Re: How Should We Respond to Homo***uality?

Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:35:14 GMT, AJA <ahnemann@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
>> "Bren" <BGKent@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>> news:P6YGj.6126$Pc2.4005@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>> B - Oh dear...the whole concept of "God hates" is evil to me.

Not to me.  Saying, "God hates sin," when sin is fundamentally 
destructive to human beings, is good as well as true.  On the other 
hand, saying that God hates any human being whatsoever, regardless of 
how sinful, is both evil and false.

>> God hates is a strange expression to me also and a wrong one.
>> The whole homo***ual ranting is so very tiresome to me.  It's as though

>> folks have chosen that as their favorite sin, and by God quoting
Scripture 
>> that are absolutely _right_ about it!

There does seem to be a lot of ranting about that particular sin, in 
here and in other Christian circles.  While I don't deny the words of 
Scripture nor the Church Fathers on the subject, I never did understand 
why many seemed so inordinately disgusted by this particular sin and so 
tolerant of other ***ual sins.  As best I can tell, the Holy Scriptures 
consider homo***ual *** to be simply one of many forms of fornication, 
no worse than others.

The whole thing reminds me of something C. S. Lewis said in response to 
a question about his autobiography.  As a child Lewis went to a boarding 
school, and describes a great deal of homo***ual behavior (and 
homo***ual bullying) in the dormitories at the school.  A reader asked 
him why he had simply described the situation and said nothing about the 
sin of homo***uality.  His response was that he preferred to comment 
about sins that tempted him and that he'd had to fight, and neither 
homo***uality nor gambling had never been tempting him.

Of course, someone promptly asked if that meant that he'd been tempted 
by every other sin.... ;)

> In Lent we Orthodox Christians are supposed to pray every day "Grant me
to see
> my own transgressions and not to judge my brother".

> And of course one of our frequent transgressions is ignoring that. 

<nod>  And the sin of judging others while ignoring our own sins is 
closely allied with the one sin that has any claim to being the worst 
sin of all -- spiritual pride. :/


Lord, have mercy!


-- 
Catherine (Hampton) Jefferson <ariel@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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