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So God changes God's mind, does he?
TownHall.com ^ | 8/08/03 | Bill Murchison

Posted on 08/08/2003 1:35:16 AM PDT by kattracks

As Episcopalians this week broached the unprecedented topic of a gay priest's fitness to be a bishop, a vital clue emerged as to what was going on.

A priest from Portland, Ore., the Rev. Sherman Hesselgrave, observed that "God changes God's mind."

Ah. Hmmm. Shall we ponder?

First, the linguistics -- the deliberate avoidance of the possessive "His," so as not to identify God with male patriarchal ideas. Then, the central suggestion -- God as just another head-scratching, chin-cupping water-cooler buddy, with changing viewpoints for changing times.

"God changes God's mind." Is there a nicer precis of the modern mood, in which practitioners of a sexual style once foreclosed to Christians find themselves celebrated as authoritative Christian teachers?

Congratulations, Bishop Gene Robinson. Come talk to us about all the other junk we need to discard to get right with this changeable God.

You could certainly call Hesselgravian theology a piece of arrogance. (Who exactly finds out about God's mind changes and then reports?) But I'd go further. It amounts, as well, to cultural Darwinism: evolution, in other words, as the key to everything. We seem to be constantly "evolving" -- and not just in terms of prehensile tails and opposable thumbs, rather in wisdom, in understanding!

Whereas we once thought and taught particular things, enlightened souls step forward to remind us that was then, this is now. God changes God's mind. We move on. Get with the program!

Human life, evolved or otherwise, has never been tidy. But modern thought and practice, were they to get any grungier, would lie beyond the corrective powers of Procter & Gamble. To speak a thing these days (e.g., "God changes God's mind") is to render it True. You render it enforceable by mobilizing as many "progressive reformers" as possible into voting blocs and pressure groups.

So it happened in the Episcopal Church's upper reaches -- the seminaries, the House of Bishops, the bureaucracy, the church media. Louder and more persistent grew the clamor, inside and outside this venerable Christian body, to deal with homosexuality as if it were a civil rights issue, rather than a moral question rooted in scriptural and theological understanding.

A favorite gambit of the "progressive reformers" involves comparisons of homosexuality to slavery. Start with the fact, according to the question-begging contention, that the Bible endorses slavery (a highly non-factual "fact," as it happens). That means -- on goes the peerless logic -- that other things in the Bible may be false for enlightened modern folk. One of those things, naturally, would be the tradition of heterosexual monogamy as the Christian norm.

Gene Robinson's church-splitting promotion to bishop undermines Episcopal claims to teach the Christian tradition with care and faithfulness. It is necessary nonetheless to be realistic: This is how we do business today. A truth is precisely as true as a show of hands affirms it to be.

The reverberations from cultural evolution shake institutions other than religious ones. One such is the law. The simplistic view of the U.S. Constitution as a "living" document (not unlike the Bible, it would seem!) constantly invites Supreme Court progressives to attempt new spins on old jurisprudence. The latest response: this summer's decision invalidating the Texas sodomy law.

"(G)ay life," reported the New York Times Magazine just the other day, "seems to be heading steadily in the direction of greater visibility and acceptance." There is no doubting it. Not doubting it is, of course, different from viewing that particular evolution as entailing the substitution of a fresh truth for one worn-out and worthless.

What Charles Darwin and the biological evolutionists somehow failed to implant in the mind of the cultural evolutionists is that life can evolve downward no less than upward. The dear, dignified, stately old Episcopal Church seems to have gambled and come up snake eyes on its bet that God is other than who He always said He was.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Bill Murchison | Read Murchison's biography



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: billmurchison; episcopal; fallout; homosexual; homosexualbishop
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To: bets
obtuse is good - now let's get series

Yes - that would be HUGH!

41 posted on 08/08/2003 6:46:25 AM PDT by MortMan (Tag - Does this mean "I'm it"?)
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To: WKB
Thanks for the ping.

"About as much time as the Roman Empire had at this point"

You are absolutely right.

These people are treating the Bible the way liberals treat the Constitution...like a living and evolving document.

They don't take either one of them seriously.

42 posted on 08/08/2003 8:04:35 AM PDT by dixiechick2000 ("The Prez is as focused as a doberman on a hambone!"---Dennis Miller)
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To: glory
This would send a very strong message and isolate the ECUSA, perhaps pushing them into dropping the title Christian altogether. Apostate churches like this need to be exposed and other denominations who are true to the Bible need to point this false doctrine out as well and expose this organization for its corruption, if for no other reason than to save the souls who might walk in there someday and think this is real Christianity.

Good point. It's called shunning, or ostracism, and it's a good form of punishment, or stating one's position righteously. I was considering how people who stay in the Episcopal "Church" will be tainted by the blasphemy and evil therein, and now I realize that those churches who stay silent on this issure will also be somehow complicit, in a subtle but real way.

It reminds me of years ago in NYC I believe, a woman was being killed on the street and no one intervened or even called the cops. Everyone was shocked, (of course now no one would be shocked) because everyone who heard her screams and knew what was going on and did nothing partook of the guilt and responsibility for the crime.

Very good point.

43 posted on 08/08/2003 8:48:07 AM PDT by First Amendment
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To: FlyVet
re post no. 20...

Couldn't have said it better.

44 posted on 08/08/2003 5:09:54 PM PDT by Cindy
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To: this_ol_patriot
This is what happens when people no longer believe, they are just in the church business to make a living.

Succint and accurate --bump --

45 posted on 08/08/2003 5:13:59 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: kattracks
People thinking they know how God thinks and justify their actions cause 'God approves' it is exactly what islam does, and exactly why they have jihad's and endless violence.. Afterall, they figure, if they do it it's their allah's will.

A complete and utter trainwreck of a philosophy.
46 posted on 08/08/2003 5:16:11 PM PDT by Monty22
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To: SkyPilot
Yeah, the "Clock" thing. ALong with the buzz words "Diversity", "Inclusion" and "Big Tent". It's the new code for perversion and apostasy.

God help us.
47 posted on 08/08/2003 5:19:19 PM PDT by bonfire
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To: kattracks
"For I, the LORD, do not change." (Mal. 3:6a)

48 posted on 08/08/2003 5:42:43 PM PDT by sweetliberty ("Having the right to do a thing is not at all the same thing as being right in doing it.")
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To: PatrickHenry
here we go again.
49 posted on 08/08/2003 6:01:09 PM PDT by I got the rope
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To: Monty22
Do you remember what God did to Soddom and Ghomorah? He sent fire and brimstone to that homosexual community and destroyed it completely and to Lot's wife, turned her into a pillar of salt because in her turning, her heart was there.

Mr. Robinson was also heard to say he thinks God is doing a new thing!! Jesus did it all on the cross. He said "It is Finished." There is nothing new to do except take us to Heaven and believe me I look to that event every day.

There is going to be a division because the church cannot stand on sand foundation. It must have the Rock!!
50 posted on 08/08/2003 6:14:13 PM PDT by DearAbby
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To: I got the rope
I'm not getting into this one. Too many other controversies going on where we can still make a difference, and this one is just too disappointing, and probably too far gone.
51 posted on 08/08/2003 7:17:59 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Everything good that I have done, I have done at the command of my voices.)
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To: rmmcdaniell
Good post. Idle Darwinizing does no good. Marxist apologists are constantly trying to tie Darwin to some stupid theory they have when something goes wrong. Sometimes I wish they would just read his books or study the man's life...he was a minister.
52 posted on 08/08/2003 7:42:39 PM PDT by I got the rope
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Comment #53 Removed by Moderator

To: PhilliesPhan
Just for hypothesis, if G-d changed his mind about all that (not to mention the dietary laws) when he clearly specified that the laws were "eternal", then why couldnt he change his mind about homosexual conduct (which, although called "abhorrent" was never declared an "eternal" command)??

Wow...welcome to FreeRepublic...maybe you can join the small army of pseudoconservative Homo apologists here.

54 posted on 08/08/2003 9:24:19 PM PDT by I got the rope
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To: Cindy
God's Word is crystal clear; one of the attributes of God is immutability. The true and living God, the God of Biblical Judaism and Christianity is IMMUTABLE, He does NOT change.

The leaders of the Episcopal Church, who are in support of homosexuality and homosexual leadership within the Episcopal Church, are not worshipping the God of Scripture but a god of their own imagination. They are apostates and hirelings who are leading those under their care to destruction.

“For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed." Malachi 3:6

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17

55 posted on 08/08/2003 9:43:41 PM PDT by Jmouse007
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To: PhilliesPhan
re post no. 53...

Please read Post. no. 3. Click on the link to read that post.
You might find it interesting.
56 posted on 08/08/2003 11:25:45 PM PDT by Cindy
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To: Jmouse007
re post no.55.

You're correct.
Amen!
57 posted on 08/08/2003 11:26:50 PM PDT by Cindy
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To: Cindy
God didn't change his mind nor did he forget
how to take notes...........
58 posted on 08/08/2003 11:33:13 PM PDT by cars for sale
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To: pram
BTTT. Ann Coulter is awesome...she nailed it with that observation!
59 posted on 08/08/2003 11:39:06 PM PDT by I got the rope
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To: PatrickHenry
I'm not getting into this one. Too many other controversies going on where we can still make a difference, and this one is just too disappointing, and probably too far gone.

Reminds me of the many Proverbs that tell us not to get into discussions w/fools. After one or two warnings (and no repentance), we should back away from the situation and let fools be fools. Then there's the one that warns us that casting pearls before swine is dangerous, since they'll trample on the pearls then turn and rend us.

This controversy recently happened in my last church, and I'm now angry at all my friends (and one relative) that stayed in the church. They needed to leave as soon as it was clear that the liberal elite leaders had taken over and were pushing their homosexual agenda. Instead, they want to stay and try to "work it out." So far, things appear normal and peaceful, but I say that over time then ultimately they'll be rended. In the meantime, they're donating to the agenda that they're very much against. Stupid!

60 posted on 08/09/2003 2:17:19 AM PDT by bets
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