As a Christian what are your thoughts?

[Tao_Equus]

You seem to be one of the Christians who opts for the spirit, but Mee is very much a prisoner of the Dead Letter.
Mee, we *already* love each other, as we are. It is only people like you who tell us to hate each other for what we are.

Bravo Bob!! And if they are Muslims... or.. heaven forbid...Palestinian Muslims?

 

[Quahom1]

You seem to be one of the Christians who opts for the spirit, but Mee is very much a prisoner of the Dead Letter.
Mee, we *already* love each other, as we are. It is only people like you who tell us to hate each other for what we are.

No, it is hate what one does, not what one is.

 

[Quahom1]

Bravo Bob!! And if they are Muslims... or.. heaven forbid...Palestinian Muslims?

Claiming a title means nothing. Acting in an atrocious manner and claiming it under a title, tends to associate the deed with the declaration. After awhile the two can become synonomous...

 

[Quahom1]

Namaste mir,

Jesus also said, ye without sin cast the first stone.

Then out of the blue a huge rock flew throught the air and knocked the harlot on her butt, and Jesus whirled around in surprise...

"MOTHER?!!!"

ya gotta lighten up.

 

[Saltmeister]

Then out of the blue a huge rock flew throught the air and knocked the harlot on her butt, and Jesus whirled around in surprise...

"MOTHER?!!!"

ya gotta lighten up.

No that wasn't part of the script . . .

. . . or worse still . . . the huge rock turns out not to be a rock at all . . . but the hand of a lechering man hitting her butt hard. Love ya ma lady. Yo mamma. Who's your daddy?

 

[cyberpi]

Mee, we *already* love each other, as we are.

I'm of the impression you don't love Mee as he is. Do you love sin?

 

[madeinrussia89]

One should consider their judgment of others may come back to haunt them.Well I'm thankful that you are one of those folks that thinks all of the world is nothing but unworthy sinners!

Condemning a sin and judging someone are two totally different things. Just like saying " homosexuality is a sin and it is wrong " and " you are just a bad person " are two totally different things.

People generally are unworthy, and we are saved through divine grace.

 

[madeinrussia89]

It is MY natural state. It may be a minority natural state, but it as natural to me as blueness is natural to my eyes, although that is a minority state also.

I just don't agree with that.

...so it follows that the way God created me is not a "sin", no matter what your church says.

God didn't create you to sin, of course not. But if you choose to sin, that is entirely of your own agenda.

It is the love in my heart, the beauty in my sight, the joy that I share with others. These are all positive things, indeed HOLY to me.

Love is positive, but sex isn't necessarily.

Stop calling me "it". You are saying that *I* am wrong, and *I* will never be right.

I'm not calling you " it" I'm referring to Homosexuality as " it ". Are you homosexuality? No. That doesn't make any sense.

Just like someone cannot be Heterosexuality.

Jesus is saying, AGAIN, that right and wrong are not defined by "whatever the old book says". How do you decide which parts of the old book are still relevant and which aren't? Jesus tried to tell you, but I see no sign that you hear him at all.

I must have missed it then.

I see no sign that you hear him at all. You fragrantly dismiss anything I have quoted from the New Testament that Jesus has either directly said or his Apostles have said that they have learned in their walk with Christ.

We decide which rules we still follow (or are even still considered rules) by Jesus' example and the example of his Apostles. That's how.

The church has changed radically, several times, during the course of its history.

The Orthodox Church remains unchanged since the first Pentecost until now.

Roman Catholics have broken off, and Protestants from them, but the Orthodox Church has never broken, has never changed.

You're saying Jesus, the Apostles, and the Saints were all homosexuals???? *I* am the one who has "been there".

NO! I am not saying that all.

Jesus has been there since before our creation, since the beginning, since before the beginning, he knows and sees the Father, he is God, and he is the Word.

Jesus is the Word made flesh. The Word does not lie, and if the Word says that men having sex with men is a sin, then it is unless God tells us specifically at some later date that it is not.

That's what I mean by " being there". Not being there as in committing sin, that is ridiculous, Jesus Christ did not sin.

To say that it is not my nature is to make an assertion about what is in me, an assertion I know to be false. Now of course you can say that I am a "deviation from our creation", excluding me from that "our": God created YOU, but Satan must have made ME?

No, I am saying that it is deviating from creation if you think practicing homosexuality is the natural state of creation, not that you are a deviation.

You can choose whether or not you want to act on it. God created all of us, but he didn't create us to sin.

I have no such "choice" to make: I know quite directly that what you say is false. I cannot look at the sky, see it as blue, and "choose" to believe that it is green, or even more absurdly, "choose" to believe that I see it as green.

You have a choice everytime you perform an action. To do or not to do. To say you don't means that you have no responsibility over yourself or your actions, and I know that is false.

Not to the question at issue, which was "how, exactly, would I or anybody "make amends" for having given joy to others? By inflicting pain on them? " You admit that you cannot give any answer to that, but you express the opinion that others in your church can: you are mistaken about that; at least, I have found no conservative Christians, regardless of denomination or ordained status, who has any kind of answer to that.

I don't have an answer because I am not blessed to hear confession and it is not my place to provide an answer for which I am not allowed to do.

Others in my Church can, just because you haven't found it or attempted to ask someone blessed to hear confession, doesn't mean there isn't an answer.
You can't expect to have your question answered if you don't bother to ask someone basically blessed to do so.

Now of course your church does give some kinds of "answers" that I do not like to hear. By nature, I find love and joy and beauty where most male humans would not; and your church's "answer" to what I should do is, "Forgo the joys that other humans are allowed to have"

Actually, the answer would more likely resemble " Turn away from the false joy in which other humans distance themselves from God with ".

which I do not like to hear because people's lives have been rendered pointlessly miserable through following such horrible advice. Asked why joy is "bad" and misery is "good" in my case, your church answers "Because no human being could by nature find joy in such a way", which I do not like to hear because I know it to be a falsehood; and also because those who agree with your church that any creature whose nature is as my nature actually is could not be human, but who do not share your illusion that "Gee, you must not actually be like that, then" but rather understand fully that I am what I am, will naturally then treat me as a subhuman.

I know you don't like to hear it but the truth isn't always an easy pill to swallow, but again, if you find it to be misery to be seperating yourself from sin, then that is a whole 'nother ballgame.

The Church doesn't treat sinners as subhuman or unhuman, we all sin except for Jesus Christ, but we all should want to, try to, and eventually turn away from it altogether.

I KNOW my nature, directly. To repeat, "Since you don't have the direct knowledge of what is in my head, you can decide that I am lying to you, but don't pretend that there is any possibility that I am mistaken."

Because there isn't a possibility.

 

[bob x]

Mee, we *already* love each other, as we are.
I'm of the impression you don't love Mee as he is.

By "we" I meant gay people. He was advising us to turn into Christians, which ironically would make us stop loving each other and start hating each other (and ourselves).

Just like saying " homosexuality is a sin and it is wrong " and " you are just a bad person " are two totally different things.

No, they're not different in the slightest. It is my very heart that you are condemning.

It is MY natural state. It may be a minority natural state, but it as natural to me as blueness is natural to my eyes, although that is a minority state also.
I just don't agree with that.

Are you calling me a liar? I am the one who KNOWS.

Stop calling me "it". You are saying that *I* am wrong, and *I* will never be right. I'm not calling you " it" I'm referring to Homosexuality as " it ". Are you homosexuality? No.

It is my very nature that you are condemning. You keep telling me that you don't believe I really have such a nature, and that is why you think you are only condemning an abstraction and not speaking to me personally: but I REALLY TRULY AM of that nature, and you ARE condemning me personally.

We decide which rules we still follow (or are even still considered rules) by Jesus' example and the example of his Apostles. That's how.

That is not what he tried to teach you. He tried to teach you to have a moral sense of your own, not to follow authorities.

The church has changed radically, several times, during the course of its history. The Orthodox Church remains unchanged since the first Pentecost until now.

You are seriously mistaken. The Orthodox Church has at various times taught Semi-Arianism, that Jesus was the first and highest-ranking creature but not equal to God, Nestorianism, that the human carpenter-boy-from-Nazareth was a different person from the divine Logos which the carpenter allowed himself to be used as a mouthpiece by, and Iconoclasm, that any pictorial art is a blasphemous sin. On the particular subject at hand, as I say I do not know the history specifically of the Russian church, but the Greek church always was in compliance with the Byzantine emperors as long as they lasted, and this led them to quite opposite positions:
Emperor Justinian decreed forfeiture of all property, castration and enslavement as the penalty, and that special procedure be followed, borrowed from heresy cases, in which the quaestor (a churchman in a magistrate's role) would be not only the investigator and prosecutor, but also the judge, and the defense not be allowed to call witnesses or have the assistance of counsel (this was the moderl for the western "inquisitor" role). According to Procopius, Justinian was motivated by greed for rich estates which he confiscated by blackmail; he had attempted to blackmail a rich homosexual who called his bluff and the trial ended in an acquittal, so Justinian changed the law to make sure no such embarrassment happened to him ever again.
On the other hand, emperor Basil "the Macedonian" was an open homosexual who nonetheless became a popular military commander during the turbulent reign of Michael "the Drunk", who had turned over much of his power to a co-emperor Bardas and then regretted it; Michael hired Basil to assassinate Bardas, and the price was that Basil become co-emperor instead, but of course Michael then tried to renege and was murdered by partisans of Basil. Then it turned out that Michael's mistress Eudocia was pregnant: with unusual magnanimity, Basil married her, adopted her son as his own heir (he became the great emperor Leo "the Wise"), and set her up in a nice palace-- but never, apparently, slept with her. After Eudocia died, he insisted on marrying his true love, John (Leo's tutor), and the Church obliged him. The same-sex wedding liturgy was copied with variations for many same-sex weddings over succeeding centuries, until deleted at the time of the Turkish conquest.

Jesus is the Word made flesh. The Word does not lie, and if the Word says that men having sex with men is a sin

JESUS did not say any such thing. Nor did Jesus tell you that every old rule in Leviticus was eternal law: quite the contrary, he specifically told you that some of the old stuff was just "hard-heartedness" and WRONG.

No, I am saying that it is deviating from creation if you think practicing homosexuality is the natural state of creation, not that you are a deviation.

It is not the natural state of all creation: it is the natural state in which *I* was created.

I have no such "choice" to make: I know quite directly that what you say is false. I cannot look at the sky, see it as blue, and "choose" to believe that it is green, or even more absurdly, "choose" to believe that I see it as green. You have a choice everytime you perform an action.

But not every time I BELIEVE or DON'T BELIEVE something. You were telling me I could "choose" to believe that my nature is different from what I KNOW, directly, that it is. I cannot "choose" to believe the opposite of what I see.

Not to the question at issue, which was "how, exactly, would I or anybody "make amends" for having given joy to others? By inflicting pain on them? " You admit that you cannot give any answer to that, but you express the opinion that others in your church can: you are mistaken about that; at least, I have found no conservative Christians, regardless of denomination or ordained status, who has any kind of answer to that. I don't have an answer because I am not blessed to hear confession and it is not my place to provide an answer for which I am not allowed to do.

No, you don't have an answer because even asking the question, How can anyone feel "bad" about being a source of joy and make it "good"?, is to reveal the absurdity of your position.
Now, I could feel bad about being the source of *hurt* to others, if I was. Say my whole family was disgusted at what I am and continually unhappy about it, I could feel sorry about that; but I have the good fortune that I was not raised by Christians, so my family can just feel happy for me when I am happy.

I KNOW my nature, directly. To repeat, "Since you don't have the direct knowledge of what is in my head, you can decide that I am lying to you, but don't pretend that there is any possibility that I am mistaken." Because there isn't a possibility.

That's right. So are you calling me a liar, or can you grapple with what I am telling you about what my nature really and truly is?

 

[madeinrussia89]

No, they're not different in the slightest. It is my very heart that you are condemning.

If those two statements aren't at all different to you, then there is no difference to you between condemning a wrong-doing and condemning a person? What the hell? Those are two seperate ideas.

Are you calling me a liar? I am the one who KNOWS.

You are part of humanity, and as humans, we have one nature.

It is my very nature that you are condemning. You keep telling me that you don't believe I really have such a nature, and that is why you think you are only condemning an abstraction and not speaking to me personally: but I REALLY TRULY AM of that nature, and you ARE condemning me personally.

I am not condemning you personally, or you at all, but homosexual action. If you cannot see the difference between condemning sin and condemning a person, then I cannot help you.

That is not what he tried to teach you. He tried to teach you to have a moral sense of your own, not to follow authorities.

How do you reconcile that with his insistance for us to follow the 10 commandments? That is following an authority, God's authority.

There is no " I'm going to follow my own rules " because we aren't judged by the rules of man, we are judged by the rules of God.

You are seriously mistaken. The Orthodox Church has at various times taught Semi-Arianism, that Jesus was the first and highest-ranking creature but not equal to God, Nestorianism, that the human carpenter-boy-from-Nazareth was a different person from the divine Logos which the carpenter allowed himself to be used as a mouthpiece by, and Iconoclasm, that any pictorial art is a blasphemous sin.

You shouldn't spout off about the Orthodox Church when you clearly don't know anything about its history. Arianism and Nestorianism were never branches of thought represented by the Church, they were branches outside of the Church that the Church thoroughly condemned, see the ecumenical councils.

On the particular subject at hand, as I say I do not know the history specifically of the Russian church, but the Greek church always was in compliance with the Byzantine emperors as long as they lasted, and this led them to quite opposite positions:
Emperor Justinian decreed forfeiture of all property, castration and enslavement as the penalty, and that special procedure be followed, borrowed from heresy cases, in which the quaestor (a churchman in a magistrate's role) would be not only the investigator and prosecutor, but also the judge, and the defense not be allowed to call witnesses or have the assistance of counsel (this was the moderl for the western "inquisitor" role). According to Procopius, Justinian was motivated by greed for rich estates which he confiscated by blackmail; he had attempted to blackmail a rich homosexual who called his bluff and the trial ended in an acquittal, so Justinian changed the law to make sure no such embarrassment happened to him ever again.
On the other hand, emperor Basil "the Macedonian" was an open homosexual who nonetheless became a popular military commander during the turbulent reign of Michael "the Drunk", who had turned over much of his power to a co-emperor Bardas and then regretted it; Michael hired Basil to assassinate Bardas, and the price was that Basil become co-emperor instead, but of course Michael then tried to renege and was murdered by partisans of Basil. Then it turned out that Michael's mistress Eudocia was pregnant: with unusual magnanimity, Basil married her, adopted her son as his own heir (he became the great emperor Leo "the Wise"), and set her up in a nice palace-- but never, apparently, slept with her. After Eudocia died, he insisted on marrying his true love, John (Leo's tutor), and the Church obliged him. The same-sex wedding liturgy was copied with variations for many same-sex weddings over succeeding centuries, until deleted at the time of the Turkish conquest.

The Orthodox Church has never authorized and CANNOT bless a same-sex marriage.

This entire story is false to make homosexuals look like they have some place in the antiquity of the Church, and oh wait, they don't.

JESUS did not say any such thing. Nor did Jesus tell you that every old rule in Leviticus was eternal law: quite the contrary, he specifically told you that some of the old stuff was just "hard-heartedness" and WRONG.

I love how you pick and choose the verses you want to believe Jesus said. And that last verse was in 1 Corinthians (THE NEW TESTAMENT), not Leviticus. It still asserts it as a sin, but we don't kill people over it.

It is not the natural state of all creation: it is the natural state in which *I* was created.

You think you have a unique creation that goes against the entirety of humanity? Do you really think you're that special?

But not every time I BELIEVE or DON'T BELIEVE something. You were telling me I could "choose" to believe that my nature is different from what I KNOW, directly, that it is. I cannot "choose" to believe the opposite of what I see.

Well, maybe you should look beyond the boundaries of what you think you know, because you are not seperate from the rest of humanity.

No, you don't have an answer because even asking the question, How can anyone feel "bad" about being a source of joy and make it "good"?, is to reveal the absurdity of your position.

Because it is an absurd assumption to think it is true joy in the first place. True joy in sinning? Yeah right.

And I don't have an answer to how you should repent for it because I am not blessed to hear confession. If I was, I wasn't hesistate to tell you.

That's right. So are you calling me a liar, or can you grapple with what I am telling you about what my nature really and truly is?

I don't think you are knowingly lying. I know you believe it's true, but I don't, and there is no " grappling " because I know it cannot be.

 

[mee]

It is only people like you who tell us to hate each other for what we are.[/quote

its people like me who tell out GOODNEWS of better things .
And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come. matthew 24;14

(Isaiah 52:7) How comely upon the mountains are the feet of the one bringing good news, the one publishing peace, the one bringing good news of something better, the one publishing salvation, the one saying to Zion: “Your God has become king!”

(Romans 10:15) How, in turn, will they preach unless they have been sent forth? Just as it is written: “How comely are the feet of those who declare good news of good things!”


and no hate message insight . only GOODNEWS and it is being advertised on a global scale

(Mark 13:10) Also, in all the nations the good news has to be preached first.

teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded YOU. And, look! I am with YOU all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.” matthew 28;20


those who are into working along with Gods purpose for the earth are all doing what Jesus asked them to do . and people like me are working inline with that purpose,and even the angels are directing that work,

(Revelation 14:6) And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, and he had everlasting good news to declare as glad tidings to those who dwell on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people,

and this is the GOODNEWS , Jesus is a reigning king of Gods heavenly kingdom goverment DANIEL 7;13-14 AND SHORTLY THIS KING WILL GO INTO ACTION .

“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be brought to ruin. And the kingdom itself will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite; DANIEL 2;44

yes the God of heaven has set up the heavenly kingdom in 1914 and soon it will go into action . and it is GOODNEWS.............

“It is better to take refuge in Jehovah than to trust in earthling man.”—Ps. 118:8.

Do not put your trust in nobles, nor in the son of earthling man, to whom no salvation belongs.”—Ps. 146:3.

 

[mee]

By "we" I meant gay people. He was advising us to turn into Christians,

i dont think i was saying anything , i was reasoning on the verses and what they were saying ,and verse 11 was making the point that those things listed were past things after becoming christians .

 

[bob x]

It is my very heart that you are condemning.
If those two statements aren't at all different to you, then there is no difference to you between condemning a wrong-doing and condemning a person?

It is my heart you are condemning, not anything wrong that I have ever done to you or anyone.

Are you calling me a liar? I am the one who KNOWS. You are part of humanity, and as humans, we have one nature.

Humans are very diverse, and differ in many aspects of their nature. Surely you are not claiming that every human is attracted to females by nature? For you yourself are not. I am male, by nature, as half of humans are and half are not; I am attracted to males by nature, as about half of humans are and half are not; I combine both those natures, as is true of only a few percent of humans, but that is still over a hundred million.
Some people are hot-tempered by nature, some are calm by nature, some are cheery by nature, some are gloomy by nature. Do you think God only wanted one type of people to exist?

That is not what he tried to teach you. He tried to teach you to have a moral sense of your own, not to follow authorities. How do you reconcile that with his insistance for us to follow the 10 commandments?

Never ever ever did he tell us that we should follow whatever it says in the 10 commandments.
He told us not to kill, not to steal, etc. because these do harm to others, not because an authority said it; he told us to disregard the Sabbath commandment whenever it would conflict with real morality, which is not based on following "commandments".

You shouldn't spout off about the Orthodox Church when you clearly don't know anything about its history. Arianism and Nestorianism were never branches of thought represented by the Church, they were branches outside of the Church that the Church thoroughly condemned, see the ecumenical councils.

You are the one who is obviously ignorant of the history. Patriarch Eusebius converted the church to Semi-Arianism, and Nestorius was himself the Patriarch of Constantinople. When the church councils condemned these positions, they were condemning the earlier errors of the church. The heirarchy of the church has often been in error on serious issues in the past, and so, it might be in error now.

The Orthodox Church has never authorized and CANNOT bless a same-sex marriage.

The church did so for centuries. Whoever lied to you about Nestorius never having been the head of your church is also lying to you about this subject.

I love how you pick and choose the verses you want to believe Jesus said.

What I understand Jesus to have been saying is right and good, not because Jesus said it, but because it is truth and would remain truth even if Jesus had never said it, or if Jesus was nobody but a fraud, who nonetheless came out with some words of truth.

And that last verse was in 1 Corinthians (THE NEW TESTAMENT)

Do you worship Paul?

It is not the natural state of all creation: it is the natural state in which *I* was created. You think you have a unique creation that goes against the entirety of humanity?

No. It is YOU who thinks that my nature "goes against" humanity. I tell you, I am just a particular subtype of human, a minority subtype but not all that rare, and it would be no problem if people like you did not insist on making it one.

You were telling me I could "choose" to believe that my nature is different from what I KNOW, directly, that it is. I cannot "choose" to believe the opposite of what I see.
Well, maybe you should look beyond the boundaries of what you think you know

Suppose I told you that you don't really believe in Jesus, and when you say you really do, I tell you that you are mistaken: not "mistaken" about who Jesus was, mind you, but mistaken about whether you believe it; and I am not talking about subconscious doubts, but telling you that your conscious beliefs are not what you think they are. But... but... what you "think" IS what your consciousness is-- wouldn't this be pure insanity?
You are guilty of this same level of insanity here when you presume to tell ME that what is inside my head and heart "cannot" be there.

it is an absurd assumption to think it is true joy in the first place. True joy in sinning? Yeah right

It IS joy. And it is NOT sinning. You don't know what the hell you are talking about, and you refuse to listen to anyone who does know.

 

[17th Angel]

You don't know what the hell you are talking about, and you refuse to listen to anyone who does know.

Who really does brother?


maca salāma

 

[bob x]

I've decided MadeInRussia must be right. After all, the Christian churches have never been wrong about anything before, have they?
But if I'm not who I think I am, who am I? I thought I was male, and attracted to males, but no such people exist-- and I do exist, don't I? So Made, tell me, which is it? Am I female by nature? Or am I attracted to females? I would have thought I would have noticed either of those things by now, but obviously I'm not thinking clearly. Can you tell me which it is, or do you have to ask somebody especially "blessed"?

 

[mee]

but obviously I'm not thinking clearly.

well going back to those who have become believers in corinthians congregation, many of those would have not been thinking clearly before becoming christians , they would have been doing many things that they thought were ok to do.

But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. James 1;14


A thief is not born a thief, but he makes himself a thief, by his own thoughts , till in the end it gives birth to doing wrong because he is filling his or her minds with wrong thoughts .


just a thought,

i am reasoning on what the bible says thats all ,i am not judgeing any one.


Many former homosexuals have discovered, no problem is too big for Jehovah, who can provide the strength and help needed to meet His standards and receive His blessings.—Psalm 46:1.


God is for us a refuge and strength,
A help that is readily to be found during distresses.

Genetic, hormonal, and psychological factors may also play a role in distorting sexual feelings. It is comforting to know, however, that our Creator can provide help and support to those who need it.—Psalm 33:20; Hebrews 4:16.

but before God can help us we have to be prepared to be molded to his standards

 

[bob x]

"i am reasoning on what the bible says thats all "
I know. I wish you had a moral sense of your own, or some capacity for thought, but you don't. All you can do is echo primitive Mideasterners.

"Many former homosexuals have discovered..."
There are not "many". The fraction of males whose sexuality is changeable in that way (it appears to be somewhat more common in females) is a minute fraction of a percent, perhaps lower than one per million (see the other thread: a researcher diligently looking for them couldn't find more than a couple dozen claimants in the whole United States). Most "ex-gays" just manage to instill enough self-loathing to destroy their sexual response completely.

 

[Saltmeister]

Do YOU not know that unrighteous persons will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men, 10 nor thieves, nor greedy persons, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit God’s kingdom. 11 And yet that is what some of YOU were. But YOU have been washed clean, but YOU have been sanctified, but YOU have been declared righteous in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the spirit of our God.......1 CORINTHIANS 6;9-11

Ok, madeinrussia, I see what you mean.

But then again, a lot of us have been greedy, a lot of us have lied, a lot of us have stolen things (ie. picking up lost property, or items we believed someone else lost or were just lying around). I'm sure quite a few of us have been drunk before. I haven't, but someone else has done it.

What I see in this verse is Paul talking about "the impure mind." He seems to be talking about hedonism, materialism and narcissism.

I don't detect narcissism in Bob. Narcissism is self-idolatry. I don't see self-idolatry in Bob's personality. What I see is someone wanting acceptance. He's expressed a number of times a reverence for God and my impression is it's important to him to know whether or not God has a purpose or place for him in this world.

I've decided MadeInRussia must be right. After all, the Christian churches have never been wrong about anything before, have they?
But if I'm not who I think I am, who am I? I thought I was male, and attracted to males, but no such people exist-- and I do exist, don't I? So Made, tell me, which is it? Am I female by nature? Or am I attracted to females? I would have thought I would have noticed either of those things by now, but obviously I'm not thinking clearly. Can you tell me which it is, or do you have to ask somebody especially "blessed"?

I'm not much of a believer in moral absolutes, and I wonder if, even if homosexuality was "wrong" or "impure" or "inappropriate" if it could be seen as "absolutely wrong" or "absolutely impure."

Let's explore the notion of absolutes . . .

Suppose that we were to delete, one by one, the words in the New Testament. When would the Gospel disappear? What if we were to delete, first of all, the man lying with man part? Obviously we see it as wrong because it says it's wrong. Christians would not be so adamant if it didn't say that. We wouldn't see it that way if it didn't say that. This all becomes a question of what is right and wrong with regards to things that don't need to be said. So we'd ask the fundamental question: what needs to be said? If something is wrong, do we need to be told? Why so if we can decide for ourselves, if it is in our nature to know right from wrong?

It seems to me that the words in Scripture are a lot like food. A bird that has lived for 100 days and needs a loaf of bread each day doesn't just die in the middle of the 100 days just because it only got 90 loafs of bread, missing 10 loafs of bread in the 100 days. So Scripture is much like food for thought. Life doesn't just fall apart because we miss a bit of Scripture.

If we go without food for several days, we lose an opportunity to absorb nutrition, but we don't die.

The point here is, it seems to make a lot of difference that Paul mentioned homosexuality. What if he hadn't? Would we still condemn homosexuality? I am sure a lot of people would argue that Paul was right for saying that. If he hadn't said it . . . what would happen? Someone would suggest that men would be shagging men and women shagging women. It would seem like we're going around without an essential component of our mind and conscience. It's like saying that if we didn't consume that extra word in our minds (ie. "homosexuality") we'd suddenly have a spiritual heart attack, diabetes or a spiritual HIV/disease. Now that is just crazy.

What if, for example, Paul had just said, "don't be hedonistic, materialistic or narcissistic. Hedonists, materialists and narcissists don't go to heaven?" Would we then, still see homosexuality as impurity? Is homosexuality just impurity, hedonism, materialism and narcissism by definition? The letter of the Gospel says its impure but what says the Spirit?

Ok, I may concede that it may have a "bad influence," but doing emotional damage is probably just as unhealthy. Even if it was "unhealthy," nobody said it was "absolutely impure" and that we had to go to extremes and say "this is an absolute no-no." I think there is room for healthy co-existence. We could set aside a special space or community where they can go to do their thing. We would be shielded from their private lives. In public, they're just like the rest of us.

Even if you aren't really "homosexual," or if you can change, you at least feel and believe you are one. You can't force yourself to not feel that way unless there's some kind of paradigm shift powerful enough to wipe out the homosexual mindset, or more importantly, the nature. What you feel is what makes it "natural" at this stage in your life. If you are to change to not be homosexual, you would have to make a "natural progression" out of this phase in your life. If you can't change, it would be "unnatural" to force yourself to change (ie. through indoctrination, convincing yourself through logical arguments).

The way I would see it is that your mind is like a tree that grows a particular kind of fruit. Some people have minds that are strong enough to change the kind of fruit they grow. Some are too weak. Well . . . that is at least how I see my own life. I have been a tree that wanted to change its fruit lots of times. If you can't change then perhaps you have already reached your full potential, or at least one part of your life/personality has reached its limits.

I've decided MadeInRussia must be right. After all, the Christian churches have never been wrong about anything before, have they?

I don't quite agree with that. The Bible is a piece of literature. All literature is open interpretation. Good meaningful and reasonable interpretations require a lot of knowledge and experience. Reading a lot of books helps us to read other books well. Knowledge and experience extends our intuition allowing us to understand a piece of literature faster. It's much like lubrication. If Christianity was based on a oral tradition it would be different, but Christianity is largely based on written tradition (literature), and perhaps the tradition of an organisation that has dedicated itself to preserving the memory of the experience of a particular group of Christians (ie. sacred tradition). We know that written tradition is really a word-based manifestation of a wordless tradition, but such a word-based manifestation has a lot of ambiguities as most literature do. We just have to decide what it is trying to say.

 

[mee]

Because of Adam’s disobedience, we have all inherited imperfection. We must therefore battle fleshly weaknesses and strong desires that are out of harmony with God’s original purpose.

The Bible likens man’s position before his Creator to clay in the hands of a potter. It says: “O man, who, then, really are you to be answering back to God? Shall the thing molded say to him that molded it, ‘Why did you make me this way?’” (Romans 9:20)

It is obvious from the way God made men and women that it is natural for them to be sexually attracted to one another. Sexual attraction to a member of the same sex, to an animal, or to a child is therefore unnatural.—Romans 1:26, 27, 32.

For this reason, people who pursue such unnatural sexual inclinations find themselves contending with God. The Bible contains this warning: “Woe to the one that has contended with his Former, as an earthenware fragment with the other earthenware fragments of the ground! Should the clay say to its former: ‘What do you make?’” (Isaiah 45:9) Surely it is reasonable for the Maker of humans to give direction on sexual matters. Is it not also reasonable that humans should follow such direction?


in the laws given through Moses, God specified sexual practices that were abhorrent to him—namely, adultery, incest, homosexuality, and bestiality. (Leviticus 18:6-23)


lots of people in the world are commiting adultery, but just because the world in general has gradually accepted this, it does not make it right in the eyes of the most high, people the world over do their own thing and do not bring God into the picture. it is all me, me ,me .

 

[bob x]

Obviously we see it as wrong because it says it's wrong. Christians would not be so adamant if it didn't say that. We wouldn't see it that way if it didn't say that.

That is precisely the style of thought that Jesus was trying to teach AGAINST.