Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!lll-winken!sun-barr!newstop!sundc!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mib@geech.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Moral reasoning (was Re: draft of Identity Task Force statement) Message-ID: Date: 14 Dec 90 09:27:17 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: /home/fsf/mib/.organization Lines: 39 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article ta00est@unccvax.uncc.edu (elizabeth s tallant) writes: Why then do people become homosexuals? It is not because 'God created them that way." NO, not at all! It is because : "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking because futile and their foolish hearts were darkened....Therefore, God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts to the sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator..... Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions." Roman 1:21-27 Oh dear. Here we go again. I dread this, but, lest people forget how to read, I'll say it again. "In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations..." Quiz question: In all other passages, how does Paul use the word "nature"? Hmm...we find, with the aid of any concordance, that "nature" is used in the NT to describe one's personal nature, which is also often termed sinful. There certainly isn't any concept of nature as the source of moral rightness, or of any kind of impersonal abstract "nature" which applies to everyone. What to make of Romans 1? Not too tough here. There were quite a few in the ancient world who were so lustfilled that they abandoned *their* natural passion for ones unnatural *to them*. Paul here doesn't say *anything* about someone whose natural passions differ from heterosexuality. -mib -- Michael I. Bushnell \ This above all; to thine own self be true LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE \ And it must follow, as the night the day, mike@unmvax.cs.unm.edu /\ Thou canst not be false to any man. CARPE DIEM / \ Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!