I wouldn't disagree with your theology, JA, apart from the God bit of course. However I would have to say that the position of most denominations is a long way a way.
...It's easy to be gay and Christian if you follow the words of Jesus and toss out all the crap that everyone else put into the Bible and then had the temerity to deem, "the Word of God," from the insane and cruel Abraham to the hallucinatory John.
On the other hand, there is good reason for lots of different people to be angry with organized religion. Some of the worst atrocities that man has done to man and nature have been done in the name of God. (However, we are equally capable of doing those things in the name of other things, such as nationalism , tribalism, or whatever motivated the Nazis, for example).
So I don't begrudge anyone for speaking out against Christianity nor do I fail to understand why people in their anger make no distinctions between the beliefs of different denominations. In fact, I am just as frustrated and angry at mainstream denominations, including my own, who remain somewhat silent as fundamentalists hijack Christianity and redefine it in the public's eye as something full of hate and ignorance.
So although I might speak passionately about the viewpoints of mainstream Christianity, I don't speak passionately against the anger of Jason or anyone else who has been marginalized by any group claiming to be Christians.
Amused.
Sin is such a childish concept...but then again, so is religion, so it's easy to see why the two so often go hand-in-hand.
I think there is plenty of justification for what you say, when you consider the various ways the concept of sin has been defined and lived out by different religious groups. But I do think this depends on your definition of sin. The best definition that I know of is that sin is any human act or failure to act that increases misery and suffering of any organism that is capable of misery and suffering.
There are some surprisingly timeless concepts in the Bible about sin, even if you use the definition I just offered. Luther's interpretation of Paul's thoughts about sin put it more in line with a kind of addiction without the benefit of the modern psychology of addiction. In other words, Luther wisely highlighted Paul's writings about how our free will is limited by our biological affinities which we are not always able to control by our intellect. I think the plight of an addict is a good model for the plight of any human who is struggling against doing things he doesn't really want to do.
St. Paul writes about sin and his own lack of free will in this regard:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to dothis I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. - Romans 7:15-20
If you are an addict, or you have a loved one who is an addict, you understand what Paul is talking about. All of us have this kind of dual consciousness of what we are, what we want to be, and how we want to behave in the face our own adversity and the adversity of others. But our abilty to live out those ideals are limited by the physical and mental nature of being human.
I think that anyone here would say the same thing about their own propensity for sin if you define sin the way I did above.
Therefore, our recognition and acknowledgment of our propensity to sin is useful to us lest we develop false notions that sin can be defined very narrowly like the fundamentalists do, and that we might be able to live without sin. So the idea of reminding ourselves about our sinful nature has less to do with wallowing in guilt and self-reproach than it does with keeping ourselves vigilant to the fact that every moment of the day is full of opportunities to help reduce misery and suffering in the world.
The legacy of Luther has Protestants not practicing individual confession with a Priest. Although one could go to one's Protestant pastor and confess, he would remind you that your list of transgressions in the face of misery and suffering in the world is longer than you could possibly recount. And if the recounting, however complete you thought it was, makes you feel like you have somehow made up for what you did or did not do, you will then think that nothing else is needed of you.
Therefore, most church services, both Catholic and Protestant start almost like an AA meeting, where the congregation recites a general confession acknowledging their propensity to sin generally. Words like, "..we are sorry for those things that we have done and those things we have left undone....". And we do this without the desire to wallow in guilt so much as to not become complacent and think that the rest of the church service or anything else is a substitute for constant awareness and action to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
I have come to think that this approach to sin is extremely mature and extremely valuable. It is a kind of jewel of self-knowledge that people of all religions or no religion could benefit from.
...Aside from that, I don't have much of anything else to say or add really. ...-
Yet you added something beautiful nevertheless. Thanks for that.