Monday, January 14, 2013

Truth takes another hit

Last week, the guitarist for Christian fill-in-the-blank-core band (loud noisy stuff for the uninitiated :-) ) put up some interesting tweets about Christianity, homosexuality, and acceptance. Here's the Alternative Press article on the events, with the tweets.  Of course, as with any speech about homosexuality that doesn't just absolutely accept it as normal behavior and demand all adhere to that opinion, there was much outcry and internet flaming declaring the man an evil hater who should be wiped from the earth.  The decision from the band and Mike Reynolds was that he would leave the band, reporting that he is moving on to Bible college and possibly mission work in the Middle East (where, by the way, his view on homosexuality would often be considered nowhere near extreme enough, check the listed nations, legal status and possible punishments in the middle of this article from the Economist)
This stirs up many thoughts.  The first is to try really hard not to judge For Today or Reynolds for their decision.  Hopefully there was much prayer and discussion that went into it, not just trying to hide on his part and media damage control on the band's.  The second is that, reading the statements, there's nothing hateful there.  He is being honest about a Biblical attitude towards a sin, calling a spade a spade.  He doesn't elevate it as a worse sin than others, he doesn't call for gays to be strung up from the streetlights, he simply calls out the various fractions of society and of the church that are not being honest.  Let's tweek some words here.  What if he said "there's no such thing as an adulterous Christian" or "there's no such thing as a mass murderer Christian" (we're talking actively involved and trying to justify their actions, not someone who has seen the light and asked forgiveness).  Would there be any outcry from within the church, or from without?  Not likely. 
Just because something is socially accepted does not make it God accepted.  No matter what the excuses we come up with (it's genetic, it's natural, we can play with the words and interpretations from the Bible to say it's not a sin, ect) we have to stand up and call out sin as sin.  We still love the sinners, because they are in the same state we were before we got saved, and in the same state we occasionally slip into when we fall off our own spiritual wagons, but we have to love them enough to be honest with them and ourselves.  It's just amazing how the other side absolutely refuses to engage in any actual debate on the status of homosexuality as a sin, instead instantly demonizing anyone who dares speak out against their sacred cows.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

I'm Back (and it's anybody's guess as to for how long) :-D

New year, time for the traditional "getting back to writing" post.  There are always lots of excuses for not doing stuff.  A long, nasty election season, the nasty, long effects of that election, the evidence that low information voters are making low information decisions and higher information voters are giving up, the horror of the Colorado theater shooting and the Newtown school shooting, and horror of the political ghouls leaping on the carcasses to throw in the fires of  their machine before the bodies were even cold.  The idea that taxing rich people more will fix our nations fiscal issues despite the fact that seizing the entire assets of the richest people in the US would only run the government for less than two weeks, and the fact that the aforementioned low information voters don't know enough basic math or economics to see through this distraction.
Fortunately, my little corner of the world has been going pretty well through all of this, and plots and plans are in the works to keep things that way, even make them better in many ways.  I know there are lots of people out there who are still doing well in the face of the big picture issues.  The headache is balancing paying attention to the bad, letting people know it's out there, and offering solutions with paying attention to the good, letting people know that it's out there too, and offering ways to spread that good around.
So that's the objective here for the new year.  Gripe about the greatest nation in the world going down the toilet at the hands of ignorant ideologues who have been building a Taj Mahal on a foundation of quicksand while talking about the folks who are trying to build something even bigger, even more beautiful on the rock solid foundations we started on, along with reminders that even when things look horrible from our perspective, God is always running everything, and His plans are working on a big picture we can't even imagine, a picture that makes our momentary discomforts like dust in the wind.  So happy new year y'all, here's to seeing a lot more from here.