Jason Coleman

Sometimes this [tendency to go soft on doctrine] is frustrating, as in a recent confirmation class I attended where a classmate intimated that she wasn’t sure she believed in sin. The old evangelical in me wanted to shake her shoulders and suggest she leave. But mostly this means that we journey together, each at different places and constantly extending grace to one another. This is not a great growth model, but it sure looks a lot like the kingdom Jesus describes.

via My Liberal Christian Church is Not Dying | Patrol – A review of religion and the modern world.

A small tangent from something that occurred to me while writing my previous post. What do we moderns think motivates homosexual behavior, and is that still the same motivation that our ancient Christian counterparts would have named? In short, I think that the Bible explains homosexuality as a failure to control one’s sexual passions while we moderns understand it as an “orientation” preceding any sexual passions. It’s been relocated in our modern understanding, much like Heaven and Hell, and our reaction to those passages that mention it should be reverently reevaluated just like the ones that mention heaven being “up”.

While Heaven and Hell were once thought to exist in physical locations that one could point to — up and down respectively — we now think of them residing in other dimensions or outside of our physical universe or some such. We don’t know where they are but they’re not up in space or under the crust of the Earth. In contrast to that, when the apostle Paul wrote about every knee in the universe bowing to Jesus (Phil 2:10) he knew that some of those knees were “up” in heaven with God, some were on the Earth with us, and some where under the Earth in hell.

I think a similar relocation should occur with respect to homosexuality.

Since adulthood I’ve understood homosexuality as something that originates in someone’s brain; it’s a sexual “orientation” in the mind. That is the modern understanding: a person doesn’t act like a homosexual, one is a homosexual. My question is whether an ancient man like the Apostle Paul would have seen people in these modern categories of “gay” and “straight”. Was he condemning “gay men” as we understand them, or was he condemning a particular sexual activity and referring to those who practiced that activity as “homosexuals”?

Frankly, I can’t imagine that Paul was using the categories of gay and straight the way we use them. I think he saw homosexuality as an act. An action. Or maybe as an indication of a cluster of other spiritual failings like a rapacious sexual appetite, moral depravity, and cruelty to others. Those are not the fruits of the Spirit, and certainly deserve to be condemned. But they’re also not any more necessary to a homosexual orientation than they are to a heterosexual one.

So I guess that my understanding of homosexuality has been relocated, just like Heaven and Hell. I see homosexuality as something personal that happens in your mind; Paul saw it as something that involved others and happens under your tunic. In light of that relocation, the next question would be exactly what was Paul prohibiting? And is that prohibition different than “everything anyone at any time” might broadly refer to as homosexuality?

I like this take on Christian tradition because it expects us to be able to defend why certain ideas and actions have become traditions in the first place.

It should go without saying that not everyone who questions tradition is right.  But when we do question tradition, we need to be able to ask “why”:  Why does this tradition exist?  What is the point of this rule?  Where does this belief come from?

via Homosexuality and Christianity: Does God bless same-sex marriage?.

That “why” surprised me the first time I read this because the “why” being asked wasn’t “Why would you question this tradition?” but instead “Why is this a tradition in the first place?” What a wonderful turning of the tables!

I come from a very doctrinal church that teaches each generation why these doctrines exist. The idea that a doctrine stands merely because it is “tradition” wouldn’t hold much weight with a group who see themselves as direct descendants of the Reformation. Doctrines only have acceptance as long as they accurately represent what the Bible teaches. Each generation has a responsibility to question and understand those doctrines — and even perhaps to modify them if a powerful argument can be made that a certain doctrine may represent a “traditional view” of a subject but that it isn’t in fact what the Bible is teaching.

Who did the Apostle Paul mean when he wrote about the sinfulness of homosexuals? Who would have popped into his mind? Do today’s homosexual Christians stand out from that group of people or blend into it?  I think the author’s position as a gay Christian is greatly helped by asking that question.

I hate the word homophobia.

It is not a phobia.

You are not scared.

You are just an asshole.

via Punks is Kittehs, I hate the word homophobia. It is not a phobia. ….

So there’s that.

Wow. Rachel Held Evans does a great job of refocusing this whole Chick-fil-A appreciation/boycott controversy away from the realm of clashing political tribes and into the realm of personal pious behavior. Speaking to Christian supporters of Chick-fil-A:

Please know that when you post a picture of yourself defiantly holding a Chick-fil-A bag on Facebook, it may send a hurtful message to your LGBT friends who—fair or not—have come to associate Chick-fil-A with anti-gay organizations and anti-gay remarks.  There is no need to cause unnecessary offense to folks who have already been so ostracized by the Church, no need to wave a red and white banner through yet another culture war.  If you really want to love your gay friends and neighbors, shoving Chick-fil-A bags in their faces right now is just not the way to do it.

via Rachel Held Evans | Some words for Christians on both sides of the Chick-fil-A war.

I think she’s right about the timing of the whole thing. Buying something from CFA on Wednesday would sufficiently demonstrate your support for the politics or freedom of speech of the company and its president. Broadcasting your activities via Facebook would be more about high-fiving those in your tribe and stuffing it in the faces of your LGBT friends and acquaintances. This may be a situation where, for a time at least, the loving thing to do is not let your left hand know what your right hand is eating.

Depressing, poignant image from Daniel Florien after his visit to the Aurora shooting memorial at the Century 16 movie theater.

I am back in the car, my pilgrimage behind me. I close my eyes, grateful to have been spared, so far, such tragedies in my life.

As we drive past the Century 16, still surrounded by police tape and containment barriers, I can’t help but think that, in a way, we are all attending our final movie showing.

Life is a theater where we never know when the movie will end. All we can do is, with our friends and family, enjoy it the best we can, until the show is over and the screen fades to black.

via Thoughts on the Aurora Shooting by an Aurora Atheist.

Scary thought. When will my bad guy jump in and ruin this movie for me?

The weeks fly by, but some days take forever.

via Goblinbooks: I’m Glad You Think Marriage Is Important, Kirk Cameron.

Set against the Fundamentalist Christian practice of ignoring or interpreting away entire passages of the Bible that do not agree with their doctrine but then claiming to believe the “whole Bible” there’s this about accepting those passages as part of the Bible and then telling them no.

The reason I am a Liberal Christian is precisely because I think the only Christianity worthy of the name is one that knows what is in the Bible, and is honest about the fact that we do not believe and practice everything it says, that we do not want to do so, and that there are good reasons why we should not do so.

via “Folks Haven’t Been Reading Their Bibles” – Barack Obama on Religion and Public Policy.

Chick-Fil-A’s president made a statement that he and his company support “biblical” marriage. Op-ed columns and advocacy groups swing into action and take sides for and against Chick-Fil-A for the words of its president. Chick-Fil-A then makes a press release that the company is getting out of same-sex-marriage politics. Penultimately, a blogger asks if “believing that a legitimate family consists of a biological man, a biological woman, and children equate to being anti-gay?”

Finally, another blogger responds with a list of the various permutations that straight families take while raising children, including parents, single parents, grandparents, and teen-mother living with her parents and raising her child while her parents are still raising her. Then the blogger asks:

None of this is a problem, right? It’s really just the gayness of it all that makes you fall back on the word “legitimate,” isn’t it? So, yes. If you announce that you believe that the only “legitimate” family is “a biological man, a biological woman, and children,” I’m pretty confident you are anti-gay.

via Squashed, Yes, it really does.