Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Tim Cole <tcole AT adobe.com>]

Title: Re: [percy-l] God's Gender and Ham Sandwiches

> However, I don't think we do much good for anyone, including ourselves, by judging others -- if we're busy taking the mote out of another's eye often we have a log in our own - as someone on the list already said.  We have so many more important things to do for them. (Jesus declared our most important admonishments are to love God first, and our neighbor and ourselves next.) 
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> Hi Karey, thanks for your reply. I differ with you here. Jesus did more than love everyone. He told the woman at the well, for example to ‘go and sin no more.’ He made a bit of a ruckus with the money changers as well. Both the OT and NT are full of examples of followers of God/Jesus judging the behaviors of others (Matt. 7:20) and fleeing or removing its influence. That sort of example/admonition co-exists with the caution about motes and logs. And there’s nothing in Jesus’ summary of the Law to lead us to believe  that we are to embrace the disobedience of others (or ourselves for that matter).
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> To love God and love others unconditionally does not entail that we turn a blind eye to behaviors that the Scripture forbids. It does entail that we love others in spite of their imperfections, because we ourselves need the same charity.
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>  Do you really think the fact that the Pharisees never questioned Jesus about homosexuality is the reason that he never mentioned it? 
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> We don’t know he never mentioned it. We only know it isn’t mentioned in the Gospels, but other issues are. There are a lot of sins on which Jesus didn’t comment in the Gospel record. Jesus’ comments on sexual morality and marriage indicate that his views were consistent (in general) with the Pharisees of his day. He would be considered a very orthodox Jew, and would have condemned homosexuality in the same way the Law does and the other writings of his era.
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>  Are all the things we have recorded about Jesus in direct response to the Pharisees or issues of the day?
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> No. Are you trying to say that if it really was a sin that Jesus would have mentioned it? He doesn’t mention bestiality, child sacrifice or pederasty either. Or insider trading.
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> Jesus’ ministry was primarily to Jews within their culture. The questions he was asked were theological issues of the day. We aren't blessed with Jesus views on every conceivable topic (which is unfortunate). Had homosexuality been something practiced in Jerusalem of his day, as it was in the gentile world, then we might have had a record. But, given the fact that it was rare to nonexistent within Hebraic culture (because of the OT prohibition), it wasn’t something he addressed. Paul on the other hand, whose ministry was to gentiles, did address the issue directly.
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> Better to pay attention to our own behavior than try to change others'....  If we judge them, we put ourselves above them (pride - the greatest sin), and usually we're not paying attention to what we need to do spiritually ourselves.  
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> I don’t follow you here. Paying ‘attention’ to my own behavior implies that I have a standard of right and wrong by which to do that. For Jews and Christians, that standard comes from God via the Bible and the law in our hearts. In order to judge myself, I put God above me. When I see behavior in others that violates God’s law (whether it be pride, theft, adultery, homosexual behavior or whatever), I’m not appealing to my own authority to identify it as such, but to God’s. I’m not putting myself above anyone. I’m putting right and wrong as defined by God above myself and others...the same standard for all. 
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> I don’t see (in your statement or in Scripture) how from an awareness of my imperfection that I lose the ability to identify sin as sin, whether it’s in my life or in anyone else’s.
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> Paul's comments were more culturally determined (the "po-mo-phobes" in the bunch will probably hate that remark) and much of what he said regarding social groups and social arrangements (women, homosexuality, marriage, dressing, etc.) can be read as influenced by his social context.
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> I think you’re painting with a brush that’s way too broad. Romans 1 isn’t a culturally conditioned statement. It’s an elaboration of what the Torah says, adapted to a gentile audience. I don’t see any cultural loopholes there at all.
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> Dante places the sexual sinners in the first or second (I forget which one, but it's early) circle of his Inferno.  That's because the sexual sins (adultery, etc.) are a kind of "missing the mark" of the greatest virtue, love.
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> Well, we may differ here, but I don’t give Dante the same respect and authority that I would Paul or the rest of the Bible. I think that both what the Bible affirms and condemns with regard to marriage, family, love and the significance of the union between man and woman clearly indicates that homosexual unions are serious violations of the divine design and ought to be treated as such. That said, I’d agree 100% that pride is still worse.
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> Tim