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I've read lots of comments from people who say they are anti-gay because their church disapproves of it, or they believe the Bible tells them to be anti-gay. I can't help but think, "Really? Is that all it takes? Are you unable to think for yourself?"
Why do some people blindly follow orders without questioning them? I can't imagine surrendering my ability to think and evaluate things on my own. I would feel like I've joined a cult if I did that.
Obviously, I'm not a religious person, but I do like to try to understand why so many people are religious.
I think you have hit the problem right on the nail.
A lot of people seem far more worried about what their Church teaches them than their personal and introspective relationship with God.
I'm an Atheist myself so hardly the right person to comment, but it has long puzzled me as to why so many people follow blindly the precepts and dogma of a particular church rather than following their own heart / conscience and REALLY looking within themselves for their own beliefs.
I have never understood the need for Churches at all. If God exists surely he is within you and speaks to you directly not through some minister ?
The Christians I admire most as the Quakers who seem to truly have a very personal relationship with God and do not believe in a hierarchy of ministry for example. The Quakers seem to have genuine one on one relationship with their God and I truly respect that. They place their relationship with God above any other intervention. Their Churches are simply shelters and they sit in silent prayer. Nobody ever tells them how to think or what to think.
I see the vast majority of churches as social clubs rather than anything else. Who cares what the Church thinks as long as you know what your God says to you in the privacy of your own heart/home ?
If God exists then he must be everywhere , a Church is just an assembly of like minded people in a building built by man .
This is what scares me most about organised religion. The organised bit. The part which means one relinquishes his/her own conscience and genuine free-thinking and allows others to think and dicate for and to them instead of using their independent intellect and reason.
To me faith is about your special relationship to God and no other worldy agency shoudl interfere with that at all.
I find it odd that God would encourage man to relinquish his own personal voice by having his conscience drowned by the din of religious social and cultural pressure.
Man should not even need scriptures. Surely God's voice is powerful enough without the aid of a written guide-book. If he truly existed scriptures would be utterly redundant.
After dealing with my sister and what I call her "addiction" to church, I have to agree that too many simply give up their ability to think for themselves. I gave up trying to discuss anything of a religious nature with her several years ago. I had emailed an article to her that I had found informative and that had challenged some of my thinking on several matters and I had hoped it would give her some perspective on the views she expressed, particularly on the subject of gays and SSM. When she replied that she was going to print it out and 'discuss it with her pastor' before giving me an answer, I told her 'don't bother'. I wanted HER thoughts on the article; I wasn't interested in what her pastor thought!
It's been nearly 30 years since I attended any church, but I still consider myself to be a Christian because I still believe in the basic teachings of Jesus Christ - to love God and love your fellow man as you love yourself. If you love yourself, you don't do anything that would bring harm - physically, mentally or spiritually - to yourself. So if you love your fellow man, you also avoid those things you know would bring harm to him/her. It is not my job to judge the sins of another. If God considers another to be sinning, He will take care of it at the proper time. But too many are not willing/able to leave that judgment to God and His time. They think that they have to point at this or that person and scream "SINNER!" as if the sins of that other person is harming them in some way. They simply don't see that any 'harm' that has come to them is a result of their own judgmental attitudes.
I've read lots of comments from people who say they are anti-gay because their church disapproves of it, or they believe the Bible tells them to be anti-gay. I can't help but think, "Really? Is that all it takes? Are you unable to think for yourself?"
Why do some people blindly follow orders without questioning them? I can't imagine surrendering my ability to think and evaluate things on my own. I would feel like I've joined a cult if I did that.
Obviously, I'm not a religious person, but I do like to try to understand why so many people are religious.
Thanks.
I worked the gay quarter for a couple of years in Birmingham The jug, the troc i can say i cannot be ANTI to any human being twenty years and never refused to pick anybody up even when they could not pay. and i am not really religious, i do have a hatred of teaching young children about sex i believe they should remain innocent and protected from the world for a certain period of time. I love them queens every single one of them.
I've read lots of comments from people who say they are anti-gay because their church disapproves of it, or they believe the Bible tells them to be anti-gay. I can't help but think, "Really? Is that all it takes? Are you unable to think for yourself?"
Why do some people blindly follow orders without questioning them? I can't imagine surrendering my ability to think and evaluate things on my own. I would feel like I've joined a cult if I did that.
Obviously, I'm not a religious person, but I do like to try to understand why so many people are religious.
Thanks.
Not sure but I guess that to many people it has to be because it absolves them of personal responsibility. The Milgram experiments showed that people will go to great lenghts if they feel that they are just following orders from a greater authority.
no church should teach hate.
militant gays that attempt to force their own beliefs on others are no better
jerry falwell in pink
When has a gay person ever tried to force you to become gay?...I doubt if that has ever happened, but I see plenty of Christians trying to force homosexuals to be hetero.
When has a gay person ever tried to force you to become gay?...I doubt if that has ever happened, but I see plenty of Christians trying to force homosexuals to be hetero.
Logic has never been the refuge of many Christians though so no surprise there. Apparently their faith is so thin that even accepting the existence of Gay people might lead to a "conversion" or at least a general societal move towards us all turning Gay.
I've read lots of comments from people who say they are anti-gay because their church disapproves of it, or they believe the Bible tells them to be anti-gay. I can't help but think, "Really? Is that all it takes? Are you unable to think for yourself?"
Why do some people blindly follow orders without questioning them? I can't imagine surrendering my ability to think and evaluate things on my own. I would feel like I've joined a cult if I did that.
Obviously, I'm not a religious person, but I do like to try to understand why so many people are religious.
Thanks.
What I find even more puzzling is that the majority of the Christians who vehemently condemn homosexuals (although many don't) don't appear to even know what their Bible says about homosexuality...or what it doesn't say, to be more exact. I mean, they don't even know the verses. Or if they know one or two, they've never looked beyond what some modern English translation says or they don't realise that many translations are commissioned by conservative churches. They don't know the culture and history in which the Bible was written, they don't know the context of the verses, very few even know much about homosexuality other than myths and stereotypes.
Yet apparently many of these people feel perfectly justified in using the Bible to condemn and vilify millions of people. Then they have the temerity to say it's because they "love" homosexuals and want to tell them the "truth". Please.
I've read lots of comments from people who say they are anti-gay because their church disapproves of it, or they believe the Bible tells them to be anti-gay. I can't help but think, "Really? Is that all it takes? Are you unable to think for yourself?"
Why do some people blindly follow orders without questioning them? I can't imagine surrendering my ability to think and evaluate things on my own. I would feel like I've joined a cult if I did that.
Obviously, I'm not a religious person, but I do like to try to understand why so many people are religious.
Thanks.
Well from my vantage point, I live in a country where it was very accurately pointed out in another thread that 85% claim to be atheist. Now the state church here is Lutheran and they accept "Gays & Gay marriages". However, the homosexual community is plagued by attacks and beatings that don't come from churches, but rather non-religious/atheistic Nazi & other Socialist organizations and groups which reside in this country and elsewhere in secularist Europe.
Of course to be fair these groups don't like the Lutheran Church either and vandalized three churches in last years Euro-Pride Festival in Stockholm as well.
Go figure that one.
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