Stones Cry Out

Has he not read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?

Probably not... I bet he doesn't even think in those terms. Probably just twists the scriptures that explicitly mention homosexuality, and ignores the entire set of scriptures that construct the "male - female" relationship...

What do you expect him to do... he now has a position of celebrity and exposure to the media and now he is spouting his filth.

"And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many."

"By their fruits you shall know them"

What do you expect him to do... he now has a position of celebrity and exposure to the media and now he is spouting his filth.

"And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many."

"By their fruits you shall know them"

What do you expect him to do... he now has a position of celebrity and exposure to the media and now he is spouting his filth.

"And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many."

"By their fruits you shall know them."

I consider Gene (I refuse to endow him with a title) a goiter and not a cancer. A cancer is potentially fatal. A goiter is a growth that is not life-threatening, merely ugly to look at and a nuisance to live with. The condition can be treated with a combination of diet and surgery.

Heh. Okay, a goiter it is, then! :-)

He wasn't implying Jesus was gay. Listen to the audio and it'll be more clear.

He certainly is attacking the normativity of the nuclear family.

After listening again to the audio (quicktime file), he's not even attacking the nuclear family - he's saying that the position that it's the "be-all-end-all" doesn't find too much support in the Gospels, yet the things that do find lots of support are downplayed.

That wasn't very clear: some things are clearly sinful (greed), yet many christians focus much more on things (family values) that don't have as much textual support. There's something strange about that.

This leads me to be believe that the cancer on the church might be disingenuous sensationalism.

Sorry, here's the link.

jpe...

I thought Robinson's remarks I quoted in my blog were interesting in that they were in the context of a response to a question from the audience. That question was along the lines of 'how the acceptance of homosexuality could be squared with the scriptural emphasis on redemption for sins.' It is in that context I take exception to virtually everything Robinson has to say to the Christian community short of 'I'm a sinner in open rebellion to Christ and am serving out of my own selfish desire.'

He says "I believe in sin... what I do have a problem with is when people, all too easily I think, are very quick to point out my sin and not too terribly quick to own up to their own." He then goes on to mention Jesus spent much of his time talking about greed, and complains that the church doesn't condemn greed. He then claims the sin of Sodom wasn't homosexuality, and follows that up with the passage quoted above.

It doesn't sound like he's saying Jesus was gay (though he's definitely trying to hint at the possibility, I think trying to get under people's skin)... he seems more interested in saying Jesus wasn't "mainstream", and that people's condemnation of homosexuality is because it's not "mainstream". He's trying to say homosexuals are like Jesus -- shunned by the religious, but not really doing anything wrong.

As Greg said, this is the wrong answer. Homosexual behavior IS sin, plain and simple. There is no getting around that. Any answer from him other than "I am living in open rebellion to Christ" is the wrong answer.

Gene Robinson seems in many ways the best--and worst--example of some key issues attending the vice of homosexuality. As a man who through some sense of duty, devotion, and self-discipline married and produced children, he shows that same-sex inclinations need not deprive a person of natural and normal participation in God's created order. When however he became dissatisfied with family life, entertained adulterous thoughts, and let an unholy passion for other men gain mastery, he set out on a road of sexual and personal vice that ruined his marriage, degraded himself, his ministry and witness, and now profoundly threatens to rend the church that would embrace, justify, and even extol his sin and lack of repentance. Thus does the case of Gene Robinson well illustrate the ruinous personal and communal consequences of pursuing and sanctioning the "gay lifestyle." Also evident are the worst consequences of the disordered, delusive, and deeply corrupt thinking that comes from the willingness to join together what God has not joined, setting thereby the self over God's own order and commandments. Sadly, and not a little ironically, Gene Robinson bears personal witness to the pleonexia, or willful striving for more, that St. Paul calls idolatrous, and which from the first has been the beginning of all mortal sin.