RELIGION HAS MADE A MOCKERY OF GOD

And people of faith should ask themselves: What is the cumulative effect upon outside observers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker living like lords on the largesse of the poor, multiplied by Jimmy Swaggart's pornography addiction, plus Eric Rudolph bombing Olympians and gays in the name of God, plus Muslims hijacking airplanes in the name of God, multiplied by the church that kicked out some members because they voted Democrat, divided by people caterwauling on courthouse steps as a rock bearing the Ten Commandments was removed, multiplied by the square root of Catholic priests preying on little boys while the church looked on and did nothing, multiplied by Muslims rioting over cartoons, plus the ongoing demonization of gay men and lesbians, divided by all those "traditional values" coalitions and "family values" councils that try to bully public schools into becoming worship houses, with morning prayers and science lessons from the book of Genesis? Then subtract selflessness, service, sacrifice, holiness and hope.

[For the full article, see here.]

Perhaps the major institutional instigator of homophobia is "religion!" Religion is human beings' institutionalization of the worship of the god whom most have created in their own image!

God is outside and far larger than any religious world-view can contain, and God is far more merciful and gracious toward God's creation than mere human beings can ever be!

The "religious" among us have sown to the wind and now religion as an institution is beginning to reap the whirlwind!

Actually, what the above article understates or omits is the increasing lack of religiosity among many people who do go to church, as witnessed by the fact that much of what is preached and believed by those who participate in religious institutions sounds incredible to most thinking and sensitive people. And it sounds incredible because it is incredible!

A basic fundamental of Christianity's view of God is that of "grace," or God's unmerited favor toward God's creation! Indeed, that grace, manifested by unconditional love, is what all Christians are enjoined by God and by the Bible to do!

Christians are to be agents of God's grace in this world!

Yet, we see very little of that love toward others among professing Christians, especially the showing of unconditional love toward Gay people! And that is one of the reasons I've long maintained that Gay people are God's gift to society and, most particularly, to the Church!

Gay people enable, and make patently clear, the separation of the wheat from the weeds within Christ's Church!

By Gay people being victimized and oppressed "in the name of God," the contradiction between the grace of God and the hatefulness of many of those who claim to represent God, shows forth to all who have eyes to see the absence of God within most of the institutional Church.

And although Gay people are the recipients of the hatred that often manifests itself in sanctimonious and unctuous intonations of a rhetoric of "love" by assorted clergy and professing Christians, institutions of "religion" are commensurately suffering the loss of members due to such transparent phoniness, and every Christian should be thankful for that.

And, most importantly, it is God Who suffers the most from such homophobia, and every single Christian knows that fact to be true!

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