You say that's a deflection.
I say that it's a major point, so major it takes up about 98% of the visual field, but it comes too close to home for too many people. (What elephant?)
Posted on 07/09/2015 4:22:36 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
For evangelicals who lament last Friday’s Supreme Court decision, it’s been a hard few days. We aren’t asking for emotional pity, nor do I suspect many people are eager to give us any. Our pain is not sacred. Making legal and theological decisions based on what makes people feel better is part of what got us into this mess in the first place. Nevertheless, it still hurts.
There are many reasons for our lamentation, from fear that religious liberties will be taken away to worries about social ostracism and cultural marginalization. But of all the things that grieve us, perhaps what’s been most difficult is seeing some of our friends, some of our family members, and some of the folks we’ve sat next to in church giving their hearty “Amen” to a practice we still think is a sin and a decision we think is bad for our country. It’s one thing for the whole nation to throw a party we can’t in good conscience attend. It’s quite another to look around for friendly faces to remind us we’re not alone and then find that they are out there jamming on the dance floor. We thought the rainbow was God’s sign (Gen. 9:8-17).
If you consider yourself a Bible-believing Christian, a follower of Jesus whose chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, there are important questions I hope you will consider before picking up your flag and cheering on the sexual revolution. These questions aren’t meant to be snarky or merely rhetorical. They are sincere, if pointed, questions that I hope will cause my brothers and sisters with the new rainbow themed avatars to slow down and think about the flag you’re flying.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegospelcoalition.org ...
I’m stealin’ that ouchie graphic!
The current issue (Aug/Sept) of First Things has an article that I think is relevant: "Technocracy Now" by James Kalb. Mr. Kalb says that the "project" of the political and cultural elite that has brought us "gay marriage" can be described as "maximizing the satisfaction of preferences." This view of the "good" for which we strive permeates nearly all of modern life, including "conservatism."
If "heterosexual marriage" is simply an institutional vehicle for "maximizing preference satisfaction" for the spouses, then how does it differ, in essence, from "gay marriage"? It differs only in the accident of the presently-preferred sexual activities of the participants.
In my opinion, without a much grander picture of holy matrimony, conforming to both the natural and spiritual realities of the human person, no ground in the public space can be gained. This doesn't mean that individual couples won't live out holy matrimony, although that's harder when "preference satisfaction" is their criterion whether or not they're aware of it. However, the general view of marriage has nothing new to offer people who see the goal of human existence as maximizing preference satisfaction with a minimum of constraint.
(Pardon all the "quotes": I'm working with someone else's idea which I have not fully absorbed, although I feel as if I've been on the verge of coming up with something like this concept.)
....”sodomitic acts are a turning away from natural sex, and these acts are sterile”...
No...I think that The scriptures are clear these are people who have turned away from God....as follows:
“For although ‘they knew God’, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but ‘their thinking’ became futile and their foolish ‘hearts were darkened’..... .....
...’Therefore’.... God gave them over ‘in the sinful DESIRES of their hearts ‘to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another’.... They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
BECAUSE OF THIS... God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Furthermore,... just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over ‘to a depraved mind’, so that they do what ought not to be done.
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy..
... Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.... Romans 1:21-31
see post #23
Yes, that’s a quote from the Bible. However, it’s not clear to me how this is responsive to the points raised in Mrs. Don-o’s post or mine. Could you connect the dots?
I said.....”That's like saying pedophiles/homosexuals in the catholic church are that way because of celibacy.”
Though you can say...” that's not like saying that at all. Not even by analogy. Not even close. ..That sentence is not an argument, it is a fact.” ... The real fact is Men have turned away from God all else follows thereafter...see post 23.
Though you certainly, (being a catholic yourself), would view all through the lens of catholicism’s teachings...which is what your statement evidences.....scripture is very clear homosexual and deviant sex acts are a direct result of men turning from God and following their own dark desires even though they have known about God....”God gave them over to shameful lusts.”....He let them have their wicked way...and the same is for the Priests who committed the criminal acts of pedophilia and that of homosexuality within the catholic church.....
Therefore your statement does indeed say exxactly as I mentioned...."That's like saying pedophiles/homosexuals in the catholic church are that way because of celibacy."
The primary purpose of sex between a husband and wife is summed up by Christ(interesting he did not mention children in this context) Mark10:But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. 7”FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, 8AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.…”
In this context he was speaking of divorce but he in turn was also quoting Genesis 2:23-24:…23The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” 24For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
In this context the Bible was speaking of the creation of a woman out of man via the rib of Adam and that both man a woman find a completeness thru one another. Children were not spoken of in this context.
God did command that we be fruitful and multiply but the primary purpose of sex is to strengthen and reinforce the soul and spiritual ties between husband and wife.(to become one flesh...which is why God really hates divorce for it injures the souls of 2 people and children if present) That a couple however, should hope to continually remain childless may indicate a darker spiritual issue as you have stated but not for those couples who desire to have children yet God has chosen NOT to bless them as parents of such!
This same thing --- call it "love-making life" or "life-making love" --- really conveys respect for God's design.
This is not negated if the couple are naturally infertile. Natural sexual relations between a husband and wife always have the significance of "this is the life-giving act" even if the act naturally does not or can not produce a baby.
That's why husband and wife past the age of childbearing can certainly still enjoy sexual union. But they shouldn't do perversions which are not the life-giving act (e.g. ejaculation into the anus or other acts of sodomy which I very much don't want to describe.)
They should also not do any perversion which, while it is procreative, is clearly not a love-union, such as intentionally fantasizing you're with somebody else, e.g. having relations with your wife while viewing porn; or, for that matter, marital relations deteriorating into rape.
It is part of the privilege of being human that we are cooperators with God in this way: love and life blossom together, they are not intentionally split-off from each other.
Anyone --- even a seemingly unbelieving scientist --- who looks more and more into how sexual love "works" becomes more and more impressed with God's design, which is exquisite.
However, none of this has anything to do with celibacy.
Great tagline.
"No."
No?
Really?
Are you saying sodomitic acts are not turned away from natural sex? ...or that they are not sterile?
The layers of irony are just so... (sigh. Shakes head.)
Yes, just so.
Re your tagline in this post, also cancers of the mouth, esophagus, and rectum.
I say this because it's obvious sodomitic acts can't be anything other than unnatural...the parts don't fit.
But that's of course not central to what we were discussing..so again do we take up this deflection or stay the course?.......I prefer to stay the course.
....”the primary purpose of sex is to strengthen and reinforce the soul and spiritual ties between husband and wife.(to become one flesh...which is why God really hates divorce for it injures the souls of 2 people and children if present)”....
Exactly...thank you.
There’s a couple I know who do not have children...by choice. There ares serious mental health issues in his family and the risk would be great children would also have these. They opted out of having children...nevertheless they are celebrating their 50th wedding Anniversary this year and a wonderful example of their love relationship and the ties which have kept them all these years...and they’re still in love.
You say that's a deflection.
I say that it's a major point, so major it takes up about 98% of the visual field, but it comes too close to home for too many people. (What elephant?)
“questions that I hope will cause my brothers and sisters with the new rainbow themed avatars to slow down and think about the flag you’re flying.”
LOL...I don’t see a lot of thinking going on recently. It’s all emotional tripe. A bunch of right brain nonsense..
Emotional tripe that’s on a one-way ticket to hell.
We disagree on ‘the cause’......you seem to be saying that the reason we have gay marriage today is because of ‘societies’ rejection of natural sex and fertility.
I’m saying that ‘the cause’ is man’s deliberate refusal of ‘acknowledging God’ and self-denial... a turning away from HIM who they are aware of and denying the truth.......and in doing so ‘the consequences’ are twisted sexual behaviors which are the “result” not the cause.
“For “THIS REASON” God gave them up to vile passions.....”... For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. ...Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, ‘burned in their lust for one another’, men with men committing what is shameful, and...RECEIVING in themselves THE PENALTY of their error which was due. ...Rom. 1
The fact is God spoke against homosexuality LONG BEFORE our society faced this marital issue...........Lev. 18:22-25.... “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. ‘Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; (Important)...”for by all these the nations are defiled”..... which I am casting out before you. ‘For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants.”..
..So this is nothing new, it is ancient, and God spoke a warning against this behavior long ago. Further we know that that homosexuality is a learned BEHAVIOR.... (Homosexuality is the ultimate end of expressing the freedom one has in their ‘sinful nature’)... This is proven because many have stopped practicing it.
One editorialist writes:... “How can (homosexual) people be happy when they’re persistently ‘deceiving themselves’, believing that it is just as natural for sperm to swim into feces as it is to swim into eggs?”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.