Demolishing Strongholds
Anti-gay Christian leaders have generated a number of clever slogans that have obscured to their own followers the shallowness and error of their damaging condemnation of fellow believers. The Apostle Paul described such shallow slogans in II Corinthians 10:4-5.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
The following posts aim to demolish such arguments and pretensions on behalf of our fellow believers.
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I don’t understand why these disgusting hate mongers smash on gay folks so much. Every gay I’ve known, I’ve been met with kindness, honour and far more integrity (And grift!) than most straight Christians I know! Ironic, ain’t it that you preach love but determine to hurt and even drive these guys and girls to take their own lives.
Cut the crap. Move into the 21st century where simple equality is a right that should be granted everyone (Last I heard, that promise is *supposed* to be granted everyone but most of you cherry-pick!). Bigotry like this belongs in the Dark Ages and we’re not there anymore!
So they’re gay. So what! Being doesn’t make up the entirety of who someone is. “Hate not, lest the hate come down on you tenfold!”
I’ve been wondering where that heat comes from. I’m convinced that many anti-gay Christians are only anti-gay because they’ve been told, over and over again, that God requires them to be anti-gay. I’m certain that many of them would not write and vote the way they do if that opinion weren’t required to remain an evangelical in good standing. It’s hard to be an outsider in your own group, your own church.
[Note: Edited for copy-and-paste content and silly AIDS comments.]
Yes, many Christians are only anti-gay because they’ve been told to be, not because they have any grounds on the subject. However, the Bible clearly tells us, in no uncertain terms whatsoever, that being gay is wrong (I’ll show you the verses for that in a minute), and until, without twisting Scripture, someone can show a verse that says being gay is “alright”, this will continue to be correct:
Joshua, it’s silly if you think I’ve never read your favorite proof texts about how evil and wicked gays and lesbians are. If I had a dollare for every copy-and-paste from Romans, Leviticus, I Corinthians, and I Timothy I’ve read, I could pay off my mortgage. Save yourself the trouble–I will not approve that here. They have already been published on this blog. If you want to discuss them, start by finding them in the appropriate thread.
Please look in the banner area and click on “Gays and Lesbians in Luke.” I’ll be happy to discuss with you Jesus’ acceptance of gays and lesbians after I am convinced that you’ve read the evidence I’ve given there, that you’ve read people’s objections, and read my responses. I’ve already done my work there, read and learn, Joshua.
Joshua, go to the banner area, look for “Gays and Lesbians in Luke,” and read what I’ve posted. Read what I have posted, read the objections others have posted, and read my replies. If you would learn something, take the time to actually investigate it. If you respond and I can see that you are simply making objections that other people have already made, then I won’t publish your comments.
As a strong Christian, I have never been anti-gay. Recently, I saw a medical program which dealt with people who have within them a twin sister or brother who never developed and so became intertwined with the body which was born, giving that person a multiple (and confusing) set of genes that can easily make them confused over sexuality. That is certainly not something God causes, nor the babies either! God loves us no matter who we are; and it is difficult to understand how other people can be so unaccepting of those who have had no say in how they were created and how their bodies function. Biblical people did not understand either that this type of thing could and did happen; and I can see how they might have perceived these situations. But, I can and will never see that God would treat anyone any differently because of something they truly have no control of; and, I do think sexuality can be beyond one’s own human control.
“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28.
It seems odd that Jesus says this plainly, while there is little in the way of outrage among Christians at the ubiquity of this sin, among ourselves, our fellow believers, or the glorification of lust by the culture at large. Sure, many Christians speak out against it, but no where CLOSE to the degree and livid passion that Christians tend to devote toward the condemnation of homosexuality (though Jesus never uttered a syllable on the topic).
More to the point, Matthew 5:28 illustrates a shift in the thinking of sin compared to Moses. Some could say it is a semantic difference, while others argue that it is a major paradigm change. Namely: sin is not merely an “act” of the body, but the motivation of the heart. The Pharisees enjoyed building “fences” around the Law, adding some extra-Biblical “padding” just to insure we don’t come close to breaking the Law. In one example, the Torah states that a man can only be lashed 40 times and no more. So the Pharisees added a “fence” so the new law is “no more than 39 lashes” just in case we miscount or something, to keep us from going over the true limit of 40.
The Pharisee’s would have loved Jesus’ expansion of the adultery “fence” to cover even “lust” in addition to the act of adultery itself. But that wasn’t what Jesus was doing. He was dismantling the whole notion of sin as an “act” and focused squarely on “intent.” The Pharisees understood this instantly, which is why they did not welcome this seemingly more restrictive take on adultery, and instead, they picked up stones to kill Jesus for what He was saying.
This dovetails nicely with Romans 14 — especially the crux of the passage in verse 14 — though the whole chapter tackles this specific issue. It seems to me to bring the word “sin” back to its original Hebrew context: the condition of being separate from God. This is why the Bible tells us that we are all sinners — we are all in a state of separation from God, at least while we live on this earth, and we can all feel the aching void of the separation, even unbelievers. The simplistic “Santa in the clouds” notion of God looking down on us from on high, marking who is naughty and who is nice based on our actions, is as removed from serious Biblical teaching as the vacuous platitudes that pass for wisdom among so many Christians.