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.
Yes - that would be HUGH!
"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.
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.
Succint and accurate --bump --
Wow...welcome to FreeRepublic...maybe you can join the small army of pseudoconservative Homo apologists here.
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
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!
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.