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Oct. 5th, 2008 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sam_gamgeeI love my church. I really do. I love the people. I love its traditions. I love that it's a place where I feel like I can worship God and grow in my relationship with him.
But at the same time, I feel very frustrated and saddened by it.
I feel that it is being hypocritical by preaching God's love and yet saying that homosexuality is wrong. I'll agree that certain aspects are wrong, just as I'll agree that certain aspects of heterosexuality are wrong (rape, abuse, promiscuity, etc.), and I'll even agree that certain contextual, circumstantial homosexuality is wrong. (I mean in the sense of homosexual acts for idol worship. This comes from some discussions that are going around about what Biblical passages actually meant to their original readers.) But I don't see how a loving, monogomous, affirming, positive relationship that happens to be between two people of the same gender is a bad thing.
And it frustrates me that my church is challenging itself this year to come up with God-sized things to plan and put into action and I *so* want to tell them that I want one of our goals to be to reach out to the GLBTQ community and show them that God loves them just the way they are. (Especially after last week's challenge of "You know, a lot of the ideas we've been getting - while very worthy, seem kind of small".) But I have a feeling that it would get rejected, and I'd be shown the info we have for One By One (an ex-gay ministry) and I'd have a few sessions with our pastor.
And the fact that we just finished up a sermon series on grace (with a fair amount of references to the recent movie and William Wilburforce - who was the force behind the abolition of slavery in England), just makes me feel this more keenly. I just - gah. I want to know why my brothers and sisters in Christ feel this way and think this way and how they can allow this conflict and disparity to exist in their faith and in the church. (If we're commanded to love everyone regardless, how do they reconcile excluding gays? Especially given that the Bible has been used to back up practically every human rights argument that's come up.)
And this is more about the video than anything else. The source material is 1 Corinthians 13 - which has been dubbed "The Love Chapter".
But at the same time, I feel very frustrated and saddened by it.
I feel that it is being hypocritical by preaching God's love and yet saying that homosexuality is wrong. I'll agree that certain aspects are wrong, just as I'll agree that certain aspects of heterosexuality are wrong (rape, abuse, promiscuity, etc.), and I'll even agree that certain contextual, circumstantial homosexuality is wrong. (I mean in the sense of homosexual acts for idol worship. This comes from some discussions that are going around about what Biblical passages actually meant to their original readers.) But I don't see how a loving, monogomous, affirming, positive relationship that happens to be between two people of the same gender is a bad thing.
And it frustrates me that my church is challenging itself this year to come up with God-sized things to plan and put into action and I *so* want to tell them that I want one of our goals to be to reach out to the GLBTQ community and show them that God loves them just the way they are. (Especially after last week's challenge of "You know, a lot of the ideas we've been getting - while very worthy, seem kind of small".) But I have a feeling that it would get rejected, and I'd be shown the info we have for One By One (an ex-gay ministry) and I'd have a few sessions with our pastor.
And the fact that we just finished up a sermon series on grace (with a fair amount of references to the recent movie and William Wilburforce - who was the force behind the abolition of slavery in England), just makes me feel this more keenly. I just - gah. I want to know why my brothers and sisters in Christ feel this way and think this way and how they can allow this conflict and disparity to exist in their faith and in the church. (If we're commanded to love everyone regardless, how do they reconcile excluding gays? Especially given that the Bible has been used to back up practically every human rights argument that's come up.)
And this is more about the video than anything else. The source material is 1 Corinthians 13 - which has been dubbed "The Love Chapter".
