Category Archives: Christians and homosexuality

Our touchy Loving Father is pissed off (again)

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DoctorIn 1665, the great plague overtook London and killed about a sixth of its population. The church and other authorities believed the plague was a punishment from God for the sins of those who lived in the city.

Such a view is understandable among people who lived in a pre-scientific era (just) and had no other way of explaining natural phenomena other than from a religious perspective. Their ignorance is perhaps forgiveable.

Speed forward to 2014 and the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Liberia and other parts of Africa. Ebola causes an incurable disease with a 90% fatality rate. And guess what? Those of arrested development, whose thinking is still stuck in the seventeenth century, attribute it to God. More than that, they predict a plague on a scale next to which the 1665 plague looks like little more than a minor skin irritation. And all because of the sins of other people (naturally). According to Liberian church leaders:

God is angry with Liberia. Ebola is a plague. Liberians have to pray and seek God’s forgiveness over the corruption and immoral acts (such as homosexualism, etc.) that continue to penetrate our society. As Christians, we must repent and seek God’s forgiveness.

The usual suspects – atheists, secularists, those pesky homosexuals, pornography, abortionists and women who have abortions – are bringing the judgement of God to Africa, and far more importantly, according to American evangelical leaders, to America itself. There’s an even a lunatic fringe there who welcome it:

Everybody who stands up and embraces sodomy, BE THOU CURSED WITH EBOLA! Cursed be ye for embracing this!’

rants Harlem Pastor James Manning.

As ever God’s judgement, if that’s what we’re dealing with, will be indiscriminate. It will strike down the weak, the elderly, the vulnerable, and, yes, Christian missionaries (the two American medics who have contracted the disease are just that.) Because God’s like that; when he’s in his Hulk-smash mode, he doesn’t care who gets in his way.

There is a cure though. Just as the scientifically illiterate in 1665 thought prayer would spare them from the plague, the way to survive the coming Ebola pandemic is, according to Pastor Rick Wiles, to be covered in the blood of Jesus:

Now this Ebola epidemic could become a global pandemic and that’s another name for plague. It may be the great attitude adjustment that I believe is coming. Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography, and abortion…
If Ebola becomes a global plague, you better make sure the blood of Jesus is upon you. You better make sure you been marked by the angels so that you are protected by God. If not, you may be a candidate to meet the Grim Reaper.

Yes, only true believers who have the blood of a long dead Jewish preacher ‘upon’ them, and angels hovering over their heads, will survive the coming plague (so those Christian missionaries are safe after all – they needn’t bother with the medical care they’re currently receiving back in the States).

This isn’t even seventeenth century thinking; it’s straight from the bronze age.

Will there be a world-wide Ebola plague? It seems unlikely, but who knows; life is more precarious than we sometimes like to admit. If there is, it won’t be because a vengeful, pissed-off God is inflicting it on us… because there’s no such entity. Nor is there a nice, loving, daddy God either – but then he doesn’t figure in this particular scenario anyway.

In spite of what the Bible promises (James 5.14-15), there’s no supernatural protection from Ebola, nor from any other disease. The poor souls who died of the plague in seventeenth century England found that out the hard way. Praying to God and sloshing about in the blood of Jesus, metaphorically or otherwise, protects no-one.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

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PersecuteThe Reverend Andrew White, vicar of the Anglican church in Baghdad, was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning about the persecution of Christians in Iraq. Undoubtedly, appalling things are being done to these people – beheadings, torture, theft of their possessions – just because of what they believe. The Sunni Muslim militia doing the persecuting are routinely referred to in the UK media as ‘Islamists’ or ‘extremists’, in a vain PC attempt to distinguish and distance them from other of Mohammed’s followers. Whatever we call them though, men, women and children who follow a different long-dead prophet are suffering at their hands.

It is a sad fact that whichever religious group holds the reins of power, it persecutes those who hold different beliefs. History is replete with examples and because Christianity has, for most of the last 2000 years, held the whip hand, it is Christians – the church – that has invariably meted out the persecution. And still does.

There are Christians today who, in God’s name, think that atheists, women and homosexuals should be supressed, denied their rights, deported and even imprisoned. In the West, God’s gentle people (‘Christianists’? ‘Extremists’?) tend not to get their way, but in countries where Christianity still holds sway, they do. Christians persecute minorities, in Uganda, Nigeria, the Gambia, Cameroon and elsewhere, as they themselves are persecuted in predominantly Muslim countries. It’s all so terribly human, as they eagerly jettison the command to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated in favour of a ‘holiness’ that drives them to deprive their victims of life and liberty. Christians have been and are no better than the fanatics who turn on them when the boot is on the other foot.

Perhaps they don’t go in for beheadings quite so much these days, though there are still Christians who advocate stoning as a preferred method of purging society of sinners. Others take it upon themselves to campaign against the human rights of those they’ve taken a dislike to. Recently, the Family Foundation of Virginia announced a forty day fast that it thinks will impress God enough he’ll destroy same-sex marriage in the States. It’s a fast with a difference though – those taking part can eat during it: ‘We are asking the entire Body of Christ to join us for this fast,’ the group says. ‘Giving up physical food isn’t necessary – but feeding on the spiritual food provided is vital.’

I don’t know about you, but I always understood that fasting meant doing without food. A fast isn’t a fast otherwise.

This laughable nonsense beautifully encapsulates religious belief; take on the outer aspects of a faith, including its language and its rituals, and reinterpret them in whatever way suits you. That way, showing the love the saviour commands means treating others with contempt; fasting to get God to do what you want really means filling your belly; following Jesus means ignoring most of what he said and doing what you like.

It’s all so empty, so human, so meaningless – so very hypocritical. If only it weren’t quite so dangerous for those on the outside.

The Most Important Words In The Bible

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EternalLife1Some parts of the Bible are more important than others. A few verses have a prominence far greater than all the other parts of God’s Word™ and are far more authoritative. To obey these few verses alone guarantees one’s status as a true, born-again Christian.

I can announce that today I will be revealing which the verses are that matter more than all the rest.

There are only about three of them, one in the Old Testament, and two in the New. It’s possible there are a couple of others hidden away somewhere but they’re a little more obscure and don’t, as a result, give us the clarity we’ve come to expect from God’s Word™.

More ink has been spilt, or in recent times, more keyboards bashed, to pound out the implications of these verses than almost any others in the Good Book. Check out any Christian blog, any church web-site and the chances are you will find multiple postings and even entire sections dedicated to these three special verses. You could start looking here or here or here or here… There are sermons about them too and even protests and counter-protests, so important are they.

So, you might be wondering, are these the verses that tell us to love our neighbour as ourselves? Are they the ones that say we should turn the other cheek? To attend to the log in our own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else’s?

No, it’s none of these. In fact, The Most Important Words In The Bible are not ones uttered by Jesus who failed, inexplicably, to recognise their importance. Maybe they’re the words of St Paul then, about love being the most important thing or how to gain eternal life? No, it’s not those either. Only modern Christians have been able to recognise fully the significance of The Most Important Words.

And they are – fanfare from the Heavenly Host, please –

Leviticus 18.22 (duplicated in Leviticus 20.13):
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.

Romans 1.26-27
…God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

1 Corinthians 6.9-10 (plagiarised in 1 Timothy 1.9-10)
Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

So now you know. The Most Important Words In The Bible are these, the verses condemning gay people. These are what Christians prioritise, write about and rant about more than any others. Not ‘forgive others if you want to be forgiven’, not ‘don’t judge’, not ‘give to all who ask’… but the ‘sin’ of homosexuality.

It’s irrelevant, apparently, that Jesus himself has nothing to say about same-sex relationships; irrelevant that, even in the verses where he touches on homosexuality, Paul lists a whole load of other ‘sins’ that Christians themselves are known to indulge in from time to time. No. The Bible is not, you see, about salvation, not about witnessing to non-believers – it’s about homosexuality and what a dreadful thing it is. Today’s Christians, having isolated these few verses, know this and so have their priorities straight.

Never mind that the Bible isn’t really God’s Word (see my previous two posts); never mind it has other things to say besides a few mentions of homosexuality; never mind that it demands a great deal of Christians themselves, which, naturally, they ignore – today’s believers know what Christianity is really about.EternalLife2

Why would someone choose to be like this?

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KissJesus and friend enjoy a quiet moment of intimacy.

Over at Barbwire, a particularly prickly Christian web-site about guns and how the world is going to hell in a handcart and how Christians are persecuted – persecuted, I tell you! – just because, out of love, they trash homosexuals, they’ve been discussing gay Christians. In a totally fair and balanced way, they’ve concluded you can’t be both because of something or other the Bible says.

What I don’t understand about gay Christians is how anyone would choose – and it is a choice when there’s no evidence they’re born that way – to be something as destructive, unhealthy, degenerate, unproductive and downright icky, as a Christian.

 

 

 

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 25: Unbelievers are going to Hell!

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Spoiler alert: No, they’re not.

 

HellIt’s always nice when the local fellowship keeps in touch.

There’s good news and bad news. First, the good news: Hell doesn’t exist. You can’t go to a place that doesn’t exist.

 

Next, the bad news; you’re not going to survive your death. Sorry to break it to you like this, but there it is: no-one survives death. Once the physical, chemical and electrical processes in your brain cease then so do you, because that’s what you’re made of. That self you have a sense of – your soul if you want to call it that – is entirely dependent on those electro-chemical processes. It doesn’t exist independently from them. You cease to be once the brain dies and begins to deteriorate*. Everyone who has ever lived and died, including true believers down the ages – from Jesus, Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to Augustine, Bede, Wilberforce and C. S. Lewis – have all ceased to be, dissipated and obliterated forever, along with their physical brains and bodies.

 

And why, dear Christian, would you want to survive death? What makes you think that the bundle of petty concerns, loves and hates, neuroses, reactions and habits that you call ‘you’, merit long-term survival? Because that odd little collection of impulses is what you’re talking about when you say you are going to live forever. You may regard yourself as changed into some sort of reflection of Christ, but it’s your essential self that you desperately, and arrogantly, hope will enjoy eternal life. It won’t – and why should it?

 

So, there’s no you to survive and no Hell, or Heaven, for you to go to. The Bible doesn’t offer Heaven – see my previous posts here and here – but it does talk about Hell. It’s the place the Unrighteous go when the Righteous™ take over the earth (albeit it in the first century). According to Jesus in Mark 7.20-23, the Unrighteous are people like murderers, thieves and the proud, while Paul includes other ‘undesirables’ like homosexuals (1 Corinthians 6.9). This isn’t nearly enough for today’s Christians though**. They want everyone except themselves to be sent to Hell. So if you’re not ‘saved’ according to their magic formula, then you’re certain to go there. Never mind if you’re not a murderer or proud or gay. That’s where the God of Love is going to send you, to be tormented forever.

 

And where is Hell? Jesus seems to think it’s in the heart of the Earth (Matthew 12.40) and invariably those threatened with Hell go ‘down’ to it. The wingnut who wrote Revelation also implies it’s in the Earth (9.2). You’d think, that being the case, we would have found it by now. But we haven’t because, of course, it doesn’t exist. And you’re not going. And there won’t be a ‘you’ to go in any case.

 

So don’t waste any time worrying about it or letting Christians persuade you Hell is a real place. Live your one and only life in the here and now as best you can. Enjoy it. It’s not a rehearsal for a better place, and certainly not for a far worse one.

 

Notes:

* In The Lazarus Effect, Dr Sam Parnia relates instances of people being revived up to an hour after death, but only in specific circumstances, when the brain remains undamaged. Any longer than an hour and it’s not possible. Such revivals are extreme forms of the rebooting your brain does every morning after sleep; the brain itself and all its neuro-connections must still be capable of functioning for you to be you again after sleep or even apparent death.

 

** Yes, I acknowledge some Christians don’t accept Hell. American pastor, Rob Bell, suggests in Love Wins that Hell doesn’t make ‘a very good story’, and that God will save everybody. All Hell was let loose in the resulting backlash from true, Bible-believing Christians; a response that was extreme, brutal and frequently sanctimonious. How dare Bell contradict God’s Word, Holy Scripture? Surely he deserves to go to Hell for that.

 

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 24: We stand for biblical truth!

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Judge

Christian commentator Tony Perkins demands that Christians defend ‘biblical truth without compromise.’ What he really means – because he only ever uses it in this specific context – is that Christians should use the bible to condemn gay people.

He’s not so hot on standing up for the ‘biblical truths’ that say you should turn the other cheek. Or go the extra mile. Or that you should sell all you have and give the proceeds to the poor. No sir. Those are biblical truths that demand something of Christians themselves so of course they feel perfectly at liberty to disregard them.

And what about ‘judge not that you be not judged’? Christians will tell you that this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t judge others, just that they should do it according to those same ‘biblical truths’.

This is not what Jesus is saying here though. He clearly means ‘do not judge others unless you’re prepared to be judged yourself’, which, we can only conclude, Christians are happy to have happen to them. They judge others and in so doing open themselves up to judgement; Jesus is very fond of this kind of yin and yang, measure-for-measure arrangement:

Judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you will get (Matthew 7.1-2).

It could also be the case that Jesus is referring here to God’s ultimate judgement as well, in which case those condemnatory Christians who believe that being ‘saved’ allows them to escape the final judgement are in for quite a shock. Still, they can always use the ‘I was only defending biblical truths’ excuse.

Stephen Green is Gay

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Green2

Stephen always got his inspiration from the Lord…

Stephen Green of Christian Voice is unhappy. Gay Marriage, he insists, is a Very Bad Thing.

Green has had a lot to say about gay relationships and gay sex over the last few years. In fact, he’s obsessed with the subject. His latest ejaculation, called ‘Gay Marriage is a Farce’, helpfully informs us:

‘Gay’ relationships (are) built on perversion.

Homosexual desires are described as vile affections in the Bible.

‘Gay marriage’ is a massive step towards the social economy of Sodom.

We don’t say homosexuals are perverts because of what they are, but because of what they do.

Homosexual activity… is either dirty or abusive or both.

Homosexuals, frustrated by their inability to engage in true sexual intercourse, have to resort to activities which are abusive or dirty.

Homosexual acts fall a long way short of the God-ordained conjugal act.

Personally, I now use the word gay mostly in its modern sense of substandard (as in, ‘that coat’s gay’).

Never self-identify as ‘gay’. Never let someone else identify you as ‘gay’.

Green is himself ‘gay’. In the ‘modern sense’, of course. He preaches that marriage is between one man and one woman for life, yet is divorced and now with his second wife-for-life. He trashes charities that help young LGBT people and makes unwarranted personal attacks on gay celebrities, recently suggesting that Stephen Fry has a ‘porcine ancestor… not that we do evolution here’ and adding derisory inverted commas around the ‘Sir’ in Ian McKellen’s name. How big and clever is that?

Even though Jesus has more to say about poverty and homelessness than homosexuality (about which he says precisely nothing), Green never mentions them. He consistently avoids talking about his saviour’s commands to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile and avoid judging others. These, it would seem, don’t matter.

While he occasionally rants about evolution and complains Christians are persecuted, it is to homosexuality he constantly returns. Always with inverted commas around ‘gay’, to ward off the voodoo.

But Green is insecure in his beliefs and faith; he rarely publishes comments that dissent from his ‘biblical’ position and when he does, responds to those who make them with an uncharitable smugness that borders on abuse. There is no sense of any Christian charity in either his comments or on his site as a whole.

Worst of all, he washes his hands, Pontius Pilate like, of the harm his negative, destructive comments cause LGBT people. The real bullies, he says, are not Christians with poisonous views like his but rather:

homosexual activists who persuade young boys and girls that adolescent same-sex attraction indicates a permanent ‘orientation’ and who go around talking homosexuality up and giving bullies a weapon to use against shy boys and tomboyish girls. People like ‘Sir’ Ian McKellen, Elly Barnes, Jake Dyos and the rest of the low-life at ‘School’s Out’.

So now you know. Stephen Green, who calls ‘gay’ people perverts with ‘vile affections’, whose relationships and love-making are, he says, founded on dirt, disease and abuse, is in no way a bully whose views contribute to any ill-feeling towards gay people.

No, the vilification to be found on Christian Voice is actually Christian love™. The gospel according to Stephen Green: it’s so substandard.

A Story From The Bible…

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Luke 10.29-37 accurately translated from the original Greek

 Jerry&Sam

…And so Jesus told them a story to explain what he meant:

“There was,” he said, “a young man called Jerry Cohen who was making his way across the city late at night when he was set upon by some yobs. They kicked him to the ground, stole his wallet and phone and left him for dead. He lay in the doorway of a shop, blood seeping from the deep cut to the back of his head and pooling into the shadowed corner. With his teeth broken and ribs cracked, Jerry slipped into unconsciousness.

By chance, a group of people from a local church were out that night witnessing to the young people partying in the bars and pubs of the district and for whom, let’s be honest, this was an unwelcome intrusion. Some of these well-meaning church-folk noticed Jerry lying in the doorway as his life ebbed away, but as they couldn’t see all the blood they simply assumed he had passed out from an excess of alcohol. They decided to leave him where he was to sober up. ‘Let’s give him the Good News to read when he does,’ said one, tucking a tract called Salvation through the Redemptive Power of the Cross into his top pocket. 

Minutes later, an evangelist happened to pass Jerry, still curled foetally on the floor, and noticed that the premises next to where he was seemed to be one of dubious repute. Its lights blazed even at this late hour and there were over-sized, suggestive pictures of athletic-looking young men in the windows. He didn’t want to look too closely because he didn’t want the taint of sin to cling to him but it seemed obvious that if the shop was what he thought it was, then the boy next to it could only be a homosexualist, hell bent on foisting his perverted lifestyle on everyone and destroying traditional marriage in the process. And so he walked swiftly on, quietly quoting Romans 1.27 to himself: Men commit shameful acts with other men, and receive in themselves the due penalty for their error. ‘If ever there was a sign that the end times have arrived,’ he thought to himself, ‘it’s the likes of that degenerate individual over there.’ As he crossed the road, he failed to see another young man approaching in the opposite direction.

Sam Harrington wasn’t a homosexualist either – because really there’s no such thing – but he was a homosexual. He’d had been working late and was eager to get home so he too was taking a short cut through the centre of the town. He spotted Jerry in the doorway and before he could even think what he was doing, he had pulled his phone out of his pocket and had dialled the emergency number. While he waited for the ambulance to arrive, he cradled Jerry’s head in his lap, holding closed the gash to stop further blood loss and helping it start to heal. When the ambulance arrived, Sam went with Jerry to the hospital where he sat anxiously in Accident and Emergency for  two hours, waiting to hear how he was. When, finally, a nurse came to tell him that now the young man’s jaw had been wired together and his head stitched there was every chance he would pull through, Sam wept unashamedly.

With the last bus long gone, he began his long walk home. He didn’t have enough money for a cab and he didn’t like ringing his partner in the early hours of the morning to ask for a lift.”

“So tell me,” Jesus said finally, “which of the three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the yobs? Who showed him real love?”

His followers looked around blankly at each other, for surely this was a question that was impossible to answer.    

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 18: We’re the ones being persecuted!

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Persecution

You think Christians don’t say they’re persecuted? Take a look at a recent entry on Christian Voice, where the claim is made that Christianity itself is being ‘criminalised’ in the UK. Visit American Christian blogs where they insist they’re being persecuted. Listen to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, complain ad nauseam that Jesus’ followers today are marginalised and mistreated.

And why do they feel this way? Usually because they don’t like being told they should stop persecuting gay people. It’s their religious right, they tell us, to ‘live according to conscience’ and to bash (if only verbally in this country at least) a maligned minority. And any attempt to stop them from doing so, they say, is an infringement of religious liberty. Hatred of homosexuality has become such an integral part of the Christian faith these days.

Suggest to Christians in the West that they’re not experiencing persecution at all, but only a fair and reasonable attempt to make them treat others as they themselves would be like to be treated (didn’t Jesus say that?) and they respond, as a Christian Voice supporter did the other day, by sending you a link to the site of the Christian Liberty Council. Here’s the proof that Christians are really the victims! Go to the link and what you get is, yes, a list of believers who’ve been cautioned for abusing LGBT people. It’s so unfair! And that’s it, that’s their evidence.

If Christians were prevented from gathering together for worship, imprisoned for their belief in Jesus, stopped from talking about their faith, denied the means of praying together and so on, then perhaps they could reasonably say they were being persecuted. As it is, they’re the ones doing the sniping – and whining when they’re chastised for it.

In fact, their saviour tells them in Matthew 24.9 what to expect when any real persecution or ‘criminalisation’ comes along. They should, he says, whinge about it at length, even if it’s only a very remote possibility.

Oh, no wait, that’s not it; see it as a gift, he tells them, and pray for those doing the persecuting (Mark 10.30 etc). Problem solved! As ever though, they choose to ignore him. They much prefer to hang on to their prejudices and see themselves as the real victims.

Picture shows, clockwise:

Pat Robertson, US TV evangelist, who says gay people want to destroy marriage and the church itself.

Yoweri Museveni, Ugandan president and evangelical Christian who this week approved a bill toughening penalties and punishments for gay people.

George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who complains about how dreadfully Christians are treated in Britain.

Scott Lively, American evangelist currently facing a lawsuit for ‘crimes against humanity’. Influenced the anti-gay laws recently introduced in parts of Africa and, possibly, in Russia.

Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, which officially condemns homosexuality, whatever conciliatory noises Frankie himself appears to make.

Stephen Green, operator of Christian Voice, which insists Christians in the UK are being criminalised for their intolerance.

Caption suggested by an article on the excellent Joe.My.God blog.

What’s this ‘Biblical morality’ we keep hearing about?

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Is it feeding the hungry? Helping the poor? Visiting the sick and the imprisoned? Opposing injustice? Fighting against oppression? Giving away your possessions? Going the extra mile? Turning the other cheek? Respecting others? Loving your neighbour? Loving your enemies?

Or is just about sex? To read Christian web-sites and blogs, you’d think so. Jesus’ followers today are obsessed with it, which is why the God they make in their image is too. Sex that other people might be having, before marriage, during it; sex when it makes babies and when it doesn’t; sex with yourself; sex in the head, on the screen and in different positions; sex with too many partners, with the wrong partners and with partners of the same sex (the worst sin of all, apparently). They write about little else, because you see, what other people do in bed together is of great concern to God. It’s more important to him – or his self-appointed representatives on Earth, anyway – than hunger, oppression, slavery, injustice and genocide combined.

If only we all had sex like the Christian experts say we should (because it’s in the Bible) then we’d all be so much better off; civilisation wouldn’t be slipping into the abyss, God wouldn’t be so upset with us and we wouldn’t all be destined for hell.

End

But morality isn’t just about sex. In fact, it has little to do with who we sleep with and when. Rather, morality is about how we treat others, as Jesus said (Luke 6.31). Of course, how we treat others in a sexual context is important, but it’s no more important than how we treat them in other contexts. That’s because morality is, or should be, all embracing. It’s long past time Christians stopped banging on about it as if it was the only concern of morality. Instead they could start treating those who do sex differently from them as they themselves would like to be treated. That, if there really is such a thing, would be true Biblical morality.