Tag: Christianity

The Rainbow Nazis attack conscience

And, incidentally, civilization. That certainly didn’t take long:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky has filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Rowan County couples, two same-gender couples and two opposite-gender couples, denied marriage licenses by County Clerk Kim Davis, a press release from the ACLU confirms.

Davis is standing firm on her decision to stop issuing marriage licenses, despite dozens of protesters who gathered outside the courthouse.

“My conscience will not allow me to issue a license for a same sex couple,” says Kim Davis, “because I know that God ordained marriage from the very foundation of this world to be between a man and a woman.”

In explaining the ACLU’s decision to file suit on the couples’ behalf, ACLU of Kentucky Cooperating Attorney Laura Landenwich stated, “Ms. Davis has the absolute right to believe whatever she wants about God, faith, and religion, but as a government official who swore an oath to uphold the law, she cannot pick and choose who she is going to serve, or which duties her office will perform based on her religious beliefs.”

The Rainbow Nazis really appear to be hell-bent on seeing the establishment of a post-democratic American theocracy. Because that’s what is most likely going to come out of this Sodom and Gomorrahstan totalitarianism in the end. They’re like children who can’t resist pushing until they discover where the limits are.

Within a year, they’ll be attacking priests and pastors too.

It appears that it won’t be all that much longer before everyone discovers what happens when enough people stop consenting to the consensual fiction known as “the law”.

This is what happens

When you put women in the pulpit  It doesn’t surprise me in the least. Notice how wide the approval is; the deputies were just itching to have an excuse to turn canon into parody.

The Episcopal Church officially joined Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ this week in becoming the third mainline denomination to embrace gay marriage rites — a move that comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions.

The new liturgy extending marriage to gays and lesbians was widely approved with a vote of 184-23 by the Episcopal Church USA’s House of Deputies during the denomination’s 78th General Convention; it will become available for use on November 29, Deseret News reported.

In a separate vote of 173 to 27, the institution of marriage was changed from being comprised exclusively by a man and a woman to being between two persons more generally, with the line “both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman” being axed from the canon.

Once the women start preaching, it’s only a matter of time before Jesus Christ himself is axed from the canon. Refuse to accept the authority of God’s Word in one thing, you may as well refuse to accept them all, because sooner or later, that’s where you’re headed.

The headline is wrong, however. The Episcopal Church ceased to be a Christian church some years ago.

They are the SAME war

David Brooks manages to completely miss the point in the process of recommending that conservatives simply wave a white flag in the cultural war and dedicate themselves to performing good works deemed socially acceptable:

Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.

Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many communities have suffered a loss of social capital. Many young people grow up in a sexual and social environment rendered barbaric because there are no common norms. Many adults hunger for meaning and goodness, but lack a spiritual vocabulary to think things through.

Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely.

The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

This culture war is more Albert Schweitzer and Dorothy Day than Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham; more Salvation Army than Moral Majority. It’s doing purposefully in public what social conservatives already do in private.

I don’t expect social conservatives to change their positions on sex, and of course fights about the definition of marriage are meant as efforts to reweave society. But the sexual revolution will not be undone anytime soon. The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace.

As Jartstar commented, Brooks wants Christians to clean up the social wreckage being caused by people who reject Christianity, but neither prevent them from causing more damage nor even teach them how to stop harming themselves and others.

Now, granted, there is a certain ironic propriety to telling people who already well accustomed to losing battles to engage in another equally hopeless one. But the fact is that conservatives didn’t have to lose those battles, they simply chose not to fight them. We could end the gay marriage battle by the end of the week if we wanted; ISIS has demonstrated that it requires little more than rooftops and gravity. That’s simply not how we prefer to operate.

Regardless, we have options that range from winning the cultural war through extreme barbarism on the one side to abject surrender on the other. And that is why everyone, even our short-sighted opponents, should hope that the civilized cultural warriors win, because if they don’t, history strongly suggests that the uncivilized cultural warriors will. The pendulum always swings back, and the further it swings one way, the harder it swings back on its return.

David Brooks fails to understand that the problems he laments can only be fixed by rejecting the ruling left-liberalism he supports and embracing a conservative philosophical outlook. But in any case, the answer is simple: no.

Rod Dreher’s response is more genteel, as you might expect, but similar:

 I don’t believe my friend David understands the inseparable connection between Christian sexual morality and the familial and social instability David rightly decries. Family and social breakdown is inextricably linked to the abandonment of Christian sexual ideals — specifically, the idea that sexual passion should be limited to expression within the bounds of marriage. Chastity — which is not “no sex,” but rather the right ordering of the God-given sexual instinct — is a Christian virtue. It is not the most important Christian virtue, but it is not one that can be discarded, either.

The Village of Light

We were at a baptism today, conducted early in the morning at a nearby lake. It was expected to be a fairly private affair, with only a few friends and family present, but about a dozen strangers were there, including one very old man styling in a three-piece suit and fedora with a cane and a waist-fob on his vest.

Afterwards, the old man commented, “magnificent, magnificent.” And when I expressed my surprise at the presence of him and the others from the community who didn’t know the individual being baptized, he gestured around us to indicate everyone present. “Ah, but we are the Village of Light,” he said.

We will survive this present darkness. We know how the story ends.

“We shall obey God rather than man”

The Lutheran Missouri Synod responds to the Supreme Court’s further rejection of representative democracy yesterday:

A one-person majority of the U.S. Supreme Court got it wrong – again. Some 40 years ago, a similarly activist court legalized the killing of children in the womb. That decision has to date left a wake of some 55 million Americans dead. Today, the Court has imposed same-sex marriage upon the whole nation in a similar fashion. Five justices cannot determine natural or divine law. Now shall come the time of testing for Christians faithful to the Scriptures and the divine institution of marriage (Matthew 19:3–6), and indeed, a time of testing much more intense than what followed Roe v. Wade.

Like Roe v. Wade, this decision will be followed by a rash of lawsuits. Through coercive litigation, governments and popular culture continue to make the central post-modern value of sexual freedom override “the free exercise of religion” enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

The ramifications of this decision are seismic. Proponents will seek to drive Christians and Christian institutions out of education at all levels; they will press laws to force faithful Christian institutions and individuals to violate consciences in work practices and myriad other ways. We will have much more to say about this.

During some of the darkest days of Germany, a faithful Lutheran presciently described how governments lose their claim to legitimate authority according to Romans 13…. “We shall obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29). Christians will now begin to learn what it means to be in a state of solemn conscientious objection against the state.

One almost has to laugh at the disingenuous way in which the rainbow lobby is frantically claiming the matter to be settled. Nothing could be further from the truth. As the Lutheran pastor observed, the issue is now as settled as abortion in the USA, which means it will now become a much bigger and more divisive political issue than before.

The most significant problem with the decision has nothing to do with the actual issue at hand, but the way in which it rendered hundreds of millions of votes cast over decades to be totally irrelevant. The whole point of voting on divisive political matters like this is to avoid politics by other means. But when voting is no longer a permissible option, what else does that leave?

Nor was conscientious objection the only response to the decision, as ISIS took a decidedly different approach to the #LoveWins hashtag. “#Love”, such as it is, already has a bodycount.

 That’s “diversity”? It sure all looks the same to me.

Bow not before Caesar

Unlike the Episcopalians and Anglicans, the Southern Baptists are standing strong against government-imposed abomination and the legal parody of marriage:

Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas, said American Christians should be prepared for massive fallout if the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex unions.

“We want to stay in the system,” Graham told me in a telephone interview. “We want to work in the system. We want to support our government. We want to obey its laws.”

But.

“But there’s a coming a day, I believe, that many Christians personally and churches corporately will need to practice civil disobedience on this issue.”

The foundation for such a possibility was laid Wednesday morning in Columbus, Ohio where the current and former presidents of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination sent a strong message to the country. 

“We strongly encourage all Southern Baptist pastors, leaders, educators and churches to openly reject any mandated legal definition of marriage and to use their influence to affirm God’s design for life and relationships,” the statement declared.

While affirming their love for all people – regardless of sexual orientation, the former Southern Baptist presidents said they “cannot and will not affirm the moral acceptability of homosexual behavior or any behavior that deviates from God’s design for marriage.”

“Our first duty is to love and obey God, not man,” they emphatically stated.

It has become abundantly clear that the U.S. federal government is increasingly opposed to the U.S. Constitution, the Bible, and Jesus Christ. And like every other government that has been foolish enough to take on the Body of Christ throughout history, it will demand obedience in vain.

Of course the lukewarm and the nominal believers will fall in line and fall away, that is what they always do. But as the pressure mounts, the faith of the faithful will grow harder and stronger, until their oppressors break upon it like a pane of glass striking a diamond.

SC church shootings

Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen says the FBI will be involved in
the investigation of a shooting at a historic black church that killed
nine and is being called a hate crime.

Mullen said the FBI would aid the investigation while speaking at a
news conference that was also attended by FBI Special Agent in Charge
David A. Thomas.House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford says that among those killed at
Emanuel AME Church was the church’s pastor, state Sen. Clementa
Pinckney.

Authorities are still searching for the shooter, who’s described as a white male in his early 20

I wonder if it will still be called a hate crime if the shooter turns out to be a white atheist motivated by a hatred for Christianity or a Muslim bringing jihad to America? Then again, the fact that the shooter spared a woman and told her to “tell the world what happened” indicates that the police have additional information that has not been released to the public.

The reason I’m a little curious about the simple “white racist” theory is that as a general rule, most whites who hate blacks tend to prefer the gainfully employed, church-going blacks to the thugs and welfare queens, so these days, a church would seem to be a somewhat unusual target from that perspective.

The Devil’s own

It’s not at all hard to understand why Phil Sandifer so dislikes “One Bright Star to Guide Them”. Indeed, the strength of his distaste for it is a testimony to its depth and power, to say nothing of its appeal to Friends of Narnia, as can be seen in this exchange that took place outside the actual literary debate.

PS: From my perspective, this is the most basic disagreement that exists between Vox and me. Both Vox and I look at the problem of the world being far more complex than even an extremely intelligent person like ourselves can hope to fully understand. Vox’s reaction is to give complete trust to an unknowable higher being with the capacity for full and total understanding of the world. Mine is to instead try to fully understand my experience of the world, a task that is still staggeringly difficult, but at least feels accomplishable within the scope of a human lifetime and intellect.

I view his approach as a horrifying act of submission to an authority that is at best imaginary and at worst illegitimate. He views mine as nihilistic solipsism.

VD: I think you need to revise that. At best imaginary, at worst legitimate. Your biggest concern isn’t that God exists and His authority is not legitimate. It’s that He exists and it is.

PS: That’s actually not a concern of mine, although we should be precise here and distinguish between his authority and his power. I am profoundly concerned that your god exists and wields the power you describe. It is literally my greatest existential fear; a terror that has genuinely kept me up at night, because in the event that it is true I am knowingly signing myself up for an eternity of torment that goes beyond anything I am capable of imagining.

I have no concern whatsoever that his authority is legitimate, however. It is not, at least over what I understand to be me, Philip Sandifer. The self that I am solipsistically invested in has an independent consciousness from your god. I am but a sinner, cast out into a material world and fundamentally separated from your god. But where you view my sin as my imprisonment in a lowly, materialist prison, I view it as my freedom from the tyrant you choose to serve.

To misquote Blake, I am of the devil’s party and know it.

It is not uncommon for people to ask me why I treat atheists, particularly those of the militant or evangelical variety, with such open contempt. The reason is very simple. The only way they can be reached, the only way they can even begin thinking rationally about Christianity instead of thoughtlessly reacting to it, is for their pride to be broken first. Since their pride tends to revolve around their intelligence, it usually requires a higher intelligence to break it and I happen to be reasonably well-equipped in that regard.

It’s not knowledge that keeps men like Phil from submitting to the Most High, to the Creator God of the Universe, it is pride in the independent consciousness that they possess as a gift from the very tyrant they refuse to serve. As an arrogant man myself, I recognize that fierce and independent pride when I see it. I even admire it, to a certain extent. But I also know its futility, and worse, its sheer pointlessness.

Does the jar demand the potter admire its beauty? Is the jar foolish enough to be proud of its existence separate from the very mind that conceived it, the very hands that shaped it and brought it into being? Does the jar so lack perception that it fails to grasp it can be unmade as easily as it was made by its maker?

In what, O jar, is your petty pride?

How strange it is that those who refuse to grovel before God so readily bow before other men and genuflect before some of the most foolish ideas of Man ever conceived. And how pointless, when we know that one day every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord. Serve freely or defy as you see fit, because every path leads to the same destination, submission before the Almighty.

Economics 102 and remedial Theology

We begin with explaining the economic concept of “opportunity cost” to Jim Hines, John Scalzi, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden:

In the wake of Scalzi’s Big Book Deal, folks have been saying some rather ignorant or ill-informed stuff about how publishing works. I wanted to address a few of those points here.

Let’s start with the easiest, in which folks over on Theodore Beale’s blog claim that by Tor giving Scalzi a $3.4 million advance, they’re “squeezing out” approximately “523 initial advances to new science fiction authors.” In other words, Beale claims that “Patrick Nielsen Hayden and John Scalzi have combined to prevent more than 500 authors from getting published and receiving paid advances.”

This is a particularly egregious bit of ignorance coming from Mister Beale, who fancies himself a publisher.

Publishing is a business. As a business, Tor not only spends money on things like acquiring and publishing books, they also earn money by selling said books. Assuming Scalzi shut out 500 authors assumes that Tor is simply pissing away that $3.4 million. This is a rather asinine assumption. John Scalzi has repeatedly hit the NYT Bestseller list, earned a Best Novel Hugo, and has several TV/film deals in development for his work. Tor buys books from John Scalzi for the same reason they buy books from Orson Scott Card: those books sell a hell of a lot of copies, and earn Tor significant profits.

Very often it’s those profits — the income from reliable bestsellers like Card and Scalzi — that allow publishers to take a chance on new and unknown authors.

Let’s count the errors:

  1. Scalzi and PNH have combined to render it impossible for 523 new science fiction authors to break into mainstream publishing through Tor Books. This is a simple fact so long as we know that Tor does not have an unlimited amount of money at its disposal. The fact that Pan Macmillan just canned PNH’s counterpart at Tor UK “following a review of the company’s science fiction and fantasy publishing” should suffice to indicate that Tor’s advance budget is not limitless. The math is straightforward: PNH chose to give one author 13 advances of ~$250,000 per book rather than giving 523 authors $6,500 advances of the sort he gave John Scalzi for Old Man’s War. Any response that doesn’t take this into account is mere handwaving and evasion.
  2. I don’t fancy myself a publisher. I am very pleased to have the privilege of publishing John C. Wright, Jerry Pournelle, Eric Raymond, Tom Kratman, Sarah Salviander, Jonathan Moeller, Rolf Nelson, Martin van Creveld, and William S. Lind, among others. And we expect to announce the publication of several big names from the game industry soon.
  3. Observing that Scalzi financially shut out 500+ authors does not assume that Tor is simply pissing away that $3.4 million. Those authors are now shut out whether Scalzi sells millions of books or none at all. If Tor is pissing away that $3.4 million, it is the authors now being published by Tor who will be shut out in the future. Tor is literally betting their careers on Scalzi. I expect some will like that gamble, others not so much.
  4. The opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative forgone, in a situation in which a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives given limited resources. We’ve already established that Tor’s resources are limited. So, the question is not whether John Scalzi’s next 13 books “sell a hell of a lot of copies, and earn Tor significant profits”, but if those 13 books will sell MORE copies, and earn Tor MORE significant profits, than the books from other authors Tor otherwise might have signed.
  5. Tor bought Scalzi’s various one-and-done appearances on the oft-gamed NYT Bestseller list. The idea that Fuzzy Nation was ever more popular than Old Man’s War
    or sold more copies is downright risible. To cite Tor’s past
    marketing efforts as justification for the new authors it has decided not to publish is a category error. It’s a sunk cost of trivial
    benefit going forward, not that Hines likely knows what a “sunk cost” is. As for the appeal to the Hugo Award, I’m going to give McCreepy the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s sarcasm.

Remember, each new author doesn’t have to outsell Scalzi to generate opportunity cost. The breakeven on units for each book is 2.5 percent of Scalzi’s individual book sales. Assuming the average new Tor writer sells 10,000 books, (and the biggest publisher in SF had better be able to sell that many) that means each of the 13 Scalzi books has to sell at least 402,308 copies for Tor to break even on the opportunity cost from a reasonable unit sales perspective. And each new author who proves capable of selling more than 10k copies only makes the decision that much worse for Tor. You will notice that none of the Scalzi allies attempting to defend the deal ever bother to work through the actual math of it, preferring to rely instead on general phrases like “a hell of a lot”.

However, there are two very real and even significant justifications for preferring 13 John Scalzi
books to 523 new author books even if the future sales estimates tend to favor the latter. Hines doesn’t bring them up, presumably because they highlight my point
about how there are 3.4 million reasons the deal is shutting out new authors. It is more expensive, and
therefore less profitable, to edit, print, and distribute 523 different
authors than one. Even if we use the EFA’s very conservative guidelines and assume an unrealistically low production amount of $5,000 per book, those 523 authors would cost Tor at least $3 million more in production costs than producing John Scalzi’s 13 books will.

Furthermore, there are a limited number of available slots in the retail channels, even for Tor. Barnes & Noble is not going to endcap 500 different Tor books; they probably don’t even carry that many in total. But again, this supports my larger point about how the increased centralization of traditional publishing tends to lock out new authors and midlist authors alike. That was why I stopped even talking to traditional publishers years ago; as a midlist author who sold 30k to 40k copies per book, I knew I was of little interest to them. These days, if you can’t at least threaten six digits in your two chances at publication, you will need to be a gatekeeper’s pet in order to stay in traditional print for long. The dirty little secret of traditional publishing is that its profits are no less dependent upon constant churn than the average stockbrokerage.

And this points to the best part of what increasingly looks like a pretty good deal for Scalzi: he is locking in Tor’s marketing focus on his behalf, although again, at the expense of its other authors. And that, combined with what we have learned about Pan Macmillan’s unhappiness with its editorial product in the UK, leads me to suspect that PNH is feeling the heat from above and has therefore thrown a bit of a Hail Mary in order to buy himself more time.

Since we’re on the subject of openly clueless statements about me at File 770, let’s address two of their creative takes on theology while we’re at it:

CPaca on June 1, 2015 at 3:27 pm said:
VD isn’t a Christian, despite claiming he is. The belief that Satan rules the world instead of God is some form of Christian Gnostic heresy. One has to wonder if Wright is fully aware of who he’s hanging out with.

If this were a science fiction novel, the dialogue would end here, with the Atheist Who Knows the Bible Better than the Bible-Thumping Bigot gloriously triumphing. Of course, this isn’t a science fiction novel, and in fact, their knowledge of Christianity literally doesn’t rise to the level of Out of the Silent Planet. Do they not even understand what “Silent Planet” means? Do they not truly not understand the entire purpose of the Word made flesh, much less the Crucifixion?

The belief that Satan rules the world is the very essence of Christianity!

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’
-Matthew 4:1-11


But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.  When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:  about sin, because people do not believe in me;  about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer;  and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
– John 16:7-11

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
– 2nd Corinthians 4:4

Stevie on June 1, 2015 at 3:56 pm said:
I think we agree that VD is not a Christian; I think that VD would happily abandon his not very good grasp of Gnosticism on the grounds of ‘rhetoric’, or ‘Aristotle’, or whatever flavour of evasion he happens to feel like at any given time. Given his obsessive hatred of John Scalzi I suspect that VD cheers himself up by imagining him as ‘left behind’.

Sadly, Wright’s track record as a professed Christian suggests that he doesn’t understand Christianity either; his appalling outburst about Terry Pratchett is wholly incompatible with Christ’s commandment that we should love each other. Wright appears to be under the impression that Christ really didn’t understand being God, and that Wright has much better ideas as to what God actually wants than the reprobate who spent his time with the poor, the sick, the hungry, and consorted with dreadful people like tax collectors…

I can’t abandon what I don’t have. And as for the idea that John Wright’s rejection of the late Pratchett’s euthanasia activism is somehow incompatible with Christianity, that is simply false. Terry Pratchett was not only, as Neil Gaiman described him, a very angry man, he was a very wicked and cowardly man.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.
– Hebrews 1:9

But it is true that as a man outside the Church, we should not judge him; God will do that. In any event, the extent and intensity of their hatred for me should suffice to testify as to whether I am a Christian or not.

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
–  John 15:17-19

Let them hate. I never forget who they hate first and foremost.

Mailvox: a collection of questions

A new reader has a boatload of questions. This is merely the first half. I’ll address the other half later this week:

First time e-mail correspondent here, as well as a reader of your blog for about a month-and-a-half now. My religious beliefs could best be described as “conflicted”, or “confused”, or “I’m not even 100% sure what I believe but I’m trying to find out”. My political ideologies and other personal beliefs are in a similar state of flux, and thus, all four of my questions are asked mostly out of curiosity, partly because I know you’ll give a good answer (Should you choose to respond), and partly because you (unlike quite a few people) cite your sources.

Oh, and I read The Irrational Atheist from front to back. Twice. Once when I was 14, the old man gave me TIA to read, because that was when I was really asking the hard questions about my childhood faith and wondering whether or not the godless teenagers that went to high school with me had a point or not, but it was a bit intellectually above me and I didn’t really absorb the arguments presented all that well. Now, at the tender age of 20, having read the book a second time, I can say with absolute confidence: They really, really didn’t. And having seen what passes for the intellectual atheist, I can also say with the same confidence: Whatever my religious beliefs turn out to be in the future, I certainly never want to turn out like THAT.

1. Given the rather thorny issue of homosexuality, this isn’t really one question but several related ones. I’ve read your beliefs that homosexuality is an evil, but not really much beyond that. (Others have claimed that you said it’s a birth defect, but I’m aware that’s not the case. I recognize a media smear campaign when I see one) So, I have a few questions to pin down exactly what you think about it:

a) Do you believe all evils are inherently equal? b) Do you feel that homosexuality equals coveting your neighbor’s possessions equals adultery equals murder? c)Is there a set hierarchy? d)Or does God judge such things on a case by case basis, acting in the role of The Universal Judge?

e)Do you believe that homosexuality is a choice? The act itself clearly is, but the desire as well? Many gay people that I’ve personally spoken to claim they would have “opted out” if they had been given a choice in the matter, not necessarily out of any love for Jesus Christ (Although there are those that do), but a desire to be normal and get through the day unmolested. f) If the desire is not a choice, if it is something that is designated at birth, then how does this relate to the Christian view of homosexuality, which seems to view it as an active choice that the perpetrator can choose to stop doing at any time?

g) Do you know of any testimonial or historical evidence that indicates that a person who is gay can become straight by means of conversion, prayer, or worship of the Christian God? I am aware of testimony that such prayer and worship that has cured diseases, addictions, psychological issues, ended crippling pain, and even cured physical birth defects like limps or both legs being different lengths. Wouldn’t it then follow, that such a God would be capable of ending a homosexual desire to those who asked? Wouldn’t it then follow that such a God would WANT to do so, to remove evil desires from those who wish to have them removed?

h) Hypothetically speaking, if you had turned out to have a primarily (or even exclusive) male sexual preference, how do you believe this would have affected your belief and worship of Jesus Christ? i) Do you think you would attempt to be chaste? j) Would you still denounce the behavior as evil? k) Would you even renounce your worship of God altogether?

I have no idea what the young man’s reason for asking these questions might be and I don’t see any need for anyone to play any guessing games in that regard. After all, it could be anything from an inexplicable craving for Erasure to an overreliance on the philosophy of Macklemore. I will admit that I found it rather amusing to see how some reacted so badly to the “birth defect” comment, considering that it is the preferred alternative explanation to abnormal sexual orientation being a matter of choice. Any abnormality that renders a living being considerably less fit by virtue of presenting a reproductive handicap, be it physical or psychological, must be regarded as a material defect by anyone who subscribes to TENS, and if we are to believe that homosexuality is determined in the prenatal state, then “birth defect” is exactly what gay activists have been proclaiming homosexuality to be for decades. By literal definition from Wikipedia: “Congenital disorder, also known as congenital disease or birth defect, is a condition existing at or before birth regardless of cause.”

I’d think people would be more considerably concerned that one could also make an alarmingly strong case for high cognitive capacity being a congenital disorder in modern society on this basis, but then, we mustn’t deny the rainbow crowd their dramatics.

a) No. All evils are not equal, either in terms of their consequences or the way in which we are informed God regards them. b) No. In addition to the 10 Commandments being specified, Jesus explained that one Commandment was the most important one. c) There does not appear to be a strictly ordered A-Z hierarchy. d) Yes, as we are told God knows and judges what is in a man’s heart.

e) I believe all actions are choices, though not necessarily conscious and definitely not always rational. And I believe some inclinations are innate. But it’s not a binary situation, as our choices lead to consequential inclinations we would not possess had we made different choices. It’s quite clear, if you happen to know any homosexuals, that some come to their orientation very naturally, others choose it for a variety of reasons, and still others have it thrust upon them by others.

f) This is a misunderstanding of the Christian perspective. We all have evil inclinations. We all experience temptation. What tempts you does not tempt me, and vice-versa. But we are all responsible for resisting whatever temptations happen to call to us.

g) Yes, I have known people who no longer act on their homosexual inclinations and some who say they are no longer troubled by them. Not all of them are Christian, as it happens. I believe in a tantiscient God who can do whatever He decides to do. But we live on the Silent Planet, in a world that He does not rule, a world that is riddled with evil, and so it should be no surprise that evils and misfortunes continue to be inflicted upon us by its ruling power. That’s why we ask, why we pray, that His will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven, because for the most part it is not being done that way right now on Earth. (Note to Team Calvin: not now.) If it was, we wouldn’t need to ask for it.

h) Very little, considering that I was a hedonistic pagan agnostic with a Porsche and a record contract. Temptation is temptation. i) Yes. j) Yes. There are plenty of things that I would very much like to do that I have no problem describing as evil and rejecting on that basis. k) No chance.

There is a reason that Christianity is described as the hard and narrow path. It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. Don’t listen to the idiots who claim that Jesus Christ will solve all your problems and make you rich and cure your hangnails if you only say the magic words. They’re just scam artists trying to sell you something. Christianity isn’t Candyland, it is a very dark and terrible vision of a very scary place, of a universe that isn’t merely indifferent to you, but is actively seeking to destroy you, body and soul.

And if that doesn’t better reflect the reality we observe around us than every other philosophical and religious creed you’ve ever encountered, then I have to very seriously question whether you are paying attention to the world around you. To reject that reality because you really, really, really want to nail the hot little brunette in the miniskirt who is making eyes at you isn’t even wrong, it’s category error.

As for the issues of God’s inclination and ability to address orientational temptation, I think you would be much better off listening to this man on the subject than to me: