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Now how can you make such a statement without knowing me personally? Now who is judging?
You are judging. You don't know any of the homosexuals you are dissing as "sinners." I at least gave you a chance to open your mind on a script before determining your spiritual heritage. You've done no such thing for any homosexual. They are bad because of what the Bible says--while ignoring MOST of what the Bible really talks about.
And, in opposition to Jesus' teaching, you always put YOUR beliefs and YOUR judgments ahead of everyone one else--as if you and your thoughts are somehow superior because you've misinterpreted scripture.
Quote:
"He who would be first shall be last."
Matt 20:16
This passage is right in the middle of a parable where Jesus is teaching His disciples about those who are unhappy with God's mercy and love for all and who are always demanding their "right" to be in front and better off than others.
So when Jesus speaks--you fail.
He said with regard to the onerous law of going the "extra" mile--that we should do so willingly--and couched as it is in those verses I think He meant "happily" as well.
But you fail to follow Jesus.
The story of the woman caught in adultery illustrates Jesus was willing to forgive the sinful woman, and that those who were correct about what the LAW stated should have been looking at their own hearts instead of the sin of this woman. The object lesson is about judging--you quote "Go and sin no more," missing the lesson Jesus was teaching.
So when Jesus speaks---you fail.
When Jesus says to turn the other cheek as in
Quote:
"I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.…"
(Matt 5:44-45)
So when Jesus speaks---you fail.
When Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan it is a story fraught with political intrigue as the Jews and Samaritans despised one another. The Samaritans even used a different Bible. But when Jesus tells the story of a man being merciful to a stranger the hero of the story is the hated Samaritan, the one with the wrong Bible and the wrong spiritual "beliefs," but his action on that day was everything Jesus was highlighting about being His follower---To be merciful to those who hate you, to those who look down upon you, who prefer separation from you. And the lesson is twofold: YOU should be assisting those you look down upon and despise, but more importantly you should keep your judgment to yourself because that person (a homosexual?) may be the very one to rescue your sorry butt from a ditch.
So when Jesus speaks--you fail.
When Jesus teaches us to pray He uses the word "Forgive us our debts AS we forgive our debtors." Your understanding of that story is that homosexuals should forgive you IF you are doing anything hurtful. And probably more than one has--because those homosexuals know what it means to follow Jesus. You should be as fortunate as a good christian homosexual--perhaps they will rescue you when you are beaten and robbed.
Quote:
Be therefore merciful as your Father is also merciful. Judge not, and you shall not be judged: condemn not, and you shall not be condemned; forgive, and you shall be forgiven.
Luke 6:36-37
You need to get away from those preachers leading you to hell. You are obviously quite young and I place a strong burden for your apostasy on those preachers. Try taking a different road. You won't find a lot of people on it that you know--but any of them would help you out of that ditch you're in.
Thank you. I'm not as objective as you think. I simply believe that "an honest enemy is better than a false friend". In this case according to my understanding, this man was not an honest person, and neither were his co-workers. Maybe he pretended to be open-minded and then revealed his true color when he got accepted by his colleague as a facebook friend. However, I agree that this happened outside their work, so each one is responsible for their own action.
The second colleague was also not an honest person. If she told him to leave her alone immediately after he mentioned the movie, he wouldn't be lead on to further discussion.
I generally don't like fundamentalist Christians. I don't want to have anything to do with them. I don't believe in "love the sinner, hate the sin" mentality, nor do I believe in tolerance. I only believe in acceptance. You either accept me or you don't.
If Christians accept me, we can be friends wherever we are on earth.
If Christians don't accept me, we can be neighbors if we have to coexist in a same place.
I have to be black and white in this situation because it's not as simple as disagreement of different opinions. Being gay is a part that makes me who I am. I cannot have a friend who denies a part of my identity, a critical part that makes me the person he/she wants to be around in the first place. When I am feeling down after a breakup, the last thing I want to hear is "I guess God wants to spare you from eternal damnation, so He helps you end the relationship with that man". I need someone who can understand and want to share the pain of lost love with me. A "I respect you but I disapprove your lifestyle" cannot do that.
Nobody in life is immune from offend. I'm not afraid of being offended, but I'm afraid of being hurt. These feelings are not the same. I'm offended when a Christian stranger tells me that I am going to hell for being gay. I'm hurt when a Christian friend says to me he loves me but disapproves my "lifestyle". I invest my emotion and my trust in friendship. If it is a false friendship, it may take me a very long time to heal.
I don't know about other people, but I want Christians to have an outlet to express their opinions without any censor. I don't want them to use political correctness to protect my feelings. I may be offended, but I will get over it. I believe that everything happens for a reason. If a Christian and I mean to be friends, our friendship will triumph our beliefs.
I think in this story, this man made friend with his colleagues simply because he wanted to proselytize them, but they were the ones who lead him on. Both sides made a mistake.
What a terrific post. Would to God young jeff would see the humanness in your writing. So many people focus on the differences in sexual attraction between heterosexuals and homosexuals that almost all fail to look for the genuineness of needing acceptance--the very thing Jesus was explaining to the Pharisees over and over.
Well, as I've said many times, your "opposition" of same sex marriage is nothing less than fascism hiding behind the Bible.
It's not enough to have the freedom to decide for yourself how you want to live your life; it's not enough to believe homosexuality is immoral and therefore refrain from participating in homosexual acts.
No.
You want to decide for EVERYONE how to live their lives. You want to decide for EVERYONE which moral code to live by, and you want to tell EVERYONE what is or isn't moral based on a religion not everyone in this country subscribes to.
I really don't care what you believe. That's the beauty of Western democracies -- we have the freedom to make our own choices and manifest our own individual set of beliefs. In this country, we don't burn books to stamp out unpopular ideas; we don't censor the press to reflect only one point of view. We don't have to join a particular political party, worship a particular god, or hang a portrait of our "fearless leader" in our living rooms ... and no one, including yourself, is being forced to marry someone of the same sex, attend gay weddings, participate in Gay Pride parades, donate money to gay activist organizations, and you're not being hauled into a doctor's office to undergo electric shock therapy until you learn to love homosexuality with all your heart.
You're allowed to live your own life as you choose.
But what if that were not the case, hmm? What if you were denied the right to marry because you're heterosexual? What if you were discriminated against and thrown out of stores and restaurants because you're a Christian? What if preachers and televangelists were poisoning the minds of millions of people to hate you, persecute you, and to do everything they can within legal limits to ensure that people like you were relegated to 2nd class citizenhood?
How would you feel?
Because I'm here to tell ya, buddy ... I'm really really REALLY sick of the "Fundy Knows Best" mentality that your little religious faction pushes onto the rest of society. You and your ilk have this deluded, arrogant, holier-than-thou attitude that proclaims, "I'm a fundamentalist Christian and therefore I have the right to make YOUR choices for you."
I don't know what you personally do to oppose gay marriage, but there are a lot of fundamentalists who are very active in their opposition ... as if they're saying, "Because I'm a fundamentalist Christian, I get to act as a surrogate parent for society as a whole. I have a mandate from God to tell the rest of the world what they can read, what is played over the radio, what can be shown on television, what books are available at the public library, what kinds of clothes people can wear, whether or not someone is following their proper gender roles, who they can marry, and thousands of other little things that, in a free country, SHOULD be an individual choice.
Instead of just leaving people alone, your belief system states that your flock has to be society's busybodies, always interfering, always looking for the next thing to ban, censor, restrict, or control in order to further your insidious goal of FORCING the entire world to dance to only the tunes YOU think should be played.
In all seriousness, Jeff ... what gives you the right to make choices for the rest of us?
(And for God's sake, do NOT play the "turn the tables" game by accusing people like me of making choices for YOU because I'll tell you in advance that that would be a truckload of manure. Same sex marriage doesn't force you to do a damn thing.)
I will take a slightly different stand than you. I actually appreciate jeffbase40 for his total honesty. He exposes himself, so I know who I am dealing with. I wish more and more Christians are totally out instead of sugar coating "we love you but we disapprove your lifestyle". We cannot deal with injustice when it is in the dark. Because of people like jeffbase40, I know that I have to live a better life not to make him or other Christian fundamentalists change their mind. I have to live an honest and compassionate life so that I can gain support from open-minded people like you. Last time I check, America is constitutional republic, not a tyranny. We, The People, have a voice. I will plagiarize here if you don't mind. Tyranny wants people to believe in their absolute virtue. They want the other side to be seen as evil, and they want to exterminate people who are against them.
Fundamentalist Christians in the White House, in my view, are tyranny. I grew up in a communist country, so I know how scary tyranny is. American evangelical Christians in politics are not too far from communist government in Vietnam. The difference is Vietnamese government, who is the real evil, attempts to shield the opposite side from the public so that people think they are the only good guys. Christians from America seem to be sincere about their good intention, i.e. creating a Christian utopia, even though their methods are not different from my government - making people think that others who hold opposite views are evil. That is why I don't like to argue with them. Because I am not as eloquent as many people, my wrong choice of words when debating with them may make other people think that I am shutting down their voice.
Living in the US for 12 years, I have found Americans to be compassionate and acceptant (not tolerant) except a few Christians who knocked on my door and constantly talked about sins. All I need to do is to live an honest and loving life and let Christians say whatever they want to say. Action speaks more loudly than words. I put my trust on you and other Americans who will embrace and totally accept me when you see how I live my life compared to the words Christians say about me.
Again, I don't intend to sound like a saint. However, I think that bigotry will dig its own grave when it has a free environment to expose itself.
Then why keep making stuff up about people that are patently and transparently false? Why is it you keep granting yourself exemption from the rules and standards you presume to hold everyone else to?
You need to get away from those preachers leading you to hell. You are obviously quite young and I place a strong burden for your apostasy on those preachers. Try taking a different road. You won't find a lot of people on it that you know--but any of them would help you out of that ditch you're in.
Fire and brimstone from the Christian Left. We saw it here first.
In contrast, in America, people take it too far, Christians or nonbelievers. Both sides like to provoke the other side.
I have never personally witnessed that. In my experience, Atheists mention their lack of belief only in passing. If you want to know anything more, you have to ask. The only people who have tried to push their religion on me have been christians.
In the general public, I see christians protesting anything and everything that offends their religious beliefs. They do the provoking and those they attack only become vocal to defend themselves against the attack.
FWIW, I consider "Christians" to be those who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. "christians" are those who only THINK they do and often use their religion for personal gain.
Pfft. That was hardly fire and brimstone. And I've seen that road, so I think that sounds more like concern that telling ppl they are gonna go into a fiery furnace.
Pfft. That was hardly fire and brimstone. And I've seen that road, so I think that sounds more like concern that telling ppl they are gonna go into a fiery furnace.
In my opinion, threatening people with hell is "fire and brimstone."
Exactly. If an atheist had been fired for doing this very thing, Jeff would be defending the employer to the death. I can imagine what he would say....
"The employer is a Christian, and most of the employees are too. That means the vile atheist should stop talking about his sinful ways and let the Christians talk about the Bible without bothering them."
Or maybe...
"The employees didn't want to hear about his immorality, so he should have just kept quiet and let them work... at preaching to him about his immorality. "
Sound about right Jeff? You've made it clear you only want free speech for YOUR people. You also think that YOUR people should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, regardless of what others think, or what laws they are breaking. Right?
So Jeff, what is it? Is it just your religion that should get preferential treatment?
Figured I would re-post the comment, since Jeff admitted he only looks at very recent posts...
Except in the strange world of fundamentalists where the guy who disrespects his boss and makes dumb choices is defended, excused and made a victim.
Yet those same fundamentalists support the rights of employers to fire employees simply for being gay, and if this was one of those instances they would be defending the employer and some would even be celebrating it.
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