Below is a comment that was left on my blog in response to a post about the perversion of homosexuality. The commenter’s statements will be in italics while my reply will be in regular typeface. I will post the entire comment over the course of several days. We Christians have a rational, objective basis for our faith. We have truth revealed in the word of God.
Just a quick note, this comment was left in response to other comments on a post from a few days ago. You can read that post here.
I have yet to meet a "Christian" who can square this bloodthirtsty tribal deity with the "god of love" that they think Jesus represents.
Jesus preached repentance. Further, He preached that those who did not repent would suffer judgment. He also preached that God had sent Him into the world to bring about salvation for those who would repent of their sins and place their faith in Christ. During His time on Earth 2,000 years ago, He did not come to judge. He will come back to judge and execute His enemies. In fact, He proclaimed that those who went to Hell would suffer never ending torment. Finally, those who did not repent and place their faith in the Lord Jesus will be thrown in a lake of fire where they will suffer forever. I don’t know, but I’m kinda getting this funky picture that Jesus did proclaim the judgment of God. Therefore, because God’s justice and His mercy are proclaimed in both the Old and New Testament, there is no discontinuity for anyone to have to “square” as you put it.
Nor have I yet to meet [sic] a "Christian" who can adequately explain how a command to murder the gays is actually good for anyone in society -- good for the gay people (even assuming it is a "sin," there's no chance for "redemption"), or good for the "people of god" who are then forced to cold-bloodedly murder their brothers, sons, friends, and neighbors.
Let’s take each one of those points in turn:
good for the gay people—They violated God’s moral law and their own conscience. God has nowhere obligated Himself to give anyone a second chance or a reprieve. See, that’s what makes grace so amazing. When I repent of my sins (for which I should spend eternity in Hell) and place my faith in Christ Jesus, He forgives me NOT because I am good enough and deserve it (I don’t) or because what I did wasn’t that big of a deal (whatever the sin was, it was enough to earn me a one way ticket to hell) but because God is a merciful God who shows grace to undeserving sinners like me.
good for the “people of god"—One point of the law was to keep the people of God “pure” (separated from their pagan neighbors and their religious practices). It also kept them “pure” in the sense that if sin was in their midst they would remove that sin so it would not spread. Therefore, God’s choice to have the sinner killed for a particularly perverted sin would have benefits for the Hebrews. If Billy Bob does something that is perverted and nasty and he’s killed for it, I’m going to think long and hard before I do the same thing.
In the New Testament, we see the same thing played out with the difference being spiritual rather than physical. For example, God will give unrepentant homosexuals over to “depraved minds”. Christians are called to expel people from the church who claim to be Christians but are unrepentant in their sins.
Clearly, God’s command was good then and it’s good now.
I'll continue dissecting the comment next week.
6 comments:
Great, Joe. A murder apologetic on your blog. This is a beautiful religion you practice.
I am glad I am not your neighbor.
Andrew
John 18:37
joe
Wow!
Hey Heidi
How is the little one? Well I hope.
RE: "he will execute his enemies ... never-ending torment ... lake of fire ... suffer forever ..."
I see. So your way of squaring the the Testaments is just to focus on Jesus being as bloodthirsty as the sociopathic, hair-trigger Yahweh. Duly noted.
RE: "God has nowhere obligated Himelf to give anyone a second chance ... "
Then why didn't he command the stoning of EVERY sinner? Why just certain ones? I would refer you back to my original post about the Hebrews tribal concerns about bloodline, reproduction, and replenishment of the tribe, and racial purity. The OT was written by men with a social agenda specific to their time and place and not binding on humanity today. Interesting, perhaps, as a bit of history. Compelling, perhaps, if we can update some of the narratives, such as Jews do with the Egypt/Mitzrayim slavery narrative for the recently completed Passover haggadahs, but otherwise, not relevant.
RE: If Billy Bob does something that is perverted and nasty and he’s killed for it, I’m going to think long and hard before I do the same thing.
Total red herring here. The above comment does nothing to address the rightness or wrongness of being gay, and does nothing to address my original question about how being commanded to murder your son, brother, friend, or neighbor could represent something good for the "people of god."
If "Billy Bob" gets killed for dishonoring his mother [Leviticus 20:9], then, sure others will think "long and hard" about that, or whatever, but that doesn't mean that it's logical to make such a thing into a capital crime. [And again... a question you refuse to answer is why you're not waging a blog campaign against these other types of sinners. Why aren't you organizing against people who say bad things about their mamas? Deny them their rights. Throw them out of churches. Pass constitutional amendments against them, etc.]
What's more, it CANNOT be psychologically positive for a community to be commanded to murder its own members. That is insane. I mean, talk about spreading impurity. Can you imagine a society desensitized to the bloody deaths of its own citizens at the hands of the angry majority? That is not a community in which I would want to live.
And you have no problem holding this type of community up as God's model?! For shame.
Finally, it makes no sense to me (never has, never will) that a supposedly unchanging god could think that such a system is the "best" for humanity for xxx thousand years, and then suddenly rescind it later. That's the fundamental logical flaw with Christianity.
One more thing: Please post my comments. You do me, your readers, and yourself a disservice when you continually censor me. It's rude, annoying, unkind, and arrogant.
Andrew
Acts 26:29
joe
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