Being a christian and gay

Deuteronomy 22:2-3 And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment;

Genesis 22:3And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him,

 

Well yeah, the Bible has been around too long for people to still hold onto judgemental attitudes. We are literally commanded to forgive and told that if we don't then God will not forgive us. For any of us to dare to judge anyone else is folly and we are usurping God's authority, we have no right. We are all under grace according to the Bible because we are all deemed unworthy. Still after all these things are spelled out in the Bible some people think that God is backing them when they start pointing at certain types of people and damning them to Hell.

 

It's what people think the bible says, but they take it out of historical-cultural context.

 

It is the church telling you that being gay is a sin. Just stop being a member of that church. Remain a christian if you like. You need no church for that.

 

what gay people are condemned for is maybe the one thing they have no choice in deciding for themselves

does god has mercy for those who decided to sin in spite of his wishes??

 

point!

 

And if God is homophobic you do wonder why he put men's gspot in our asses

 

I think your pastor is ignorant if he thinks you can just get over it, if you put your mind to it. Maybe prayer and cold showers? When you say getting "over it" isn't easy, you're really understating the case. There are some psychologists--at the fringes of their profession--who say it can be done: the so-called "Reparative Therapists". They think being gay is caused by family dysfunction (for males:under fathered, over mothered) and by "exotic is erotic" (attraction by what is different, which for sissy boys would be jocks). Maybe there's something there. Nobody knows the entire picture. But the "cure" rate is low, and aimed mainly at making guys less attracted to guys and to a lesser extent be attracted enough to girls they can have babies. The American Psychological Association thinks it can be damaging to try to tell someone they''re "broken" and try to fix them, when the success rate is low and they aren't broken in the first place. There's also the risk of encouraging gays to marry, and especially to have kids. Lots of them do. We have lots of broken homes in this country, and lots of loveless marriages. As for celibacy, that seems to be hard enough for priests who have institutional support for it, and seems to me to be as "unnatural" a lifestyle as could be imagined. Obviously, I'm not a fundamentalist, so I don't think passages in a Bronze Age book that may have been directed at temple prostitution, promiscuity, and domination necessarily apply to loving same sex relationships.

 

Hold whoevers hand you want.
Have sex with whoever you want.
Believe in whatever you want.

If anyone tells you other wise and that your wrong for whatever reason in your own personal beliefs tell them to take their fascist thoughts and go play hide and go fuck yourself.

 

Can someone please explain to me why anyone would want to worship a God that is so cruel he dangles a piece of cheese in front of a mouse for his entire lifetime and doesn't ever allow the mouse to taste the cheese?

To be blunt, I think that people who think that way are pretty half assed in their line of logic. If someone believes in God, and someone believes that someone cannot help their sexuality, then that person must believe that God created them and their sexuality. Why would God deliberately create a gay person only to condemn them to eternal hellfire if they ever succumbed to their natural desires? Thats some kind of sadistic twat of a God, no offense.

 

Woah, you definitely didn't read my entire post, because that's the exact opposite of what I was talking about. What are you doing here anyway? This is the SANCTUARY. Seriously.

Sex outside marriage is a sin. This is true for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. I know this view isn't popular for a lot of people these days, but it's there in the Bible and I believe this is a Sanctuary for Christians to talk after all. And I'm definitely not talking about the Old Testament.

I never said homosexuals can't be in a caring relationship.

And finally, you can't burn in Hell once you're saved by Jesus and repent of your sins. God isn't the one that makes the decision for people to burn in Hell. It's the people themselves.

 

irregardless means not regardless. "sex outside marriage is a sin". Another know it all. You-all don't want those of us that think you're foolish to post here? Then quit being foolish and boring.

 

Sorry TIB much of this is not directed at you at all, I'm gonna rant for a second though.

I agree but you do realize that it's no different than any other sin and none of us have a choice. The Bible says sin is in our flesh, science says homosexuality is in our genes. The Bible claims we are all afflicted with it and in his mercy God found a way to rescue us from this affliction.

Everyone seems to get hung up on the downsides of the biblical story and omits the fact that the story has an upside where humanity is saved from this condition. Sure it's a convenient ending but it's part of the story. Don't like it? tough titty.

It's like you guys are talking about the story of Rudolph the rednose reindeer and no one ever gets past the part where all the other reindeer treet him like shit.

As far as the christian God's opinion of homosexuality...it's in the book for crying out loud. Someone mentioned earlier that any christian who thinks its a sin doesn't know jack. Well...it's in the book.

Leviticus 20:13 "'If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

That's it...you have to get over it, this isn't Star Wars and you're not George Lucas...you can't rewrite it. This story is old and belongs to a religion. Don't like it? I'm fine with that, but you can't say the religions followers are wrong for saying their God doesn't like homosexuality when they are simply repeating what's in their religious text.

Go tell a budhist that the five fold paths are wrong.

In the mythology of batman his parents were killed, I can stand here all day long and say that is messed up for so many reasons but that's the story and I have to deal with it.

Christians have to except the fact that God forgives this sin and they are no better in anyway or any more righteous or sanctified than anyone that is gay. That's the rub folks.

Both sides can not like it all day long but this is the story and to try to rewrite aspects of it that are this clearly addressed is folly. This subject was not written in parables.

The red sea being parted? up for debate. Noah's ark holding two of every animal? up for debate. God not liking homosexuality? Not freaking up for debate.

 

Sorry I meant "regardless". I just fixed it.

*Sigh* Looks like the regular Christian forum isn't enough for you, eh?

 

Mothman, Leviticus has a lot of stuff that people don't follow anymore. In fact, much of the Old Testament. Things were way worse before Jesus came around, because man had enslaved themselves to Adam, and in effect, Satan. So there were a bunch of things that had to be done to pay for sins and get close to God. Much of it works like a historical text.

The New Testament superseded it, and Jesus changed that.

A guy having sex with another guy is no different than a guy having sex with another girl outside marriage.

Homosexual means you're attracted to the same gender in a romantic sense. It doesn't mean you're going to have sex with them.

There's nothing wrong with two guys having a relationship. It's not re-writing, if anything that's adding to the Bible by saying you can't.

 

Look. I sometimes get testy when any--I repeat ANY--human acts as if the answer to existance is truly theirs. We are not meant to know what the answer is. Not in this form. People just keep studying these ancient texts of all types and then think they absolutely KNOW the what,why,and when regarding existance and our place in it. I know people need something to believe in--it can be scary to contemplate merely becoming worm chow and not continuing as ourselves--somewhere. We feel important enough to feel we deserve special dispensation. Life is puzzling that way. So I'm sorry if I get insulting sometimes--I do wish all humans well--but damnit,until some entity or person returns from death or some other dimension with some kind of news-isn't it obvious that there is no way in understanding what it all means? I just advocate having an inquisitive mind and not settling for input from other than ourselves. I do not mean don't read and gather as much knowledge as possible as we live out our lives--just believe that whatever may be true may be revealed in due time. Or not. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What else is needed?

 

Really? When and where? The last I heard of the "gay gene" controversy was when Dean Hamer claimed to have found one back in the early 90s. He's the same NIH researcher who also claimed to have discovered the God Gene. Unfortunately, both claims have been called into question. On the gay gene issue, Rice and Ebers in Science, Apr., 1999, produced data showing that their results "do not support an X-linked gene underlying male homosexuality", and that the brothers studied by Hamer were no more likely to share the genetic markers than would be expected by chance. More recently, Dr. Francis Collins, Director of NIH, explained: "evidence from twin studies does in fact support the conclusion that heritable factors play a role in male homosexuality. However, the likelihood that the identical twin of a homosexual male will also be gay is about 20% (compared with 2-4 percent of males in the general population), indicating that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations." This statement, interestingly, was twisted by anti-gay groups to say "there is no gay gene." So here, as in so many other areas, the facts are ambiguous. Science hasn't really answered the question definitively, but just provides some tantalizing evidence subject to our interpretation. And your latest post (above) says this beautifully!

 

I have read most of the articles on this and I agree --there is controversy. Bias creeps in where science is undecided. Hey--I'm almost human!

 

Do you realize that you are nearly saying the same thing I said? The fact that Leviticus is old testament does not mean that God is now okay with homosexuality but instead that this sin is now forgiven because we are not under the law any longer...as you said the new testament superseded it.

To say that there is nothing wrong with it coming from a biblical standpoint is silly. I agree that it is only as wrong and no different than having sex outside of marriage which is also a sin. God is not cool with either but has given us his forgiving grace for both.

I never said two guys can't have sex...I only stated God's attitude toward it. The Old Testament familiarizes us with the hebrew god who sent his son to fullfill the prophecy which is the New Testament.

The Old Testament also said "thou shalt not kill", God is not suddenly cool with killing because we are no longer under the laws of the Old Testament. Still he will forgive a murderer.

Let's not play the semantics game of homosexuality means this or that and doesn't mean they are actually having sex, why would I want to keep saying "men that have sex" over and over. Besides even if we do it your way there is this passage:

'But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." -- Matthew 5:27-28

Adultery is a sin period. Why would it be any different for men to lust after men without acting on it.

You have to understand, I'm not another christian condemning gay people. My only arguement in this is that the Bible is often vague, but not in this issue of how god feels about homosexuality. By that I mean men having sex with each other. It's not my fault that this is in the Bible. Don't forget the bible is made up of both the old and new testaments. You can't argue around it. You have to accept that this is how God thinks and that he also forgives it. The forgiving it part is where the christians get all huffy. It in the bible that god forgives all sins and iniquity...it doesn't say except being gay.

It is was it is.