Bad theology - bad end
Submitted by Forgiven on March 13 2000 17:09:58
In reply to I still haven't gotten a reply from my post.... submitted by TJ on March 10 2000 13:09:28
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Hmm scary..... It’s always amusing to go hand to hand in trying to debate specific verses and their meaning - but in practice it is seldom outstandingly productive. Of course usually the issues concerned aren’t of enormous significance - partial expiation over against total, transubstantiation v consubstantiation and THE biblical pattern of church government don’t actually make a lot of difference to our lives unless our church happens to split over the issue. But the choice as to whether it is legitimate for Christians to live in consummated genital sexual relationship with people of the same sex on the same level as marriage - that is real issue with lots of hurting people around to show how important it is. A starting point is to try and ask how we should decide these things. The statement ‘Do as the bible says’ isn’t exactly straight forward - as the articles pointed to in this thread have already shown. Let agree one thing - we are seeking to determine what God’s will for human being is. It is not a matter of us trying to reach an intellectual conclusion, but rather hear from God for ourselves. THIS SHOULD BE THE NORMAL CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. You should be able to answer the question ‘What was the last thing God said to you’ without a great deal of difficulty. You may not want to share it - if God is leaning on you in an area that is a bit of an embarrassment then it may be hard to speak up - but if it isn’t real then something has gone wrong. Why do I say that - because it is the way that Jesus operated and it is the expectation of the New Testament ‘All who are led by the Spirit are the children of God’. How do we know it is of God? Well a good starting point is that it all hangs together and makes sense - if you feel God telling you to do something fairly odd, you should expect it to make sense in the end when you have obeyed. But when being guided by the Spirit you can be certain that it will not be to do something that the bible condemns. The man who claims that God told him to commit adultery is WRONG. It doesn’t work like that - God will not lead us to commit sin. Which is where the discussion about the bible starts. The bible becomes an important guide to us when we are seeking God’s will - but we should be starting with what we believe God is saying to us. If we are convinced before God that gay sex is wrong, then mixing with lots of people who are convinced otherwise is asking for trouble; ‘Bad company ruins good morals’ is a quote that Paul affirms in the context of discussing the resurrection; mixing with too many people holding the opposite view from what is the truth is liable to undermine one’s determination to hold to what God has revealed. It’s why churches need to ensure that they preach on a wide variety of issues by the way - because if they fail to keep covering all the bits of God’s revelation, especially those that are unfashionable at the moment - the time will come when they will not be able to make a stand on the issue because their members will be divided about it. I digress. To sneak gently back towards the issue in hand - ‘quod ubique quod semper quod ab omnibus’. Being the Latin tag which traditionalists - in their best sense - have always thrown at the evangelicals who wander around trying to derive everything from scripture - and making a bad job of it (why does your pastor lead the entire service and preach as well, rather than letting everyone bring something to share?) “What everywhere, always and by everyone” is the translation; there is strength in numbers because the church down the years has always sought God, so what the majority has heard, and what God has shown to be of Him by giving His blessing to is likely to be a better bet than the latest innovation that I have come up with. By no means an absolute principle - there have been times when reformer have had to hold out against most of the Christian world for some substantial time - but it is always the case that in the end God vindicates such stands and their views become accepted by the main stream. And usually such developments are accompanied by substantial church growth as people find a new reality of God has been released by this revelation. I’m not seeing this with the pro gay mainstream churches. To describe their decline as terminal is as yet premature, but not much. The dynamic growth is coming from the churches that on this issue have held to what has always been taught everywhere by everyone...... To come back towards the bible (wow, I used to call myself an evangelical....) CS Lewis points out that in order to achieve their conclusions, the proponents of liberal theology have to construct a series of steps of logic, each with a moderate probability. Probability theory tells us that in order to cross each of these bridges, it is necessary to multiply the probabilities together, so the actual probability of the final outcome is very low. There are a numerous steps in the argument that our pro gay relationship proponents make. There are a number of tendentious interpretations of the bible that rapidly make their place look unlikely. But there is also the 'worldly' logic that is the real buttress of their position - and it is that that is really providing the strength of their position - and which needs to be most clearly demolished to reveal the Christian position. Some of the steps of the argument look like this: There is only true fulfilment in a one on one relationship This must be sexually expressed The gay person is only able to build a fulfilling relationship with someone of the same sex They have the right to avoid suffering Being deprived of this one on one relationship is suffering Therefore we have to allow them to have a sexualised gay relationship Of course when you put it out like that the holes rapidly appear - Jesus lived a fulfilled life despite being celibate, although it can be argued that modern society is so unfriendly that it is much harder now - but the one I want to focus on - because it crops up in a lot of other moral dilemmas that the church is losing the argument on - is 'They have a right to avoid suffering'. This is a sub Christian belief which we need to show as not consistent with the Bible, which clearly argues that suffering is a means of testing for Christians and, as a foretaste of the nature of Hell, a means of warning to non Christians to repent and turn to God 'lest something worse happen to you' as Jesus expresses it in Luke 13. Yes its hard - but this offers a coherent understanding of a world under God's control; the only alternatives are atheism or a theology that denies that God is almighty. Neither is a Christian belief. As gays, we have a cross to bear that others don't - aren’t we the lucky ones. That is the Christian perspective (Acts 5 v41) You want easy - the broad road’s that way - just remember what’s at the end...... By our sufferings we are sanctified and made more ready for our eternal home; that’s what matters, and what happens over the next 60 years will appear as nothing when we look back on it all in a few thousand years time. (Well it helps me). A short bible comment - that old saw about it being ‘Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve’. When God chose / designed the perfect companion for man, he didn’t chose another man, he chose woman. Now as gays we find this hard to cope with; these strange females with lots of untidy bits and no great fun to be around - though it is interesting to note that they often appreciate our company more because we don’t represent a sexual issue to them - but that was the way God made it when it was ‘very good’. Equally there is no clear example of a gay relationship in the bible (Jesus’ love for John is agape not eros by the way) and David and Jonathan both end up married with kids so certainly weren’t unattracted by women. If God really had wanted to give us the freedom to go down this path, I think he would have made it a whole lot more obvious! A final point: if the liberals are right and the conservatives are wrong, I will have lived a few decades somewhat more miserably than was necessary. But if the conservatives are right and the liberals are wrong and I chose to enter a gay relationship, I’m risking my eternal salvation. Really I don’t think it’s worth the risk ;-) And then there's the biological argument OK Enough Enough So if you have been, thanks for reading all this..... |
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