SD, you did not "parse" 27, so much as just go "Gospel Truth" in more depth.

Truth and "Gospel Truth" are different things. Gospel Truth is not modern medicine. Praying does not seem to halt organic disease, for instance. (gross oversimplicaction, yet valid) Gospel Truth is based on faith. Medicine is based on physical facts.

Two very different things cannot be weighed by the same kinds of standards.


blather...27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

I will parse this in part as I can:
-the men, leaving the natural use of the woman,
is a fairy tale. men do not go ___. homo behavior is not catching. it's inborn and repressed, if later it comes out... it was always there. The majority of men would never take up a homo lifestyle if women were avalable as sexual choices too. Therefore, advising peeps now to Stay Out o Prison! (ha)

men with men working that which is unseemly,
working that Thang? I guess. Unseemly? I dunno, it seems perfectly natural to -me- but who am I? A homo purely by his inborn nature. No priest ever got to me. Anyway, I wasn't corrupted by any sort of social influence. Your god (sic) made me just the way I am.
This homo trait is found in every mammalian species. It is always minority behavior in humans, in all cultures and eras and races. It seems to be a natural side effect of heterosexual reproduction. It is not "unseemly", it is just a useless (?) variation.

27 is a blather for the reason that it works from a false presumption: that homosexuals are corrupted and corruptors. That is an offensive lie,

The word "offensive" is my personal opinion. The word "lie" is simple truth. Gospel Truth is not fact here. It is, rather, a manipulation by which to achieve an end: Garner power for the guys in red robes. (Homos designed all that Catholic regalia, by the way, and still walk under most of the heavy fabrics).

there are no clean hands

SD, great you are not a Catholic. That is a point in your favor, in my jaded eyes.

-

 

You're correct SciFly, none of us have cleans hands and simply put....we can't on our own. Also correct Truth and Gospel Truth are different. The problem is, you can't define truth on an individual level and have it work for society as a whole. Everyone's self proclaimed truth is justified at any given moment for a decision. With no reference point of common truth....it's chaos. Anyone can justify anything at any time for any reason.

Medicine is based on Science and often adjusted because what was once defined as fact was proven fiction. See history of the atom. We crack that puppy open and all this stuff fell out even smaller. Science says many different things about the origin of space....yet fails to answer the basic question of the impossible as proven by science itself........"How can you get something from nothing".?

One the other hand, I have seen, experienced and read of others that have experienced the true power of prayer. Sometimes science just shakes its proverbial head and can't explain it. So they ignore it.

I completely understand the life you choose SciFly and frankly that is your personal business and none of mine. Quite frankly, it also is irrelevant. We all have temptations that are not right in Gospel Truth. Alcoholics have a gene too...does that make it right for them to be drunk 24/7? Your cross to bear is that IMO. Mine is certainly present...I just don't make it public. It's what we choose to do about it is the difference.

Gospel Truth is fact for God. When you asked the question about ___ men and God....I gave you Gospel Truth. SO that is what we were talking about.

I always study the things that offend me the most. Usually that's where I have a problem.

 

if we were created in gods image, does he/she/it have a sexual organ? if so, what is its purpose if he/she/it is alone

 

[quote="ScionDad"]You're correct SciFly, none of us have cleans hands and simply put....we can't on our own. Also correct Truth and Gospel Truth are different. The problem is, you can't define truth on an individual level and have it work for society as a whole. Everyone's self proclaimed truth is justified at any given moment for a decision. With no reference point of common truth....it's chaos. Anyone can justify anything at any time for any reason.

quote]

That is exactly what I feel!

 

example of putting something on me that is your Faith's presumtive hubris.
Such a prideful thing to say.

I had just finished explaining that I was formed this way from within, not from without.
I did not CHOOSE to be homosexual. Did you choose to be heterosexual? If you did, then by all means watch out: you'd have conflicts internal indicating a tendency towards bisexual or homosexual needs.

I did not choose to be ___. I could not succeed in "changing". Could you?

no. One thing is the mirror image of the other. Don't be a Pronouncio, please, not on me, not on this topic. I happen to be expert on the matter, and humble myself by going "out" in a place like this. It's done so that gays should not be invisible on SL. They are in your daily life and they are here too.

?choose? who god should punish and send to the furnace? the bible is quite clear.

all that crap was written by power-infused men with agendas.

my agenda? to live and exist in society and do as little harm as possible to others.

The only only only way for harmony is to discourse without making personal attacks on the oppoent. I'd really like to see you edit some of the earlier postings you've made -which focus on me, really, and not on the questions raised.

Which of us is speaking more like a Christian today? Let's start a new slate. You get a new chance. I forgive you.

 

That is all.

 

I softened that request, asking in edit of the original posting, for SD to edit his earlier postings that were all personal on -me-

this latest of his: "I completely understand the life you choose SciFly" is another mispeak and it is hurtful to the cause of discussion. It hints that Gospel Truth is indeed whatever that Christian wants it to be: real life truth. "I perfectly understand the life you choose".

No, sir. You do not. Not at all

 

I can understand why certain people use that terminology. While it is true that we did not choose that we became ___, we choose to accept it and live life in the way that makes us happy. Some do not, instead seeking to cover up the truth and live a life as something false. In the respect that I choose to do what feels right to me and makes me happy, I made a choice. That is the only choice involved in the matter.

 

We can all live life any way we so choose (for the most part). Be ___ if you so feel that you were born that way, but please, PLEASE, do not be hypocritical and call others narrow minded for disagreeing with said lifestyle choice.

 

I prefer this look on Homosexuality, in regards to the Biblical teachings addressing behavior, WHICH ARE WAY DOWN THE LINE, in regards to apologitics and faith...


For example... in order to address the concept of Biblical determinations of behavior, you must first tackle to ideas that there is a God, that He is perfect, that the Bible is innerant in nature, that the context of those verses were applicable in todays society and many more things....

For the sake of the topic, I'd state that the following comments are based on the belief that there is a god, and that the Bible and it's teachings are part of that "God's" revelation, guiding us in our human behavior....

The merits of that basis could go on forever and in regards to this question aren't really applicable, because this response is in regard to the Biblical understanding.... but, coming from a Biblical perspective, those must be taken into account for that perspective to be more understood...

Not that I am defending or accounting for that perspective.... as much more than could ever be talked about here would have to go into it....

Now that that is out of the way.... I like this selection. something I would think would ,more accurately be the "Biblical" understanding of Homosexuality.... Taking into account the quotes of "Biblical"

This comes from sermon addressing church members, so that must be taken into account as well, given terminology and, of course, the inherant bias built into it....

It is long....


"Homosexuality"
Gen. 19:1-11
May 4, 1997

Now it was surely in God's providence that we should return to our series of sermons in Genesis, after our time away in Isaiah 53, to find ourselves at Gen. 19 in the very week in which homosexuality has been a topic on everyone's lips because of the "coming out" of Ellen DeGeneres on her TV show. What was certainly made obvious once again by all the public discussion of this subject in these past days was how differently homosexuality is viewed in our culture today from its presentation in the Word of God. And that is true of opinion both on the left and the right.

I will begin by taking certain things for granted.

First, homosexuality is a sin. It is clearly presented here in Genesis 19 as a moral perversion and is so in the rest of the Bible. In Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 it is grouped with incest and bestiality as sexual sins to be punished by death within the community of Israel. And there it is clearer than even here in Gen 19 that the sinfulness of homosexuality lies first in the very nature of the act -- "of a man lying with a man as with a woman" so the Law reads -- and not in the further perversions to which it leads, such as the loss of sexual restraint and homosexual rape as here in the account of the angels visiting Sodom.

And, because the whole Scripture teaches us that sin resides not only in actions but in thoughts and attitudes, it is therefore impossible to deny that homosexual desire is also sinful, just as heterosexual desire for a person with whom you have no right to sex is sinful by the direct statement of our Lord himself. "He who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." [Matt. 5:28]

Second, homosexuality is a particularly heinous sin that surfaces more and more in societies that are in the midst of moral collapse. Though the Bible plainly acknowledges that homosexuality is always with us, it also speaks of it and views the practice as a specific indicator of terminal spiritual corruption. You have that here, in the account of Sodom, where homosexual sin illustrates the extent of the defilement of this society and explains why God could endure it no longer and had to destroy it as savagely as he did. It is certainly not the case that this was Sodom's only sin -- Ezekiel (16:49) says that the citizens of Sodom were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned for the poor and needy -- the point is that this sin of homosexuality, especially expressing itself in such an open way, indicates the moral degradation of the culture. You have this same point made in the similar episode recounted in Judges 19, this time of the men of Gibeah. And you have the point, illustrated in these histories, made in argument by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1. There Paul argues that homosexuality lies, in a way, at the end of a process of moral degeneration and corruption, a degeneration that has proceeded to the point that men and women have revolted against nature itself.

Now, you know well that an increasing number of people have sought to argue either that the Bible does not really condemn homosexuality per se or that modern discoveries have rendered the Bible's teaching on this subject obsolete.

1. In the first case, it is argued that the Bible condemns only certain types of homosexual activities -- promiscuous, violent, and those connected with pagan worship. The writers of the Bible, we are told, either did not know about, had never encountered, or were not intending to refer to monogamous, loyal homosexual relationships, and those are not condemned.

But that argument falls and not only because those who make it have all been guilty of the most shameless sort of special pleading, arguing from silence, errors of logic, and misstatements of fact. This view of the Bible's teaching about homosexuality cannot be sustained because the Bible clearly identifies what it is condemning -- a man lying with a man as one lies with a woman (Lev. 18:22) -- but, still more, because the Bible condemns all sexual activity that is outside of the bond of holy marriage. It doesn't allow heterosexual men and women either to have sexual relationships outside of marriage. The Bible clearly does not take the modern view that sexual activity outside of marriage is unavoidable and therefore moral and acceptable.

2. In the second case, it is argued, in many different ways, that we have learned that homosexuality is "normal" and that, therefore, the Bible is wrong to forbid it.

Here is where the argument is being made in our culture today and it is an argument that is being made in open defiance of information widely available and accessible, but which the media do not distribute, while, at the same time, they trumpet the most egregiously biased and often openly dishonest arguments and conclusions of ___ rights advocates.

I haven't the time to demonstrate this to you, but it was all demonstrated to me in a most comprehensive, persuasive, intelligent, learned, and sophisticated way in a book I read this past week. This is Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. The book is published by Baker and I urge you to obtain a copy and read it carefully. It is an education in many ways, but will clear the mist surrounding so much of what you hear today in regard to homosexuality and public policies in regard to it.

Dr. Satinover explains many things: that homosexuality is not a "genetic" condition, if one means by that that it is caused by genetic inheritance and that researchers have known this for a long time. It is true that both genetic inheritance and the influences of hormones on a baby in the womb can create effects that may render a person somewhat more, perhaps only slightly more susceptible to homosexuality if other factors are also present, but that is hardly the same thing as saying that genes cause homosexuality. After all, in a kind of reversal of fact, if homosexuality were genetic, it would become extinct because homosexuals do not reproduce nearly as prolifically as heterosexuals do, but homosexuality is not extinct, even after all these centuries. Homosexuality is a rare condition -- between 2 and 3 percent of men -- but it is obviously with us today as it was in biblical times.

On the other hand, Dr. Satinover explains, homosexuality is not a "choice" either, if one means by that that at some point in one's life a person simply decided to become a homosexual. No Christian should ever have believed that anyway, with all that the Scriptures teaches us about the complex motivations of the heart and the impenetrable mysteries of human sinfulness.

In many cases -- though not, it appears in all -- sexual abuse has played a role in the development of homosexual orientation, or unhealthy relationships between a child and a parent. But, the development of that orientation is in many ways, like other compulsive behaviors, the result of many steps, with each step making it harder for a person to turn round -- from homosexuality or from alcoholism or from various forms of heterosexual deviancy or other such compulsions -- until the person seems completely trapped, until even his brain has been changed as a result of these behaviors. As Dr. Satinover puts it [p. 176]: "compulsions are neither simple choices nor true illnesses. They are a category unto themselves that includes elements of both choice and disease. There is a process, a way or path by which a life -- a free, moral life -- is progressively, not all at once, undone. It is this erosion of moral capacity that makes these preeminently spiritual conditions." Dr. Satinover describes the pleasures that young people -- especially in certain environments -- can find in homosexual attraction and activity. After all, the Bible describes most sins as pleasurable, natural, and self-reinforcing, until they are, in effect, addictions. [p. 147]

And, with a lovely mixture of truth-telling and compassion, Dr. Satinover puts the lie to so much that we hear today from the ___ lobby about the "normalcy" of homosexuality. He gives the facts, sad and bleak as many of them are, the facts that we never hear in the media, which have surrendered themselves to ___ advocacy and political correctness: the dramatically lower life expectancy, disease, the much higher incidence of suicide, and the rest -- and all of that, even without the consideration AIDS.

And, then, with calm and deliberate accumulation of the evidence -- easily accessible and widely known to those in the field -- he demonstrates that both secular and religious treatments of homosexuality enjoy a significant measure of success -- the heresy of all heresies to the ___ lobby and its advocates. For, you see, if you admit that homosexuals can change, you not only admit that homosexuality is not a fixed, genetic condition, but you open the door for the historic claim that homosexuals ought to change, that their lives are abnormal and undesirable because of their homosexuality. You are perhaps aware of a recent protest, entered in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, of some prominent psychologists and psychiatrists to the new orthodoxy among professionals in the field that homosexuality cannot be changed and no one should make an effort to try to change it. The protesters pointed out the fact, known to a very large number of people who would never acknowledge it in public, not only that many young people who at some point adopt homosexual practices later give them up, but that many longstanding homosexuals have proved eminently treatable. Indeed, Dr. Satinover compiles the major studies to demonstrate that the overall success rate of these secular strategies is about 50%, when success is defined as considerable to complete change [p. 186]. Religiously based programs are as if not more successful, as we might imagine. There is now an organization "Homosexuals Anonymous" akin to AA in its approach to this compulsive behavior.

There is so much valuable information in Satinover's book that I urge you once more to acquire and read it. But, remember, all of that was only to counter the idea, now so widely circulated, that homosexuality is genetic, unchangeable, and normal and so should not be condemned as sinful. Now, once more, to the Bible.

What are we to say about all of this? What is a biblical approach to homosexuality and, even more, to homosexuals.

Well, we have already said that it is a sin and that God condemns it. And I want to say again that, despite all that you hear today, the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality is clear, consistent, and thoroughly sensible. There should be no confusion here. I want to say that again because there is much to say on the other side and I don't want anyone to hear me say only one thing. Homosexuality is sinful, deeply sinful. But, we can say and must say much more.

I. It is also true that it is only one of many sins that God condemns, even but one of many sexual sins that God condemns, and it is not the worse sin!

We must say this to be loyal to our Lord and Master who brought up himself this history of Sodom and Gomorrah and the terrible sins of those cities of the plains. He was discussing the disinterest of the polite, upright, religious folk, church members, in Galilee to his message. And he said, "I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town."

In our natural irritation against the misrepresentations of the ___ lobby and the demands of homosexuals that their lifestyle be accepted as normal and healthy, we must not betray our faith, brothers and sisters. Sin is sin and guilt is guilt, and there is enough lying on all of us to damn us a thousand times over. It is unseemly and betrays a spirit contrary to true gospel faith and humility for us to speak as if homosexuality were a greater sin than the sins from which our Redeemer has delivered us.

The Bible speaks much more about heterosexual sin than about homosexual sin and much much more about other kinds of sins -- especially the sins of church going people -- hypocrisy, pride, and indifference to the poor and needy. As Alexander Whyte said, commenting on the teaching of Jesus, "the uttermost sinner will always be found in a church not a prison." Today, we might say, the uttermost sinner will always be found in a church, not a ___ bar. The point being that the closer one gets to the light the greater the evil of not living in that light.

II. Second, sin being the condition of all men, grace is for us as well, for all classes and conditions of human beings.

It would be a denial of divine grace of the most profound kind to argue that God would not or could not save certain kinds of people -- the kinds of people some people feel God should not want to save. It not only is a denial or our own great need for forgiveness for us to say or think such a thing, but, it is also a denial of the power of God's love.

It also is flatly contradicted by the Bible. I suppose the happiest mention of homosexuality in the Bible is, strangely, 1 Cor. 6:9. I say "strangely" because the text reads this way:

"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

Now, how, we might ask, can there be any happiness, any cheerfulness in that? Well, it comes in the next verse. "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

There were former practicing homosexuals, even male prostitutes among the congregations of the early church. God's grace had reached down to them and granted them forgiveness in Christ and the grace to lead a new life, a pure life. We are not told if all of them eventually married and had children. It matters not. They were washed of their sins like heterosexual Christians were washed of their many and great sins. We Christians are the company of the washed, and it is, finally, immaterial where the dirt came from that had to be washed off by the blood of Christ. What matters is that we were dirt and we have been washed.

III. And the third thing we can say about homosexuality and homosexuals from the Bible is that their summons, their calling is no different from that of anyone else who comes to faith in Christ and comes, by the Spirit of God, to call Jesus Lord.

This is Paul's point, of course, in the text I just read you from 1 Corinthians, but it is the general point of all the Bible -- from whatever background we come, whatever shape our former lives may have had, we all have the same life to live, the same commandments to keep, the same spiritual warfare to fight, the same Lord and Savior to honor with our lives.

C.S. Lewis writes in one of his letters [A Severe Mercy, pp. 147-148]:

To map out the boundaries within which all discussion must go on, I take it for certain that the physical satisfaction of homosexual desires is sin. This leaves the homosexual no worse off than any normal person who is, for whatever reason, prevented from marrying.... Like all other tribulations, it must be offered to God and his guidance how to use it must be sought."

Dr. Satinover does not claim, the evidence does not suggest, that all homosexuals can change or will change their sexual orinentation. No careful reader of the Bible should have thought so. If Paul is struggling with certain sins still at the end of his holy life, as he tells us he was; if virtually every great Christian through history acknowledges that they could not get free of certain sins, besetting sins they were called; if, as it appears, it is God's way to leave certain temptations to test and exercise the faith of his children, then why would not some struggle with homosexual desire the way so many have struggled with heterosexual desire, or love of drink, or money, or fits of temper, or the like. It is only to be expected.

Of course there are going to be Christians, even very godly Christians, struggling with the temptations of homosexual desire so long as they live in this world. There are Christians struggling with temptations of every other kind, why not this one? Some of us know such people.

And it should not surprise us at all, that such Christians have a great deal to give to the church, gifted by the Holy Spirit as they also have been. After all, homosexuals as a class of people in our society, are no less bright, talented, no less capable of love and self-sacrifice as anyone else. We are well aware of talented athletes, actors, writers, artists, philosophers who are homosexual. So in the church, Christians who struggle here have their gifts and graces to add to the body as do all the other recovering sinners who make up the membership of God's house.

You see, I think we Christians have something to answer for in the rejection of the Bible's true teaching about homosexuality by our culture and by the ___ community itself. We are at least partly responsible. For we have too often seemed to say to ___ men and women: you are sinners (and that is right, of course), and you have got to stop committing these sins. And what they have heard us say is, "you have to live denying yourself and your sexuality," if you are going to heaven you must live the excruciatingly painful life of denying the cravings of your body and soul. And that is true too, so far as it goes. But wait!

Now, we need to hold out hope for homosexuals who want to change. Many of them can and do and especially many who seek that change through the grace and power of Christ. But, we do say to many such folk, you must deny yourself, there is no other way. What we have not made clear is that this is to be true for every Christian in one way or another, indeed, in many ways, in other words, that this demand is by no means made only of homosexuals. When the homosexual says to us, you seem to be telling me that I must endure a terrible hardship to enter the kingdom of God, we should not only be telling him, "yes, that is so," but, "that is what is true for all of us" and our lives should demonstrate to him not only that this is so, but that Christians can do such things and find their lives and their happiness and their satisfaction in such self-denial because God helps them and because, when God is our portion, our inheritance, we can lose other things, we can do without other things, and still live fully authentic, fruitful, happy, lives in this world.

God is God and he will determine who must give up what. But Christ said, we must deny ourselves if we would be his disciple, and he said that some would be eunuchs for the kingdom of God. That should not be so hard for American homosexuals to believe and accept as it is. But it seems to them that we are asking all the sacrifice of them and making none of it ourselves!

No our message is to be: we are sinners like they are and have found forgiveness in Christ and they can too; and the life that God calls them to live -- if in fact they do not escape their homosexual temptations -- is that same life he has called us to live and that we are struggling to live in this world for our Savior's sake. It is not easy, but for us it is worth any difficulty, and it will be for them as well.


I hope you made it through the whole thing.... The problem with discussing such a hot button issue is that there are an unnumeral amount of apologitic discussions you must address prior to even respecting or appreciating such a perspective....

 

Who are you talking to? I don't believe I ever made that insinuation. I knew I should have just not involved myself in this thread.

 

Hey... I feel the same way.... I just stick to the main topics and let the random comments go by the wayside...

 

I believe the bible is the greatest work of fiction ever written.

 

That's a reasonable belief, as the faith and study neccesary, in my honest opinion, to believe the Bible within it's own merits without solely naively accepting it's teachings, it not what most people would want to invest...or in some cases, due to life experience, are even willing or able to invest on their own...

I do sincerely believe that with a significant investment in the study of history and worldviews, a good dose of humbleness, and a pretty tough faith-jump, one can see the reality of the Bible as something more than solely a document... But, to go from any perspective otherwise, to that of Christianity, is not something easily done, or even sometimes possible, without a person really wanting to and encountering it with a mind not set against it...

That's why I'd never dog someone for not taking it totally for it's word and doubting its authenticity.... I've done it as well, and feel that blind acceptance, or not challenging a perspective is naive...

And, if it is a great work of fiction, it's the best and most reasonable fiction I've ever read in terms of interpreting the world around us.... especially compared to the Koran, BofM, and the teachings of Buddah.... along with other Worldviews I've explored... There's a point where I decided on the most rational explanation and then had to make a jump of faith from that point...

 

Maybe I'm just dense, but if you live a "good life" and are a "good person" what does it matter that someone is ___. All the times I ever called someone a three lettered f word or a homo or whatever is worse in the big scheme of things than the person who was the recipient of those barbs doing what they choose to do among themselves. I hurt them....they never hurt me. Somehow in all his infinite wisdom I think god would realize this, or at least I hope so. Regardless of if it is genetics or choice, how does it make someone a bad person? Forget what the bible says. And don't tell me it's disgusting or not normal. A married man and woman could be in to (pick your disgusting, twisted fetish here). I could say that's not normal and that it's disgusting....but again, what does it matter?

 

Depends on if there is a God or if there isn't... If there is... and there are behaviors that pull an individual away from our perfect design and ability to relate to God, then it would matter...

If there is not, then there is no grounds for the consideration or value of any specific behavior...

Depends on the perspective... But, each perspective must be all or nothing... based on it's own merits

 

true that!!!

 

"I've got rings on my fingers
Bells on my toes, and
Elephants, to ride upon, my little Irish Rose"
-a song lyric from a century ago-

The facts are well stated and the thoughts are well made, by those of either side, who do realize, the Great Choice to be made, is whether we should accept Differents into the folds
the folds! of human variety.

I try to do that. So do many or most Christians. Those are the people to whom I feel a kinship.

A bridge between humanity need not be -crossed-, just to see well, to hail good cheers to, those on the other side of the =artificial divide=.

 

ok I don't know if I'm the only one that can see this or not, but does everyone else see the banner at the bottom of the page that reads "is ___ marriage wrong?" ?

I thought this was interesting since the topic had been somewhat brought up in this thread.

 

No, it's a random Google add, that corresponds to the topic in the forum.... mine says "Rainbow Recovery" Drug treatment for Gays...

Funny that it came up that way for you!