I had quite a long post lost to a momentary power outage. It was a “nicer” one and though I didn’t have heart to rewrite it immediately afterwards, I may try to attempt rebuilding it later ( note to self: save frequently).
From blog reading: ran across a quotation which said that “An artist doesn’t necessarily have deeper feelings than other people, but he can express these feelings. -Ned Rorem” I thought about it a bit and concluded that is not really true. Being able to express deep feeling is not exclusive to artists or artistic temperments and not all art is expressing deep feeling.
Sometimes art is interpreting things for us, sometimes it is a new way of looking at something very familiar to us, but inflected with the artists view. As well as sometimes expressions of the unexplored.
Trying to make profound and concise statements about art is akin to trying to do that about “beauty”. I attempted that, once. I found it extremely difficult and gave up-although it did lead me into someinteresting dialog with someone online one time. We discussed topics like “male beauty vs. female beauty” and racial stereotypes and ideals of beauty and how they change in reference to that. No conclusions, but enjoyable discourse.
from reading in another blog:On a more prosaic level – always the level in which truth reveals itself … was a thought that caused me to pause. I don’t know if it is an accurate statement or not, or even if it is partially true. Certainly the prosaic makes it easier for us to grasp, but doesn’t the truth reveal itself on sublime levels as well or perhaps better?
I tend to think that, now that I have positioned the thoughts in words.
a post I decided against: Some “god-blogs” are talking about SpongeBob, the cultural ramifications , and taking sides pro and con. I left a comment somewhere and was angry enough about where it took one blogger in doctrine ( yes, if you can imagine that) that I thought about making a post… but the anger added to the fact that I think it is of the utmost idiocy to make a cartoon character the center of controversy that I decided against it. I may make a stand-alone post sometime on the error of thinking that Jesus calls Christians to associate with the sexually immoral and elaborating on the question I am itching to put toward some of the more foolish ideas such as “God is tolerant of the immoral” and whether they want to be “tolerated”? The question that itches where I have not yet scratched is this: If a Homosexual comes into your church, do you really think that person is satisfied with tolerance? Would you be?
You see, I think when a person comes to church they come to be loved.
Ha. I started. Well, I have to quit, because the topic needs more careful proceeding than this…. I thought anger would tend to do it injustice. And some things in the church are so ill thought out when volleyed out there that they beg, fairly beg, for someone to rip it …but you know the admonition against that, and anyway, blogging is not always about rants.
But here’s this: is love about tolerance? What is tolerance in the modern sense? Isn’t it a live and let die proposition? And if it were… would that be love as defined in Christ’s teaching?
enough for now….. those are the kind of things I thought about today-
Okay, I won’t unwind on this now if you’re not going to, if only to say this: I don’t think anyone I know has ever confused tolerance for love, at least not in my little world. I’ve found over the years through the various phases and stages of my healing from homosexuality that Christians were quite willing to “love” me provided I didn’t get too close to them or their children. And I was “tolerated” so long as I looked and sounded and acted the way Christians thought I should look and sound and act if I was going to claim the name of Jesus.
Now here’s what I ultimately found out to be true: Jesus loved me way too much to leave me the mess that he found me. But my homosexuality was not the biggest mess in my life, just the most, shall we say, visual. Jesus wanted the wounds in my heart that drove my homosexuality, that provided me with value and security and identity — the very things I had been seeking in other men that he wanted to fulfill in me all along.
That was never a message I got from the church. What I got from the church was “You’re not dancing fast enough. Faster! Faster!” And because the church refused to love, it will now be forced to tolerate. Is that ironic, or what?
I highly value your opinions and thoughts. I don’t think God is asking for ‘tolerance’ for things. The Message that He has given is that we be hot or cold, for or against. I think the Church is asked something more risky and costly and what offers an eternal return: Are you willing to love that soul to the covenant extent of love?
What we have to ask : What are the terms?
And then we have to comprehend whether we already entered into those terms with God.
I got the same message[“faster”] as you from the Churches I attended. sympathies all around:)
Perhaps we can find the proper message in all this…
Hi Ilona,
I’m having a bit of a difficult time understanding where you’re going with this one.
“If a Homosexual comes into your church…”
Is it a homosexual who has recently become a Christian? Is it a homosexual who considers homosexuality and Christianity compatible? Is it a homosexual simply interested in what Christianity is about? Is it a homosexual intent on forcing the acceptance of same-sex marriage? etc., etc.
“…when a person comes to church they come to be loved.”
There are many ways to “love” a person in the Christian sense. Do you mean feeding them if they are hungry? Worshipping with them? Discipling them? Exhorting them? Accepting them? How? Accepting their behavior? Acknowledging that their behavior, as clarified by “a homosexual comes into your church,” is a sin? (albeit no different from “sin” in the general sense, but certainly different in its physicality than the sin of an idle thought) Trusting them? etc., etc.
While I agree that we in the Church have a long way to go in terms of learning how to express agape love to others, I think that the general idea that we need to “love” the sinner unintentionally couches itself within the aspect of the politically correct notion of “tolerance.”
After the prostitute washed Jesus’ feet (an outward act of repentance) he told her to go and sin no more.
Hi Rusty;)
I hoped to clarify in the post, ‘un-closeting’. when I say a person comes to a church to be loved, I mean it in the most general sense. That is why they arrive there… they want to see if the message of love applies to them, they come with that hope.
The reason you have a volley of questions is because you know that there are ‘terms’ to love. I think we have to look at our use of the “unconditional” word. We need to define what we mean scripturally by that.
When I say “homosexual ” I mean anyone with that history-anyone who can possibly be branded that way . I use the word ‘branded’ intentionally.
I also think that Christians need to get clear on what God requires of them. I think I need to write a little more on that.
My view is that the PC “tolerance” is antithetical to the Christian “love”.