Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!christian From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Christian Homosexuals Message-ID: Date: 29 May 89 06:02:16 GMT Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Lines: 36 Approved: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Roland McGrath asks how a homosexual relationship could be wrong, since it is an expression of love and God is love. I've commented enough about homosexuality. I'm not going to again. However I see a more general problem with this posting. You could replace homosexual with adulterous, etc., and not change the force of the article. The problem I think is that it fails to tke into account the kind of complex things that can happen in human lives. Christians believe that people are made in God's image, and that our love is an image of his. It's possible for that image to become tarnished, but still be visible. There are unfortunately many human relationships that are damaging. And yet, from time to time in them we can still see the image of God's love. An adulterous relationship may have moments of self-giving love, in which God's love shows forth. Yet in the long run the relationship is damaging, and will cause great harm. You may, depending upon your viewpoint, take this as an example of the fact that God lets the rain fall on both the just and the unjust, or you may go further and see it as a special action of God's grace. When love is expressed inappropriately, the relationship can become damaging, yet to the extent that love is still present (using love in the Christian sense) it may still be a channel through which God can act. Note the "when expressed inappropriately". It is not the love which is wrong. It is not wrong to love someone else's wife, and even those who oppose homosexuality do not say it is wrong to love someone of the same sex. What is wrong is for the relationship to develop in certain ways. Ultimately the shape of the relationship threatens the existence of love in it or elsewhere in the people's lives. Yet even if a relationship goes in the wrong direction and becomes damaging, to the extent that there is still any love present in it, that love is a gift from God. So my problem with the article is this: you can't say that homosexual love is OK just because it is an expression of people's love for each other. It could be a self-defeating sort of expression, that ultimately turns back on the love that started it. Adultery is an example of such a thing. The question is whether homosexual relations are or not.