This agency has sooo many challenges, and my focus has gone from trying to craft an 18-month plan to move us forward to trying to keep the doors open through the spring. It's wearing on me physically.
So I turn to Facebook, where a friend (straight, married, evangelical male) posted about gay marriage. It was something like: "Let me get this straight - Larry King is getting his 8th divorce, Elizabeth Taylor is getting married for a 9th time, Britney Spears had a 55 hr marriage, Jesse James & Tiger Woods cheated on their wives several times, Tony Parker cheated w/a teammates wife & some religions favor multiple wives, yet the idea of same-sex marriage will destroy the institution of marriage... REALLY??!! Re post this if you agree!"
So of course I posted, waiting for my more conservative friends to blow me up. I only got people agreeing with me -- either it's not an issue or people just don't pay me any mind anymore. We did get into a long, drawn out discussion with a self-described "conservative, evangelical, Latino" on the status of sex, sexuality, marriage, etc. I posted there what I've posted many times: Can someone explain to me why it is that we Christians get so hung up on sex and sexuality and stick to the Word on that, but choose to dismiss the Word when it tells us not to eat pork or shellfish (or many of the other Levitical holiness ...codes, one of which is the prohibition against homosexuality). How come we're even on the internet, since Jesus said we should sell our possessions and give them to the poor and THEN come follow Him? How come we never talk about how much Jesus' ministry was about casting off the chains of social and economic injustice, versus how much it dealt with sexuality? How come we stick to (what we understand to be) the literal Word sometimes and feel free to interpret it at other times?
Lots of people have shared their thoughts with me, but none in a way that I fully understand. This is not directed at anyone and I'm not trying to point fingers or pick specks out of any eyes, but trying to understand thought processes ...
Sorry. I realize it's a lot of questions all together; inquiring minds and all."
No one's ever explained that to me in a way that both honored the Word and made sense to me. The guy who started the thread posted this link: http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-gay-christian or the free pdf version. You can download the free pdf version here.
All that is background. Today the guy posted an article from Religion Dispatches about the Anti-Gay Conservatives, which leads to my comment for today.
What if, instead of cobbling together assorted Scriptures from the Old and New Testaments to make a point about how people express their love, what if instead we were to focus on a something Jesus said consistently in the Synoptic Gospels. What if we were instead to focus on how people LIVE, and to use as our basis the stories as told in Matthew 19:22-24, Mark 10:24-25, and Luke 18:24-25. No matter whether you're of the school that He was talking about a literal eye of a needle or whether He was talking about a narrow gate named Eye of the Needle, Jesus pretty consistently makes the point that rich people will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So why, then, do we have so many Christians who accumulate wealth? Isn't that contrary to entering into the Kingdom?
Did not Jesus and His followers live as socialists, all contributing their earthly possessions for the common good? Wasn't it Ananias and Sapphira who were struck dead when they tried to keep not all but SOME of their profits for themselves? It seems pretty clear that the Bible speaks against accumulation of wealth and materialism, yet we interpret it away -- this passage we always say is about lying to the Holy Ghost. Yes, but the lie was ABOUT materialism. The lie was to cover up a stingy materialist nature.
We never talk about those things, yet Jesus did. How are we justified in obsessing over sexuality, which He never mentioned (except to side with those who committed sexual sins) and yet we ignore His teachings on materialism, or actively engage in it? We have Christian teachings on money management, Christian teachings on creating wealth -- isn't the "prosperity Gospel" completely contrary to the Spirit of what Jesus taught? We talk about our Father's abundance, and his many mansions, but aren't those HEAVENLY mansions, and heavenly abundance, which Jesus has clearly told us we can't partake of if we cling to earthly material things?
Looking at my friend's FB page, I see he's posted another article from Religion Dispatch, titled Tax Cuts for the Super Rich Aren't Biblical. While I don't think many of us (who aren't super rich) would argue with that, what about those of us who AREN'T super rich, but who still hang in there in the rat race? Is that Biblical?
Nah, we won't have that discussion. It ain't right.
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