Donkeykong

it's good to know that you consider gay people to be the equal of cheeseburgers. With friends like you....

Toto

not that there's anything wrong with cheeseburgers. . .

Toto

The LA Times Belief section had an interview with V. Gene Robinson:
This seems more to the point than comparisons between homosexuality and mixing meat and dairy, or wool and linen. The scriptures are quite clear that divorce is a violation of Biblical principles, and the church fought no-fault divorce laws strenuously. But they lost that battle in the culture war, and they're not going to get that toothpaste back into the tube.

rhutchin

People who have divorced and remarried and refuse to acknowledge that this was a sin will either be strong supporters of other forms of sexual immorality or they will not be strong objectors to other forms of sexual immorality.

Johnny Skeptic

The Bible says that Moses allowed divorce. Regarding Jesus' supposed comments about divorce, there is not any credible evidence at all that the writer was speaking for God and not for themselves.

Now where is your evidence that God is moral? God is the most immoral and dangerous being who I know of? Who do you suppose created Hurricane Katrina and sent it to New Orleans? Even Attila the Hun did not kill some of his own followers. Are you aware that God punishes people for sins that their ancestors committed, reference Exodus 20:5? Isn't your main argument that a man should love God because if he refuses to love God, God will hurt him? Do you love God? If so, why? If you have children, if they were in danger of drowning, would you try to save some of them, or all of them? If the latter, why?

rhutchin

If I said this, then I need to correct the record. It is God who provides salvation from sins and it is God who saves people. Repentance and forgiveness are products of salvation and not requirements for salvation. When God saves a person, that person then, and only then, will look into the Bible and compare what he reads to his life and say, I have sinned. The mark of the person who has been saved is that he will not call anything right that God has called sin (recognizing that people do not gain a perfect knowledge or understanding of the Bible at the point they are saved).

The easy answer is yes. If a person never reads that X is a sin and no one ever tells him that X is a sin, then he cannot be expected to give up X when God saves him. There is some behavior that we could expect even if the person had no knowledge of God's laws. The forgiveness that God gives applies to all sins. Repentance by a person applies to known sins. God can save people who are slave owners and we would not necessarily expect those people to free all the slaves at that point. However, the person’s treatment of the slaves would certainly change and we should expect that he would not force a person to continue as a slave if that person did not want to do so. How a person treated his slaves might be a function of the support and counsel he received from others, pastors, slave owners, etc. whom God had saved.

God has given people rules to live by (e.g., 10 commandments). A society that wants to follow God will adhere to those rules and would not be usurping God’s authority or position by doing so.

Paul explains this in Romans 13
1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers [the government]. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power [the government], resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
6 For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.

What the Bible did was to make a distinction between clean and unclean. That women was unclean whether she stayed in camp (because she had a tampon) or went out of camp during her period. Similarly the sin of a man participating in sexual immorality would not be changed by a condom. Regardless, a person who was unclean could not approach God (i.e., could not participate in sacrifices). Christ removed the distinction between clean and unclean. In the same way, Christ removes the distinction among sinners when He saves them.

Actually, Peter knew that it meant that God was saving gentiles as well as Jews. He did not seem to get the part about eating with gentiles which led to the confrontation with Paul.

Well, if the law applies to one person, it applies to all. Judge not that ye be not judged. The bigger problem seesm to be that people refuse to accept the things they do as sin so they allow others to sin in the same manner.

The Bible clearly condemns sex that occurs outside of marriage. All sexual activity outside marriage is sin (morally wrong) and makes a person ineligible to approach God (the person is impure). If we say that sex between two men (or two women) outside marriage is OK, then we could not condemn sex between a man and a woman outside marriage (and not even make age distinctions in sexual activities). Love of one person for another, in the Biblical sense, is obedience to God’s commands and is expressed in treating others as God has commanded.

Johnny Skeptic

Since you claim that God does not wish to reveal himself to everyone, he is immoral. Therefore, decent people do not have any choice except to reject him. No man can fairly be held accountable for refusing to accept a message that he has never heard.

Who do you suppose created Hurricane Katrina and sent it to New Orleans? Even Attila the Hun did not kill some of his own followers. Are you aware that God punishes people for sins that their ancestors committed, reference Exodus 20:5? Isn't your main argument that a man should love God because if he refuses to love God, God will hurt him? Do you love God? If so, why? If you have children, if they were in danger of drowning, would you try to save some of them, or all of them? If the latter, why?

In case you have chosen to avoid replying to my posts, I accept your admission of defeat.

seebs

Okay, I think we may agree more than I thought.

Or possibly during their lifetimes, which I think is the key point.

This does not seem to have been the case historically.

Incorrect.

People and society are not the same thing.

A person that wants to follow God will avoid sinning. However, there is no justification for the leap from "I will avoid sinning" to "I will forcibly compel others to avoid sinning".

There's no conception of tampons. Women were required to leave because they were unclean during their periods. Tampons do not change the moral state.

Exactly. Since the objection to gay sex was a ritual purity one, it is now gone. It is no longer unclean.

In any event, it went well beyond "eating shrimp".

I think it goes as far as "gay guys having sex".

You have given me no reason to believe that it doesn'.t

I think that's a much smaller problem than the problem of obsessing over other peoples' alleged sins as a defense mechanism about dealing with our own.

No, it doesn't. I've asked people to support this, and never gotten a single actual citation. There's condemnation of adultery, but that's it. There's not even a rule against rape per se.

Except that the distinction between clean and unclean was erased.

We keep reinventing it, because it shocks us that God would associate with impure people, but that's the price of salvation.

I think we could easily draw conclusions about consent based on general principles, even though the Bible never addresses the question.

Only in that God has commanded us to treat other people with love. "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law."

This doesn't mean that, unless you follow every mitzvah, you are not really loving. It means that we are under a new law, which replaces all the purity and impurity stuff with something else.

In any event, there's no obvious reason to rule out gay marriages, which would allow for intramarital gay sex. There are no specific examples, but the Bible makes it quite clear that many marriages which are not quite in line with the hypothetical ideal are nonetheless marriages. They may not be very good marriages, but they are still marriages. And what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

In short, unless you are capable of yourself joining two souls, you have no place telling people their marriages don't count.

rhutchin

Yes. No one is perfect.

Not sure. I haven’t read any historical accounts on this.

I don’t see a distinction. A society is made up of individuals. Those laws that apply to individuals would not change as those individuals form societies.

Your objection seems to be that you don't think God’s laws apply to all individuals, so those who think God’s laws apply to them should restrict those laws to themselves and not impose them on others. In practice, we find that each group that has a view about the laws that should prevail seek to impose those views on everyone in society.

OK. But it seems that there was a coincidental, practical purpose for the woman being separated from the community. Not having lived under conditions such as existed in the wilderness, I’m not sure that we can know the true import of the law for either health or religious purposes.

Christ removed the distinction by including all under sin and then dying because of that sin. The objection to gay sex, as well as to sexual immorality among heterosexuals, is based on moral reasons; both are sin.

There seems to be a big difference between eating shrimp and having sex. The real issue is whether sex that occurs outside marriage is sin. The Bible clearly says that it is.

Yep. That’s a problem also. The need, then, it to investigate the Bible to determine what is sin and what is not.

We have--
Eph 5:3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints;..

The term, “fornication,” refers to all sexual immorality. I am not aware of any sexual activity that occurs outside marriage in the Bible that is presented in a favorable light. There are accounts of consensual sex but I don’t remember anything positive about any of them.

That is wrong. God does not associate with impure people. Either He cleanses them (saves them) or He leaves them to their own devices. No person who is impure (with sin) will be allowed into heaven.

Given that which the Bible does say about various sexual activities, It becomes clear that sexual activity outside marriage is sin.

I don't see that the Bible makes it quite clear that many marriages which are not quite in line with the hypothetical ideal are nonetheless marriages.

Mark 10
11 So He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.
12 “And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

The Bible does make a distinction here. There is no instance where the Bible addresses homosexual activity positively- it certainly does not condone gay marriage.

Gamera

Actually it is the gospel itself that saves, in confronting us with a choice to accept God's love. God doesn't wave a magic wand and save people. He gives them a choice, as articulated in the gospel.

Romans 1:16 - For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Ephesians 1:13 - In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,

Romans 10:14 - But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? . . .So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ. 18

Hebrews 4:12 - For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.