Please note the shared item to the left on this blog from Mike Highton. I left a comment, but such is the difficulty of signing in etc I have saved it here in case it got lost in the ether.
Are comments important? This one is. The debate over same-sex relationships seldom gets to the need for all - gay or straight - to conform themselves to the death of Christ. That means, folks, that you cannot desire anything or act or talk or walk - cause you have died. (In your baptism of course). So whatever is good or bad in you has died - the whole thing. Not just the parts you don't like.
Then - after your death - this is your first death - Then, I say, when the voice of your creator rings in your ears - Well-done, good and faithful servant, you have overcome through my blood - Then I say, - Then you will begin to learn. The kingdom does not come about by our strength or by our morality or by our will. And your 'then' will work backwards and forwards in your time, redeeming it, showing you how your God was leading you before you even knew, discovering grace where you saw only disorientation, finding you awake instead of asleep.
Now - after my short ranting sermon, this was my comment on Mike's very well reasoned essays.
Hi again - no I don't disagree. I don't actually think either you or Rowan go far enough. I agree that our sexuality is far more central than not. Also I agree that 'natural' is a weak argument against same sex relations. I think you have done very well in this whole series of essays. I have shred [sic - I meant shared] them all on one of my blogs. You achieve the highest score when you write in the person of your interlocutor:
>>I want to live in obedience to God; I truly, prayerfully and conscientiously do not recognise Romans 1 as describing what I am or what I want. I am not rejecting something I know in the depths of my being.<<
What then must also be said - is "and I have come to this knowledge of my person through the death of Jesus. It is by him in the Spirit and the unexpected glory of his resurrection that I now begin to know myself. And that knowledge matures and embraces my being - it does not deny it as those who reject my desire out of hand would deny it."
Need it be said that the same consecration of desire must be known by the heterosexual also. If it is so known then I doubt that the heterosexual will apply Romans 1 out of its rhetorical context. This is not a simple slam-dunk argument that Paul is making, but the beginning of a 55 step sequence in 10 parts that does not get to its end till chapter 12. (Some do not like the end of chapter 12 - see my recent translation of psalm 34 for a real life comment from another elder and friend.)
2 comments:
Bob, I'm using your shared items in the Behemoth experiment (See Lingamish). I hope that's alright. Eventually I'm hoping for many contributors each sharing their best reads.
David - it seems good to me that you have done this. I note that Google isn't quite expecting the feeds to work like this - I did get an error on one click of Behemoth - a circularity I think. You have implemented a clever twist of their shared and starred items.
I know it will increase my reading and perhaps that is good - it means my choices are not quite as limited as my own decisions would make them.
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