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God is concerned with each of us and how we act down to the most little detail. He is a loving God and wants what is best for us. He created us to have sexual dignity and made us man and woman for a reason, to continue the human race not to die out. Adam and Eve had it made until their sin entered the world when they disobeyed God's commands but then we all disobey God's commands each day in our fallen world with our first parents' sin.
Disney made a movie of the book Bridge to Terabithia and got into the theology debates. Peter Enns in his book The Sin of Certainty, points out a scene that was a life changer for him.
Jess and May Belle are brother and sister in a fundamentalist family in rural Virginia. Leslie, the girl next door who has become friends with Jess and who is a free spirited young girl, has been to Jess' church for the first time. For Leslie church is another adventure, and glad she came along despite the hellfire and brimstone preaching.
On the way home in the back of an old pickup truck Leslie declares, "That whole Jesus thing, it's really kind of interesting."
May Belle is absolutely shocked and corrects Leslie, "It's not interesting, it's scary. It's nailing holes through your hands. It's because we're all vile sinners that God made Jesus die!"
Leslie looked at May Belle like she had just told her babies were delivered by storks. "Do you really think that's true?"
Not only do they believe it, but Jess tells her they HAVE to believe it because "it's in the Bible." May Belle dutifully adds that if you don't believe in the Bible, "God will damn you to hell when you die."
Leslie will have none of it. "I seriously do NOT think God goes around damning people to hell. He's too busy running all this," she says, pointing to the sky and trees overhead.
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The idea that the Creator of heaven and earth, with all their beauty, wonder, and mystery, was at the same time a super-sized Bible-thumping preacher, obsessed with whether our thoughts were all in place and ready to condemn us for eternity to hell if they weren't, makes no sense.
Leslie's fifth grader comment was childlike with commonsensical innocence that strip away our wall of "proper Christian thinking."
Jess' God tends to be our default god, but isn't Leslie's God the one we deep down want to believe in because He inspires us to see Him in everything? It was a common ordinary moment that brought the dutiful brother and sister to think about "What Is God Like." That can't be answered just from the limited pages of the Bible but demands our highest intellect that will consider how we are made in His image and yet remain so troublesome in our inability to see beyond ourselves. "God is watching ME. God is concerned about ME. God speaks to ME.
But God is the God of all nations, all peoples, and all of creation. We have our place in that community, and Jesus said it was to serve others. "He who would be first, shall be last." So if we encounter folks that challenge our long held beliefs, maybe it's an "uh-oh" moment to get us to think.
If God was so concerned about sexual purity why didn't Jesus descend from Joseph who refused Pharoh's wife instead of being descended from Joseph's brother, Judah who slept with his own disguised daughter-in-law thinking she was a prostitute. Joseph was the just and righteous one of the twelve brothers, and Judah a deceitful, brother back-stabbing, womanizer who visited prostitutes even though he was married.
By being obsessed with sexual sin yourself, you've turned God into you because He is about "ME, ME, ME."
The entire episode of Sodom and Gomorrah was, as the Prophet Ezekiel pointed out, really about hospitality. THAT is important to God, but He more than once in the OT seemingly waves away the sexual misdeeds of a man who marries his half-sister (Abram), a man who marries sisters (Jacob), a man who visited a prostitute (Sampson), and a King with a boatload of wives and concubines (David). God got angry with David not for his wives but because of his adultery--just about the only "sexual" sin God is consistently unhappy with.
No, but their IS reference to sexual immorality so I would say that includes homosexuality and all the other sexual sins. There is many sexual sins as we all know. Infidelity, incest and all the rest. God was not just referring to men having sex with men but all sexual sin.
We know today, in our secular culture, we want everything to go when it comes to sex but God does not want it that way.
There has certainly been a lot of very serious sexual sin in the Catholic church against children which is the worst type of sexual sin I know of. Why do you suppose that evangelicals be they Protestant or Catholic are never up in arms about all the sexual child predators and human trafficking of sexual slaves. All I ever hear out of the evangelical camp is condemnation to same sex couples and those who are pro-choice on the issue of abortion. The scriptures have a special warning for those who offend children. And by children, I mean those who are living souls who have the breath of life in them, not the unborn.
Yes, Mightyqueen801, you have mentioned this a number of times on various threads and I'm glad that you included it on this thread. I was hoping that you would and you did. As newcomers appear and involve themselves in these discussions, and, for those who might have missed it or forgotten about it from the previous times it was mentioned, it needs to be repeated when necessary. I just hope that at least some participants in this discussion or visitors browsing the thread will take it on board.
Thanks. That's why I repeat it. It will be dismissed by those who desperately need S&G to be a factual tale, for without that, the whole framework in which they've imprisoned themselves takes a huge hit, and light might get in.
With the way families fight I don't think Israel needed this story to teach about enemies.
Cute, but what you think based on your personal life doesn't have any bearing on the meaning of the tale. In a warring, tribal society, the powers that be have to come up with reasons to make the enemy look as bad as possible, to create a "Them".
Same as now.
Anyway, it's not as if I made it up myself. It's what I was taught by priests who spent time studying this stuff, and it's the only thing that really makes sense.
Maybe I'm going blind but I see NO reference AT ALL to homosexuality in the above passage of scripture. And, while I realize that I sound like a broken record, I say for the umpteenth time that the terms 'homosexual' and 'homosexuality' are not found in scripture at all. Nor is any equivalent term found in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. The Bible writers would have had no concept of the term 'homosexuality', particularly with regard to human sexuality and how we today define these particular sexual orientations. How could they? They hadn't discovered hot and cold running water yet. Any reference in scripture to male/male sex is made with regard to those males that are seen to be naturally heterosexual but having sexual dalliances with temple prostitutes for religious purposes and perhaps rape intended to humiliate another male. And, that's it!
What about that bible verse that says a man that lies down with another man is an abomination?
Funny how fundies turn themselves inside out trying to insist that D&J weren't a gay couple. Although, I guess David was probably bisexual.
You know the old saying, if you swing from both sides of the plate, you double your chances for a date on Friday night.
Seems like David couldn't get enough of it. How many mistresses, wives and concubines did the man have, and one gay lover (that we know about)? And he was a man after God's own heart.
Last edited by Pleroo; 04-16-2018 at 09:19 AM..
Reason: typo
... And by children, I mean those who are living souls who have the breath of life in them, not the unborn.
My children were alive before they were born.
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