Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: Mercat

As I believe you are Catholic, I have to wonder if that is the Catholic interpretation on this, that it’s just between Bruce Jenner and Jesus?

God is love, and is that view truly love? That would mean keeping quiet while someone openly sins and it is widely promoted to tens even hundreds of millions others as acceptable to God. Sin leads to separation from Him and harms others, ultimately leading to their separation from God, too. And there is no sin that’s “just between” a person and God. It all affects others, especially spiritually.

Modern technology has also indeed made us into a village of a sorts. The private affairs and business of ordinary people all over the world become our business on a daily basis. In the Bible, God is called Jehovah Nissi - The Lord is my banner. An army would follow behind a banner, what or whom they were fighting for. And there can be other banners, besides the Lord, or He can be held up falsely, supporting sin. It’s a very serious thing to hold up the name of the Lord falsely. It’s actually the literal meaning of the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain - not to “lift up” the Lord’s name in an unworthy manner.

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Ephesians 5:11

And in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul writes to the church in Corinth about a man in their assembly who had his father’s wife.

3 For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,

4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,

5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Radical individualism is a secular humanist/atheist idea that isn’t Christian at all. It’s political, and perhaps with the fallen world we have, the best that can be done politically, but it’s not God’s ultimate will for us. That is the Kingdom of God, which we should be readying ourselves to live in. There we know that we are not our own, but belong to God, and to each other.

Protecting individual rights here are about protecting us from other people forcing us to disobey God. In evangelical Christianity, sometimes the “vertical” and “horizontal” relationships are talked about - the vertical being with God, and the horizontal being with other people. Individual “human rights” are about our “rights” on the horizontal level - that other people shouldn’t force their religion on us, or take away our right to speak, or falsely imprison us. They shouldn’t do those things because they are just another fallible person or persons.

But we have no such rights with God, who is eternally above us, by every right of His. He can tell us what it is right to say or not say, and punish us for disobedience. Where other mere people have no right over us, to determine everything we do, say and believe, and wholly be our master, God, being God, does have that absolute right.


65 posted on 04/26/2015 9:38:57 AM PDT by Faith Presses On ("After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations...")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies ]


To: Faith Presses On

OK. I won’t offer him the Eucharist. What else is productive or useful here?


75 posted on 04/26/2015 10:10:13 AM PDT by Mercat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 65 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson