Has it occured to anyone that all this talk about the "full inclusion" of LGBTQQ people into the life of the Church actually serves to exclude them from certain aspects of Church life? Here's how:
Every baptized Christian has the privelege and the responsibility to approach the Father, through the Son, and "with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Our salvation is in Christ, and our salvation is a salvation from sin. And each and every single one of us is deeply marred by our sin.
The pundits of ECUSA's New Religion cut LGBTQQ people off from the throne of grace. They teach that it is only with fear and trepidation and second guessing about what is and what isn't a sin that we approach the throne of the Father's grace. Or, what is worse, they tell LGBTQQ people to approach the throne of the Father's grace with confidence that they do not need mercy and forgiveness for at least area of their sinfulness.
By teaching that homosex is not, in fact sinful, that it does not need to be washed with the blood of the Lamb, the teachers of the New Religion exclude LGBTQQ Christians from the fullness of the life of the Body of Christ. Our Lord was clear: he calls all, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, to himself. And we come to him by repentance.
"I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Luke 5.32)
Lying across the pathway of repentance that leads to the loving and affirming embrace of our Lord is the insidious lie of ECUSA's New Religion: that repentance is not necessary if you are LGBTQQ. But The truth is: without repentance, there is no divine mercy, no love, no affirmation. Without repentance, the way to Christ, and to his love and affirmation is definitively blocked, and without Him, there is only judgment, only death.
[Note: LGBTQQ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, and Questioning. Note too, that this little essay is in response to the Minority Report of Bp. Chane, et alia, entitled A Statement of Conscience, and to other expressions of the same damnable lies to which many in ECUSA have fallen victim.]
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5 comments:
I agree completely. "Inclusion" is absolutely the wrong concept.
Here's the problem, though: why would your salvation from sin be different from, say, mine? Aren't we all susceptible to the same human failures and temptations? Lust, greed, pride, jealousy, gluttony, etc., etc.?
Do you actually believe that "homosexual lust" is a completely different sort of thing from "heterosexual lust"? And isn't lust itself the stated problem? Didn't Christ make this explicitly clear by telling us about "adultery of the heart"? Why, then, are you so focused on the genitals?
It is not what goes into a man (or a woman) from the outside that defiles him; it is what comes out that does so. What matters is what's in his heart. He said this many times and in many different ways.
You're looking in the wrong location. And by so doing, you're destroying any chance a person has of repentence. This is every gay person's experience, BTW; we know that love is not evil or sinful. So we don't listen to you or believe what you say about faith. You, also, are cutting people off from the throne of grace.
bls,
I'm with you up to the end. I don't think homo lust is any different from hetero lust. And what do you mean by "love" in the last paragraph? Do you mean sex? You know that sex is not evil or sinful, and so you therefore don't listen to us about faith? (Who are "we" anyway? Me and Peter Akinola?) I'm not following you.
But I think maybe your understanding of the teaching of Mark 7 is a bit tendentiously gnostic. Our Lord was not teaching sexual libertinism. And he wasn't teaching that its impossible to sin "on the outside." (If he were, then what would be wrong with incest or bygamy or peeing in the baptismal font?) He was speaking very specifically, as the text says (v. 19) about food laws. Our Lord goes on clearly to say that both "fornication" and "adultery" (1) proceed from the heart and (2) defile a man. That applies equally and in the same way to people of any and every sexual orientation. His point was that exterior sins proceed from within. And that sinful procession from interior to exterior defiles.
Or maybe you are wondering why it is that homosexuality is illicit? If so: because of the divine narrative of the institution and iconography of gender, sacramentalized in marriage. A necessary (though not a sufficient) condition for the holiness of sex is that it be between a husband and a wife. ALL other sex (hetero or homo) defiles a man (or woman), because it doesn't fit into the divine gender narrative beginning in Genesis, going through the Song of Songs, the story of Hosea and Gomer, the Wedding at Cana, Ephesians 5, etc. etc.
God has only told one story about holy sex, and there's nothing in it about intra-gender sex. You may think it cretinous, but indeed "its Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve."
Yours in XP,
WB +
No, WB - I said "love" and that's what I meant. (I also said "you," and that's what I meant, too. If I'd wanted to bring PA into it, I would have.)
I'm not sure exactly which gnostic crime I'm being accused of this time, but I think Mark 7 says exactly what it means: "But what comes out of a person, that is what defiles. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile." I don't think it could be any clearer, could it? So aren't these the things we have to beware - and repent - of? It doesn't follow that "homosex" implies any of the above, you know. And if you insist that "homosex" be repented of first, you'll never let anybody get to any of that other stuff. And so people will remain in their sins.
I really can't agree that the divine narrative stipulates that "the holiness of sex" must be "between a husband and a wife." A husband and two wives, maybe - or is it 700? I always forget.
Anyway, ere's a hypothetical (or perhaps it's true) for you:
Master, I'm in a 20-year partnership, and I've got 4 adopted kids. What should I do to have eternal life?
(The problem, I think, is that you seem to divide love from sex when you think about gay people, as if attraction and partnership were only about lust. But of course, marriage is never only about lust.
Most people want love in their lives, in the context of intimate relationship. It's normal. And when you deny people intimacy, you are creating loneliness where it doesn't have to be. And that's the very first thing God notices about humanity: It isn't good for the man to be alone.
Sex is part of any marriage; it's not the whole of it.)
Okay. So you meant "love" and not "sex." I'm trying to understand you. You said that gay people "know that love is not evil or sinful. So we don't listen to you or believe what you say about faith." Are you saying that my own view is that love (and not sex) is, in fact, evil / sinful?
And yes we do, as you say, have to beware and repent of those things from Mark 7 which defile. But I don't think its an exhaustive list, do you?
Where did I say that homosex had to be "repented of first"?
And does homosex "imply" anything from the list in Mark 7? I believe it does. I believe it "implies" either adultery or fornication, as homosex is in every case sex outside the bond and covenant of marriage. (Though of course its no worse - or better - than any other sex outside of marriage.)
With regard to polygamy, that's not the way the New Testament has received the Old, and neither is it the way the Church Catholic has received either Testament. You know better than that, bls. Are you next going to tell me about all those nasty African bishops and all their many wives?
Your hypothetical / true thing: The answer is the same for everyone: live in chastity. If you're not married, that means you don't have sex. If you're married, that means you have sex only with your wife or husband. When you stumble, go to confession. Why would the Church's teaching be different for gay people? What is so difficult to understand about the catholic position?
With regard to your parenthetical post scriptus, are you suggesting, bls, that it is impossible to love someone without having sex with that person? Is that my mistake in "dividing love from sex when I think about gay people" (and everybody else)? Is my problem that I don't understand that you can't really love someone without having sex with him?
Your absolutely right about God noticing man's loneliness. And what does God do about it? He creates woman. Or do you have some alternative version of Genesis where God creates another man to be with Adam?
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