What happens when I get sick for a few days, get bogged down with loads of work, have a huge lock-in at church to plan for, preach a few sermons, try to apply for some seminary scholarships, and find my RSS feed has way too many blog posts and news articles saved just waiting for me to expand on them with my *expert* opinion? You get this fantastic group of links. There’s something for everybody here, more than likely a couple of somethings for everybody.
I’ll probably have another one in the next couple of days because I still have a ton of marked stories to go through. I hate putting some of these in these big groups because there are some great stories in here worth spending some time on – I just don’t have that time. So, if one grabs your attention and you want to comment on it: go for it.
POLITICS
- Hillary: the Holy Spirit sensing Theocrat?
- Obama: the Church vote getting Theocrat?
- Did Huckabee push some evangelicals over to the Democrats?
- Joe Carter publishes an open letter to the religious right in which he describes 10 ares where we have messed up spiritually in our work politically.
- He also takes Christians and our culture as a whole to task for our flippant treatment of prison rape.
CHURCH
- Barna details a new way to research church attendance.
- Struggling to answer: “Does this church accept people who aren’t perfect?” Very good read.
- Fantastic April Fool’s Day posts.
- The Thinklings on why we need the institution of the church.
- Good quotes by Rick Warren courtesy of Ed Stetzer.
- Stetzer also has a good look at diversity outreaches by evangelical churches.
- Rob Zinn gets it.
- A new study looks at how we view sin – what it is and what type of things we think fall under that category. Here’s Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll’s definition of sin.
- In whom do we have confidence? Here’s the annual list.
- Warren says mainliners and evangelicals need to reconcile.
- Can Christians be too obsessed and study the Bible too much?
- Does an book shelf at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary devoid of Southern Baptist authors mean academia has left the SBC?
- Michael Spencer writes that abstinence programs can sometimes hide and undercut the Gospel.
- He also details how the church has failed in reaching out to GLBT individuals. This is followed by a comment he received from a homosexual Christian and part of his response.
- Perry Noble details the characteristics of the early church that should be present in the modern church.
- As a Christian and a professor of New Testament, Luke Timothy Johnson rejects people attempting to make the Bible say what they want it to say. Instead, he simply rejects the authority of the Bible for another authority – his experience.
WORLD
- Is Africa the back door to liberating the Middle East both politically and spiritually?
- More than two dozen missionaries or seminary students, many of whom are American citizens, were recently kicked out of Jordan.
- There’s a battle over international AIDS prevention funding taking place in Congress.
- Iranian police chief tops Elliot Spitzer’s hypocrisy. Yeah, it’s that bad.
MISC.
- From Evangelical Outpost’s 33 things:
Kyte will be this year’s twitter and revolutionize video blogging.
Wanna go back old school? You can play Nintendo games on your browser here. - The concept of Net Neutrality is dividing Christian and Conservative groups.
- The real story of Galileo and the Church.
- Recently the NFL tore down the wall of separation of church and Super Bowl.
- Rev. Willy Drake does not like the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, so much so that he decided to pray that God would rain down his judgment on them. Just me, but I don’t see this as beneficial…to anyone.
- A recent study looked at why kids lie and the type of parents that have lying children.
The more I read xians’ ideas concerning hx the more I am dismissive of it. It’s too bad, but there you are. You people really have nothing to say to us. I think xianity does many good things, but this just disqualifies it for serious consideration in my mind. I have to agree with Hitchens that it is a toxin which destroys rational thought and simple humanity.
btw: I can see where Spencer is trying to reach a decent and loving position regarding gay people. However, he keeps being drawn back by “biblical teaching” and notions of sinfulness. To my mind this just demonstrates that otherwise decent and humane people have been poisoned by religion, and, though they struggle to express their decency, they are constantly being hindered by their religion’s teachings. Can’t you people see the dissonance created when you tell us how much you “love” and “value” us, how your God “loves” and “values” us, while at the same time denouncing the most intimate and basic part of our lives as “sin” and “perversion”? When gay people hear this we can only see hypocrisy or dishonesty, and dismiss it as harmful nonsense.
Until xianity is reformed and repents, and the offending passages deleted from its holy book, I see no hope for reconciliation.
One side or the other will have to repent, that is for sure.
I think most of us (or at least some of us) see that it is difficult for you to understand love when you hear sin. It becomes next to impossible to grasp how someone could both love you and view an intimate part of yourself as sinful.
But for us, we do (and must) accept Scripture as authoritative. Through it we come to learn who God is and how He loves us. Through it we learn of His sacrifice in order to establish a relationship with us. In it we find the guidelines that guide our life and keep us going in the right direction. We have tried it and found it completely trustworthy. We could no more delete an "offending passage," than delete a non-offending passage. We must take it as whole and complete. If it is truth, it is always true in every aspect.
When it deals with sin, it hurts on many levels. It has cut me numerous times. That becomes ratcheted up when dealing with an issue that the person feels is a basic part of them, how they were born or created.
I'm well aware that it is extremely difficult for you to see past the language of "sin" to reach the language of "love." The church should do a better job of reaching out to gay individuals, showing them actual love through real relationships and helping them in daily life. The church should repent of horrible, unChristlike behavior in our past (and present) response to gay people.
However, we cannot separate ourselves from what God says. You say that your sexuality is "the most intimate and basic part of our lives." In essence, you find your identity in your sexuality. For Christians, we find our identity in Christ. He is our identity. He is our everything. He flows over into every aspect of our lives, including our sexuality. It all runs through and from Him. We can no more renounce and move beyond what He says than you feel you can move past your sexuality.
BTW, thanks seeker for the adjustments on the post. It makes it a lot easier to read.
NP, all I did was bulletize your text.
Aaron, I think the nut of your argument is the following (which I will address):
But for us, we do (and must) accept Scripture as authoritative. Through it we come to learn who God is and how He loves us…We must take it as whole and complete. If it is truth, it is always true in every aspect.
Let me say that I understand your position and am not responding out of malice or anger or ignorance. However, I must also say that your view is most definitely not a necessary one, but one that has some flaws and can, therefore, be abandoned with little spiritual effect.
First, the texts you see as authoritative and as God’s Word were put together by men over centuries. For this effort, some texts were included and others excluded. This holds especially true for the NT where decades or centuries of often bitter battles took place over the texts themselves and their interpretation. There was never one obvious interpretation which was agreed upon by all within the church. It was, in fact, a political battle. Several times, the emperor stepped in on one side and imposed one interpretation solely to ensure order and security for the state. Several different interpretations of scripture and the faith itself battled for dominance and, only slowly and after much acrimony and often violence, did one sort of come out. Add to this the Protestant reformation, and you have quite a mess where it comes to the texts cited and their interpretation.
This is true. I looked it up. So, you see I’m not just blathering to further my own agenda, but have taken the faith seriously enough to investigate it thoroughly.
Thus, I see little necessity to, as you put it, to see the Bible (as well as church teachings) as authoritative and true, and, especially, true in every respect. Certainly, other interpretations are possible and, even, necessary. Just because you and your evangelical/fundamentalist/conservative brethren interpret scripture one way doesn’t mean that what you think is absolutely and necessarily what God had in mind (if He exists). Your interpretation could be wrong, the text could be false or corrupt or politically influenced, several other factors could be present, or part of it could be true while other parts are patently false and harmful.
I especially think it’s absurd to maintain that the whole text must be taken uncritically as “always true in every aspect.” How can you possibly know this? Just because tradition (which is little more than the history of other mens’ opinions) says so doesn’t make it true for all time and all people. I mean, just on the face of it, this is unreasonable. Every text everywhere has problems. To just assert that we must take it all uncritically on face value is a mere assertion without evidence or justification. Why should I just accept your assertions about hx as true and authoritative merely because a handful of bits of scripture say so? What if, taken in the context of their time, they mean something else? Why shouldn’t the millennia of knowledge we’ve gained since be taken into account? Do we still believe in Paul’s opinions regarding the divine right of kings or the disgusting nature of sex or the acquiescence to slavery or the role of women? Why, then, must we continue his harmful and cruel attitudes towards millions of gay people? If we must judge the tree by its fruit, can we not, based on its demonstrable harm to gay human beings, convict xianity of a terrible evil? Rotten fruit, rotten root, I say.
Finally, I also have to observe that there are other ways to come to an understanding of “God” and what such a concept means for each of us. You assert that your religion is, if not the sole, then the best way of doing so. I dispute this. It may be one way, but not the only. There is no basis to argue reasonably otherwise that can be verified. Observationally, there are several other historic methods to approach to Ultimate or Divine or God (or what you will) than Christianity, particularly your brand of the faith. And there are plenty of spiritual ways which don’t include the strong patriarchal, sexist, and homophobic memes which infect your religion. If you insist that your brand of xianity is the sole means to God, you are being hubristic, for God’s ways are not man’s ways.
Before Silver descended into insult, I was set to explain my views on “faith” as a concept. Here’s just a brief note on how I view it.
I agree with Paul Tillich in his formulation of faith:
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
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Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.
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Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.
In this view, faith is not some fidelity to an authoritative scripture or church or theology or set of laws. Rather, it is an existential experience which grips the individual and directs him to some Ultimate. It is an action, a way of being in the world, not a code for behavior or way of judging other’s behavior. Thus, it can exist in any spiritual tradition. I believe that this view takes into account the mystery of man and his experiences of the transcendent, and it also allows us greater breath and depth and flexibility in our responses to the Ultimate. I wish you guys could take this view into account when you approach gay people, rather than your dogmatic reliance on authority and dogma. You’d be a lot more effective.
"I wish you guys could take this view into account when you approach gay people, rather than your dogmatic reliance on authority and dogma. You'd be a lot more effective." ——->
Effective at what? Watering down scripture? Thats really what is wrong with main stream religion today, I think. What some call dogma is anothers code of ethics and morality. The world may be an anything goes place, true, but a person who actually thinks before doing would want to consider God a person with feelings. This would require a Christian person to use the filter of "does this please God" before undertaking some action.
On many questions, the Bible already answers certain questions so as to cut through the back ground noise of culture, no matter where in the stream of time one finds their self.
"God is a person with feelings"?! What a primitive concept.
Evidently, you didn't read my analysis, or, more likely, you didn't understand it. You can believe what you want, but you certainly cannot impose your simplistic and uninformed opinions on the rest of us.
I impose nothing, thats impossible. And I would not be interested in doing it. Just making a statement.
I read and understand what you are saying. It just sounds like so much circular/Eastern philosophic thought. The arguments I have heard before, many times. Being a Buddhist in the past, I understand the explaining away of things my such notions.
To you God is a concept, to me a person. What you see as primitive, I see as perfect. Haven't you heard before"the simple things are hard and the hard things are simple"?
I wish you guys could take this view into account when you approach gay people, rather than your dogmatic reliance on authority and dogma. You'd be a lot more effective.
I will, thank you. I suspect that many gays seek a spirituality apart from the revealed monotheistic scriptures. I do not regard gays as anti-God or anti-faith per se. I also think that a condemnatory primary approach is not helpful when trying to reach the gay community or individuals. As you suggest, greater understanding and appreciation of gays and their perspectives is probably needed among Christians.
However, we also have a tough "prophet's" job, which is to also declare the clear truth about the sinfulness and associated judgments of God upon such, in order to warn the 'foolish.' So both approaches must be with us, of necessity.
But what if I emphasize a spirituality which reflects more than just a positive regard for the person, but also looks at reason, science, experience, and tradition to determine what is spiritually good and healthful, and I find that same-sex attraction is possibly something that is a dysfunction (at least for some) that they can effect change in?
What if they want to be a father and have a 'natural' family with kids? Can I tell them that affection for the other sex is not only what God has intended for them, but is possible, even healthy?
Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.
I agree that, in a generic sense, this is faith – trust in, experience with the unknown infinite. But faith may be more – it may be a relationship with a personal, loving Creator who desires communion with 'his' creatures.
And in an even more specific sense, Christianity is concerned with more than just generic faith, but *saving* faith – that is, saving us from the temporal and supposed eternal consequences of our sinful state. In that sense, a purely experiential faith will not lead to salvation, but at best, to a sense of one's *need* for a savior.
Just my thoughts.
This does nothing to counter my discussion of the history of xianity and the problems surrounding the texts and the development of theology. I find it all rather arbitrary and political, and something I can decide against without fear or guilt. I have to say that my investigations of the historical development of xianity has freed me from its clutches. You guys keep insisting that your opinions are somehow "truth," but I see it as considerably less. I'll take the more open, trusting, and risky stance advocated by Tillich (among others) to the dogmatic and safe views you espouse.
btw: What your regard as your response of "reason and science" has been shown to be false. Your view rests on your version of xianity and little more. Sorry.
I want to get to that topic. It is one that I am profoundly interested in and have done research on it Louis. I'm not spouting off too much that I haven't dug into. I'm going into apologetics for a reason. I hope you can give me a few days to post something about that topic.
One of the links at Spencer's place references a NT professor named Luke Timothy Johnson. I also mentioned him in this post, but I didn't mention that his writing was about homosexuality. He, being a gay man and a NT scholar, faced a difficult decision. In the end, he decided two things (in my opinion, one right and one wrong).
One, he decided that people can't just go through and cherry-pick verses and they can't just say that Bible allows for certain things when it doesn't. He agrees that the Bible teaches against homosexuality. Second, he decides that his experience and the experience of others is a more reliable authority than Scripture. I disagree with that. But at least, he doesn't try to have it both ways.
That being said, I appreciate the tone and demeanor of the comments here. Everyone seems to be trying to discuss things as academic and less personal as possible. That's a great thing and I enjoy it – reading it and participating as much as I can.