Religion, Homosexuality, the Usual
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Guardian
Member # 2476
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written Tuesday, June 29 2004 12:23
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I searched the Wikipedia for 'Satan' and this is what I found: The devil (Greek Diabolos: Slanderer; [ also ] who creates disorder, confusion; Hebrew Schatan: Adversary; Latin Lucifer: who carries light) is defined as a spiritual being, which opposes 'Good' with 'Evil'. Christianity sees the devil as God's opponent and seducer of mankind. But in the original judaic belief the devil's part is clearly subordinated, the same applies to Islam. While living in diaspora in Babylon, the jewish people came into contact with the teachings of Zarathustra (Zoroaster). Zoroaster's state religion is dualistic: "..and in the beginning were these two spirits, the twins, who as they say themselves are called the good and the bad in thought, speech and action. Between them the righteous make their choice." Before that time, the terms 'heaven' and 'hell' had not been known and/or defined in the jewish belief. The propagation of belief in angels can also probably be attributed to Zoroaster ( angels and faith in angels already existed in advanced archaic cultures, in Babylon, Assyria etc. ) The popular representation of Satan often refers to originally pagan gods. He is also sometimes interpreted as the archetype of the lusty, potent man or as a symbol of internal, instinctive human impulses and forces. The antique world knew Lucifer as another name for the planet Venus. In roman mythology, he was the son of Aurora, goddess of the dawn, also called Morning Star. Messadié regards Satan's change from prosecutor in God's council to God's opponent as a take over from Zoroaster's 'Ahriman'. The evil creator 'Ahriman' and the good god 'Ormudz' are opponents within Zoroaster's teachings. This difference between evil demiurg and good spiritual entity, that accepts Satan as God's opponent without questioning God's omnipotence was merged in the faith of the christian Gnosis. A faith however, that states divine omnipotence while seeing Satan as opposed to it, has by this logical contradiction a philosophical problem in bringing both parts together, in defining 'Unity'. -------------------- Polaris Posts: 1828 | Registered: Saturday, January 11 2003 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Tuesday, June 29 2004 12:59
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Once again, a return the the Old Testament Book of Job is enlightening. As far as I know, it's the only time that Satan appears in any way in the Old Testament, and he is clearly acting with God's express permission. ?Alorael, who would like everyone to go back and discard all the Paradise Lost ideas about Genesis. Milton may have put an indelible stamp on Christianity, but he wasn't speaking with the word of God. He was just an author who wanted to write an epic. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 4154
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written Tuesday, June 29 2004 13:13
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quote:By that I meant that I am untrusting of them because some parts of it may not apply to those in this era. For example, the sacrificing of animals. This has changed so that we do not need to kill animals in order to repent, because Jesus died on the cross. Another example would be the whole thing about which foods not to eat. I'd expect that that section was there to keep the scientifically ignorant people of that age healthy. (For example, I think I recall that the Bible says that corpses of animals are unclean, and that one shouldn't touch them. This doesn't mean that if I touched a dead mouse I have sinned, or that I am unclean, because I can just go wash my hands with antibacterial soap.) -------------------- You're a moron if you think I'm not. Posts: 213 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Tuesday, June 29 2004 17:02
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You can't have it both ways. Either God changed His laws once, and can do it again, or He didn't. If He didn't, the vast majory of Christians go against His decrees daily. Yes, there are many things that are ritually unclean. There are specific ways to regain ritual purity, and it has nothing to do with physical cleanliness. Basically, if you can second-guess part of the Bible, I'd like to know why I can't second-guess other parts. ?Alorael, who agrees that parts of the Old Testament are clearly outdated. However, parts of the New Testament suffer equally from their distance from modern times. God gave people brains for a reason, presumably. Why not use them? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 4154
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written Tuesday, June 29 2004 17:35
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quote:I'm not trying to have it both ways -- I never said God doesn't change. If God never changed, then we would have been flooded in another Noah's Ark epidemic by now. Feel free to second-guess all of the Bible. I don't listen to even the preacher of my own church without a little skepticism. If you don't question what you're told, then that would just be ignorance. Granted, I was raised in a Christian family, but I still question my faith, and I would not still be following it if I did not find it to be true. -------------------- You're a moron if you think I'm not. Posts: 213 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
Member # 919
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written Tuesday, June 29 2004 19:19
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This topic is moving far too fast for me, so I'll respond to the three posts directly after mine and then wait for it to slow down a bit. Djur, I see those bits about a "jealous God" as a mistranslation or misinterpretation. You can either believe what I believe, or you can believe that the Bible is horribly self-contradictory; why would such a God allow his own son to be killed in such a horrible way for people who had been actively fighting him for millenia? I also believe that God started out with a desire to make humans as perfect as possible, and then, with such strong resistance by Satan, backed off over time, leaving us more and more to our own devices. A form of ethnic cleansing, I suppose, but remember - to God, eternal life is more important than our current existance on Earth. Also, when you're God, not Hitler or Pol Pot, you can do things like that; what is yours, you can either protect and nourish, like Moses, or you can mostly leave it alone, like most of the modern world, it seems, or you can destroy it, giving it another chance in the afterlife. Sounds cruel, I suppose, but it's really not... I'll let RC or someone with time on their hands explain. Muslims must really love you. Thuryl, I haven't. However, my cousin is a Catholic priest; I'm about to go on a family trip for two weeks, so I should have plenty of chances to discuss religion then. What I've heard, though, I don't really like - it seems too conservative, too strict, too self-centered, too... top-heavy, I guess, like a bureaucracy that keeps growing and growing until it can't keep track of itself. I'm a Christian non-conformist, and I don't intend to change that any time soon. Not that I'm unwilling to change. I just can't find a Christian church that I like that focuses on the Father more than the Son, that's willing to accept that Paul was wrong, that Jesus is the Son only, not God himself (did you know that the Bible never actually says that Jesus is God until Paul's letters?). A bit like the Jehovah's Witnesses, I guess, but they're more strict than Catholics. Kelandon, you agree with Dolney? You realize that he's a radical atheist, right? The non-believing equivalent of those Christian fundies that everyone hates so much? Of course, there's nothing wrong with fundamentalism. Unless it's religious. In Paul's letters: "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." (Romans 1:26-27) This might be the only time in the Bible where female homosexuality is mentioned; however, it is equated with male homosexuality, which is discussed in more detail elsewhere. "Law is promulgated, not for the righteous man, but for persons lawless and unruly, ungodly and sinners... fornicators, men who lie with males,... and whatever other thing is in opposition to the healthful teachings according to the glorious news of the happy God." (1 Timothy 1:9-11) Not as critical as he is in Romans, when you think about it, but... it's there. This was from my friend's Bible; he's a Jehovah's Witness. Mine just says "fornicators and perverts", I think. The other quote was from the New International Version. Take that as you will. I prefer the Old Testament's quotes anyway, mainly because they're not written by Paul, but you were wondering where it mentionaed homosexuality. That's where. -------------------- And though the musicians would die, the music would live on in the imaginations of all who heard it. -The Last Pendragon TEH CONSPIRACY IZ ALL In case of emergency, break glass. Posts: 3351 | Registered: Saturday, April 6 2002 08:00 |
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Shake Before Using
Member # 75
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written Tuesday, June 29 2004 20:00
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I'll confirm the first verse Sir David posted as clearly mentioning (and condemning) homosexuality - only one translation I could find didn't, and it didn't make sense, either. The second one I'd say is in most bibles as a reference to (and condemnation of) homosexuality - assuming, of course, that 'sodomites' are homosexuals (or that the translator in question meant homosexuals when he said 'sodomites', which is what matters) [ Tuesday, June 29, 2004 20:18: Message edited by: Imban ] Posts: 3234 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4637
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 02:11
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AFAIK, Jesus didn't abolish any law (if we take seriously what He said in S. Matthew Chap. 5). So that Leviticus verse is still in effect. Besides, you can read in Revelation (Apocalipse) that homossexuals won't be saved (just as adulterers, thieves, murders, etc won't). So both Judaic and (more conservative) christian religions condemn homossexuality. But there are christian religions that don't condemn it, although they can't justify it wit the Bible.  -------------------- Visit the BoA Center! Blades of Avernum Center Your Avernum Design Haven Brand new and powerful forum! Check it out now! Posts: 483 | Registered: Tuesday, June 29 2004 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 09:02
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Err, didn't abolish any law? Well, arguably, but he changed some practices (see the prior discussion of the Sabbath, etc). Sir David, careful there. I said I found it hard to argue with Dolney's perspective, not that I agreed with it, and I said that based only on his single post that indicated great frustration with religions, Christianity in particular. I feel that frustration. If he hates religions irrationally, then obviously I don't agree with him completely, but that's what I meant. Those couple of passages are interesting. If I remember the article I read correctly, those were the ones explained away as actually against pagan temple practices and pederasty, based on the original Greek, although I can't vouch for that on my own knowledge or as anything more than just a vague recollection. -------------------- Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!! (The home of BoA's HLPM v1.1!) Rate my scenarios! Northern Kingdom 0: Prologue High Level Party Maker Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 09:09
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David, your views are basically Arian. In essence, they believed that Jesus was subordinated to God. You might want to check out a little early church history. It's an area I have some interest in, particularly as it relates to the Migration period but I'm afraid I can't recommend any must-read books for the subject as a whole because I haven't yet found any. If you've got a preacher with an interest in that, you might want to try him. My views are influenced by Arianism but tend to come to the opposite viewpoint. I'm not convinced of the existence of God, and if he does exist I'm not sure I'd want to worship him. He's clearly not all-loving (which is too subjective a term to be possible anyway,) which to my mind would suggest that there is no being that is utter evil (Satan,) and this would suggest that God's decisions are whims more than anything else (since he isn't doing things for political or material gain or anything else which mortals might.) I'd also suggest that just because you're God, doesn't make murder acceptable. Being a deity DOES NOT remove from you the standards expected of Hitler and Pol Pot. So I'm more or less an atheist. But I do have a great deal of respect for Jesus. Jesus puts forward a set of beliefs I'd be very happy to live by. In Jesus' worldview, it is impossible not to sin. And unless you live an entirely sinless life, you are doomed to the fires of hell. Jesus is therefore saying that obscenity is as wrong as stealing which is as wrong as homosexuality which is as wrong as child abuse which is as wrong as murder which is as wrong as genocide. The only escape is faith in God. I don't want to take that road, since I subscribe to the 'God as bastard' model, wherein God is behaving like a human, only much more powerful (although to give him his due, if we had his power, we'd be behaving to a much less than human standard, I'll bet.) But I'd be quite happy with a religion with Jesus at its centre. I also find Jesus the prophet of social change to be worth listening to. I like his strictures on wealth, on the necessity of loving all men equally and the like. There are plenty of bits of harsh Judaean morality I don't like, but it could be argued that just because I find them distasteful, doesn't make them wrong. As to Paul and his ilk, I have little time for them. They are bigotted, glorify in the suffering of their opponents in a most unChristian manner (the description of Judas' death in (I think) Acts is almost gleeful.) There are points to be found, but there's also stuff that just isn't worth obeying. Some of the letters, moreover, seem to have been included despite the fact they only had relevance to local church policy in Asia Minor in the first century AD. Revelations is of very dodgy authority and the selection process for the books of the bibles was very deeply flawed. Also, from a personal standpoint I'd much rather read a rabble-rouser like Amos (although not his jingoistic and hateful fellow author Obadiah) or indeed Jesus himself (although the Gospel writers themselves ought to be taken with a pinch of salt.) Lastly, a few comments on things I've read in other posts which I disagree with to some degree: MSW, there may have been gay marriages in the 12th and 13th centuries, but at this point Southern Europe didn't even have the institution of religious marriage (it was an entirely secular ceremony) and this was probably the low point in adherence to biblical teaching in the Christian era. The bible does clearly make objections to homosexuality. It's arguable that those sections were written by closed-minded bigots, but those verses are in there, albeit in a very muted role. Ergo, the issue is mostly whether the bible is right, not what it says. ef, angels aren't entirely a product of the Babylonian Captivity. The four cardinal angels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel have names which mean respectively Man-God, Eagle-God, Bull-God and Lion-God (don't know which one means which) and there have been finds in the area of Israel from the 14th century BC of altars in high places flanked by representations of these four creatures, so there's an argument that the cherubim were absorbed from a pre-Judaic religion. -------------------- "I particularly like the part where he claims not to know what self-aggrandisement means, then demands more wing-wongs up his virgin ass" Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 4154
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 09:35
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I don't understand people who say they respect Jesus, but don't think he is the Son of God. I'm not sure if you said you felt that way or not, but how can Jesus be respectable if he's not the Son of God? Seeing as he said that he was the Son of God, he'd either have to be a madman or a liar. No liar or madman could have the power to heal people and to speak as he did, in my mind. Were he a liar, then he's not respectable, anyway, and how could someone who taught such things be so evil as to claim that they are God? It doesn't work. Nor does him being a madman. There is no one who could have said and done what he did without (or even with) full control of their mind. [ Wednesday, June 30, 2004 09:36: Message edited by: Eldiran ] -------------------- You're a moron if you think I'm not. Posts: 213 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 3022
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 09:53
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quote:Presumeably, those who don't think he is the son of God, and don't think he is a liar, don't believe that he said he was the son of God in the first place. Or no more so than everyone is supposedly a son of God. Can you prove that Jesus did miracles? Posts: 269 | Registered: Saturday, May 24 2003 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 10:29
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If we don't assume that the Gospels were written with the help of God, then looking at them as purely historical documents, they are a bit sketchy. To the best of my knowledge, the earliest fragmentary copies that we have date from something like 110 or 120 CE (AD for the Christians), and we don't have reasonably complete copies until something like sixty years later. These were recopied (several times) from documents written around 50-70 or so, meaning that the earliest fragmentary copies were recopied forty years after the original writing. On top of that, the Gospels describe events that occurred in around the year 30 and earlier, so they originally written at least twenty years after the fact. And also, they were written in Greek, when Jesus spoke Aramaic, and translation is inherently paraphrase. Thus, if we take the Gospels to be the work of humans, there's a lot of room in that history for revision, error, or even at the very minimum, interpretation. Also there are considerations that the Gospels are written as arguments (John, for instance, explicitly says that it was written to convince the reader that Jesus was the Christ) and were at minimum written by biased sources, as well as, I'm sure, other issues, too. By that logic, we know very little about Jesus except that he was a reformer of some kind of the religio-political systems in place in his region at the time. The madman-liar-prophet argument doesn't completely work. Moreover, using such a loaded word as "madman" is probably the wrong way to go. Being mistaken would probably be a better way to describe the issue (and here I am referring to the logic presented in the book of that name, which is, I assume, your source for this reasoning). [ Wednesday, June 30, 2004 10:30: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!! (The home of BoA's HLPM v1.1!) Rate my scenarios! Northern Kingdom 0: Prologue High Level Party Maker Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 4154
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 12:43
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It seems impossible to me that the Bible could have been composed without godly intervention, because if it was I'd expect it to be massively flawed and completely disproven by now. I'm fairly pessimistic about human capabilities. I'm also pretty sure that if there were a clear contradiction in the Bible, the media would be all over it by now, because such a thing would cause a lot of controversy, and controversy sells well. And FZ, the only place you would read what Jesus says is in the Bible. Why would you trust one part of one of the books and not another, if they are written by the same person? -------------------- You're a moron if you think I'm not. Posts: 213 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 13:22
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There are contradictions in the Bible. Look at the first two chapters of Genesis! God creates man and woman with performative power. Whoops, no He doesn't. He creates man from mud and woman from man's rib. The Bible is rife with inconsistencies, flaws, and errors. They're not news anymore because they have been exposed for years and it's simply not headline material anymore. You can explain all the problems away in a number of ways, but they're incontrovertibly present. ?Alorael, who doesn't see how Jesus claiming to be the son of God (or Son of Man) makes him evil if he lied. Maybe he did it to give more force to a worthwhile message. Maybe he was crazy enough to think he was the son of God but sane enough to have beliefs worth following. Maybe his disciples edited his words heavily. Heck, maybe he had reasonable beliefs and his disciples wrote in miracles to make them sell better. There is no reason to doubt Jesus the historical man. There is good reason to doubt Jesus the messiah. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 3022
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written Wednesday, June 30 2004 13:52
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quote:They aren't. The new testament, in particular, is a collection of popular texts and secondary sources by different authors which were selected and put together by The First Council of Nicaea, held in 325 AD, or other groups, in order to quash the almost uncontrollable diversity of beliefs at that time. http://ptet.dubar.com/bible-composition.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_testament Posts: 269 | Registered: Saturday, May 24 2003 07:00 |
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By Committee
Member # 4233
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written Thursday, July 1 2004 04:41
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Just airing a pet peeve of mine, but "BCE" and "CE" are far and away too PC. What denotes the "Common Era" anyway? Hmmm. Still seems to hover right around the alleged time of the birth of Christ! When cultures win wars or become dominant, their practices and standards are adopted, and Western culture has done pretty well with that. Until some other standard manages to surplant our reckoning of history, let's not be petty, okay? Americans still use English units of measurement; we haven't renamed them "American units," and to do so would be foolish. CE is just a thin label covering AD, and doesn't change that the year 2004 is relative to the birth of you know who, whether divine or not. Posts: 2242 | Registered: Saturday, April 10 2004 07:00 |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Thursday, July 1 2004 04:52
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I strongly agree, and I don't use PC as an insult -- I just find it offensive that people are willing to call a calendar based on a non-scientific estimation of the birth of one religious leader the 'common era' calendar. A much better CE calendar would run from the last major prophet (Muhammad, or about ~600 years later than AD/BC -- or perhaps Marx, if you felt whimsical), the last major geopolitics shift (1820? 1945? 1992?)... needless to say, a mess we'd have to get into every time someone did something history-worthy. AD/BC can be used without a faint hint of imperialist sentiment, at least, so I'm happy with them. -------------------- They want to have a war to keep their factories They want to have a war to keep us on our knees They want to have a war to stop us buying Japanese They want to have a war to stop industrial disease They're pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind They want to suck your energy, incarcerate your mind Give you Rule Brittania, gassy beer, page three Two weeks in Hispania and sunday striptease Meanwhile, the first Jesus says, "I'll cure it soon Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons" The other one's out on hunger strike, he's dying by degrees How come Jesus gets industrial disease? Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
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By Committee
Member # 4233
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written Thursday, July 1 2004 06:19
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Nothing wrong with perfectly good imperialistic influence. How about basing the year on the founding of the United States?  By my reckoning, 1776 AD = 1 PA (Pax Americana), so it's now 229 PA. Yeehaw! Anyone who disagrees will be smoked out of their spiderholes and gotten! Amer'ca rulez!!!(By the by, I thought Spiderman 2 ruled.) [ Thursday, July 01, 2004 06:22: Message edited by: Andrew Miller ] Posts: 2242 | Registered: Saturday, April 10 2004 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
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written Sunday, July 4 2004 01:00
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quote:He just ended the sacrifice system, that were always meant to be ceased with Jesus' ultimate sacrifice, AFAIK. He said He didn't come to abolish the law. He didn't break the sabbath (He just was wrongly accused by the pharisees). Hey, even after dying in a friday, He just ressurected monday, to keep the sabbath.  -------------------- Visit the BoA Center! Blades of Avernum Center Your Avernum Design Haven Brand new and powerful forum! Check it out now! Posts: 483 | Registered: Tuesday, June 29 2004 07:00 |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Sunday, July 4 2004 01:46
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The Apocalypse of St. John has inspired more idiocy than any other book, bar none. People have been predicting the coming of the end times since it existed. That said, I view the Bible with general skepticism; I have less problem believing in God than BtI, mostly because I have reason to believe in God as a clockmaker: the reason that all of the atrocities of history happened is that God has little, if any, role at all in human affairs. And believing that homosexuality is an inborn trait -- or if not, certainly one for which little control exists -- I cannot in good conscience belive God would damn anyone for it. [ Sunday, July 04, 2004 02:01: Message edited by: Ultimate Weapon Custer ] -------------------- They want to have a war to keep their factories They want to have a war to keep us on our knees They want to have a war to stop us buying Japanese They want to have a war to stop industrial disease They're pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind They want to suck your energy, incarcerate your mind Give you Rule Brittania, gassy beer, page three Two weeks in Hispania and sunday striptease Meanwhile, the first Jesus says, "I'll cure it soon Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons" The other one's out on hunger strike, he's dying by degrees How come Jesus gets industrial disease? Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Sunday, July 4 2004 05:18
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quote:Hence, Revelation should be publically rejected by all Christian groups and ceremonially burnt. Revelation is the most doctrinally dodgy book of the whole NT (the Eastern Church didn't allow it to be read aloud until the fall of Constantinople, perceived to be a sign of the coming Apocalypse and the Copts still reject it, whilst I understand Luther toyed with throwing it out with the Apocrypha.) And the point of the crucifixion was to forgive humanity provided they put their faith in Jesus. So if murderers, homosexuals and the like are being rejected, that's because John of Patmos was wrong. In my religious moments, I daydream of the second coming of Jesus, in which he casts down the fundies and those who took his name to support their drug-induced bigotry into the lowest hell. Real Christians would have forgiven Judas. quote:I can admire a liar. I can admire his actions, at the very least. I can admire him and disagree with him. I don't have to believe everythin he said to respect the man. Besides, if you don't believe in God, you aren't going to consider it evil for someone to claim they're the son of God. Particularly since I'm not sure evil can be empirically defined. Jesus said he was the son of man. I've yet to hear a convincing argument that that must mean 'son of God.' It would imply the reverse, in fact. Mind you, he says a lot of other things that suggest the opposite. It's hard to justify the argument that he wasn't the son of God if you believe the Gospels, but it's notable that many first century Christians held just that view. quote:Let's take the example of the Iliad. Composed about 800BC in a pre-literate time, refering to events of around 1250BC. There's still massive debate about it's exact historicity, but the central theme has never been conclusively disproved and is if anything looking stronger by the day. Compare to the Bible. The Old Testament underwent some editing and maintenance around the 6th century BC, the stuff which didn't make sense was cut out at the Council of Nicaea and there are a number of 4th or 5th century bibles, which do contradict each other on occasions. You don't need divine assistance to preserve a degree of coherence for hundreds of years. And the bible was not written by the same person. You can claim divine guidance, but an atheist won't believe you. Indeed his case is supported by the differences of opinion between writers, from the pro-Judaean kingdom writings of Kings and Chronicles, to the anti-urban rabble rouser Amos, to the vicious nationalism of Obadiah, to the entirely secular book of Esther. Then there's the massive change in perspective between Old and New Testaments. -------------------- "I particularly like the part where he claims not to know what self-aggrandisement means, then demands more wing-wongs up his virgin ass" Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
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written Sunday, July 4 2004 05:44
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quote:And what is "having faith in Jesus", in your opinion? If someone has faith in Jesus, then he/she will follow Him. The Bible condemns homosexuality, so if someone practices homosexualism then it's because he doesn't repent doing it. How can something that is not repented to be forgiven? That woul go agains't God's justice, where we must repent to be forgiven. Having faith it's not just believing in Jesus. Satan believes in Him too -------------------- Visit the BoA Center! Blades of Avernum Center Your Avernum Design Haven Brand new and powerful forum! Check it out now! Posts: 483 | Registered: Tuesday, June 29 2004 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
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written Sunday, July 4 2004 07:48
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Overwhelming, you have managed to pull me out of silence again and caused me to make a comment defending gays again. I can never understand how anyone can believe that God created people like me, with the sexuality that they have, and expect them to go against their basic nature and live out their lives as a lie being straight. I believe in a God that makes gays like me the way they are because he wants them to be that way. Not so they can go through life in constant suffering because they think God wants them to be straight while their mind and soul tells them that they are not. I only believe in the teachings of Jesus, and not anything else really in the Bible. The Bible was written by men, and just because they were divinely inspired by God, that does not mean that God himself wrote the Bible. Everything in the Bible was written by a human being, and human beings are not without fault. They will put whatever they think is right and just into the Bible. Also, Paul said that people are not to judge others. I must also say that I am a Christian as is my boyfriend. I know what love is now and I thank God every day for introducing me to the love of my life. I refuse to believe that God did not have some hand in bringing us together. And we will never agree that it is a sin for us to love each other. Such love cannot be wrong in God's eyes, or he would have disapproved of David and Jonathan's relationship in the Bible. A true gay romance story. Also, Jesus once even approved of a Centurion's love for his servant boy. The whole verse deals with the centurion's faith in Jesus as a healer, but Jesus would have been blind not to know the relationship between the two during that time in history. It was well known during that time, when the Roman Empire was in rule, that homosexuality was an accepted sexuality all around their empire. Jesus most certainly would have known this, and yet he did not judge the centurion concerning his gay relationship with his servant. If this was such a grievous sin, then why did Jesus not take this opportunity to comment on another supposed sin and cleanse this man of his supposed bad sexuality? It could only be because he himself did not believe it was a sin. He was most impressed by the centurion's faith in him and even knowing that the centurion would go on loving his servant, Jesus still healed him. I will never ever believe that the God I believe in wants everyone in the world to be straight, including the people he created gay. God is a part of my life and he will always be. If my sexuality is such a horrible sin, then why has he been blessing me so much lately? I found my soul mate, I will be getting a job within a month, I will soon have a house, I am losing weight, and I am finally soon going to be able to drive. On the judgment day, we will all see who was right and who was wrong. That reminds me, if you think homosexuality is so unnatural, than why is it so evident in nature? Oh yes, gay animals exist as well. All over the world. So much so that books have been written on the subject, documenting all the different species that have been found to be in their own gay relationships. One of the books is called, Biological Exuberance. I took the time to read some of it and it is very interesting. [ Sunday, July 04, 2004 07:50: Message edited by: Sir Sherlock Holmes In Love ] -------------------- (Looks around in the Study) Colonel Mustard: "Just checking." Mrs. Peacock: "Everything all right?" Colonel Mustard: "Yep. Two corpses. Everything's fine." "Keep your wits about you, the game is afoot!!" - Sherlock Holmes Posts: 935 | Registered: Friday, August 8 2003 07:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 4537
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written Sunday, July 4 2004 12:12
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quote:Forgive me, but this post doesn't have any other relevance to this topic. I would normally not get involved in this kind of thread; it just occurred to me that this part just seemed to be sitting there, ignored, whether intentionally or not... -------------------- Digital Neko - more nekojin per capita than you can beat senseless! Now featuring all-new subdomain! Posts: 147 | Registered: Sunday, June 13 2004 07:00 |