Glorifying God In Our Sexuality: Part 2 – Naturally Insulting

 

Prop 8 Protestor in California

Prop 8 Protestor in California

As I gather my thoughts about what we as the church should be about regarding the area of LGBT ministry, let’s explore more of what we shouldn’t be about.

 

Vicki previously commented:

I have a friend who’s husband was homosexual … She went to counseling with him for a while … He had felt the tension from church people that could not understand his struggle. That was her biggest complaint against the church; people couldn’t see it as a normal struggle, they want to make him out to be a criminal or freak.

One of the common phrases heard when discussing homosexuality in the Church is, “It’s not natural.” But that makes me ask, what is natural in a fallen broken world? Is being albino natural? Is being allergic to something natural? Are phobias natural? Are hermaphrodites natural? They are all very real and all occur naturally.

The problem with making the statement that “homosexuality is unnatural” is that it’s more of a personal attack and not much of a convincing argument. A homosexual person’s urges and desires are just as real as a heterosexual person’s urges and desires. To call them unnatural communicates that what they are feeling and experiencing is illegitimate and is easily discounted as lesser.

Being a musician, I know I can get rather defensive when someone throws out the blanket statement, “Rock and roll is not music.” No one is ever going to win me over with such an approach when I happen to like rock and roll and appreciate it as music. That person’s statement makes no sense to me because I know it as music.

From a personal perspective, homosexuals know their urges and desires come quite naturally. From a biological perspective, they know of examples of homosexuality occurring in the animal kingdom. So while homosexuality is uncommon, that doesn’t make it unnatural by definition. By offering such a statement to a homosexual, you are not only insulting them personally, but the statement doesn’t correspond with their reality so it’s understandably judged as false.

The most tragic part is that Jesus’ name and Scripture are usually associated in such a discussion so the Christian world-view is guilty by association and deemed equally false as well.

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Glorifying God In Our Sexuality: Part 1 – The Haggard Interview

So I caught the Nightline interview and saw as much of the Oprah interview on YouTube as I could. For something so intriguing with such potential, I am saddened at what is coming across in these interviews. Given what he preached before and the nature of the story, everyone wants Haggard to give an answer to whether he still believes homosexuality is a sin/wrong. To which he gives a theologically flimsy answer of, “For me it is.”

But I think the problem is we are asking the wrong question. The question doesn’t address the problem. The problem is not a particular sexuality (hetero, homo, or bi) but how we honor God in our sexual “appetite”, if you will — whatever it may be.

Granted, the question assumes you are talking about the engaging in homosexual activity, but to simply say “Homosexuality is a sin,” makes about as much sense as saying, “Heterosexuality is a sin — unless you’re married.” There is too much to be misunderstood.

To Christians

Imagine being Jewish and the Gentiles are in their backyard cooking up some BBQ pork ribs (or possibly The Bacon Explosion). No law is broken smelling the smoke and thinking, “Man, that smells delicious.” Now if you happen to hate the smell of cooking pig, be thankful for God’s grace, but what of the Hebrew BBQ lovers? How should they be treated? Should they just “pray the pork away” or “get more involved in the temple”?

I think Haggard’s experience shows how completely ill-prepared the church is when it comes to ministering to people struggling in this. Seeing that our current model of government permits free speech and would not permit mass executions (as others have), the Church’s behavior has left these people with only three choices. To either continue in shame, die in shame, or accept it and be proud of it. It is no wonder national tensions are where they are these days.

My most frustrating question for me is … given how Haggard is responding to these questions (that ultimately reveal his understanding of theology), how in the world did he ever get elevated to the title of President of the National Association of Evangelicals? His wife has communicated and lived out a more of Christian world-view through all this than he has — she is clearly more qualified than he ever was.

To Oprahlites

To say “God would never want us to suppress what comes so naturally to us” just doesn’t work when you apply it in real life. What of the person that has a natural attraction to minors? What of the heterosexual, married male that is naturally attracted to other women besides his wife?

God is very clear about how we are to handle our sexual “appetites” no matter what they are. Take it outside of sexuality and apply it other areas and it becomes even more clear. What if our natural desire is to drink all the time? Or to eat all the time? What if our natural reaction to frustration is fist-throwing rage? Surely, God wouldn’t want us to suppress that, right?

The scriptures say that man’s natural desires are in rebellion against God and give us very clear lines of what God’s holiness demands. While it may sound good, it’s not what God wants and it doesn’t work in real life.

(And on whose authority is Oprah speaking for what God really wants anyway?)

The Bottom Line

Oprahlites, the Scriptures clearly say that engaging in homosexual activity is wrong — don’t demand that Christians accept and embrace it. That’s like demanding a Muslim to remove her head covering. (How politically incorrect is that?)

Heterosexual Christians, be thankful for God’s grace regarding your sexual preference. Know your doctrine of original sin. Know that different people struggle with different things and fall in different ways. Make your church a place where the Word is proclaimed and where someone can openly share their struggle in this and be ministered to.

Random Thoughts

  • We are inherently sinful from birth, and only by God’s grace is there any hope of doing anything out of faith (being righteous)
  • The lack of accountability and openness in Church leadership is pretty evident
  • The unspoken pressure to be perfect within church-culture needs to be addressed (how about by preaching the doctrine of original sin?)
  • There has been a great misunderstanding between the Church and the pro-homosexual community. While we will never agree on the morality of the issue, misrepresenting each other only adds to the vitriol that need not exist.
  • Ted needs to recognize that he is a bi-sexual and decide if he wants to honor God in his sexuality or not.
  • Unless your sin is covered by the blood of Christ there will be no mercy from the coming wrath of God.
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Dilbert Cultural Sensitivity

So there has been a bit of discussion regarding Rick Warren in the news these days. Here’s a quote from an article that cracked me up.

“Many conservative Christians say cultural sensitivity goes way too far if it requires religious leaders to hide their beliefs.”

Uhm,  “cultural sensitivity” doesn’t sound very culture sensitive.

I can see that Dilbert board room meeting now:

How do we become more religiously and culturally sensitive?

Oh, I got it! We’ll have some religions and cultures not be allowed to express their religion and culture!

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Remember The Dream

I happened to tune into the Sean Hannity radio show on the way home from work yesterday. I’m not a regular listener but I got crazy and pressed the AM button.

I heard a self-proclaimed “black” person say that the presidency cannot be used to gauge race relations because Barack Obama is not the first “black” American President— he is the first “half-white” American President.

Then today I read an article about the increased security at the inauguration because of white supremacist threats and the chatter online.

As we approach the inauguration of a new American President, and as we celebrate the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., take the time to remember the dream that this great nation allows us to have. Remember that the dream still involved judging. Judging not based on the color of skin but on the content of individual character.

So do a little introspection on the content of your character this weekend and realign the standards that you have been judging others if they need it.

P.S. Does anyone else find the label “African-American American President” a bit awkward?

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Shift + Paradigm = Rebrand

Well it looks like a logo redesign is in order for guiroo. (Oooo, a good opportunity to use some of those new typefaces.) It seems that the nature of the web is changing and the visual of a kangaroo is not as appropriate as it was at the turn of the millennium.

The idea of the web page refresh is going away. No more … click, load, view, click, load, view, click, load, view, click, load, view. With different technologies like Flex and AJAX becoming more predominant, the web is becoming less bouncy and more fluid.

Still not sure what I’m talking about? Try and think back to the pre-google maps days. If the location you were looking for wasn’t on the map you had to click a controller and wait for the whole page to refresh. Then, do it again and again until you found what you wanted.

Now google maps makes the whole experience smooth and responsive to the controls. As more and more of the web moves in that direction guiroo needs to reflect that. I have some ideas of my own but feel free to post any ideas of visual analogies I could draw upon.

Posted in Flex, Web Design | 2 Comments

New Holiday Music for Free

I really do plan on posting more here this coming year but I wanted to let everyone know that my friend Kev introduced me to this band called Sojourn and they have some great Christmas tunes available for free now. (All you have to do is recommend it to five of your friends.)

It’s very organic sounding and not your usual “Christian” industry fluff — yet very accessible for all my pop-minded friends.

Download it here: https://www.noisetrade.com/sojourn

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Lower Taxes for 95%?

On this day in history, of 299,693 voters on FOXNEWS.com, 81% think that Obama will lower taxes for 95% of America. I just wanted to make a note so that should Obama be elected we can look back and see if it actually occurred.

Except you can’t give him the credit for the Fair Tax should by chance that actually come to pass, as BullDawgy has suggested the Democrats will push once they have control so they can take credit for it.

Oh and UGA GO DAWGS! UGA

Posted in General, Time Capsule | 3 Comments

July 4th Lotto Update 2008

Well the weather was good on the Forth of July this year. It was a little cooler than normal — possibly a breeze every now and then. Wills Park fireworks were much improved from last year. We were a little concerned because it started to thundered just before the show began, but it looked like the showers were moving north of the Alpharetta area.

The city of Cumming had their fireworks on the 3rd so we went to those too.  No rain that day either. So we had excellent weather this year to go with the food, folks and fun.

Oh that reminds me. I asked Camryn what her favorite part of the 4th of July is and she said, “First, the birthday of our country. Second the meals and being able to spend a lot of time with friends.”

Excellent.

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Software Release Purgatory

Here it is July 2008 and I am still running Tiger on my iMac. Leopard came out last Fall I believe. Every once in a while I get the urge to jump in the car, go to the mall, and buy Leopard. I was thinking about doing that after I cut the grass tonight but I just saw this on Apple.com.

“Apple previews OSX Snow Leopard to developers…will enhance the performance of OS X…is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime® X…and is scheduled to ship in about a year.”

So now I begin to think, “I’ve waited this long, I can wait another year.”

Well, what about Abode CS3? So I do a quick search on CS4 and see that betas have already been released — so much for that. And so I wait.

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The Rather Difficult Font Game

Test your font skills on The Rather Difficult Font Game

I scored 27 out of 34.

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