According to the Sacramento Bee, some homosexuals and homosexuality apologists got upset by someone elses free speech. On the heels of the homosexuality promotion event "Day of Silence" in schools, some other students wore shirts to school which said "Homosexuality is a sin."
"We celebrate the multicultural nature of our school, and an anti-gay or anti-lesbian T-shirt we don't find particularly tolerant," said San Juan High Principal Dave Terwilliger.
We will not tolerate intolerance, the Leftist establishment declares! Views other than our own are intolerant and we will not tolerate intolerance.
Uh huh.
3 comments:
So you want to talk about homosexuality? YOU want to talk about homosexuality? You want to talk about homosexuALITY?
Sit down CHRIStian. Give me that bible you’re waving before you hurt yourself. I’m going to resist the temptation to snatch it from your hands and beat you with it. I am your worst nightmare, a Texas preacher who knows The Book better than you do.
You cannot wave your unread bible and scare me. I know its larger story and I will tear you a new biblical asshole.
Show me your scriptures. Show me how you justify condemning homosexual people.
Show me what you got, Christian. The Sodom story? That story is about people who wanted to commit a brutal rape. Let’s all say it together, “God doesn’t like rape”. You could have listened to your heart and learned that, Christian. Move on. What else you got?
A weak-ass little passage from Leviticus? Are you kidding me? Are you prepared to adhere to the whole Levitical code of behavior? No? Then why would you expect others to? What else?
Two little passages - two verses from Romans and one from I Corinthians. There you stand, your justification for a worldwide campaign of hatred is written on two limp pieces of paper. I know these passages, both their greater context and the original language. I could show you why you have nothing, but there is something more important you need to see.
Come with me to the church cellar. Come now and don’t delay. I am shaking with anger and fighting the urge to grab you by the collar and drag you down these steps.
You didn’t know the church had a cellar? Oh yes, every church does. Down, down we go into the darkness. Don’t slip on the flagstone and never mind the heat.
There, do you see the iron furnace door, gaping open? Do you see the roaring flames? Do you see the huge man with glistening muscles, covered with soot? Do you see him feeding the fire as fast as can with his massive, scooped shovel?
He feeds these flames with the bible, with every book, chapter, and verse that American Christians must burn to support our bloated lifestyles, our selfishness, our materialism, our love of power, our neglect of the poor, our support of injustice, our nationalism, and our pride.
See how frantically he works? Time is short, and he has much to burn. The prophets, the Shema, whole sections of Matthew, most of Luke, the entire book of James. Your blessed 10 commandments? Why would you want to post them on courtroom walls when you’ve burned them in your own cellar?
Do you see? DO YOU SEE? Do you see how we rip, tear, and burn scripture to justify our lives?
The heat from this cursed furnace rises up and warms the complacent worshippers in the pews above. The soot from the fire blackens our stained glass so that we may not see out and no one wants to see in.
Do you smell the reek of this injustice? It is a stink in the nostrils of the very living God. We are dressed in beautiful clothes and we wear pretty smiles, but we stink of this blasphemous holocaust.
Every church in America has a cellar like this. We must shovel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, because every chapter and book we ignore must be burned to warm our comfy pews.
And you come to me with two little scraps of scripture to justify your persecution of God’s children?
Sit down Christian. Sit down and be you silent.
How long has it been since you forgot that we were called to walk the earth as pilgrims? Do you not remember when HE told us to give our coats to those in need and sell our possessions to help the poor? Did you forget how the first church had all things in common so that none would lack.
Did you forget the day He told us that whatever we did for the oppressed we did for Him, and whatever we withheld from them was kept from Him as well?
Sit down Christian. You have not earned the right to speak to this generation. The right to speak is earned with love.
Take back your bible. Take it back and start reading it. Fall in love again with Jesus. Sell what you must and walk the earth. Let your love be astonishing and people may one day listen to your words.
Even now you might be saved. Our God is merciful and forgiveness awaits.
Thre's something about the way you use the bible. There's something about the way you see the bible as a thing to be used at all.
There's something about your intensity and your urgency and the way you have your eyes locked on some distant prize. There's something about the energy you are putting into this. It's making you frantic and in a hurry. You will not be present in a sacred moment. You will not wait. You will not keep silence. You will not admit that you are weak. You will not let things unfold.
You cannot abide, so you will not abide. You will not abide the journey. Arriving is all you want, and the bible is some kind of shortcut for you. You seem to be cutting corners and covering your tracks with memorized verses. You enter every room with a blast of pretty Jesus words and a lot of fast talking.
Somehow you have come to think that the bible is like everything else in your life. You think it is something to master and something you can own. The more you know about the bible, the more power you hope to gain. The more verses you can quote, the closer to God you hope to be.
The bible is your prop and your flag. You wave it around and make sure that it is seen. You highlight it and talk about it and make wild claims about its truth and fight over it and win with it and boast about how you believe every word of it. It is your way and your truth and your life.
Behold, your sacred battle cry: “The Word of the Lord is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
But that verse isn't about the bible. It's about Christ, whom you serve, and whose spirit you are called to carry in your heart. It is only He who is your way and your truth and your life.
That old man that you brushed aside? The one you called a liberal and a wishy-washy Christian? He spent the last fifty years with his hands and his heart in the pages of that sacred book. He has wept over it and searched for truth in its stories. His unanswered questions have increased every year until finally he knows nothing at all but the love of God and neighbor.
He knows something that you do not know.
Those people around the table? The ones you spoke so harshly? You dropped your big black bible on the table with a thud for emphasis. They are some of God's oldest and wisest servants. They have prayed down the walls of prejudice and broken the strongholds of anger and pain with the prayers of their hands and feet. Their words were a prayer, though you couldn't hear it.
They know something that you do not know.
These people know that the bible is not a self-help book full of easy answers, but a book of stories and wisdom that is meant to lead us into relationship and worship. There are hard and fast truths in it, yes, but they are surrounded by soft truths, and slippery truths, and sometimes truths, and truths that once were true but are no longer true, and truths that are only true if you are in the right state of mind, and truths that are only true if you are not hurting someone, and truths that are true in the moment but not if you are talking about the moment, and truths that can only be lived and should never be spoken, and truths that we cannot hear, and truths that are more than we can bear.
The truths of the bible are utterly beyond anyone who seeks to own truth and who seeks truth above the Spirit of God.
The bible is not a book for those who need a weapon. It is not a book for those who know where they are going and what questions they will ask. It is not a book for those who are in a hurry and looking for the shortest route.
The bible is a book for pilgrims and wanderers. It is a book for children and for those who wish to become children again. It is a book for seekers and searchers and dreamers.
It is a book for anyone and everyone who hopes that the desires of God might be written upon their hearts.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NRSV)
I'm not sure what your point is with your last post, Preacher, other than you seem to be trying to say that the Bible is a book for idiots who have no intention of doing what it clearly says to do.
There are plenty of things in this world that the Bible doesn't give us definitive guidance as to whether it's right or wrong, but there are a lot that you can figure out pretty easily by studying God's book and applying its principles to the situation at hand. Then there are a number of things that God just flat out says are wrong.
By your first comment on this post, it appears you aren't able to deal with some of the things God makes abundantly clear are wrong. There's little I can do about that, beyond (Ezekiel 3:18) tell you the truth; beyond that, it's up to you to accept the truth, or continue blinding yourself to your own destruction.
I hope and pray God's Spirit will continue to speak to your heart, and maybe one day you'll finally surrender and heed what he's trying to tell you, just as I did a number of years ago when I walked in error. But that's entirely up to you.
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