From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Fri May 30 2003 - 06:39:06 EDT
Sondra Brasile wrote:
>
> So what part about the word "abomination" are you not grasping?
Scientific discoveries force us to reinterpret the Genesis creation
accounts, the Flood account, the Tower of Babel account, etc., etc. All
this necessary reinterpretation means the Bible and its inspiration were not
what a lot of conservative Christians thought they were.
Where does the need to reinterpret end? In heaven. On earth we need to
integrate our experience of the world with our personal knowledge of God
through the guidance of his Holy Spirit. When our world changes as
drastically as it has over the past several centuries, we can't expect
directives to people thousands of years ago necessarily to apply in fine
detail today.
What does apply today? God has given us his Spirit and minds to integrate.
Inspired by his Spirit we should not look at religion as a set of laws and
rules but instead as guidance for living lives pleasing to him. The number
one moral principle that Jesus gave was that we love one another. This
principle transcends all other laws and rules, and all other laws and rules
need to be interpreted in terms of it.
Just as we have looked in detail at evidences for the great age of the
world, and that look forces us to reject a strictly literal interpretation
of the Genesis creation accounts, so also Christians have looked in detail
at sexuality and the lives and motives of homosexuals and have concluded
that some of the directives from thousands of years ago are less consistent
with the law of love than certain revisions of those directives.
If behavior is approved by a proper application of the law of love, no one
should call it an abomination.
Don
> >
> >
> >Rich Faussette wrote in part:
> >
> > >There is no such thing as a gay Christian.
> >
> >As a young man I agreed, because the homosexuals I knew were very
> >promiscuous, and the acts they engaged in seemed to epitomize perversion.
> >
> >Later I loosened up a bit, because I came to understand that married
> >heterosexuals commonly engage in analogous acts, and I was no longer so
> >sure they were perverse. Nothing in the Bible prohibits any kind of
loving
> >physical interaction between man and wife.
> >
> >At present I'm looser yet, because I believe the law of love trumps any
> >individual law. Homosexuals I know now have lived in committed
> >relationships practically their whole adult lives. To me, commitment is
> >the important thing. The acts themselves may not be so perverse after
all.
> > And I see no chance the world's population is in danger of falling to
> >zero any time soon. (Where I live a substantial drop is the stuff of
> >dreams.)
> >
> >Whether the state of being gay is genetic or not is kind of irrelevant
when
> >gay people time and again claim their orientation is not within their
power
> >to change. From what I've heard, they find heterosexual relationships as
> >personally repulsive as I find homosexual ones; I believe I have no
control
> >over my feelings of repulsion, so I suspect they have no control over
> >theirs.
> >
> >So.I'd still rather the whole topic didn't exist, and I'm still not what
> >you'd call supportive, but I'm sympathetic and definitely question the
> >validity of Rich's assertion.
> >
> >Don
> >
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
> http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri May 30 2003 - 06:34:53 EDT