Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!christian From: TTAERUM@ualtavm.gatech.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: christian homosexuals Message-ID: Date: 30 May 89 02:08:55 GMT Sender: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Lines: 47 Approved: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu > You could replace homosexual >with adulterous, etc., and not change the force of the article. Not a bad statement of the problem. We now have christian playboys, christian robbers, christian murderers, christian anything. When you can put a word in front of any attribution then you know that word has lost its meaning. The question of whether a church accepts somebody is mote when we know that the Church is the bride of Christ. The question is not who we accept but who Christ accepts. On one of the festivals at Yom Kippur, Lamentations is read. It includes this verse (Lamentations 2:14) The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The oracles they gave you were false and misleading. One consistent characteristic of prophecy is that it exposes sin. There is no prophetic book in the OT, whether one of the Twelve, or one of the major prophets which does not expose sin. In the NT, and historically, the Church has always had this job of prophecy. One way in which the Church maintains its integrity, and avoids hypocracy, is to reject from the Church those people who refuse to acknowledge that the activity they are engaged in is wrong. It is pure hypocracy to say with the lips "something is wrong with this activity" and then to accept, as a member someone who refuses to acknowlege that it is wrong. "How well Isaiah prophesied about you when he said, these people acknowledge me with their lips but their hearts are far from me." Especially pernicious is the mixing of the words 'love' and 'sex'. Is it lawful for two men to live together and love each other? Of course it is. Is it lawful for two men to live together and have sex? Of course it isn't. It is neither natural (as defined by what occurred before the fall) nor is it fruitful. It is, to use an OT term, confusion. Perhaps a paraphrasing of Christ's words are appropriate here, "the ax is already at the root of the tree, if men do these things when the tree is green, what more will they do when it is dry." Terry Taerum