May 31, 2012
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I hate this sort of thing…
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/31/protests-fail-to-silence-anti-gay-sermons-from-christian-preachers/?hpt=hp_c2
Read the article carefully.
If you didn’t catch it, I’ll point it out.
‘When a Christian pastor in North Carolina told his congregation on Mother’s Day that the way “to get rid of all the lesbians and queers” was to put them behind an electric fence and wait for them to die out because they couldn’t reproduce, hundreds of people demonstrated against him.
But the protests are not silencing other preachers who believe homosexuality is a sin condemned by the Bible.
On Sunday, Kansas pastor Curtis Knapp preached that the government should kill homosexuals.
“They won’t, but they should,” he said, according to a recording of his sermon posted online.’
Transitions are connecting words or phrases which indicate the relationship between ideas. “But… other…” indicates that the following object is in the same category as the subject of the previous sentence. That is, that those preaching that the government should kill, isolate, or otherwise oppress LGBTs are in the same category as “preachers who believe homosexuality is a sin condemned by the Bible.”
I’d like to remind the jury that these are not necessarily the same thing, thank you kindly.
Comments (7)
Not to beat a dead horse, but what would you say of the Bible’s authorization of corporal punishment of homosexuals? It seems that the connection between believing that homosexuality is sin and believing that homosexuals may be legitimately executed by the State for their sin is presumably plausible until refuted.
@nyclegodesi24 - Hey duder. I know you’re asking Chris, but I figured I’d chime in.
Israel’s law code was binding on Israel alone and not meant to be normative for all governments universally. It’s why I don’t dwell on Leviticus when discussing the Christian perspective. The point is made in the New Testament.
@nyclegodesi24 - Heh, yeah, pretty much what @stuartandabby said. I believe that capital punishment for homosexual acts was mandated for ancient Israel, but for non-ancient-Israelis (all of us), I don’t think it applies. I know some Christians use those verses as prescriptive statements, and I think they’re wrong. America isn’t a theocracy, God doesn’t seem to want us to make theocracies anymore, so much as make disciples.
For a more thorough explanation (with reasons), check out this and this.
@stuartandabby - @OutOfTheAshes - Yeah, I see what you two are saying, and I def. agree that NT Christians aren’t bound by OT laws for a plethora of reasons, and I reject out of hand the arguments that true Christians would execute homosexuals. The uneasiness that I feel, though, is that this was permitted to begin with. The fact that it was permitted suggests it was legitimate. (But I’m already beginning to see that this is not really true; slavery was permitted but never was legitimate. But isn’t there a difference between what God condones (slavery) and what God commands (execution)?)
@nyclegodesi24 - I think you’re right, there is a difference. And it’s something that Christians who take the Torah to be divinely inspired (like me) need to wrestle with. Sexual sins were serious enough that some of them warranted execution in Israel’s theocracy. Even relatively innocent and consensual things are grouped in there: sleeping with a menstruating woman carried a penalty of lifelong banishment. I have no idea why that would be so, to be honest–the very idea of my government being that much in my bedroom raises the hackles on this post-Jesus post-Protestant American-born libertarian. But I have to wrap my mind around the idea that previously in history God wanted lives taken over this issue.
I am rather relieved to not be an Israelite, to be honest. To have to be as zealous as Phineas, who stabbed an Israelite with a spear for bringing his foreign pagan wife to the tabernacle. But in this, I know I am largely a product of my upbringing and host culture, too. In other cultures and in other eras, no doubt other Christians have had no trouble with the idea of killing sinners but struggled with the idea of universal forgiveness…
@nyclegodesi24 - Some Christians don’t actually think that the capital punishment was ever meant to be carried out. I’m not fully persuaded, but I’m open to the possibility. http://www.mandm.org.nz/2011/05/contra-mundum-stoning-adulterers.html
Paul Copan has a chapter about OT and its supposed endorsement of slavery in a new apologetics book called _Come Let Us Reason_ that I’m thinking about getting. At any rate, stuff has been written on it before. It’s not as simple as it’s always presented.
Btw, this isn’t written as a full response to your thoughts. It’s just some food for thought as you work through this stuff.
@OutOfTheAshes - In answer to your query, and probably the briefest response I will have ever given in my life…. it all comes down to God’s Holiness. The entire Law was enacted — all of the Old Testament written — as a shining example of the Holiness of God. Thus why God issued the death penalty — because sin offends a Holy God… and those that do so flagrantly (Speaking of Old Testament times), without remorse or repentance, thumb their noses at God. They show by their behavior that they want no part of His way, His Truth — or His Life.
Make sense?