How do you reconcile being a Gay Christian.

JustAsking

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Random thoughts on the subject.

Do not judge yourself against others, do not judge others against yourself. If you must judge, just Christ as the standard. As you will surely fail too.

Being a Christian is easy, being Christ-like is hard because it requires the following, repentance, forgiveness, in that order and it is never ending process.

We always want the forgiveness and skip over the repentance.

God views all sin the same, a lie is the same as murder. We like rank sin to make ourselves feel better.

We deserve Hell, there is nothing I can do that will get me into Heaven. God forgives my debt but that does not mean I am innocent.

Does reading this make you feel relieved or guilty?

A beautiful and concise expression of modern Christian gospel of grace. To answer your question, there is nothing more liberating than the knowledge of grace.
 

jason_els

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We deserve Hell, there is nothing I can do that will get me into Heaven. God forgives my debt but that does not mean I am innocent.

I don't believe this for a minute nor do I have any evidence Jesus believed it either. This is predestination at its most pernicious.

Luther based predestination upon Mark 16 and, I fear, he wasn't aware that Mark 9-20 aren't even the fourth century versions; someone else added them later.

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.
 

clear

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JustAsking...

Just WOW! It's very hard for one not to hear the masters voice when ever you speak. I can only sit back and revel in it's simple elegance and clarity. If only others could so rightly divide the word of truth, as you do. Again... it is a pleasure to read your insights.

Aside from that, I don't have much of anything else to say or add really. I think most all of the major points have already been covered, in one form or another, by most of the above; or in previous threads- many times -before. I can only hope that the original poster takes it all to heart, and was sincere in his question/curiosity.

Beyond this, I will leave you all with a passage from 1John, Chapter 3; verses 13-24 (from the "Bible in Basic English" version; I think it reads best for the laymen, lol). Major emphasis in bold.

13 Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world has no love for you. 14 We are conscious that we have come out of death into life because of our love for the brothers. He who has no love is still in death. 15 Anyone who has hate for his brother is a taker of life, and you may be certain that no taker of life has eternal life in him. 16 In this we see what love is, because he gave his life for us; and it is right for us to give our lives for the brothers. 17 But if a man has this world's goods, and sees that his brother is in need, and keeps his heart shut against his brother, how is it possible for the love of God to be in him? 18 My little children, do not let our love be in word and in tongue, but let it be in act and in good faith. 19 In this way we may be certain that we are true, and may give our heart comfort before him, 20 When our heart says that we have done wrong; because God is greater than our heart, and has knowledge of all things. 21 My loved ones, if our heart does not say that we have done wrong, we have no fear before him; 22 And he gives us all our requests, because we keep his laws and do the things which are pleasing in his eyes.

23 And this is his law, that we have faith in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love for one another, even as he said to us. 24 He who keeps his laws is in God and God is in him. And the Spirit which he gave us is our witness that he is in us
.


Regards,

T.D.:cool:

Ciao-
 

JustAsking

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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 do—this 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.
 

B_Stronzo

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I am sorry if this is a somewhat hackneyed topic, if you are gay and christian, but it seems so irrational to me. I can't see that the Christian God is anything but homophobic. Eve was created for Adam, Noah took the animals two by two, Sodom was destroyed, and need I mention Leviticus? Paul thought that all sex was a sin.

It just seems to me that Homosexuality and Christianity are irredeemably irreconcilable. Though of course, Jesus did love John.

.. instigator :wink:

(Paul, I've always maintained, was a closet mo himself)
 

Bbucko

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Of course anything rooted in spirituality is going to seem irrational and for good reason. Life requires more than just an intellect in order to navigate through and into what we are need to learn in order to grow and evolve. It often requires our cooperation in a leap of faith. We are at times forced to step outside of what we "know" in order to get to what life is trying to show us.

For me this is the very nature of spirituality.

Emotions are an integral part of the human experience; spiritual teachings offer us a guide to help maintain a balance between our physical lives and our spiritual lives. They also lend themselves to the idea of common sense when properly utilized. (This is why fanatics and religious zealots ruin it for the rest of us. No common sense! They throw the baby out with the bath water on a regular basis, all in the name of religion.)

To live solely by the emotions to me is irrational. There are moments in life when these and other principals provide us with the tools we need in order to make it through situations we often feel powerless to face. They appeal to the intellect as well as the heart and as a result, enable us to move out of our own way and allow the truth to do its work in each of us.

In my experience, accepting the truth no matter how brutal it may be and in spite of how much I resisted against it, has always lead me to some understanding that allowed for peace on some level.

Being gay, I believe God understands my reasons for being who I am and he is certainly not limited by sexual persuasion. He is still capable of keeping his word and will provide help when I ask for it. Even if that means stepping outside of my own little reality.

Darryl Hanna’s character in Steel Magnolias: “It may sound simple, but that’s how I get through these things.”

I've never made it a habit of discussing my spirituality in public --any kind of public-- before, so it's probably easy to think that I'm an atheist, but I'm not. I wasn't trying to bait anyone with my rationality/emotionalism dichotomy; I was rather trying to quantify what I find defines us human.

I suppose the main difference between what I believe (and practice) and the faiths of so many others is that I've never claimed to have any profound, ultimate answers to life's questions for anyone else. I find any form of evangelism abhorrent on an instinctual, fundamental level.

But I don't believe in a "personal" god and have no credence whatsoever in any of the liturgy or trappings of Christianity in any of its myriad forms. I've found that without faith in the concept of a personal god, none of those things (nor the tenets of Judaism or Islam) makes much sense. My rational mind rejects them.

But my co-existent and equally important emotional mind is constantly attempting to make sense of experiences I've had that extend beyond rationality. I have flatlined twice, each time experiencing a variation on the theme of an OBE/NDE which seemed every bit as objectively real as my sitting here typing this.

I've also had a variety of other experiences that cannot be explained by any rational means, including precognition and other extraordinary paranormal events, most of which, again, happened during a state of awareness impossible to differentiate from normal wakefulness.

I have always left room for doubt, first because this is an intelligent, rational thing to do; second because I understand that genuine hallucinations are, by definition, indistinguishable from reality. One can never be certain that what seems fixed and permanent today will endure until tomorrow, just that there is a strong likelihood of it. My life is littered with the corpses of paradigms and certainties.
 

B_Nick4444

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I'll pray for you, dude!

Yours doesn't sound like a hopeless case ...



I've never made it a habit of discussing my spirituality in public --any kind of public-- before, so it's probably easy to think that I'm an atheist, but I'm not. I wasn't trying to bait anyone with my rationality/emotionalism dichotomy; I was rather trying to quantify what I find defines us human.

I suppose the main difference between what I believe (and practice) and the faiths of so many others is that I've never claimed to have any profound, ultimate answers to life's questions for anyone else. I find any form of evangelism abhorrent on an instinctual, fundamental level.

But I don't believe in a "personal" god and have no credence whatsoever in any of the liturgy or trappings of Christianity in any of its myriad forms. I've found that without faith in the concept of a personal god, none of those things (nor the tenets of Judaism or Islam) makes much sense. My rational mind rejects them.

But my co-existent and equally important emotional mind is constantly attempting to make sense of experiences I've had that extend beyond rationality. I have flatlined twice, each time experiencing a variation on the theme of an OBE/NDE which seemed every bit as objectively real as my sitting here typing this.

I've also had a variety of other experiences that cannot be explained by any rational means, including precognition and other extraordinary paranormal events, most of which, again, happened during a state of awareness impossible to differentiate from normal wakefulness.

I have always left room for doubt, first because this is an intelligent, rational thing to do; second because I understand that genuine hallucinations are, by definition, indistinguishable from reality. One can never be certain that what seems fixed and permanent today will endure until tomorrow, just that there is a strong likelihood of it. My life is littered with the corpses of paradigms and certainties.
 

jason_els

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JA's quote of Romans is one of the reasons I dislike Paul so intensely. In that quote Paul denies that he himself is responsible for his own actions. Twice in that excerpt he blames sin itself and not himself for his bad actions and/or thoughts. I swear he hit his head on a rock on that road to Damascus. It's like Paul is saying outright, "The devil made me do it."

Sorry Paul old boy, but denial of responsibility does not help one, "go forth and sin no more."

I realize my perspective on Christianity is less than orthodox by the measure of most churches and is strongly influenced by New England-style Unitarianism which discards whole blocks of Christian dogma in favor of rationality. I truly think that being gay and Unitarian is completely compatible and were I a Christian, it would be the only church I could reasonably join.
 

Phil Ayesho

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Random thoughts on the subject.

Do not judge yourself against others, do not judge others against yourself. If you must judge, just Christ as the standard. As you will surely fail too.

Being a Christian is easy, being Christ-like is hard because it requires the following, repentance, forgiveness, in that order and it is never ending process.

We always want the forgiveness and skip over the repentance.

God views all sin the same, a lie is the same as murder. We like rank sin to make ourselves feel better.

We deserve Hell, there is nothing I can do that will get me into Heaven. God forgives my debt but that does not mean I am innocent.

Does reading this make you feel relieved or guilty?

Makes me feel compassion for the delusions people embrace, the violence they do to their own ability to reason, just because they are afraid of death.
 

nineinchnail4u2c

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. . . the carpenter from Nazareth broke through that to get the actual heart of the issue, which is self-discovery, and self-realization (which involves recognizing the self as the part of the flow and entirety of all, i.e., existence, the universe, etc) Necessarily, self is part of the ontology of all and everything that came before, hence his reference to every jot and tittle, and his distinction between God and Caesar

Isn't that just taking the love yourself bit and forgetting about God. Or are you saying that the representation of the Old Testament God is defunct . . . ?

Matthew 5:17&#8211;20

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Seems irreconcilable to me.
 

Phil Ayesho

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One of Martin Luther's biggest contributions to modern theology was to bring our attention to the fact that it is not possible to really know the mind of God except as he is revealed to us through Jesus.

Really? This is a Fact?
Please cite proof or evidence of this being factual information.

In point of fact anything cited from the writings of Paul are NOT christian , but Pauline.
Paul forwarded the notion of Jesus' divinity. He made it up out of whole cloth.

Jesus always denied being divine, and specifically stated that he was the son of man, not god.


In fact, the first schism in the Christian church centered around the doctrine of Christ's divinity, because making Jesus divine took his teaching that any man could achieve what he had achieved... the actual spiritual promise of Jesus, and made that teaching a lie.


So- sorry - if you think Jesus was divine, you are not following the teachings of jesus, but the teachings of paul.

And if you think any statement made about knowing God is 'factual' then you are delusional.

Facts can be demonstrated.

And Jesus specifically stated the the Old laws, as laid out in leviticus, must be observed... ergo, homosexuality is still an abomination to the followers of Jesus.

Folks taking the stories they were indoctrinated with as children and embroidering over them to suit their own actions and interests is all fine and well.... but it is narcissistic.

the bible is not a smorgasbord for you to sample what you like and discard what you don't.
If you believe in the bible, then don't suck cock or take it in the ass, you will go to hell, or, at the very least, get passed over for that promotion to eternal life.

If you don't believe in PARTS of the Bible, then you might as well abandon it all, because if some of it is hogwash than, probably, all of it is hogwash and trying to cling to Jesus and rehabilitate some shred of the book while discounting the rest as no longer applicable is like deciding to stop believing in Santa, but to hold onto Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as still being the real shit.


It is the lens of God's unconditional love and forgiveness, called God's grace.

If God's love and forgiveness are unconditional, then you don't need jesus to obtain them.
If you have to approach god thru jesus, then his love and forgiveness are not unconditional.

And BTW... there is no such GOD described in the Bible. Paul, Jesus, and all the others makes it abundantly clear that there is a real penalty for lack of faith. That God really will judge you, and that you will be made to suffer, or cease to be, if you are not with the program.


Sorry... but the fundamentalist Kooks... they are the ones actually reading the book and following its doctrine...
Its just that the book is full of lunacy from cover to cover.