Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Homosexuality Message-ID: Date: 16 Jul 90 06:41:32 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 44 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Kenneth J. Kutz writes: ---------------------------------------- Man hasn't changed since Adam. After Adam ate the fruit offered to him by Eve, rather than repenting from his sin and accepting the fact that he was guilty he says "The woman YOU PUT HERE WITH ME-she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." Sounds a little bit like "The sexual orientation YOU PUT HERE IN ME...". Man has always tried to blame God for his mistakes. He has done it in the Garden, in Sodom, now in the USA. ---------------------------------------- I think this is an oversimplification. If we assume that homosexual preference is not God's intention (which I do assume) we can still see it as both the result of sin and something the person who has it has relatively little control over. It is possible to read Paul's discussion of homosexuality diagnostically, saying that that is the kind of thing that happens when a society starts denying God. It is possible that a person can be no more responsible for his or her homosexuality than someone with a birth defect. The problem stemming from this observation is the issue of self-justification. But it is a problem that exists on both sides. Someone with a homosexual orientation can try to justify it as being OK for one reason or another. Someone with a heterosexual preference can say, ``I'm not a homosexual (I thank God that I am not like other men, even this homosexual...??) so I'm OK.'' Seems to me that we miss the point of what Christ came to do if we take either of these positions. Christ came to call ``sinners to repentence.'' He specifically says that he did not come to call the righteous. If we try to make ourselves righteous apart from him, we are disqualifying ourselves from his calling. Does it matter how we do it, whether by justifying homosexual preference or by boasting of heterosexuality (or other qualities that make us righteous)? Besides this, we follow one who ``came not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved.'' If we are so interested in condemning, are we really following him? -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com So long as the heaven of THOU is spread out over me the winds of causality cower at my heels, and the whirlpool of fate stays its course. -Martin Buber