LifeHiscost Posted March 13, 2016 Share Posted March 13, 2016 13 hours ago, bonnie said: Yes but more intense study might show us God didn't really mean what it says in Romans. Makes sense something vital to our salvation would be left a mystery for thousands of years Romans 1:20-32 I'm not really sure I understand the full meaning of what you're saying, but the underlined brings to my mind this Word. 16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work....2 Timothy 3 God is Love!~Jesus saves! Quote Lift Jesus up!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonnie Posted March 13, 2016 Share Posted March 13, 2016 33 minutes ago, LifeHiscost said: I'm not really sure I understand the full meaning of what you're saying, but the underlined brings to my mind this Word. Scripture can be inspired and still be misunderstood. It has been stated more than once and by more than one person that a more careful study could very well prove that a homosexual lifestyle is not a sin. Ask a few of our local experts here.If that is the case then surely the other behaviors listed would need further study. Perhaps we have that wrong to. Quote Everything you do is based on the choices you make. It's not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument, or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision and choice you make, period ... ... Wish more people would realize this. Quotes by Susan Gottesman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LifeHiscost Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 18 hours ago, bonnie said: Scripture can be inspired and still be misunderstood. It has been stated more than once and by more than one person that a more careful study could very well prove that a homosexual lifestyle is not a sin. Ask a few of our local experts here.If that is the case then surely the other behaviors listed would need further study. Perhaps we have that wrong to. Following that train of thought would lead one to believe God could never get His instructions across for certain. 15 Then you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me to you. And this shall come to pass if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.”....Zechariah 6 17 If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.....John 7 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”.....John 8 God is Love!~Jesus saves! Quote Lift Jesus up!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonnie Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 2 minutes ago, LifeHiscost said: Following that train of thought would lead one to believe God could never get His instructions across for certain. That would be true. But it is what some are being asked to believe on this topic. If it is true on this topic then it would logically follow that it would be true of the other behaviors we are told would keep us from eternal life. At the very least if you believe what scripture says, you are homophobic which would mean to me God was homophobic Quote Everything you do is based on the choices you make. It's not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument, or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision and choice you make, period ... ... Wish more people would realize this. Quotes by Susan Gottesman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LifeHiscost Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 4 minutes ago, bonnie said: That would be true. But it is what some are being asked to believe on this topic. If it is true on this topic then it would logically follow that it would be true of the other behaviors we are told would keep us from eternal life. At the very least if you believe what scripture says, you are homophobic which would mean to me God was homophobic I look up the definition of homophobic and found it to be an irrational fear of that type of behavior. Definition of homophobia : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals ho·mo·pho·bic \-ˈfō-bik\ adjectiv If that would mean God has an aversion to any behavior that would eliminate one of His followers from entering the Kingdom of Heaven I would say that is true of Him, except it wouldn't be irrational, just a recognition of reality. 22 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 24 And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. 25 And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.. 26 And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. 27 And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life....Revelation 21 God is Love!~Jesus saves! Quote Lift Jesus up!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GayatfootofCross Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 1 hour ago, Wrxdod16 said: Will the SDA church be a real church finally reflecting Jesus if they allow their members to commit paedophilia and incest? Yeah right! Is the SDA church currently a fake church because they don't cater to persistent sinfull lifestyles? Hi again! Reflecting Jesus .. meaning to look upon others as our own. Sorry for miscommunication on my part. May the Joy of the Lord be your strength! Kevin(wrx) 1 Quote For all Eternity God waited in anticipation for You to show up to give You a Message - YOUR INCLUDED !!! { a merry dance }?️? " If you tarry 'til you're better You will never come at all " .. "I Will Rise" by the late great saved Glen Campbell If your picture of God is starting to feel too good to be true, you're starting to move in the right direction. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite." Romeo and Juliet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GayatfootofCross Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 1 hour ago, Wrxdod16 said: Jesus did say He would tell many that He never knew them. Why do you suppose that is? Is Jesus second coming going to be in the same manner as His first? I've never met any body who was told not to come to church. If a Gay person was told not to go to church I would feel extremely bad for them and invite them back. A life change would be expected though. I just don't see the discrimination in church as is being presented. I don't know if u read all the pages here with testimonials in between. There is so much more out there. I myself can share some very personal horrific stories too in a short life time in my own church. I suggest, if so inclined, go talk to peoples faces who are open to share their struggles. Ask God about it. ..and if ready.. They may find you a safe haven to share. .... Btw I put up the pro gay theology more to help people here to understand what Gay Christians have been figuring out. Many Studying the matter more deeply like our own church (for instance) used to do with other things that mattered most to them. Some still do! May the Joy of the Lord be your (and the Queers) Strength! Quote For all Eternity God waited in anticipation for You to show up to give You a Message - YOUR INCLUDED !!! { a merry dance }?️? " If you tarry 'til you're better You will never come at all " .. "I Will Rise" by the late great saved Glen Campbell If your picture of God is starting to feel too good to be true, you're starting to move in the right direction. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite." Romeo and Juliet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GayatfootofCross Posted March 14, 2016 Author Share Posted March 14, 2016 I answered your last question a few posts up. 6 hours ago, Wrxdod16 said: Jesus did say He would tell many that He never knew them. Why do you suppose that is? I've never met any body who was told not to come to church. If a Gay person was told not to go to church I would feel extremely bad for them and invite them back. A life change would be expected though. I just don't see the discrimination in church as is being presented. now the first question you raise. This one is much more difficult cause we do not know each other and I know not your experience with the LORD. I suppose why JESUS said He never knew them cause they never tasted and seen the Goodness of GOD. And all the Good and Mercy and Love He flowed on the marginalized and sinners were foreign to the "Churched"of the day. To know GOD.. To place your Trust in HIM ..To Experience His Goodness and that goodness flowing out to others ( Seeing JESUS in others Math 25) saves. not nec. having theology that matches with yours. Of course being in a SDA Forum I understand that sound heretical since emphasis is always on facts and dogma and doctrines and rules and Feasting from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. One day I believe the Church will be about feasting on the TREE OF LIFE next to it. Of course theology thru Bible Study (prayer etc) and His Community is extremely important in knowing GOD and His Rightousness. If the community sees The goodness of God and shares that anyway they can. But we will not always agree on everything (even Paul says "we know in part") I grew up with a number of Adventists thinking Catholics or JW or Baptists are not going to heaven cause their theology is not perfect. And I suspect they would put Gay Churches/theology in that camp also. Cause with them, it is all about the doctrines not the relationship with GOD. Again I do not know where you are in all that. That's why I hardly ever answer these kind of questions with strangers. (im trying) Again I say It is about tasting the Goodness of the LORD and placing your trust in HIM ((we love God cause we see He loved us first then it flows to others fulfilling the 2 highest commands)) Interesting to note that question you reference comes from Math 7 with first verses Jesus says don't judge GOD help us all. May the JOY of the LORD be your Strength! Quote For all Eternity God waited in anticipation for You to show up to give You a Message - YOUR INCLUDED !!! { a merry dance }?️? " If you tarry 'til you're better You will never come at all " .. "I Will Rise" by the late great saved Glen Campbell If your picture of God is starting to feel too good to be true, you're starting to move in the right direction. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite." Romeo and Juliet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GayatfootofCross Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-four-arguments-for-affirming-same.html The Four Arguments for Affirming Same-Sex Marriages Posted on 3.15.2016 As I mentioned a few months ago, I was recently asked by an evangelical institution to participate in a discernment process regarding same-sex marriage. This organization, like many evangelical organizations, was trying to map the terrain of a post-Obergefell world in an informed and gracious way. Given that this was an evangelical group they had a firm grasp on non-affirming positions regarding same-sex marriage. What they wanted my help with was discerning the shape of an affirming position regarding same-sex marriage, a position rooted in the Bible and Christian theology. This collection of intersecting arguments was something the group was less familiar with. So I was asked to help them map out and consider these arguments. I wasn't allotted a lot of time to share, there were many others presenting along with me on different issues (e.g., the legal implications of Obergefell), so to prepare for my remarks I looked out over the landscape of this debate to locate, condense and summarize the main arguments that have been made by Christians for an affirming position regarding same-sex marriage. Overall, I said, the affirming Christian position regarding same-sex marriage is built around one or some combination of four main arguments.1. Apples and Oranges Similar to the Copernican Revolution, when we came to recognize that the earth revolves around the sun, humanity has only just come to recognize sexual orientation as a durable and intrinsic feature of human sexuality. That is, sexual orientation is not a choice and it's not amenable to change. Consequently, when the biblical authors, in both the Old and New Testaments, observed sexual activity they could only explain what they were seeing through the only lens they had, that of disordered and excessive sexual desire. That was the only reasonable explanation, in the eyes of the biblical writers, for why men would desire sex with men. Or women with women. What was being condemned in the Bible was this excessive and disordered sexual desire, desires deemed, given the science of the time, as being "contrary to nature." We're in a very different situation today with our modern understanding of sexual orientation. When a teenage boy or girl, often raised in good, stable Christian homes, begins to experience same-sex desire during puberty we don't see those desires as intrinsically disordered or "contrary to nature." Even many conservative Christians have stopped condemning these desires as "unnatural." All that to say, what the Bible condemns when in comes to human sexuality is licentiousness, sexual lust run amok. For the ancients, homosexuality appeared to be one among many examples of licentiousness, sexual desires so excessive and out of control that men could get to the point of desiring sex with other men. An affirming position regarding same-sex marriage comes alongside the Bible in condemning licentiousness, same-sex and straight manifestations of it. But the affirming position recognizes that a same-sex couple who pledges life-long and monogamous fidelity to each other in the Christian sacrament of marriage don't fit what the Bible is condemning. It's apples and oranges. If anything, given that we recognize sexual orientation as natural (as even many conservative Christians now do), and that the marriage covenant is devoted to disciplining our sexuality--training eros to become agape--married same-sex Christians are the exact opposite of what the Bible is condemning. Again, apples and oranges. What the Bible is condemning isn't what we're talking about in affirming same-sex Christian marriage. As an example of this argument see Matthew Vines' God and the Gay Christian.2. Marriage as Grace "Male and female God created them" and "Be fruitful and multiply." Non-affirming views of same-sex marriage root their views of marriage in biological complementarity and biological reproduction. Marriage is between a man and a woman. In this Adam and Eve become the model of marriage, what we mean when we say that a marriage reflects the Image of God. Affirming views of same-sex marriage argue, however, that there is another marriage found in the Bible, the marriage between God and Israel. This marriage is not based upon biology but upon election and grace. In this marriage the Image of God is witnessed in covenantal fidelity. The primacy of grace over biology is also highlighted by Paul when he discusses the inclusion of the Gentiles into the church, the non-biological children who are grafted into Israel "contrary to nature" via the grace and election of God. This grace is also displayed in the family of the church, a family not formed through biology but through the Spirit and our pledges of covenantal fidelity to God and each other. In short, an affirming position of same-sex marriage argues that marriages can reflect the Image of God in different ways. There are marriages and families in the Bible that are born out of grace and covenantal fidelity rather than biology. As an example of this argument see Eugene Rogers' Sexuality and the Christian Body or Rowan Williams' essay "The Body's Grace."3. The Holy Spirit Changing a Literal and Traditional Reading of the Bible A huge hermeneutical crisis faced the early church when the Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius and his household in Acts 10 and Peter allowed them to be baptized, formally bringing the Gentiles into the church and recognizing them as co-heirs of the covenant God made to Abraham. This was a hermeneutical crisis so big it split the church. The issue was that circumcision was proclaimed by God to be an "everlasting" sign "in the flesh" of the covenant between God and Israel (Gen. 17.13). A plain and literal reading of the text argued that the Gentiles, therefore, would have to be circumcised to gain access to the promises made by God to Abraham. And yet, the Holy Spirit was being poured out upon the uncircumcised. God was doing a new thing. Not just with Cornelius, but also with the Gentile converts in Antioch. How was the church to reconcile a plain, literal and centuries old traditional reading of the Bible in light of what was happening among the Gentile converts? The issue came to a head in Acts 15 in what we call the First Apostolic Counsel. There the issues were debated--literal and traditional readings of Scripture clashing with experiences and testimony about the Holy Spirit at work among the uncircumcised. Hesitantly, the church decided in favor of experience and testimony over literal and traditional readings of Scripture. In short, the Bible itself shows us how the action and activity of the Holy Spirit can guide the church toward different readings of Scripture, even overturning literal and traditional readings. Affirming views of same-sex marriage argue that something similar is happening in our time. We observe the fruits of the Spirit in same-sex unions, evidences of holiness, fidelity and grace. The same way the early Jewish Christians saw the fruits of the Spirit manifest among a group they knew to be--because the Bible told them so--sexually depraved and under the judgment and wrath of God. For an example of this argument see Luke Timothy Johnson's Scripture and Discernment.4. Love and Liberation The fourth argument for an affirming position regarding same-sex marriage is a direct appeal to the Golden Rule: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. In some hands this appeal is a simple appeal to love and compassion in embracing our shared humanity as beloved children of God in affirming same-sex marriages. 1 John 4.8: "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." In other hands, the appeal is for justice, often informed by a biblical and prophetic appeal to liberation theology: God's preferential option for those who are oppressed and suffering. Following the Hebrew prophets and Jesus' Nazareth Manifesto (Luke 4.16-21), the Bible must be read as "good news" for those who are suffering in the world due to hate, violence, oppression and marginalization. As it says in Romans 13.10: "Love does no harm to a neighbor." For an example of this argument, on the love side more than liberation, see Gene Robinson's God Believes in Love. Affirming Christian arguments for same-sex marriages, I told the evangelical organization, generally use one or some mixture of these four arguments. The arguments are nuanced, supplemented and blended in various ways, but these are the four recurring arguments. For example, you can make the appeal for compassion and justice (Argument #4) more compelling and urgent by citing statistics about gay teen suicide and homelessness. The argument that the activity of the Holy Spirit affects how we read Scripture (Argument #3) can be supported in a variety of ways. A common example is how the Holy Spirit convicted the church about slavery. Evidences for how sexual orientation is now understood to be a natural and durable feature of our sexuality (Argument #1) and stories of the Spirit's fruits exhibited among gay Christians and same-sex couples (Arguments #2 and #3) are often given in memoir form (see Justin Lee's Torn). Mixed, supplemented, nuanced and presented in various ways, these are the four main arguments for affirming same-sex marriages. Quote For all Eternity God waited in anticipation for You to show up to give You a Message - YOUR INCLUDED !!! { a merry dance }?️? " If you tarry 'til you're better You will never come at all " .. "I Will Rise" by the late great saved Glen Campbell If your picture of God is starting to feel too good to be true, you're starting to move in the right direction. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite." Romeo and Juliet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GayatfootofCross Posted May 5, 2016 Author Share Posted May 5, 2016 http://impactmagazine.us/?p=8037 Quote For all Eternity God waited in anticipation for You to show up to give You a Message - YOUR INCLUDED !!! { a merry dance }?️? " If you tarry 'til you're better You will never come at all " .. "I Will Rise" by the late great saved Glen Campbell If your picture of God is starting to feel too good to be true, you're starting to move in the right direction. "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite." Romeo and Juliet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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