Monday, July 21, 2008

A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION IS POSED

A man by the name of Rudi Kohler wrote a brief letter to the editor of the "Salt Lake Tribune," in which he posed a crucial question, not only germane to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but that must be asked of all professing Christians, denominations, and churches.

"If gay rights is a moral issue, why doesn't the LDS Church take a moral position on the killing in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lack of health care for almost 50 million Americans, the inability of millions of Americans to earn a living income despite working 8-12 hours per day, or the presence of millions of retired Americans who worked all their lives and now subsist below the poverty level?

"Are these not moral issues, and arguably far more important than gay marriage?"

[See here.]

Rudi Kohler asks a crucial question that resonates well with all Christians, and other decent, sensitive people! (And we are to make no mistake, one can be a decent and sensitive person without being a Christian, but every single Christian is a decent, sensitive person or else he/she is not a Christian!)

Jesus puts such heretics as the legalists and perfectionists, who have tragically come to define "Christianity" in the minds of many, and who frequently rise to the highest levels of leadership positions in the institutional Church, in their place, and it must be remembered that He saved his harshest words for such as these: "Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." (Matthew 23:24)

And, when it comes to Gay people and same-sex love, they are not only straining at a gnat, but are swallowing whole the camel of the false gospel that they tenaciously and stridently preach, and which largely attracts the one-dimensional, limited human beings who are not able to tolerate (let alone embrace) behaviors that are presumably different from theirs, people who are seemingly different from them (but actually are not), people who think differently from them, people who have ideas they don't share, and these professing "Christians" are those who are seemingly unable to tolerate the many gray areas and ambiguities of life that defines an intelligent, sensitive, decent, and truly Christian human being.

They betray themselves as the purveyors of a false gospel, and betray their claim to be following Jesus!

As I've long maintained, LGBT people are God's gift to His Church and to society, and they are the canaries in the mine shaft who are there to let the miners know if there is poison gas in that mine that will kill them.

As we see in regard to the LDS Church, and to most of the denominations in the institutional Church, God is separating the wheat from the tares (Matthew 13:30,38,40), the tares being those who talk the God-talk with aplomb, and who exude all the sanctimoniousness that they falsely think defines a "Christian," but are plainly seen to be the poison of all Christians who are Christians in fact, the members of Christ's Church, and who know that the Gospel is defined by Jesus Whose life, ministry, and work epitomized grace, faith, love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness. Moreover, these tares, these "ravening wolves in sheep's clothing" (Matthew 7:15), are also poison to society as a whole!

And these purveyors of a false gospel, these one-dimensional legalists who "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel," who arrogantly presume to know the mind of God and seek to impose their own preconceived prejudices both onto the Bible as well as onto others, seeking to deny their demonically constructed "enemies" the same civil and sacramental rights that they enjoy, show themselves to be none of His, and that they are surely as poisonous to the Christian life and to Christ's Church as the Kool Aid that was drunk by Jim Jones' followers!

They have the temerity, the sheer arrogance, to commit the sin of idolatry by equating the Bible with God Himself, and by equating their own fallible, often false, interpretations of selected passages of Scripture based on their own prejudices, with what they falsely call "God's will," thereby elevating themselves, their prejudices, and their own fallible interpretations of selected texts of Scripture, above God Himself.

They also contravene Jesus' Great Commandments that Jesus says encapsulates "all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:36-40), and is to characterize and be manifested by all those who truly follow Him. Those two Great Commandments are to love God and to love and not judge others!

These pretentious and ravenous wolves in sheep's clothing, these purveyors of the false gospel of legalism and perfectionism, these who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, these advocates of the exclusion of others in the name of God, pose a horrific and poisonous danger to all Christians, to Christ's Church, and to the struggle to have a truly civil society!

In no uncertain terms, Jesus condemns these ravenous wolves: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." (Matthew 23:27)
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