Fred Phelps is right. Evil, but right

[valarltd]

Now that I have your attention...

I came to a realization today. When Phelps and his ilk come up, I seem to end up on an odd side of the conversation. I finally understood today: the others are approaching it from the argument that Phelps is wrong.

I come at it from the idea that Phelps is right. Yes, God hates gay people.

Let me break it down.
1) If you are a Christian, and discover you are gay, your salvation was not real in the first place. It was an emotional experience that led you to think you were saved. Or God has given you over to your sin.

2) If you are gay, you cannot become a Christian. The rule is "He who repents and is baptized shall be saved." You must repent, which means turning away from being gay, before you can be saved. Afterward, God will make you straight.

3) If you are saved and discover God has not made you straight, see point one. You didn't repent hard enough.

Therefore, since being a Christian is the only way to be saved, and gays cannot be Christian, they are the enemies of God. That means God hates them.

This means, that within a Christian faith, Phelps is right.

****

The problem as I see it is that Phelps pours out the pure strychnine of homophobia.
Most churches at least add some kool-ade to the cup. It usually comes under the guise of "love the sinner, hate the sin."

Also there is the problem of "Speak the truth with love."

Granted, all this depends on what the pastor's particular hobby-horse is. An anti-abortion pastor may not preach more than a couple anti-gay sermons a year. An anti-gay pastor will find a way to tie it into every sermon.

***

Mudd's rebuttal to the idea is that everyone is salvageable or the Great Commission is worthless.

***

But what about liberal Christians, like Fred Rogers? The social justice folks?

"I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Rev 3: 15-16)
Basically, any fundamentalist will tell you that liberal Christians make Jesus puke.

***

So where does this leave someone like me?
At 15, I realized I was bisexual. I was already worried because my hyperactive libido had surfaced several years earlier, and I couldn't possibly be a good person if I had feelings like that. I was actively lusting for Oholah and Oholibah's lustful Egyptians and horse-hung Assyrians. Which is NOT what Ezekiel had in mind when he wrote chapter 23.

A year or so later, we ended up in a homophobic church.

I was informed that the God I had loved since childhood hated me. He had made me wicked, given me to my sin in order to damn me. I spent the next 20+ years trying to be good, to be straight and to make it up to God that I was such a flawed piece of work.

In the end, I gave up that impossible task and walked away from the religion, accepting damnation in the process. Like a great number of the GLBT community.

Comments

[mother2012.livejournal.com]

Yes. You are absolutely right. There is no reconciling today's version of 'Christianity' with anything rational when it comes to homosexuality.

No doubt all of the homosexual animals are damned, also. God just put them here to confuse us, along with prehistoric artifacts like Lucy.

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I was always raised to believe that God loves everybody. Which makes more sense to me personally than God making people just to hate them. So no, I don't think God hates gay people. No one in either my Southern Baptist or my Roman Catholic sides of the family or in my church have ever said that. We all kind of apply "Jesus loves me" to... everybody.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

The universal love of God is actually a common heresy.

The Bible points out many cases of God hating people, families and tribes.

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

I think that was before Jesus. Jesus came to make everything new. Jesus did love everybody, and He never said a word against gay people, or hating anyone. Christians are supposed to follow the teachings of Jesus Himself.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

But Jesus is God. Yes?
And God is unchanging.

So you have the same being who, in a fit of pique that his creation wasn't living up to his ideas, destroyed the whole world reduced to cursing a fig tree for not bearing out of season.

Ell, honey, I was a fundamentalist for many years. I've stories for your stories, answers to your answers and questions for your questions. I know all the dodges.

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

Yes, Jesus is God. Jesus is God's love. Jesus is God's forgiveness. God so loved the world- not 40% of the world, not the part of the world who happen to act in a certain way. The whole world. Like the rainbow was God's promise that He would never destroy the world again, Jesus was God's promise that He loves us all and forgives us all, and will give us chance after chance.
I don't think there need to be any dodges or anything. My believe is straightforward, that God is love, and God loves us. This is what I've been raised to believe, and this is what the people I surround myself believe.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

It's what I used to believe as well.

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'll ever change my mind on that, either... which I guess makes me closed-minded. But at least I'm happy!

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

No, sin is only forgiven if you repent.
And repenting of being gay is like repenting of having brown eyes.

I'm laying out my thoughts on something that has been confusing me. I'm not complaining to complain.

As for hell, I'm going too.
I just want the Christians to be honest that Phelps is peddling straight morphine to their tylenol with codine.

The football analogy only works if you live in a world where everything on TV is football, where people randomly come up and try to get you to join the fanclub of their favorite team, and where your country has declared football its national sport and a founding virtue.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I think gays are silly to try to be Christians when the church doesn't want them. But that's my opinion.

For the churches I came out of, being gay trumped anything you believed in or did. Because you obviously weren't believing hard enough if you were still gay.

And where do you get the notion that I hate God?
We're in the middle of one of our frequent disagreements, yes.
And I do wish he'd quit sending the fanclub to ambush me. If I've been Jesus-jumped once this past year, it's happened about eight times.

Some days, I believe 100% of the population will end up in Hell.
Some days, I believe there isn't any Hell at all.

In the end, I don't know who goes and who doesn't. But I know what the churches I came out of believed.

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

I think gays are silly to try to be Christians when the church doesn't want them.

A lot of the "high up" people in my church back in Memphis are gay. Trust me, the church wanted them.

Also, the Riverside Church in NYC was doing Gay Pride Sunday the Sunday my choir sang during their service.

I'm not trying to say that all churches want them, but not all churches don't want them. I think you've had bad experiences and I'm sorry for them, but not all Christians are like the ones you encountered when you were young.

[chieira.livejournal.com]

It seems like you're operating under the assumption that fundamentalist Christianity is the only valid form of Christianity, or that there is only one correct interpretation of the Bible. Translations are tricky, and I could link you to plenty of places that prove just how dubious the supposedly anti-homosexual parts of the Bible really are. I won't even go into Leviticus, because that should no longer apply to Christians at all unless they also refuse to eat shellfish.

What I'm trying to say is that your theory only works based on one interpretation of the Bible. I think it's pretty gutsy to not only condemn yourself and others based on your very limited interpretation, but to also tell homosexual Christians and Christians accepting of homosexuality that they're not really Christians.

I am, by the way, not a Christian, but I am a lesbian. My roommate is a Christian, and I do not doubt for one second that her beliefs are valid. Neither does she ever judge me for my lifestyle, and that does not make her less of a Christian.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

If you're not going to believe it ALL, why believe any of it? The churches I came out of were very firm that you couldn't pick and choose what to believe.

You can take the girl out of fundamentalism, but she'll never get all the smell out of her hair.

I'm well familiar with the "here's the mistranslation on the Clobber Passages" sites.

Personally, I figure we all go to Sheol (the grave) and that's the end of it. Hell is a late addition to the faith, brought back from the Persian exile and a direct product of exposure to Zoroastrianism.

In my rational moments I know it's not real. In the dead of night, there's still a kid who knows it is.

[chieira.livejournal.com]

It's not picking and choosing what to believe. It's accepting the fact that words have different meanings, translations make those meanings even more muddled, and those meanings can also change over time. The word 'gay' now has a completely different connotation that it did years ago. If we were far enough removed that we read something with that meaning from somewhere in the past, when it had a totally different meaning, we would probably apply our own to it. This, along with a multitude of other things, is what I mean when I say that translations are tricky. I'm not at all saying that Christians should pick and choose what to believe. I'm saying that there are many Christians who have researched the original languages of the Bible, researched the wording used in the very few places supposedly condemning homosexuality, and they don't think that it means what fundamentalists believe that it does.

That, of course, only applies to the verses in the New Testament (mostly Paul and his crap - xD can you tell I'm not a fan?). What I meant when I said Leviticus no longer applies is that Jesus literally came to fulfill the old law; it really does no longer apply, according to Christianity. That is why even Fundamentalist Christians can eat shellfish, can wear clothes made with more than one type of fabric. Because those laws, along with the Leviticus law that supposedly condemned homosexuality, were fulfilled and removed with Jesus' death. Jewish people do not believe that Jesus was the son of God, so they still follow those laws.

So again, I'm not suggesting that Christians pick and choose. I'm just pointing out how I believe it IS possible for a Christian to really be a Christian, and still be accepting of homosexuals.

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

Paul was the original emo kid and needed to stfu.

[chieira.livejournal.com]

xD And that is why I love you.

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

*stares at icon* ... ... ... and that is why I love you. In a purely heterosexual, christian kind of way. Ahem.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Actually, Paul was the demented fanboi who never saw the source material, but produced massive quantities of fanfic that became canon.

In other words, he was James Blish.
(who wrote all the Star Trek episode novelizations and never saw an ep)

[chieira.livejournal.com]

...Okay, I love you a little bit, too. <3

[lisichance.livejournal.com]

I think that's the best description of Paul and his work I've ever heard.

Thank you.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I know about translation and stuff. I have English Major damage, actually.

And while Leviticus may not apply (it's probably a prohibition of male temple prostitutes used in certain Canaanite rituals, given the Hebrew word that's translated as "abomination") it still gets used.

But Romans 1, a favorite clobber passage which also specifically condemns lesbians, is POST Christ, so it applies. As do several other New Testament bits.

There are 6 major verses. We in the GLBT community call them "Clobber Passages."
http://www.gaychurch.org/Gay_and_Christian_YES/calling_the_rainbow_nation_home/7_gac_the_clobber_passages.htm


"While there is much debate amongst Bible scholars if any scriptures specifically address homosexuality there are eight references that are commonly used by some to condemn gays. These are commonly referred to as "the clobber passages” or the "big eight". Of these eight, only six are still used with any regularity as two have been accepted by most as not pertaining to homosexuality. Four of these (Genesis 19:1-5, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 23:17) are found in the Old Testament while the other four (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, Romans 1:21-31 and Jude 1:6-7) are located in the New Testament. The two that have been widely discarded are Deuteronomy 23:17 and Jude 1:6-7."

[ellabel.livejournal.com]

I still say that what Paul says doesn't count. That's his opinion, not Jesus. If Jesus wanted to speak out against gay people, he would have done it when he spoke out against adultery and prostitution.

[chieira.livejournal.com]

I'm only in the process of getting a degree in English, so I admit you probably know more about the subject than I do. xD

I'm aware of those passages, and they're the ones I'm referring to when talking about translation. I've read different interpretations of Romans 1, most focusing on the usage of the word 'natural' and what it could mean. Again, I'm not contesting that your interpretation or that of fundamentalist Christians is necessarily wrong. I'm just saying that it's only one of many interpretations out there, and that I do not think Christians who believe in other interpretations are automatically not 'real' Christians. There are many parts of the Bible which, even if the translations are correct, have ambiguous enough language to be interpreted any number of ways without the interpreter even meaning to do so. One person might read it and see it one way, another might see it in a completely different way. I don't think that one person would be condemned simply because they understood it differently, and another allowed magical entrance into heaven because they happened to see it the 'correct' way. For Christians, from what I understand, the Bible is a 'guide book' written by other humans. Divinely inspired? Maybe. Still human.

Again, this all depends on your interpretations, your understanding of 'God' and how He does things. You can hold that view, but I prefer to believe that my roommate isn't going to hell just for understanding the Bible in a way which allows her to be accepting of my lifestyle.

[chieira.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way, I also grew up in a fundamentalist Christian atmosphere, in a small town in Southern Mississippi, so I DO understand where you're coming from. Both sides of my family are very fundamentalist Southern Baptists. I spent most of my teenage years telling myself that I was disgusting and going to hell. When my grandmother found out that I was a lesbian, she told me that what I felt wasn't my real feelings, but rather a demon inside my body controlling me. She also tried to exorcise said demon, which is especially strange because I didn't think exorcisms were even a Southern Baptist practice. xD;

Just pointing out, I really do get it. I just chose to leave it behind me, and had the good fortune to meet Christians who proved to me that there are real Christians out there who interpret the Bible in a different way.

[nbrooks.livejournal.com]

As stated earlier. Religion summed up in 1:00 minute.

[sailorcelestial.livejournal.com]

I think a few people above don't realize that you're being, at least to a certain degree, sarcastic. You grew up with this belief system, but you no longer believe it (all the time). I understand what you meant about the little kid "in the dead of night" who still believes. We can never quite get over what we're taught in our younger years by people we love and trust, even if we grow up to understand that intellectually, it can't all be true.

Me, being Pagan (no longer identifying as specifically Wiccan), have a semi-hippie-ish take on the religion thing.

Spirituality is what's important, it what really makes people happy and peaceful, and there's really only one rule to abide by, because that one rule takes care of all the others: Love. The older religions (and by that I mean the REALLY old religions, before the Greeks, before the Egyptians, back when man was new on this Earth) understood this, I think.

Modern religion is man-made. The complicated shit came from the minds of men who weren't satisfied with "Love" as a word to live by, and felt the need say "Well, by that, the gods/God really meant this...." And "this" turned out to be all kinds of crazy things through which to weild power, like "you have to offer such and such number of lambs to sacrifice" or "you can't eat meat on Fridays" or "women are the root of all sin and evil." To me, all of these things are quite obviously very silly, but that's me. That's my opinion.

It's also my opinion that the gods do not hate anyone, no matter what face they wear for whom. Especially God, if we're going to say God is the Source from which all things come, including the gods. I definitely think that Deity in all its forms has more important things to worry about than the length of a woman's hair or skirt. There's, you know, like war and famine and poverty and racism and stuff.

Sorry. I can rarely resist putting in my two (or five) cents when there's opportunity.

[reannon.livejournal.com]

Love one another, as he loves us. Do unto others as we would have them do to us. Judge not, lest ye be judged. And so I find myself as an Episcopalian so much more in line with my hippie pagan sister than the fundies my dear friend Valar quotes. :)

Valar, dear, I know the fundamentalism burned you hard. But please, it is playing THEIR game to tell me and other Christians what we believe and how we're wrong if we say, "But that's not what I believe." Love and acceptance and Christianity are not mutually exclusive. There are more of us than you know.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to say that the numbers from the ballot boxes do not back you up. and the recent Barna Poll (http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=288) is a little disturbing too. 1/3rd of people surveyed, and about 50% of Evangelicals, said gayness was one of the major problems facing America.


This post came about because I was wondering why I was always getting into weird debates. It hit me that I was approaching from the position that PhelpsCo was right and figured that the Christians were too, since that was the position I had heard in every denomination, from Methodist to Lutheran to Southern Baptist to several independent Bible churches.

I always just figured people kept fucking up Gods word.

[synamontwist.livejournal.com]

Like the Horns on Noah thing. I figure God makes perfect sense and people, who dont and never will, misinterperet God.

I figure if its not logical its something some human came up with.

Like the "making gays just to hate them" concept. Stupid and wasteful. Sounds like something a human came up with.

Just like "Love everyone because I made them" sounds like something my Creator would say, so I go with that.

I personally LOVE the "I made dinosaurs to fuck with you because everyone knows I just love to catch people fucking up and believing in evolution" theory. It takes a flawed human psyche to come up with some shit like that.LOL

So yeah, in my faith God makes sense.

Nonsense = God's ignorant mouthbreathing followers trying to control someone or make a buck.

Makes Sense = Probably something to do with God.

Logic = God

Illogic = "I hates me some gay liberal treehugging jewish commie" spouting fools/ Jihadists

I dont get it? Where is the conflict?

Kes