Can
one commit a noun?
What
is the Nature of Freedom, Temptation, and Sin?
Humans have free will. However, free will would be meaningless if there
was not something to be free about. To be
free only in a limited spectrum of behavior would not mean much. That would be like telling someone that they were
free either to wash your car or to mow your lawn. Real
freedom is the freedom to wash your own car; or to wash their car; or to visit Tasmania;
or to do nothing at all. For love to matter,
hate, or at least indifference, must be possible. It
would have meant nothing to have created humans of free will in a garden with no forbidden
fruit that they would have been at least a little interested in, and placing forbidden
fruit in the garden was cruel only to the same extent that giving free will, and therefore
the ability for self-destruction, could be considered cruel.
Few drunkards chose to
become alcoholics out of cold logical calculation; and some are tempted more to drink than
others. Some people are sickened by the
thought of violence, while others are drawn to it. To
label every sin with a noun implies that the sinner can not help themselves and therefore
it must not be a sin, for else how could a kind God create someone in such a state of
helplessness? But sin is a verb. Otherwise, the only definition of a sin would be
something contrary to scripture which holds absolutely no temptation for anyone. In that case the only sin possible would be
something that one did not want to commit, for if they had any inclination to sin then it
would not be a sin, and even the temptation to find an undesirable sin would be a
temptation in and of itself and therefore not a sin either. In such a world, sin would be impossible. Only some sort of Satan worshiper could possibly
commit a sin, and they would have to work really hard even to figure out how to sin at
all. If sin is impossible then redemption is
meaningless. In which case what was the point
of God becoming man to be a perfect sacrifice?
Some face horrible
temptations while others seem to be mostly spared. In
Matthew ch 20, the vineyard workers who received the same pay for different degrees of
toil, seems to shed light on this. With the
choices of one’s parents during upbringing and of the surrounding effects of free
will in general, it would be impossible for two people to face the same levels of
temptations. Most likely too, temptation did
not arrive in force in one day. Small
temptations arrived and were yielded to and the fruits of those temptations paved the way
for larger temptations. However, the greater
the obstacle overcome, the deeper the resultant faith.
Christ subjected himself to direct temptation from Satan and prevailed, and
with His help any temptation can be overcome and one can be made even stronger.
Was
Scripture Reflecting Jewish Custom or a Universal Truth and does it Matter?
The first and greatest
commandment is to love God while the second is to love one’s neighbor (Matthew ch
22). Therefore, there is no such thing as a
"victimless" sin: acts contrary to the design of nature are sins against God. The first priority of Christianity must be
personal morality; food drives and bake sales can come later. It is
the church’s business how one lives their life.
It is true that Christians are not to be judges (Luke ch 6). But while a judge passes sentence, counsel advises
one in how to avoid sentence. Legal counsel
would be negligent if a client was not advised that a proposed action would probably
result in judgment. Of course, one may hide
from their own problems by becoming engrossed in the problems of others, but while that is
a danger it hardly relieves one of warning someone else when they are clearly in danger. A current TV advertisement of a denomination which
refuses to “judge anyone” seems to mean that it will not bother to warn, or
help, one who is on a dangerous path.
There is no such thing as
"being gay" for one can not “be” a sin, rather the issue is the
commission of sodomy (i.e., a clearly definable physical act). Those who commit sodomy are violating clear and
direct commandments in scripture (e.g., Romans ch 1).
Scripture did not tend to label sinners as nouns but instead called the sins
by name. When the sins were nouns, like
“adulterers”, the meaning was a person who would
continue to commit such a sin, like adultery. The
point being that the person was not merely tempted to adultery, or had committed adultery
in the past, but one who fully intended to do so
in the future.
It may be claimed that
prohibitions against sexual immorality were unique to Jewish culture at the time, but that
does not hold water. Scripture had no problem
with revising Jewish custom where it saw fit (e.g., clean and unclean food in Acts ch 10)
and made no attempt to transplant Jewish culture
en masse to the Gentile world. Sodomy was
common amongst the Romans to whom the book of Romans was written, and if the purpose of
scripture was to uphold the local traditions it would have endorsed it instead of
condemning it. If one argues that scripture
does not mater at all then they have no business in religion, any more than a Doctor who
had no faith in modern medicine would have any business in an operating room. If they claim that their "new
revelation" is inspired then why did not the Holy Spirit also inspire the disciples
to simply remain silent on the point if it was later to be revised? If they claim to be "more inspired" than
inspired scripture they are either cheap liars or mentally ill.
Moreover, a pattern
emerges in scripture which moves far beyond Jewish customs of the first century: humans were created (i.e., designed), were created
for a purpose, and are to live accordingly. If
a space alien from a billion miles away were to study the anatomy and physiology of the
human race they would quickly figure out how human reproduction works while never guessing
at sodomy. Scripture refers to homosexual
acts as an abandonment of "natural relations for unnatural ones" (Romans ch 1). In Leviticus 18, sodomy fell between infant
sacrifices to the demon Moloch (which, although almost unknown or least unacknowledged
today, was common from the time of Moses up to the destruction of Carthage by the Romans
in 149BC) and bestiality; and, most remarkably, sodomy was specifically referred to as
“an abomination” while the other sins were simply prohibitions. Leviticus also referred to Sodomy, not by some
cute euphemism, but as a perversion of nature. God
designed nature and humans are to live in those limits.
The act of reproduction did
not have to be enjoyable and engaged in at the whim of the participants. It could have been an unpleasant act to relieve
pain, instead of creating pleasure. It could
have been engaged in only once a year as needed for procreation, not on demand at almost
any time. It could have been as it is in the
animal world. But it is not. The image of bride and bridegroom was invoked by
Christ and there is more to husband and wife becoming one than procreation. The Song of
Solomon was not about mere procreation. Any
shame over sex in its proper place might be traced back to Augustine, who may have felt
remorse over having a mistress prior to his conversion, and in his work The City of God, he offers no scriptural
justification for his thought that sex was shameful. He
concluded, a priori, that since it went on in
private that there must be something wrong with it.
But Christ instructed his followers to pray in private as well (Matthew ch
6), so that logic does not seem valid. In
the 13th century, not an era of rampant liberal theology, Thomas Aquinais, in
the Summa Theologica wrote that “A sin, in
human acts, is that which is against the order of reason. Now the order of reason consists
in its ordering everything to its end in a fitting manner. Wherefore it is no sin if one,
by the dictate of reason, makes use of certain things in a fitting manner and order for
the end to which they are adapted, provided this end be something truly good. Now just as
the preservation of the bodily nature of one individual is a true good, so, too, is the
preservation of the nature of the human species a very
great good. And just as the use of food is directed to the preservation of life in the
individual, so is the use of venereal acts directed to the preservation of the whole human
race” (italics added; page 2418). 1st
Corinthians ch 7 instructs couples to fulfill their “marital duties” apparently
as an outlet for passion while not mentioning procreation, which would indicate that
pleasure in the act could be, in and of itself, a proper end. God created the natural world, and it was good.
To revise the natural state of being between or within the sexes is to
oppose nature, and nature is God's design and intended "life style." Humans take a perfectly good, and even
undeservedly good, gift and pervert it while shaking their fists at God.
Drunkenness is a sin only
by taking wine to excess; Christ himself turned water to wine in his first miracle (John
ch 2); communion is celebrated with wine; and only an excess of wine is sin. Christ himself drove money changers out the temple
(Matthew ch 21); but violence to the innocent is clearly sin. Taking something from someone else is fine if they
are willingly compensated for it; taking something without compensation is sin. It is fine to have physical relations with one's
spouse; and a sin with someone else's spouse. But
it is never acceptable to commit sodomy with anyone at any time. Which may be why Sodom and Gomorrah (whose
citizens seem to have sought the unnatural as an end in and of itself) was scorched off
the Earth while other cities reveled in drunkenness, crime, and adultery and stood for
another day. To take what is natural in
excess is wrong, but it is something else entirely to try to reinvent nature: to try to
“fix” God’s intended design is to defy God.
But this is not to say that it is an unforgivable sin; on the contrary, it
would cheapen Christ’s blood to suggest that it could not cure all who would accept
it.
Culture
Embraces Sin
One may be tempted to
punch Bill Gates when their computer locks up for the tenth time in one day. Does that make them an attacker? Of course not, because they did not actually punch
Mr. Gates. They either attack or they do not,
if they attack they commit violence, if they do not attack they hold their anger in
restraint. They may be tempted to contemplate
violence, which can be a problem in and of itself, but to call them a "non-violent
attacker" would be meaningless babble as would be calling them an
"attacker" if they had renounced violence.
A "celibate gay" is an oxymoron; a better description would be a sinner
fighting temptation. Even the clinical sounding "homosexual" is missused.
One can not be homosexual, homosexual is an adjective. Technicaly, a
homosexual basketball team, for example, would a team that was of one sex only (i.e., male
or female). Homosexual
sexual activity is the issue. To label bar
room brawlers and bullies with some euphemism like "excitable", meaning that
they tend to become excited to violence, and then lecture one that only a narrow minded
person would hate excitable people would be transparently silly. Excitement is good, right? Did they choose to have short tempers? Should not everyone be happy to be friends with an
"excitable" person? Are there
enough to go around? That culture refers to
sodomites as “gays” is a slick marketing tactic worthy of Madison Avenue. The consequences have been severe.
Perhaps the worst case of
medical abandonment in the twentieth century occurred when the psychological community
redefined sodomy as being "normal." Untold
numbers of unfortunate people were abandoned to their fates by the medical community. One of the motivations is to be humiliated and
violated, and some even go so far as to try to
catch the HIV virus to complete their violation. Apparently
there are even lists of willing HIV “donors” floating about for such “bug
chasers.” These people who seek to
degrade and punish themselves, some of whom became "gay" after being molested as
children, should not be helped? Another
motivation is to humiliate, dominate, and violate those who are weak. These people should not be helped? Contrary to media myth, the "gay"
community is fraught with violence. The
health consequences are serious besides the mental and spiritual ones. The anatomy is such that the unnatural acts put
one at the highest risk for infections, and besides that going against nature is never a
good thing: those who live long enough can end up wearing adult diapers for the rest of
their lives. Trying to treat the HIV epidemic
by trying to change the behavior of those unlikely to get it (i.e., convincing everyone
else to fund research to treat a virus, when no virus has been cured in history) while
ignoring the behavior that was most likely to pass on the disease is yet another case of
gross malpractice. In the end, instead of
facing the inherent consequences of their choices, the inevitable problems are blamed on
everyone else; for not supporting enough them if they can not find any other fault.
The phrase
“homophobe” is missleading in that it implies that one can not suggest that
something not be healthy, be it physically, mentally, or spiritually, without being
irrational. Leave it to the open minds to
shout down any discussion; leave it to the tolerants to be intollerant of discussion. Maybe this is a case of being a
“discusionphobe” or a “disagreephobe”.
Also, it refers not to specific acts, but to a label applied to people. The act is the problem, and one can be concerned
about a dangerous and destructive act without being phobic, indeed: not to be concerend
would be indiciative of a psychological problem.
By perpetuating a myth of
persecution, which can be a convenient excuse for any personal failure, and by painting a
false picture of the "gay" movement, the community of sodomites can be made
attractive to some who may have never even be that tempted by the associated sexual acts
at all. The media representation of the
"gay" community is of kind, sensitive, smart, funny, and stylish mavericks who
are close-knit and stand up for each other against the usual bigots. How many characters on TV are sodomites? Supposedly they are just like everyone else, etc.,
which is why they are relentlessly beaten into the face of every TV and movie patron in
the country. If they are just the same what
is the point? But somehow it "should not
matter", while it is forced on everyone. A
sure fire way to be "critically acclaimed" is to toss some sodomites into a
movie or TV show. A remake of Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (arguably the worst film of
all time) would be “critically acclaimed” if only some sodomy were involved
somewhere. Any movie could be an Oscar
contender if only some stock footage of lewd acts were to be spliced in somewhere at
random.
It would be silly to
define one’s self, and everyone else, and all relationships by golfing or NASCAR
racing or gardening or stamp collecting. To
define one's self by a sexual act, of any sort,
is to put an even more pathetic limitation on life. Only
a sex-obsessed person would base their entire identity on any sort of sexual act that they
want to perform, and doing so would pollute their relations with other people besides
polluting their relation with God. There are
four loves: storge (affection), philia (friendship), agape (selfless), and eros (sexual or romantic). To define oneself and their relations with
everyone else only by eros, if it can even be
called that as lust for an act is not the same as the desire for a person, is to take the
most narrowly defined love and discard the other three which are boarder, deeper, and more
lasting. This shows when people are certain
that all friendship, all affection, and all love are only preludes to, or are in denial
of, physical relationships. This belief, at
best, results in an empty life spent in pursuit of numbing anodynes, at worst it turns
into a dark and destructive psychosis.
The whole sodomite
marriage campaign becomes silly when seen for what it is.
Two companions who are not physically involved (e.g., two bachelor uncles
living in a house, two college room mates, or a daughter caring for her elderly mother)
should be treated differently than two people living together in another house if those
two people engage in a lewd sex act? Special
rights are to be bestowed to couples (and why not triads or quads for that matter) just
because lewd acts are performed? Male and
female couples are different in that procreation, resulting only from men and women, is
what carries on the human race. Women and
children suffer when they are abandoned by irresponsible fathers; if not emotionally then
certainly economically. To that end,
marriage, in a legal meaning, is ultimately not a right, but is the surrendering of rights to protect future children
and to protect the women involved who carry the children and often raise them too. The joke about the “ball and chain” of
marriage has some truth to it. If a couple
of some sort really wants to put on a legal ball and chain, any lawyer could draft a
document to do so without vandalizing a millenniums-old institution. Remove any prospect of procreation and one may as
well marry a pet goldfish, Yosemite Park, or the entire cast of Fame. Marriage
of the same sex in a religious sense is blasphemy to God, i.e., to ask Him to sanctify
sin; if such "marriages" or "blessings" occur they would be better off
in a temple of demon worship.