Re: On a wider perspective

"So the fear that Heather has expressed as to the response of the church 'yobs' to such preaching is a bit distant." I'm glad it is in your church, but I'm afraid that in the world at large, this scenario is not at all distant – it has taken a long time for the churches to take a loving approach in this matter, and far too many ministers still preach hatred toward gays. A heck of a lot of hate crimes have religious origins, stemming either from bad religious messages or from well-intentioned religious messages that could be too easily misunderstood. By the way, I wasn't trying to criticize conservatism in my letter – I was just trying to point out the special dangers that conservatives can fall into. My correspondent exiled himself from a liberal church, so I knew that I didn't have to point out to him the special dangers of liberalism. You're welcome to warn me against the special dangers of being a moderate. :) "The danger of the 'Do' bit is that it becomes the only thing that Christians ever get round to" My friend Gerard said much the same thing in his reply, warning about the dangers of the social gospel. What I had in mind, though, was not institutional help (which I'm not qualified to comment on, never having taken part in such programs), but rather the sort of question I was faced with when I first came onto the boylove boards. I believe the adult-child sex is wrong, and believing this, I felt it was my duty to share my views with boylovers in case they had not thought about the particular aspects of the matter that I had and might therefore benefit from what I had to say. (Incidentally, the same was true in reverse – I wanted to hear the pro-sex arguments in case my understanding could be expanded.) So I was in a similar position to a Christian who, believing that he has a part of the picture of life that a non-Christian has missed, wants to share with non-Christians what his own life is like. The question is: How to go about this? What I soon discovered is that people listen more to actions than to words. I could say all I wanted about the benefits of my views, but words, in and of themselves, tended to have no impact. On the other hand, I quite often found that, if I kept my mouth shut and simply supported the boylovers, sooner or later somebody would say, "Say, you're a nice person – I'd love to hear what you have to say about boylove." And then they'd eagerly listen to my thoughts. Of course you're right that if you never share your faith, people will never understand why you follow Christ. What I'm suggesting, though, is that one of your primary ways of witnessing can be through your Christlike actions. If people see you feeding the hungry, tending the sick, giving to the poor – or simply being generous and kind to the people you talk with – then sooner or later they're going to want to know what your secret is: they'll want to know why you're so much more alive than many other people. And then you tell them. "There's an alternative interpretation of Matthew 25 (the sheep and the goats) that points out that Jesus refers to what 'as you did it to one of these my brethren' - and in speaking of his brethren, he is referring to the saved, not everybody." Gerard holds the same view; I'll simply quote the passage I quoted to him: "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." Note that Jesus doesn't say that the saved have the word "Christian" stamped on their forehead. Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]