Tentative thoughts
Submitted by Heather on June 13 1999 at 22:37:03
In reply to Re: "A test from God" Submitted by Adam TBK on June 13 1999 at 17:49:13
|
Gosh, Adam, I wish I knew better what to say. What occurred to me this afternoon was a conversation that occurred at Bridges Across the Divide, where we were talking about ex-gays leaving their partners when they joined the ex-gay movement, and wondering whether this wasn't a bigger sin than the one they were trying to save themselves from. I had been taking the side of, "Well, if they really think it's sinful, how could they continue?" when a conservative Anglican priest mentioned that, in Africa (where the Anglicans are as close to fundamentalism as Anglicans ever are), the Anglican bishops have allowed polygamous men who join the Anglican Church to keep their extra wives. So obviously that was a case where some Christians felt that a new Christian discarding his partners - even if the partnership was deemed sinful by the Church - was not a good idea, because of the damage it could cause to the partners. But when I ran that tale past a boylover this evening, he said, "How will hearing that help Adam?" And I had to admit that this was all very dry and academic - not that you don't enjoy dry and academic stuff :) - and perhaps wasn't of much use to you. I guess my feeling about entangling religion with one's love life is the same as Aristotle's feeling about monarchy. He said that, when the monarch was good, monarchy was the best political system, and he said that, when the monarch was bad, monarchy was the worst political system. Likewise, I think that, when someone's belief system - whether it is religious or of any other sort - is good, having it influence one's love life is the best thing that can happen, and when someone's belief system is bad, having it influence one's love life is the worst thing that can happen. And of course that's true of every other aspect of life as well. More than once in my life, I've known people who fell in with a bad crowd - not so much in terms of meeting new people who corrupted them, as in meeting new ideas that corrupted them. Sometimes the ideas corrupted them when the ideas didn't have an equally corrupting effect on others. So I'd hesitate to say, for example, "Don't become an atheist!" just because being an atheist had a destructive effect on one of my friends, because I know that atheism has been liberating for many other people. It's sort of like adult-child sex in that respect - how one boy responds to sexual contact with a man can be very different from how another boy responds. So even if Ben is making friends with people who are like the people whom your older friend made friends with (and of course I don't know whether or not that is the case), the effects on him may be very different, since he's a different person. Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts, and I don't know whether they're of any help. Heather |