albeit probably nowhere near you. I simply stated that throughout Africa, homosexuals are hated orders of magnitude more deeply and pervasively than anywhere else on Earth. That's not me "being mean" or "disrespecting" your culture. That's a verifiable fact. You even allude to it in your last post, including in sections that I've quoted here. Is there some other way I've impugned your culture? Are you upset because I didn't follow up "they hate homosexuals" with the caveat "...and, you know, that's OK -- it's just a cultural difference."? Because that ain't gonna happen.
I still maintain that there is no biblical mandate to incoorporate Homosexuality in christianity nothing thus far short of extremely speculative interpretations has been given.
So... what, we should just ignore the homosexuals who're seeking a relationship with God, or are struggling in their faith? "Well, sorry folks, come on back when y'all decide to stop bein' queer." Is that where your thinking is at, even after reading all three parts to this series and all of the debate that's taken place in this forum? I mean... really?
You do not really do yourself justice by unfairly castigating the opposition. With an attitude like that you don't really need enemies. I sugggest if you want to change people mindsets you must Go out of your wat to be the nicest, warmest person and I'm sure people would more open and it would disarm their natural prejudices.
But I'm not unfairly castigating anyone -- I think I've treated you quite fairly. Let's be candid here, Tapiwa. I've been around the block a few times, and if you want to try to convince somebody that you might be open to changing your mindset on this topic despite the posts you've already made, that's fine, but that's not going to work with me. We both know it's just not true. ;) Your comments about being "soft" on gays were a kind effort to back-pedal a bit (and hey, it was appreciated), but I don't believe for a second that you're at all "soft" on LGBT issues. If you can't be honest about that right off the bat, it's hard to see how we're going to have any kind of honest, constructive exchange.
It's probably best if you and I just agree to disagree and ignore each other while we're here (and of course silently shake our heads at each others' posts :) ). I'll go first.
What would you do with all these people you cast aside, Tapiwa? What did Jesus do with such people? The way you treat your enemy is your own indictment...and grieves God. Is it any wonder ones like Tom leave community.
Secondly, your response is good example of how not to be good netizen.
Personalizing these replies, holding self under own victim card, and utterly mischaracterising another person such as you have just done to myself is not conducive to showing love, communication, or community. I must LOL @ your chesty "genuine grievances" comment.
I just want to re-iterate that I am advocating several different levels of acceptance. It seems from your comment that you may be conflating them.
1) Acceptance at the legal and civic level of society. This is the level at which I am willing to accept the "sterile incest" scenario you proposed. This is the level at which I am advocating acceptance of same-sex marriage. This is the level at which consensual polygamy could be recognized.
This level does not involve the church in any way, as all three of my columns have pointed out; it enhances and respects the separation of church and state. My acceptance and advocacy of behaviors at this level should NOT be interpreted as moral approval of such relationships; it merely means that I recognize the right of other free-thinking adults to choose and enter into such relationships.
There are many other practices that I find religiously and/or morally offensive which I still believe others have the right to engage in publicly in a free society: Sunday worship, doing business on Saturday, eating shrimp, and using the phrase "oh my god" are just a few of these.
2) Acceptance at the membership level of the church. Under no circumstances should any person involved in any incestuous relationship be accepted into membership in the church, nor should the church participate in recognizing any such relationships or marriages. This is clearly unbiblical and morally abhorrent.
The church has released an official statement on same-sex marriage and homosexual relationships stating that it considers active involvement in these relationships to be unbiblical. So long as that is the case, local congregations are certainly within their rights to deny baptism/membership to persons involved in such relationships and to deny marriage to same-sex couples.
I do dispute the attitude that I have heard some people express that single, celibate homosexuals cannot be members of or be employed by the church. This does not seem to contravene the stated position of the church in any way, and it does not appear that sexual orientation can be controlled or changed. Thus, as long as someone with same-sex attractions is living up to the church's stated position in this manner, membership and/or employment should be available to them.
3) Acceptance on a personal level and for participation in worship and other church activities. As I stated in my article, ANY person should be welcomed to worship at ANY time for the purpose of establishing and strengthening a relationship with Jesus. This includes people who are actively engaged in lifestyles that the church or its members may consider sinful or inappropriate. Whether or not they ever make a formal decision to join the church, commit fully to all its teachings, or subscribe to all its official statements, we can still help facilitate a saving relationship with Jesus. We can do our best to create space for the Holy Spirit to work in their life, and we can be blessed by the spiritual gifts they bring to the corporate body of the church.
I'm not sure if this is what you mean by "being preferential" and "giving them a pass into Adventism." If so, can you explain how this is different from someone who might attend church for years but not give up working on weekends and never choose to be baptized?
You do realise that your position only begins to makes sense only in those areas of the world where a dichotomy between private and public exists, and where separation of church and state is seen as a worthy ideal? I suspect that that is not where the majority of SDA members are on this or any issue. For most, it is a simple case of "God says it, therefore I will obey and you will obey. End of discussion!" And on the issue of same-sex marriage, I suspect that even most western SDAs who are in favour theoretically of the separation of church and state do not see any reason why on this issue the church should not be demanding the state enforce the biblical rule. As someone pointed out to me, 'it isn't a matter of religious belief, its a matter of right and wrong, so religious freedom doesn't come into it'. It seems to me to come perilously close to the classic 'error has no rights' position, but apparently many disagree with me on that.
As to employing celibate gay people, the SDA church has a long history of being reluctant to employ, and even more to ordain, a single person. I suspect that, while we demand celibacy of single people, we don't really believe they will achieve it. And history does support our case in general. But then, it seems we may not be able to get a majority to actually follow our teaching on exclusive monogamy in marriage either.
But shouldn't we. Aren't we the Christians who stand for the separation of Church and State - haven't we historically? Aren't we the heirs of Martin Luther's Two Kingdoms doctrine? Haven't we been that bizarre little group that from time-to-time, actually joined up with atheists against our fellow Christians, to ensure various national constitutions (including Australia's under s.116 of the CC) minimized the interference of religion and politics. Didn't we found the International Religious Liberty Organization? Isn't our whole eschatology based on the idea that in the end, certain powers (notably the USA and Vatican-Apostate Protestantism) will join together to erode the separation of church and state? Is our heritage and our practical and theological position as a world church?
I admit many if not most Adventists do not understand our own heritage and position. I remember taking a sermon one time and asking the congregation, if they were government officials (say a town planning authority) would they allow to be built in their neighbourhood: i) a Baptist Church; ii) RC Church; iii) JW Kingdom Hall; or iv) Islamic Mosque. All said they would allow a Baptist church, most a RC Church, some a JW Hall and almost none would allow a Mosque. They were all quite shocked when I noted that to disallow a Mosque, solely beause you don't like their religion, would probably be against the SDA's Churches own historical position.
Thus, I don't think it is solely a problem for the non-Western world. There is plenty of prejudice here too. But that is to say that we should accept such prejudice. Perhaps people just need a little re-education.
Have a look at the role of the SDA Church in Australia re our Cth Constitution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_116_of_the_Constitution_of_Australia
Yes, but the expectaion has always been that single pastors will make marriage to a suitable wife a priority and those who don't often find themselves not being ordained as quickly as their married associates. As I said, the reservations the church has in employing single pastors are not without basis in reality.
I can only speak hypothetically, having been married for over 25 years, but I believe that celibacy would be easier to accept if it were assumed that it would last only for a short time - ie until a suitable spouse is found. We don't allow for that option with those attracted to the same sex. I do know that same-sex atracted people have been employed by the church, but I don't know that it has ever been in the full knowledge of their attraction, any more than I believe we would be eager to employ a heterosexual person as a pastor if they announced their intention to remain celibate for life. And whether we like it or not, I suspect we still see employing a single female as inherently less risky than employing a single male.
I also have friends of both sexes (my age) who have never married and are currently working at the General Conference.
Of course, the Apostle Paul himself was a celibate single. Not that seems to marry to most people.
...still haven't slept. :X
"What you are asking me to do is to supplant my culture for a western one but I want to follow God."
Question: Are you claiming that accepting polygamy is acceptable in your culture? If so, are you willing to allow that homosexuality is acceptable in Western culture? Is one less "sinful," or those individuals should not be baptized or members?
Please explain why one is sinful and the other is merely adapting to local culture. If this practice should be followed for polygamy, as you say it is in Africa, why should not homosexal monogamy and same sex marriage be allowed in western culture since both are merely adapting to their local cultures?
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/gay-parents-and-the-marriage-debate/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120611
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/the-hijacked-brain/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120611
Look past the actual topic to the bigger issue of either/or thinking. I believe it applies to this issue and many others.
You said ''Are you claiming that accepting polygamy is acceptable in your culture? If so, are you willing to allow that homosexuality is acceptable in Western culture? Is one less "sinful," or those individuals should not be baptized or members?''
Culturally speaking polygamy is somewhat accepltable although the legislation is somewhat shaky. I believe the purpose of this blog was to clarify the relationship between the church and LGBT. With that in mind there is no adventist in my country I know who is asking for polygamy to be part of adventism in any way.
I get your question and I am not that much concerned with what happens in American legislature concerning Lgbt although Kendra did highlight eschatological ramifications. My major concern is for those who want to incooperate Homosexuality as compatible with christianity/adventism.
I believe we should aim for God's ideal in all aspects of our lives and so I am against all unions that are contrary to God's ideal ie homosexuality, polygamy, incest, bestiality etc
As Elaine pointed out in the comments on part II, it can be dangerous for someone who has had negative experiences with church in the past to just randomly try out a church in the hope that they may be accepting.
On the flip side, hanging a big rainbow banner out front of the church may also send an inaccurate message about what kind of welcome awaits within.
How can a church create a warm and welcoming atmosphere that places the emphasis on Jesus? How can the church communicate to non-attenders that it is a safe place to visit?
Send all the congregants home and put a welcome sign up in the parking lot.
Not trying to be snotty or sarcastic, but but if you're asking this question specifically with respect to homosexuals, that's the answer, unless the people inside the church can somehow magically stop believing that homosexuals are lesser people. I don't expect that to change in my lifetime, but I admire people like yourself who are at least concerned enough to make the effort.
I can't help but notice that whenever the topic of homosexuals marrying one another comes up, the mention of bestiality usually isn't far behind, whether online or on Fox News or wherever. At the risk of sounding like a total radical here, you guys know that it's a completely unrelated topic, right? That it actually has nothing to do with anything that we're discussing, and that it's really only used by anti-gay pundits on television as a backwards means of insulting gays in front of mind-bogglingly uneducated audiences who lack the necessary cognitive tools and/or reasoning skills to spot even the most basic of logical errors, and that the vast majority of educated people don't actually bring up the two topics in tandem because they have nothing in common? You don't see anybody tacking on the word "pedophiles" to lists containing the word Adventists, do you? i.e. Adventists, pedophiles, etc. I expect that would irk most Adventists to some degree, particularly since one has nothing to do with the other. Well, this is sort of like that.
Like, if this were an apptitude test question -- "which one of the following does not belong?" -- in this case, "bestiality" is the word you would choose in order to answer the question correctly. Put another way, it's along the lines of, say, a group of people having a long, sprawling conversation about automobiles, the history of automobiles, different kinds of automobiles, automobile design features, automobile interiors (leather, cloth, bucket seats, bench seats, center glovebox vs. center armrests, etc.), automobile engine types and automobile maintenance best practices and automobile external paneling (sheet metal vs. fiberglass) and automobile safety and so and on so forth, and yet somebody keeps bringing up The Berenstain Bears. Sure, both are human inventions, and if one were having a conversation about human inventions in general, then with an appropriate segue in there somewhere, bringing up automobiles and The Berenstain Bears together would be perfectly reasonable. But since the conversation is about automobiles, there's really no good reason to bring up The Berenstain Bears -- it has nothing in common with an automobile. Although it has been a couple years now, as best I can recall, The Berenstain Bears did not in fact own an automobile.
I don't really need to explain it here, do I, all the ways in which animal rape and human relationships differ? You guys see it, right? I mean, I did finally get some sleep -- gotta throw that out here -- so maybe I'm just particularly fresh right now and have some sort of hyper-focused perceptual abilities that allow me to key right in to even the most nuanced of complex logical errors, like the comparison of raping animals vs. human relationships between two consenting adults in mutual love. I did also take a critical thinking course at a community college a number of years ago. We met once a week and went through this book, and it was.. you know, it really.. nevermind, you get the idea. It was a pretty helpful course.
Anywho, thanks for listening! Just a liiiiitle gripe of mine. Have a great Tuesday, everyone.
What's more embarrassing than misspelling the word "apptitude" while ranting about dull people?
Answer: Nothing. A little humility now and then is probably good, though -- gotta keep this ego in check.
In fact, the other story on AToday about conservative hero Dr Pipim is perhaps a good correlation to put it all in perspective. Here we have an otherwise ‘normal’ married hetrosexual man, who appears to have in effect raped a young woman whilst in a position of care and power over her. And yet I have noted the same people who are bending over backwards to defend his actions are the same ways happy to pick up the stones here.
It might seem really left field, but I remember watching a documentary on the story of a holocaust survivor. She said that when she was a little girl in Auschwitz, a man with a pink star sown onto his clothes saved her and her sister. The woman, now an old grandma, didn’t really understand that the ‘crime’ that this nice man had committed was a homosexual. Although she was an orthodox Jew, she refused to allow anyone to denigrate anyone because of their sexual orientation.
Who do you think was a better representative of Jesus Christ – Dr Pipim, with his 21,000 worded defence as to why he didn’t publicly confess about the sexual incident until caught red handed (until he got caught yet again), or the pink-stared homosexual man who comforted and ultimately saved two very frightened little girls?
In truth, Tim, I really don’t know what to believe about homosexuality from a biblical point of view. However, I know too many people who are homosexual, including very close friends, to think I have a right in hell to go about judging others. Maybe we should give all our stones to Dr Pipim to throw at you – wouldn’t that be interesting?
I share your concern. Being something does not mean a person is practicing the extreme behavior that gets associated with it. Making that association often reveals more about the ignorance or disconnection from the topic of the person expressing it than the person they are talking about
Arguing that "first it will be SSM, then polygamy, then . . ." is a slippery slope argument.
The question, "If we change the definition of marriage from a bonding mated pair, i.e., 'one-man/one woman,' then why not . . . ." is a legitimate question. If we are changing the definition, then what constraints are there on such changes?
When the argument is advanced, "I have always been attracted to XY," or "I cannot remember a time when I was not attracted to XX," in other words, the argument from desire or attraction, then it is legitimate to substitute anything one might desire or be attracted to.
Different arguments elicit different responses. And those responses may be legitimate in one case, and not another.
The simple, and for some people inconvenient, truth is that all that was required to allow same-sex marriage under most western law systems was to recognise that 1) the law did not state that the couple must be of different sexes or, 2) the clause (in many cases recently added) stating that marriage must be between a man and a woman needs to be deleted. It is a simple matter of acknowledging that if we remove (as we effectively have) the connection between marriage and procreation, then two women or two men can have as good (or as bad) a marriage as a man and a woman. We are not really changing the legal definition of marriage, just making it icnclusive of same-sex couples. Polygamy again simply acknowledges that marriage need not be exclusve. As many countries already do so when it comes to de-facto or common law marriage, that is not a big step. We don't need to change laws of co-sanguineity or any other laws.
To allow marriage to anything non-human is a big change, and I really don't think it likely until we have had contact for some time with extra-terrestial beings that we recognise as equal or superior to humans. This slippery slope hits a huge bump once you get past same-sex and multiple marriages. I am sure even those who use the argument against same-sex marriages or polygamy would have no trouble answering the question 'how is same-sex marriage different to marriage to an animal?' I doubt we really need to ask 'how is sx with another human different to sex with an animal?' because almost everyne knows the answer.
Since the reality, like it or not, is that sexual orientation is among the dimensions of humanity that vary (problematic from a religious perspective, certainly, but those who take issue with the fact will have to take it up with God, because we're here whether you or He or anybody else likes it or not), from where I'm sitting, a better definition of marriage is "precisely two consenting, bonded adults who are not first bonded by heritage." According to this definition, just as with your definition of a "bonded mating [human] pair," Ed, there is no logical validity extended to sexual relationships with animals. Just my two cents.
I would like to second Kendra's suggestion to read Andrew Marin's book "Love is an Orientation" Marin is a conservative christian who decided, with his wife, to take up residence in Chicago"s Boystown,a gay neighborhood. He immersed himself in the gay community in an effort to get an idea first hand of how the world is viewed from a gay persons perspective. He wrote this book. He won the respect of the gay community even though I doubt he supports gay marriage, nor does he endorse gay sex.
I have also seen the film "Seventh-gay Adventist" and would recommend that as well.
There is currently a bill working its way though the Senate committees that would add sexual orientation and gender choice to Title 7 of the non discrimination mandates in the 1964 civil rights law. I listened to a rather lengthy discussion this afternoon about how this could affect religious liberty in regard to church institutions.
At present time there is no religious exemption for discrimination based on gender. This is what the gay rights activists want with regard to sexual orientation. Chances are they will not get all they want at first, but what they can't win by vote they will attempt by judicial litigation.
My belief is that most gays simply want to live and let live. But there is that element that is looking for a fight to punish who they perceive as enemies, which in most cases are christians and churches who do not affirm the gay lifestyle.
I cirted the case of Elane Photograph in New Mexico who refused to photograph a committment ceremony for two lesbians because it went against her relgious beliefs. Most folks would have decided it was better not to have a photographer who was hostile toward their relationship, and looked for another more friendly photographer. But no, these women sued Elane Photography for discrimination based on sexual orientation and won a $6000 settlement! If that doesn't have a chilling effect on freedom of conscience, just imagine how the numerous lawsuits that will result from sexual orientation being added as a protected class under Title 7.
I have been warning for the past four years that this was coming, that legalizing same-sex marriage was more symbolism than anything else and that this latest attempt to expand Title 7 of the Civil Rights codeto include sexual orientation and gender choice would be next. It has just come a couple yearts ealier than even I expected.
There is more at stake here than simply religating discrimination of the worst kind to the trash heap.
It is bound to have a chilling effect on freedom of conscience, as people are faced with threatened lawsuits if they try to hold their ground on their religious beliefs.
I'm not only extremely glad that the couple decided to sue in this case, but I'm, naturally, extremely glad that they were victorious. That is precisely as it should have been.
This is a total shot in the dark on my part, but I'm going to guess that "Elane Photograph" is not a church. It is a commercial business. Here in the United States of America, a business shall not discriminate in the offering or denial of services to any person on the basis of his or her race, color, gender, religious beliefs, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or veteran status, NOR shall a business discriminate on the basis of association with another individual whose status as a member of one of those classes is protected, as well as any other protected classes voted into existence at the state level and any other provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title 42 United States Code or any of the dozen or so other lesser known protections offered individuals by way of subsequent legislature.
If a business owner says to him/herself something along the lines of, "aw heckfire, now hold on just a gosh durn minute -- whyfor can't I says heck no to sellin' ta the negro-folk on account of I don't wanna so I don't hafta?", then that business may choose one (1) of precisely four (4) options. I say again last, that business has four (4) options immediately available to it, which I list in no particular order as follows:
1) Stop doing business altogether.
2) Move said business to Uganda or some other region of the world in which it is considered appropriate to discriminate against people at your leisure in the course of commercial conduct.
3) Discriminate anyway, get sued and lose.
4) Stop selling goods and/or services and reincorporate as a church.
It's not complicated, and there are very good reasons for not only having protected classes, but for enforcing that protection afforded to both business employees and the customers whom they serve. If you can't wrap your head around that, you have some serious reading to do.
Tom, I can't say that I've ever met an openly gay person who *doesn't* want equality, particularly given how far we plainly have to go in that regard. At most, I've met people who are nonchalant about it -- sort of a "meh, my partner and I have been together anyway for 10 years, it's no biggie." I can at least get that one. What I can't get is this sort of active self-loathing, what I perceive on this end of the wires as a seriously masochistic position.
I just don't understand one of us who, even knowing our status as lesser people in the eyes of our own society, advocates against our very own movement. If you have kids down the road (adopt, surrogate, whatever), and somehow, by the grace of... er, by some mirac... uhhh, through sheer force of will and a whole lot of luck (there we go) we DO end up with the equality we seek, are you going to tell them, when/if those kids ask you, that you argued to PREVENT that just so a bunch of religious folks whose old tome says it's OK to hate you could keep right on hating? Really?
I don't envy the cognitive dissonance that your situation must generate. I could not take your position and look myself in the mirror. Flat out couldn't do it.
It is bound to have a chilling effect on freedom of conscience, as people are faced with threatened lawsuits if they try to hold their ground on their religious beliefs.
People have every right to hold their ground on their religious beliefs right up until they want to impose those beliefs upon a commercial enterprise and the customers with whom they transact. Don't like it, see the four (4) options above.
Tim,
You have given the legal reasons why discrimination on the basis of gender is both illegal and prosecutable. These should be remembered by all those who seek to interject "freedom of conscience" into the mix. If one sets up a public business, it must abide by all the anti-discimination laws as well as the many other state and federal laws pertaining to all businessess. Only those that are specifically non-profit churches are free to discriminate according to their religious beliefs.
Think of those laws as just like the civil rights laws: no public business can discriminate on the basis of race...now includes sexual orientation. Nor can businesses inquire of employees as to their partners, living arrangements, or other very personal information that is not essential to their work.
But Elane Photography was not able to demonstrate that it met the criteria for such a business.
This Elane Photography case is very interesting. After you brought it up on the previous thread, I looked into it in more detail. The couple in question did, in fact, find a more "friendly" photographer, but then subsequently sued for discrimination. The argument which won the case was that Elane Photography was a public business and, as such, could not discriminate. If it were a "private" business, it would have been able to select its clientele; however, as it was not able to demonstrate that it was in fact a private business, it was subject to the non-discrimination guidelines of other public businesses.
So, let's think about public businesses for a minute. Do you believe that openly gay couples should be allowed to shop in stores together? Or should shop owners have the right to ask them to leave if homosexual relationships violate their religious beliefs? Should openly gay couples have the right to eat in restaurants together? Or should the restaurant owner have the right to ask the couple to leave on the basis of religious conviction? If a gay couple wishes to order a custom deli lunch to take on a picnic together, should the deli owner be able to decline to make it for them on religious grounds?
Suppose I own a restaurant and I do not believe in adultery? If I see a man I know is married dining out with a woman I know not to be his wife, do I have the right to ask them to leave the restaurant because they are in violation of my religious beliefs?
I have to say I agree with Tim on this one. I actually had to think about this for a moment because I probably would have just looked for a different photographer. Upon more contemplation though, laws in this country have been put into place to specifically protect minorities because the "majority" doesn't always have it within themselves to treat everyone fairly. This is not something that is unique to homosexuality. I own and operate assisted living facilities and I can't nor should I or would I deny entrance to someone because of their religion, the color of their skin or anything else. Whether I like that or not means nothing. It's what I indirectly agreed to when choosing to become a business owner in this country. If I wanted to actively participate in discrimination I would have opened not for profit assisted living facilities and associated myself with a church that shared my prejudices. Again, the case of the photographer isn't unique to a lesbian couple pushing their agenda onto others. Their are countless court cases where suits have been filed and won, based on discrimination of race, gender, age, etc regardless of what one's religious views were that allowed such discrimination.
On the issue of church participation and membership, I would ask this. Why does someone's sexuality matter? Is not the basis of all Christian faiths rooted in the original sin concept with the belief that we are all sinful and always will be and only through Jesus and his death/resurrection do we stand a chance at redemption?
Let's consider a case such as a teacher is hired at a church school, and later decides to not only come out but promote gay pride in the classroom and flaunt their sexual orientation and promote a lifestyle contrary to the beliefs of the church school that hired them. Shouldn't that school have the right to dismiss such an employee? If it did it would most likely find itself embroiled in an expensive law suit trying to protect that right and would most likely lose if Title 7 is expanded to include sexual orientation.
For clarification I am not suggesting that someone be asked nosey questions about their sexual orientation in a job interview, but I do think that what we have here is an effort to expand sexual behavior as a protected status under the umbrella of equality. That is what it really boils down to.
Tim, no self loathing here on this issue, and no I'm not a masochist. Even though I am gay, I have been married for nearly 30 years and have fathered 3 children. I was also chairman of our church school board for 10 years. I advocate a position of compassion toward gays, not hate, as you might judge, but I do draw a line in certain situations with behavior.
I question the fundamental concept of "fairness" because inequality and discrimination are essential to life and commerce. Without them both life and commerce are severely diminished.
Discrimination has been given very large and broad meanings because of the Civil Rights movement. However, discrimination simply means to choose between two options. You evaluate the pros and cons and pick what is best for you. It happens every day. You do it in the grocery store. Producers of products and provders of services do it in deciding with whom they will do business. Refusal for any number of reasons simply means the parties go their separate ways and find others with whom to do business. The New Mexico same-sex couple who were refused photo services for their wedding were not without other options for those same services. It was simply a case of political correctness run amok and upheld by the courts. I don't believe it will survive on appeal to the Supreme Court where more than 90% of the civil rights appeals from that Appeals Court are overturned.
Inequality is essential to prosperity. Without inequality a person has no higher example to which they can aspire. The "equality" that existed in the old Soviet Union reduced people to abject poverty and bare survival. Even in the cities most people had to share a bathroom with all their neighbors on the same floor of the apartment building (if it worked) and maybe they had heat in the winter. They waited in long lines at the grocery store for poor quality products-- if they were available.
Those who argue for fairness, equality and non-discrimination would do well to remember the historic model of the poverty and abusive government that results when those objectives are pursued to a politically-correct end. The ultimate model of that today is North Korea where millions have starved to death in recent years.
We as Christians need to avoid political correctness as if it were leprosy and follow God's instructions to love all and lead them into a relationship with Him so He can transform them.
Also, with respect to the following:
The New Mexico same-sex couple who were refused photo services for their wedding were not without other options for those same services. It was simply a case of political correctness run amok and upheld by the courts. I don't believe it will survive on appeal to the Supreme Court where more than 90% of the civil rights appeals from that Appeals Court are overturned.
Basically, you're totally incorrect. What the case has to do with, in the most simple terms possible, is the fact that Elane Photography, a public business, violated the state Human Rights Act, which says in very plain language that it is unlawful to discriminate against somebody on the basis of his/her sexual orientation, among other things. That's what Elane Photography did -- they discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation. Ergo, Elane Photography violated the New Mexico Human Rights Act. It's really not all that complicated, and that's one of the reasons Elane Photography lost its latest appeal about a week ago (the third time a judge has ruled against them). The company is going to lose allllllllll the way on up to SCOTUS, should it even get that far. It might have had a fighting shot if A) the company hadn't blatantly and clearly broken a very clearly-written law, and B) the company actually had something resembling a logical or otherwise meaningful counter-argument, which it does not.
When it is convenient for its purposes, it is for “states’ rights;” but they’re activists/interventionists when faced with politically threatening circumstances.
I’m sure you remember Bush v. Gore?
William Noel,
Would you not think it wise for you to perhaps consider abstention from participating in discussions of controversial issues? I only ask that question because you seem to offer that advice fairly frequently. You are justifiably proud of your ministry and what God is doing through it to help others, etc. Stick with it.
It’s interesting that while watching the U.S. Open Golf Championship today, a commercial came on for the United States Golf Association in which the following copy was read: “When you think about it, it’s what America has always been about; a level playing field, everyone able to compete, to challenge, to have a shot. In America, it’s the democratic system in which we live; and in golf, it’s the USGA handicap system under which we play. But any way you look at it, it’s… [pause for effect] the “fair way.”
Get it?
I’m aware we Americans live in a constitutional republic, but the idea of a level playing field is justice, essentially.
Anyway, with regard to the topic at hand -- I don't share your suspicions in terms of how SCOTUS might come down on this, assuming they would choose to hear it in the first place. We'll have to agree to disagree and see what happens. To me, this seems to be a very cut and dry case (almost to the point of being legally bland, though certainly it makes a lot of people very emotional for some reason, which is entertaining). Precedent paints a pretty bleak picture for the company, too, to put it mildly.
As for a faith based group being exempt from non-discrimination laws, that is not the case with Title 7 of the civil rights law.
Also, protecting one on the basis of their sexuality has nothing to do with behavior. I am gay and that is the reality regardless of whether I'm sexually active or not. In Michigan, I can be terminated by my employer for this simple reason. It has nothing to do with any "behavior" that may or may not be taking place.
Are you implying that gays themselves are in part responsible for the hatred and discrimination they face? Am I reading this correctly?
Remember that thing I said about "self-loathing" a few posts back?
Now that decision may set just fine with a lot of you here, but just where can one be in a medical practice and be refused to draw the line on what procedures they will not perform based on conscience. I would think that there should be an conscience exemption for the conception of life like there is with the termination of life, like in abortion. This is a lot more serious than a wedding cake or photography of a wedding here, yet the California Supreme Court has ignored freedom of religion on this one and it sets a bad precident.
Do we really want the heavy boot of federal courts further eroding the rights of conscience in the name of "equality" where gay rights become equal with race. My money is on the side that the extreme advocacy groups are going to win the day. Come hell or high water they won't be satisfied until even the tax exempt status of private religious groups, who refuse to fall in line with gay rights in totality, is eliminated.
Mark my word, the extreme advocacy groups will accomplish in thecourts what they fail to convince by persuasion or public vote.
One does not have to be for hate or against equality to see what I am saying is right. Equality is a loaded word these days that is used for all kinds of intimindation and the extremists are pushing the envelope to the max to back anyone who disagrees with them into a corner.
These cases were driven by the intransigency of a few who want to force gays and lesbians to "know their place" just as the blacks were once expected to recognize.
If this physician held himself out to be a fertility specialist, he should have also informed a prospective patient of his limitation was only to married heterosexuals.
Would an ob specialist limit his practice to married patients? The same rule would apply as the fertility specialist. Any physician specializing in womens' medicine should include ALL women, not a subset. He would be guilty of false advertising if this weren't made known in his ads (and the majority of such specialists advertise their services to the general public in various ways, if only the title on the door).
Could a fertility physician limit his patients only to Caucasians? No mixed race couples accepted because his beliefs were against miscegenation? Where would this stop?
I can see that in the mind of many of you, there is no case I could cite where you would agree with me or even admit that it is over the top advocacy for gays. Gays do not expereince the level of discrimination today that blacks did 50 years ago, separate bathrooms, drinking fountains, restaurants, etc. To try and equate race and sexual orientation on the same plain is just plain rediculous. I think if the truth were known many blacks are offended by the comparison. That might explain why in California blacks voted 70% for Propostion 8.
The inclusion of sexual orientation in title7 non discrimination laws will be hotly debated in Congress and those who oppose it will be damned as bigots and haters, for having the same hesitations I do for reasons I have already stated. Freedom of conscience is clearly on the line here, and some of you seem to have no problem giving it the ax. Adventist need to quit looking for sunday laws in every turn of events and see that this a far greater threat to religous liberty in the near future.
Let's say, as a public business owner, I subscribe to a religious sect (not even Christian, necessarily) in which I believe all Chinese people have the "mark of the beast" and are damned. As such, I refuse to do any business with them, opting instead to tell them in no uncertain terms to leave my store immediately.
Would I be correct in saying that you'd be OK with such a thing?
Maybe business people should be able to specify whom they are open to and to whom they aren't. That is, they might specify "open to select clients." I'm not even sure I approve of that idea....
In a strange twist, the British government is proposing to prohibit religious groups from conducting same sex weddings, and receiving complaints froma number of groups that do want to perforn same-sex weddings.
Quote: Speaking on BBC Breakfast, prisons minister Crispin Blunt had said: “We are seeking to protect, indeed proscribe, religious organisations from offering gay marriage. That may be problematic legally but the proposal that the Government is putting forward is that marriage should be equal in the eyes of the state, whether it is between a same-sex couple or whether it is between a man and a woman." He added: “It may be that proscribing all religious organisations who have a licence to carry out marriage from carrying out same sex marriages – that may be rather more problematic legally than trying to give a protection for those religious organisations that do not wish to do so and making sure that they do not have to do so. These things will be debated in Parliament when the proposals are brought forward.”
The Telegraph reports Tory MP for New Forest West, and the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the David Cameron, Desmond Swayne saying today: “I’m a Conservative but I’m in favour of gay marriage because I am a Christian, I want to see my church being able to marry gay people. The world changes and this is a liberalising measure. This will enable people to do what they want to and what they believe is right. It doesn’t force anyone to do anything.
“Those who dislike the notion of gay marriage can continue to believe as they did before … this is a free vote matter, it’s a liberalising measure, it’s something on which people will hold different opinions and that’s what a consultation is for and that’s why we have a parliament.”
Derek McAuley, Chief Officer of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches welcomed the prospect of churches being able to hold gay weddings ceremonies if they chose.
He said: “We do not believe any religious group should be forced to undertake same sex marriage, however, we would claim the right to do so in line with our own deeply held convictions about the inherent worth of all individuals and for public recognition of relationships.”
I doubt we will see that in the US, but you never know ...
In other news, activists cheered Antonio Darden, a Santa Fe hairdresser who earlier this year publicly refused to cut Governor Susana Martinez’s hair because of her opposition to same-sex marriage. He has not been sued.
I couldn't help but notice that you hadn't replied to Kendra's questions above. I thought she made some really cogent statements with respect to the freedom of conscience issue. If you hadn't intended to reply, no biggie, but since freedom of conscience seems to be a keystone issue here, just figured I'd point it out again in case you'd missed her posts.
I'm also personally quite curious, if you don't mind my asking (and the only reason I am asking is because you're only using a first name here and figure you may be OK with personal stuff) -- you said you've been married for 30 years? Just wondering -- did you get married knowing you were gay, or was that something you discovered later? I'm curious as to whether or not your unique circumstances give you a different perspective on this thing, that's all.
A Methodist church in Missouri refused to rent their social hall for a gay civil union ceremony and was sued and lost. Those are the kind of issues that I think a latent and over the top advocacy which I am against.
Tim, I knew I was different and wasattracted to my own sex since early childhood. When I fell in love with the lady I married, I thought for a brief peeriod that I was "cured", byut found out ot my dismay in a few years that that wasn't the case. While one can change their behavior, I don not believe orientation change is in the cards.
The case in CA which I'm assuming is North coast Women's Care Medical Group, Inc. vs. Superior Court (Benitiez). where the doctor refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple is somewhat unique. While I realize the truth doesn't always lie in what is presented as the court case, what was presented does create a little more understanding as to why the ladies sued.
Also to a previous comment, I don't think it's fair to compare the struggles between race, women's rights, gay rights, anti-miscenegenation laws, etc. It has and continues to effect each "group" very differently. What I do think you can compare are the opposing view points. They have often been identical arugments that are used with each of these issues.
If a service or business is highly focused for exclusive clientele, maybe that is okay (I'm not SURE that's okay), but the service should be clearly labeled or marketed specifically for the intended audience.
For example, perhaps the "Seventh-day Church for Homophobic Bigots" need not perform same-sex marriage ceremonies.
Since this gay political correctness, will stop at nothing to badger and intimidate, perhaps a posting of the old fashioned sign "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone". the propreitor is not obligated to tell anyone WHY they turned down their business, and would probably be safer just declining without giving a reason.
Stephen Ferguson asked four days ago:
" if you don't believe in God or Christianity, then why are you here? Or are you still searching? I would genuinely like to know."
What an outrageous and archaic suggestion that only believers should be discussing any subject. There are many theologians, Bible scholars; Bible historians who may, or may not be believers. It is totally irrelevant to a subject being discussed. Believers may know little of their doctrines, or origins, which does not prevent them from becoming Christians.
Often, it is those who have thoroughly studied a subject who are able to see discrepancies, problems and even contradictions. Belivers may be blinded to those in their devotion to their chosen church.
Do those outside Mormonism view that religion the same as devout Mormons? Do those inside Catholicism see it as many Adventists? Answer those and you will know why there are those here who enjoy discussing both Christianity and Adventism--usually from long years of being on the "inside" before they became on the "outside" looking in.
It was a legitimate question to ask, because the discussion ended up all about whether we should believe in God or not, which I don't think is really within the parameters of why AToday exists. We could discuss a whole range of issues, but it wouldn't necessarily be relevant. I could ask whether you think my favourite football team will win the grand final, but it would kind of be going off track. I did and would assume that people who contribute are Christian Seventh-day Adventists, who can discuss issues relevant to the Adventist community, which indeed appears to be the purpose of being here as stated in AToday's own mission statement.
If this site is just a place to talk about everything, then it really becomes a little pointless. For one, I don't think it is or should be a place whether we discuss whether God does or does not exist. If you want to have that discussion, there are plenty of places to go for that on other sites. If dialogue is going to be meaningful, then there must be a set of assumptions or boundaries that define the scope of discussion. Any discussion without scope is pointless.
In any event, Tim answered by pointing out that as an ex-Seventh-day Adventist, he has a vested interest to see how the Church handles this issue, which can impact wider society. I did take Tim's comments on board and I do think that was a good answer, and did clearly ground his contributions within the scope of why we are all here.
I think you need to put your own outrage back in its box and move on.
It seems a pity to me that so many discussions end up wandering all over the place and never really engaging with the actual topic of the blog.
I think we are talking AT each other again and not listening TO each other.
Nobody wants to be forced to participate in something they don't believe in. Also, nobody wants to be restricted from going freely about their daily life because of an attribute over which they have no control. Everybody wants to be respected and heard, and when they aren't, they get pushy. That's why all the lawsuits and in-your-faceness.
So, could we try to be nice to each other? I just think that would make everything a lot more awesome all around.
In any event, if you actually read the posts above 4 days ago, I think I was pretty fair in taking on board Tim's comments.
Tim said:
That's why Adventist Today says you're here. The reason you're really here is to discuss contemporary issues that are important to you, the Church, and by way of consequences resulting from the decisions we all make on those issues, issues that are important to godless heathens like me -- perhaps particularly so. I used to be an Adventist, as I've said, which is why I'm here and not over at Catholicism Today.
I replied:
Tim and I then did go on to listening to each other in a nice manner.
What annoys me is that way after the fact, Elaine pipes in with her supposed outrage, which only serves to derail our discussions re the actual topic, being homosexuality and the SDA Church.
Thanks for being introspective about my post, though :)
I think it is time to give this entire issue a breather for awhile. I hope you are not planning a part 4, Kendra.
It would definitely be easier to have the conversations if they could be had kindly and respectfully. Half the energy seems to go into just wrangling the conversation, never mind thinking through the issues involved.
Thats a fact, Kendra.
Cognitive-bias blind spot. Intellectual short cut into someone elses lane with own opinion,
and without thinking/signaling. Saves the energy of actually thinking, oblivious to courtesy or respect.
I guess I'm just not seeing that, Tom. Can you be a little more specific? If a business denied me service explicitly due to my sexual orientation, I'd almost certainly sue as well. Not really sure how that translates into "over the top" action or whatever -- am I just not seeing it? As a homosexual yourself (though you've stated that you utterly hate that fact, and despite your best efforts to earn God's love despite being gay), don't you love yourself enough to stand up when somebody wrongly hates you for what you are, rather than who you are?
This is part of the way the site is set up: there is no chronological order to comments, making it difficult to read continuously. Who has the solution?
As an ex-adventist and ex-Christian with professional training in biological psychology and reproductive biology (through post-doctoral research at University of Washington), I might be able to add something to the conversation. I do not choose friends based on religion, race, gender, or sexual orientation, and I find it curious that people who profess to high standards of agape are so often intolerant and judgemental, often with rather little in the way of knowledge to go on.
I am just wondering if an unintended consequence of homosexuality being more public is that a longterm single person is increasingly assumed (if only covertly behind their back) as a homosexual; whereas, they may in fact just be asexual. To make matters worse, such a person might feel judged negatively in a Church environment, even though within the standards of conservative Christianity asexuality is not just tolerated, it is a spiritual gift (1 Cor. 7:1), best demonstrated by the Apostle Paul himself! (1 Cor 7:7)
Any thoughts?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality
http://www.asexuality.org/home/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality
Yet why has no one heard of asexuality?
P.S. I am not saying social injustice against homosexual discrimination doesn't need to be addressed, nor that homosexual people can be 'curred' to become asexual. Just making a point about the complexity of human sexuality, and possibly unintended consequences of these public debates.
It certainly doesn't compare to the prejudice that gay people suffer, but it does illustrate that most people, including or especially in the Church, have an idea of what is 'normal' sexual behaviour. If doesn't even matter if that behaviour is biblical, such as celibacy.
It just demonstrates to me that culture is by far the biggest factor in play here. Scripture is just used as an afterthought used to justify predetermined cultural views.
do they admit and accept homosexual celibates as members? Do heterosexuals have to take a vow of celibacy until marriage? Does the church inquire about a couple wishing marriage if they are both celibate? Talk about a double standard!
The church has, since its inception, had problems with sex: for some church fathers (even Paul) it was only something that had to be controlled--so marriage was the only option--although celibacy seems to have been preferred for many.
Origen castrated himself because of sexual urges which he thought were sinful; Tertullian and Augustine railed against women as being the source of all evil because they were a constant sexual temptation (it's always the woman's fault ;-)
The church has had a difficult time, and still does. There has never been a doctrinal position on sexuality that conforms to human lives, only some unearthly ideal where there will be no sex in heaven. The Jews had a much healthier view of sex: it was something to be enjoyed and not limited to procreation, a very strange idea invented by the Catholic church, by celibate males!
Now a best seller, thanks to the Catholic church's publicity AGAINST it, a Catholic female theologian has written a provocative book on sexuality.
I was just musing that even though fundamentalist and conservative Christians should have no problem was asexuals, and in fact such behaviour is arguably supported in scripture, many such asexuals are likely to be wrongly confused with homosexuals and seen as 'unnatural' in many Churches today.
It just demonstrates once again that the SDA Church, like most other Churches, fails to see the complexity of human sexuality and are indeed hypocrites. I have already commented that they tend to have very lax standards on divorce (a middle-age problem) whilst going very hard on homosexuality and de facto relationships.
We have already heard some commentators say that being a celibate homosexual might not even be enough! That seems to be part of the very RC thinking against sex, which you righlty note is the opposite of the much healthier Jewish view. SDAs should know better, because RC views are very much influenced by pagan Gnosticism (that see everything in the material world, including sex as evil); whereas, SDAs are champions of anti-Gnosticism by promoting the concept of Wholism.
Should Churches ban wheelchairs for cripples? After all, cripples are hardly ‘natural’ people are they? God certainly did not intend for people to live as cripples, as he originally created Adam and Eve in Eden. There were certainly plenty of people in Jesus’ own day who believed people were made cripples for their own sins, or the sins of their parents.
I mean I love cripples and all that, but why can’t they just get up and walk around like the rest of us? If my child plays with a cripple, will they perhaps develop a taste for just sitting around? And surely we can’t let cripples be parents, because how can they teach children to walk if they can’t walk themselves? It’s just unnatural!
Most of all, I do love cripples and all that (I think I said that already), but I feel really uncomfortable when I see them sitting in their wheel chairs. It reminds me of sin, and what a sinful world we live in, and how some people just can’t live as God Himself intended. It’s just unnatural (sorry, I think I said that part).
Answer: No – cripples don’t have a choice, have a bit of sympathy!
Of course, you will no doubt say I am just being ridiculous. You might say something like the following:
Yes, being a cripple might be ‘unnatural’ in the sense that God certainly did not intend anyone to be born a cripple when he created mankind in Eden. Yes, seeing wheelchairs around might make you uncomfortable.
But how about you grow up – how do you think the poor cripple is feeling? You need to realise that in this sinful world, wheelchairs are a necessary evil. In fact, is the word ‘cripple’ itself perhaps pejorative – perhaps call them something else?
Most importantly, being a cripple might be the consequence of sin in the broad sense, but the cripple can hardly be blamed because he or she can hardly do anything about it can they – they don’t exactly have a choice!
They don’t exactly have a choice….
Sounds like other groups of people we might know…
Postscript:
P.S. Don’t write hate emails back to me because I am equating homosexuality with being a cripple. I am just making a point.
From a conservative Christian point of view, homosexuality is indeed an ‘unnatural’ state of being, brought because of sin in the world, akin to being disabled. But my point is, even assuming that conservative viewpoint is true, we should still show a bit of compassion as we do with other ‘disabled’ people. We certainly don’t expect other ‘disabled’ people to live exactly as ‘ordinary’ people do, because that is an impossibility.
Churches should be places full of wheelchairs.
Stephen,
I would love to see your analogy lengthened for an article on AToday, either the magazine or this website. It deserves a wider readership. (Editor--how about such an article?)
But cripples could go to the Christian "counselors" who would convince them that it is a sin which they could overcome if they only prayed harder.
Stephen, you made what to some is a religious dilemma, very clear. Thanks for the comparison. It should be copied and sent to the homophobic Christians who are so certain of what Jesus would do (actually, he never mentioned it).
That, in my view, is hardly compatible with most articles I see on AToday. Is that a special quality of your discourse? As a matter of fact encouraging an understanding itself is an effort to persuade. I'm just trying to comprehend the real meaning of your statement and whether you have set that standard yourself for your writing or whether you believe it applies to all articles written for AToday? Thanks.
The fact that everyone else seems to feel compelled to persuade others could account for the rampant hostility around the site.
An infant is a ward of the state because:
The biological mother, Melissa, went to prison because her boyfriend, José, had stabbed Irene, the “other mother,” so severely that she had to be hospitalized. Melissa was charged with accessory to attempted murder.
Little M.C. had three parents, recognized under different parts of the law. Melissa counted as a mother because she gave birth to the child. Irene was married to Melissa when Melissa gave birth to M.C., so Irene counted as a presumed mother under a gender-neutral reading of the statute that was formerly used to establish paternity. José, the boyfriend who stabbed Irene, was not M.C.’s father. A man named Jesus was the biological father. Melissa had a relationship with him during one of her separations from Irene.
No court ever denied that Jesus was a father. Nor did any court find him an unfit father in any way. So with Melissa in prison and Irene in the hospital, why couldn’t the court simply give M.C. to Jesus, her biological father?
The reason M.C. was placed in foster care was that the courts found that this would jeopardize the child’s interest in reunification with Irene. Bear in mind that Irene was not the biological mother. She was not an adoptive mother. She had lived with Melissa and M.C. for about three or four weeks after the child was born. Let us face facts: Irene was not a mother to M.C. in any meaningful sense.
Irene was a “presumed” mother for one reason and one reason only: same-sex marriage.
It's all here:
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/09/6197.
'Jack' would not have been the 'presumed' father because there was a known biological father. Unless the bio father's parental rights had been terminated by a court, he would still have been the known father. Even rapists have parental rights. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying that's the law.
The only reason they 'presumed' a non-adoptive non-bio related adult was a parent was because of 'same-sex' marriage. The judge essentially ruled that the bio-father's rights were terminated by the so-called marriage. That would be impossible in case of a normal marriage.
I've worked with numerous families where there was a second marriage or co-habitation, and the new domestic partner is never, and could never, be 'presumed' to be a parent. Often times everyone would be better off if the non-resident non-custodial parent's rights were terminated, but it's a lengthy process. The only thing that caused all this was same-sex marriage.
Society might presume a child born to a heterosexual couple to be the product of the union of those two parents, because its possible. But to presume two women were the parents of a single child would idiotic, except for same-sex marriage.
And I have had repeated experiences to demonstrate that you are mistaken. A biological parent's rights can only be terminated by a court, and that after a lengthy process.
It is not merely a 'bad application' of the law, since no such decision would be possible in a case of heterosexual marriage, remarriage, or co-habitation. The court would first inquire as to the next of kin. But since some states have contrived this self-contradictory institution of same-sex marriage, which cannot produce children, the only way the other party to the marriage can have rights is by 'presumption.'
The fact that procreation is impossible to the partners is precisly why same-sex marriage leads to this conclusion, and heterosexual marriage does not.
The judge in this case was presented with a task made nearly impossible by a bad law. One parent--the biological one-- was in the hospital unable to care for the chid. The other 'parent,' so 'presumed' because 'married' to the bio-mother, was an accomplice to the man who had stabbed the bio-mom and put her in the hospital, and so she was in jail. State law only allows for two parents, so the child was made a ward of the state. To 'correct' this situation, a law has been passed, but not yet signed, arranging for a child to have three parents.
Again, except for same-sex marriage, this could not have happened. If the two women were simply co-habiting, the non-bio mom would not be presumed a parent (neither would a co-habiting man). The court would establish next-of-kin, the bio-father, and custody would be given to him. No need for three parents, no ward of the state.
When we start inventing self-contradictory institutions, we end up with more and more complex problems produced by those institutions.
As we have discussed before, don't you think that some of the Bible's anti-homosexual statements is as much concerned with homosexual rape of other men by hetrosexual sexual predators (i.e. of turning another man into a women), rather than talking about long term, consentual and loving same-sex relationships?