Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@mhuxu.UUCP (Michael Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: changes in the church, some personal comments Message-ID: Date: 27 May 89 06:01:06 GMT Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Lines: 89 Approved: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Gregory Shippen writes: + I find it equally appalling how often these creeds fail completely to at + least ask themselves what God would want in this situation. I wish I knew what I may have said (other than my conclusions, of course :-)) that would suggest a failure to ask what God wants of me. Here again is an issue where actual acquaintence with Integrity members (for example) goes a long way to dispelling false ideas about gay Christians. The problem (for us and for you) is that we have come, through many years (decades and lifetimes, even) of prayer and counsel and experience to understand that what God wants of us is NOT what the Church has traditionally taught us. I was well enough instructed in traditional sexual morality by the time of my catechism classes and baptism as a teenager, 30 years ago. That was NOT the issue that prompted my departure from the church; instead I was (over)reacting to the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy I perceived in my teachers (and that perception may have had more to do with my own adolescent arrogance than with reality -- at this interval it is very hard to say.) Nor, some 15 years later was my reentry into the Church prompted by any alteration in teachings about sexuality. Though it helped a lot to be welcomed and loved and to have my personal miseries about sex assuaged rather than aggravated by Christian friendship. Those of you who heap burdens of guilt on us will have much to answer for. No. I had come to something like the current Catholic position that being homosexual was a sort of "objective disorder" -- not blameworthy _per se_, just a matter of being myself somehow "out of joint" with God's "plan" and with no course of action open to me that would not in some way be sinful. But as I grew into the church, over a span of several years, I became aware that God was nudging me: "my thoughts are not your thougts" said the Lord, and "by their fruits you shall know them" said my Lord. And I looked at the saints around me and discovered instead of my fantasies an objective ORDER that can only derive from God. And this order involves the sexual bonding of people of the same sex. It is the order described in Genesis, though we have done our best to misapply it, to narrowly monopolize it for the "best" people in society, for 3000 years. The miseries I suffered derived, not from God, but from the rather nasty oppressions of my society. That suffering was a sign of sin, but most of the sin lay not in my acts but in the "righteous" people who would condemn me. I have been longer reaching this point than many of my friends (heterosexual as well as gay) partially because I am stiff-necked and self-involved. It is when I turn my head to look at other gay Christians that I can see how selfish I had been ("well, Lord; you can't really expect very much from me, consdering that I am objectively disordered.") Again, all I ask is that you look -- with open eyes and open hearts and a prayer that God will aid you in understanding us. + Religion is, admittedly, in part a social organization. It is made up of + people... This mission rules out, in my view, the concept that those in + the Church may change that organization according to the views of the + society of the time. In short shouldn't we at least ask the question: + what changes would God do in this or any other situation? I am not sure that you take your own rhetoric as seriously as you should, given what you go on to say below. It is worth dwelling on this just a bit, however. The Church is always and everywhere an institution of human beings, *in addition* to being the Body of Christ. There has never been a time (not 50 AD, nor 100, nor 250, nor 500, nor any other date) at which all things said and done by the Church could be claimed to be a full instantiation of God's will for us, untainted by both the irrelevancies of our fleshly state and more particularly untainted by sin. At ALL stages of its existence, the Church MUST criticize itself, with the aid of the Spirit. Change is not bad or good in itself; neither is stasis. The ONLY issue is "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The prior example of the Church is always a good starting point; it is seldom a good idea to simply rest there. There may be some proponents of "modernization" for its own sake in our churches, but I think that is mostly a straw man. Those of us who DO propose changes -- in the status of women, in the liturgies, in the language we use, in the acceptance of new rules for sexuality -- do so under a compelling sense that we ARE following God's will for us and for the Church. Please do us the justice to understand WHY we think as we do, even if you reject our ideas. You seem to be drawing a picture of frivolous, unspiritual yuppies attempting to make an upscale fast-food religion. It just isn't so. Consider, always, that your own seriousness and humility before God is the measure that we use as well. Our differences can be painful at times, but I may not yield my faith just because it makes you uncomfortable. Neither should you yield to any blandishments of mine on the net. But I ask you to look at God's creation with *God's* measure -- delight in variety and its goodness, delight in the Leviathan He made for the sport of it -- and not with the sour measure of early Christian asceticism. -- Michael L. Siemon "O stand, stand at the window contracted to AT&T Bell Laboratories As the tears scald and start; att!mhuxu!mls You shall love your crooked neighbor standard disclaimer With your crooked heart."