Oh,....and seriously, i don't care if a guy wants to stick his weiner into some other guy's orifice. That's his choice. I just don't think it's right to force his beliefs on me.
How about the "aids epidemic". I keep hearing how not enough money is being spent to cure this horrible disease.
I HAVE the cure. If men learned to KEEP IT IN THEIR PANTS, and women kept their legs closed, and drug adicts stopped using dirty needles, the disease would die off.
But that would be asking people to take some self control instead of doing "whatever feels good at the time".
Gay or straight, have some morals and AIDS would die off instead of people.

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You might kill AIDS off with condoms/abstinence and proper needle usage in the developed world in theory.

Go to the Sahel and areas around it and tell the people who have NOTHING that they can't procreate, thus dooming them to a certain early death because they don't have children to help them survive. Things are not that simple (e.g. keep it in your pants), and if you say it is, I'll probably punch my screen because of the massive amounts of ignorance emitted.

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Uh, Cheesey, you might want to check up on your statistics, old buddy. The violent crime rate in the United States has been declining for decades . It spiked immediately after Nixon declared his war on drugs and started going back down fairly shortly thereafter. It is now in line with historical rates dating all the way back to the beginning of this country.

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I think I agree about 2/3rds of the way with you, Alan. At least if I'm reading you correctly.

1. If you believe the Bible is the actual inspired Word of God, and not just something cooked up at Nicea, or just another how-to book, or a hundred other variations on "its just another book written by imperfect human beings, then I don't see how you can see homosexuality as often practiced as anything other than a sin. And by inference, the same for gay marriage.

If the whole thing, Law as well as Gospel, parts that bug me as well as parts that don't, is God's Word, then those "thou shalt nots" in Leviticus or wherever are not just the rules of a historical human sect. They're God saying, "Do these things, and you are sinning."

Since I'm such a believer, since I do believe the Bible is the actual inspired Word of God -- Nicea doesn't bother me, because "all powerful" includes the ability to get past any schemes of Catholic bishops and popes and influential people), I'm with Alan on this point.

2. And I don't believe you get to pick and choose. To my mind, anyone who teaches that you get to pick and choose which bits of the Law to follow is simply wrong. The Grace of God doesn't make the sinning okay. Those who would teach otherwise, to me, are, the kinds of false teachers Paul was railing against in, e.g., the Book of Galatians, the kind whose lack of obedient faith threatens not just the state of their own souls as teachers but those who would listen to them as their students.

And, this is where I worry about my own practice. Not only do I sin with regularity, I sin knowing that what I am doing is sinful. And it's going to be such regardless of how I might try to rationalize it. And regardless of how much my priest/pastor/spiritual advisor/friends will support me.

I worry because the real problem is my rationalization. I can't say those adulterous thoughts I have are okay because God has forgiven me; I can only say that He has forgiven me. I can't excuse my lusts or whatever other sin I have committed in the past hour by calling it "human nature", because that merely says my human nature is that of a sinner.

I worry because my guilt doesn't have enough power in my soul. I worry that I have surrendered to certain temptations too easily, without trying hard enough to love Him by doing what He wants rather than what my gonads or my brain have rationalized.

That's the second place I think I'm with Alan.

Indeed, I may even be more radical in my fundamentalism that he is. The real evildoers here aren't the gay couple, its the "believers" and priests, the modern day scribes and Pharisees, who would say it's okay with God to keep sinning. Who would argue that the forgiveness of grace enables their parishioners to continue on guilt-free as if there were no sin going on.

Those believers who would suggest that the forgiveness of sins means there is no sinning. Those who are encouraging nothing less than idolatry. Those who would suggest because our human nature leads us to desire in ways that break God's Law, said breaking will not give pain to God. Those who would say that our following of our human nature cannot be idolatrous, when in fact rationalized following of that nature is the epitome of idolatry, an idolatry that puts our human nature above God in the importance of things.

What God won't forgive is the gay person's denial -- or mine -- of our need to strive to follow His will and His Law in all things. What he won't forgive is our denial about our need to admit guilt when our "human nature" kicks in to frustrate our striving to follow.

God doesn't expect us to always obey the 10 commandments. He does expect us to try, and he expects us to be repentant when we try and fail.

So, here, too, I think I'm with Alan.

3. We part ways, however, because I am more troubled by *my* willingness to judge others sinful activity than I am about how sinful *their* behavior might be.

Because only God can be holier than they are. I can't. Just because I may not commit this or that particular sin, I know that I am still guilty of at least as many violations of His Law as they are.

In the end, I am saved not because I have avoided this small subset of sins that gays, lesbians, and sheep lovers have not, but because He took the problem out of my hands.

I can't wear the robe of judgment. I just can't.

Sure, I can say that this or that gay person or whoever committed this or that sinful act. But what I can't judge is how that sinner believes. I can't judge the quality of someone's repentence, the quality of their belief, the quality of faith. Heck I can't even judge my own.

That kind of judgment is God's alone. And that is the only kind of judgment that matters. God isn't counting sins any more than he's counting good works. God's only counting the quality of our belief in Him and the quality of our commitment to striving to please Him. If he counted sins, we'd all be doomed. If he counted works, none of us would have enough.

But he doesn't count either works or sins. They've all been forgiven at Calvary. God merely asks of us, "Do you want to please me and don't you just hate it when you fall short, again, and sin?" If you can answer, yes, then not only will he forgive you your sins. He's not going to be bothered when you mistakenly identify as "ok" that which He has said is sinful.

But, again, how He's going to hear my answer, or yours, or that of the most flaming gay dude, only He knows how to get that right. I can't. I can't even tell for me. So how in the heck can I get off criticizing or judging someone else?

I don't believe they're the "ten suggestions," either. But even more important, I can't tell how God sees the quality of faith of someone who believes they are.

I can't. I just can't. None of us can.

The only standards of morality I can claim sufficient knowledge of are going to be human standards. Today's standards. Yesterday's standards. It makes no difference.

But the only standards of morality that matter with regard to "sin" and "faith" and "salvation" are divine ones. And of those I not only don't I have enough knowledge; I can't have it.

And if I claim to have it, I'm committing idolatry and breaking the Great Commandment itself. I'm worshiping an idol, the idol of my own claimed wisdom and reason.

Worse than if I had got to the pearly gates and tried to sodomize Peter.

This, I believe.

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OK, thanks Finny. That's exactly what I wanted to know.

I'm surprised. I thought Finland would have more than Lutherans and atheists. Can't atheists make up their own church and marry gays? Seriously. We have hundreds of made up religions in this country. I personally know a guy who started his own church. You need only 150 people and it qualifies for all the benefits of a full on religion.

Is that legal there?

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Wade, i see what you are saying. But are we NOT to warn others when we see what they are doing is wrong according to God? Not to "judge" them, but to warn them of the consequences of their actions? So that they too can gain salvation?
It's not judging them. As you said, that's God's business. But we can't just ignore it and act as if we don't care, can we?
If you see someone standing in the middle of the road, and a truck is about to run them over, would you not yell "LOOK OUT! YOU'RE ABOUT TO BE RUN OVER!" Or would you be afraid of someone telling you to mind your own business?

Fin.....think of all the countries where they keep popping out kids like they were PEZ dispensers, yet they can't even feed or take care of the kids they already have. So they should just keep popping them out so that SOME might survive and allow their race to continue? Haven't you seen the "feed the children" ads? I can't understand HOW people could care more about having sex then care about "How are we going to feed, clothe, and take care of the health needs of our children?"
I should smash my computer screen over that stupidity.
Once again, mankind's sex drive is more important then anything.

It always seems to win out over common sense. Excuses always are made for it.

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Yet again you miss the point entirely. For these people, having lots of children isn't about getting their rocks off, as you chauvinistically seem to think. It's a calculated bet -- a business decision, if you will -- that by producing enough progeny, enough of them will survive long enough to take care of the parents in their old age. In cultures like that, it is virtually impossible for older people to provide for themselves, so they need offspring to care for them. Yes, it results in a lot of kids dying, but guess what? That is the norm throughout the animal kingdom. The whole point of sexual reproduction is to have lots of diverse offspring in the hope that a few of them will be well enough adapted to survive to reproductive maturity. It's dirty, messy, and inefficient, it produces horrifying numbers of maladapted individuals (most of whom, thankfully, die in utero), but it also produces astonishingly well-adapted individuals who survive to pass their adapted traits onto their own/ offspring.

If that sounds harsh and cynical, you'll have to take it up with God. He designed the system, not I.

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Do we have a duty to warn? I'm no longer sure.
Certainly you make a good argument, and the one I have agreed with most of my life, including most of that part of my life since I have gotten serious about my faith (fits and starts over the last 15 years).
But here's why I'm no longer sure. The problem was crystallized by a David Jeremiah CD I was listening to just the other day on the way to work. I've just finished his series of sermons on Galatians (15 CDs!). Whole series is on legalism, grace and how we should look at "the Law". Anyway, here goes.
Following Paul, the function of the Law is to point out our inherent hopelessness as sinners without the grace provided by Christ. As believers, its there to provide guidance on the manner in which we should strive to follow Christ. But if we aren't believers in grace, this or that part of the Law that we might or might not comply with isn't going to make a difference. Because no matter how good we are at one provision, we're going to be breaking others all the time by our very nature.
I think my duty to warn might exist IF the person has already come to believe in Jesus Christ as Saver of us by His Grace. It would come by way of "We all know we're going to sin, but loving Him means we want to do our best to follow His example and we don't do that by intentionally breaking what we believe Him not to approve of.
But if the person isn't yet a believer, or if the person's a believer that believes that salvation comes via obedience to the Law, then I don't think so. In fact, for those cases, I think "warning" just reinforces the wrong way of thinking about Jesus. It just re-inforces the notion that Christian belief is just another religion with rules to be followed. It just re-inforces the notion, all too prevalent among both non-believers and believers, that salvation comes from following rules and damnation comes from breaking them.
And it doesn't. It can't. Salvation can't come from ANY of our choices except the one that says "I trust you and I accept your gift of something I can never do anything to deserve. And no worse damnation can come about from breaking any other part of the Law if that offer is being refused.
If my concern is my neighbor's salvation -- and I absolutely agree that such should be my concern -- then my effort should be on helping my neighbor to understand that it all comes down to agreeing that Jesus did "it" and accepting his gift. Because if the neighbor can't do that, for whatever reason he doesn't do it, he's doomed. But if he can do that, then all the pieces involving dangly bits and sin have been taken care of to God's salvation.
Now back to those already believing, the ones I tentative accepted a duty to warn about sin X several paragraphs back. To the extent that my warning is of the "what do you think Jesus would feel about this choice you are making? Would it pain him?" then okay, the warning has value. But it has to be very carefully done: it is not only not judging of the sinner, it is not judging or even claiming that the action is sinful, that I should be doing. It's merely another example of saying to my fellow believer, "what would Jesus do/say/feel?" Another example of telling him that its all about making His feelings first, not mine, yours, or any other sinners.
The question of the relative importance we place man's sex drive, in the end, is irrelevant. The relevance of any of our drives, the relevance of ALL of our drives taken together, is a grain of sand next to the universe that is the relevance of His Drive. How we choose among our human drives makes no difference at all. How we believe about His makes all the difference.

Edit: I apologize for the lack of space between paragraphs. I can't figure out why it doesn't show up. (I also had to type the bolding code in -- I couldn't get the button to work.

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So all this time I was suppose to be filling the earth with little Dakotas, instead of fulfilling my hedonistic desires with responsible action? What an incredible decision I made to only give the world three of me - albeit in female form.

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So when I tell all you greedy tax evaders that your souls depend on paying that tax - I'm being righteous? Thanks Wade, you've given me peace.

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