This past Tuesday in Jacksonville, the Florida Baptist Convention voted to support a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
The Baptists want the Florida Constitution to state that marriage is "the union between a man and a woman and is the God-ordained building block of the family and the bedrock of society."
"The church is the voice of morality," declared the sponsor of this resolution, the Rev. Jay Dennis of Lakeland.
The voice of morality!
I have no quarrel with the Baptists being the voice of morality, even though I was raised a Methodist. (Actually, a Wesleyan - so see, I already know how this whole thing is gonna turn out anyway.)
My only question is:
Why just this morality?
Why just this sin?
Why is this now the moral crisis that deserves to be singled out in our Constitution, the civil law of Caesar, so we can create a lesser class of citizens who don't have the same rights of civil contract?
Could it be because this is an alleged "sin" that only Those Kind of People commit, instead of equally serious sins that Decent People (even Baptists) commit every day?
If we are going to start ranking the "sins," marriage between two gay people who love each other and seek a lifelong commitment doesn't even make the Bible's best-known top-10 list.
Sure, homosexuality is called an "abomination." The Bible says so, not too far from where the Bible also says it's okay to stone your headstrong son to death, and that you'd better stay away from menstruating women.
And yes, the topic of homosexuality really freaked out St. Paul, no question. But so did a lot of stuff.
On the other hand, you know what IS right smack in the Ten Commandments?
Adultery.
Adultery! Now, that's a threat to the institution of marriage. You bet.
Half of heterosexual marriages in our society end in divorce. We heterosexuals are doing a lousy job of "defending" marriage. Adultery is a big part of the reason.
So if we're going to rewrite our Constitution to "protect" marriage from sin because it is the "God-ordained bedrock of society," then I would think that adultery would be a much better target.
The Florida Constitution should be amended to say that there can be no marriage licenses for anyone who has ever had sex outside marriage.
But wait, don't stop there.
Adultery is not the only marriage-threatening sin.
There's coveting.
That's in the Ten Commandments, too. Coveting your neighbor's wife can get you in big trouble.
Bearing false witness is one of the Big 10, too, if I recall. Lying is a pretty big threat to marriage.
No legal rights for liars! God created Adam and Eve, not Adam-You-Can't-Believe.
So, you see, there are the sins that the majority of us Decent People commit, such as lying, coveting, failing to keep the Sabbath, worshiping the wrong things...
And then there is the Really Bad Stuff that God hates even more and wants us to punish and fight by rewriting our Constitution.
I don't believe it.
I am just a poor layman, but I do not recall anywhere in the book seeing instructions to rank what we consider to be sins, and to judge only the ones we find in other people.
In fact, irresistibly, Matthew 7:5 keeps coming back to me:
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Of course, Jesus said a lot of other stuff, too. Rich people almost certainly won't go to heaven. They should give away their money. We should turn the other cheek to those who seek to hurt us. We should clothe the naked and feed the poor and house the homeless.
We also should pray in private, without beating our breasts loudly and rending our garments in the streets like hypocrites.
Jesus' words, not mine.
Maybe he meant we were supposed to just pick and choose the parts we liked.
Source: http://www.sptimes.com/2004/11/14/Columns/The_Pharisees_line_up.shtml
I increased the font size on one of these comments for hypocrites to read and think then reread and rethink. About this comment:
Maybe he meant we were supposed to just pick and choose the parts we liked.
He nailed it beautifully about these hypocrites.
The Baptists want the Florida Constitution to state that marriage is "the union between a man and a woman and is the God-ordained building block of the family and the bedrock of society."
"The church is the voice of morality," declared the sponsor of this resolution, the Rev. Jay Dennis of Lakeland.
The voice of morality!
I have no quarrel with the Baptists being the voice of morality, even though I was raised a Methodist. (Actually, a Wesleyan - so see, I already know how this whole thing is gonna turn out anyway.)
My only question is:
Why just this morality?
Why just this sin?
Why is this now the moral crisis that deserves to be singled out in our Constitution, the civil law of Caesar, so we can create a lesser class of citizens who don't have the same rights of civil contract?
Could it be because this is an alleged "sin" that only Those Kind of People commit, instead of equally serious sins that Decent People (even Baptists) commit every day?
If we are going to start ranking the "sins," marriage between two gay people who love each other and seek a lifelong commitment doesn't even make the Bible's best-known top-10 list.
Sure, homosexuality is called an "abomination." The Bible says so, not too far from where the Bible also says it's okay to stone your headstrong son to death, and that you'd better stay away from menstruating women.
And yes, the topic of homosexuality really freaked out St. Paul, no question. But so did a lot of stuff.
On the other hand, you know what IS right smack in the Ten Commandments?
Adultery.
Adultery! Now, that's a threat to the institution of marriage. You bet.
Half of heterosexual marriages in our society end in divorce. We heterosexuals are doing a lousy job of "defending" marriage. Adultery is a big part of the reason.
So if we're going to rewrite our Constitution to "protect" marriage from sin because it is the "God-ordained bedrock of society," then I would think that adultery would be a much better target.
The Florida Constitution should be amended to say that there can be no marriage licenses for anyone who has ever had sex outside marriage.
But wait, don't stop there.
Adultery is not the only marriage-threatening sin.
There's coveting.
That's in the Ten Commandments, too. Coveting your neighbor's wife can get you in big trouble.
Bearing false witness is one of the Big 10, too, if I recall. Lying is a pretty big threat to marriage.
No legal rights for liars! God created Adam and Eve, not Adam-You-Can't-Believe.
So, you see, there are the sins that the majority of us Decent People commit, such as lying, coveting, failing to keep the Sabbath, worshiping the wrong things...
And then there is the Really Bad Stuff that God hates even more and wants us to punish and fight by rewriting our Constitution.
I don't believe it.
I am just a poor layman, but I do not recall anywhere in the book seeing instructions to rank what we consider to be sins, and to judge only the ones we find in other people.
In fact, irresistibly, Matthew 7:5 keeps coming back to me:
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Of course, Jesus said a lot of other stuff, too. Rich people almost certainly won't go to heaven. They should give away their money. We should turn the other cheek to those who seek to hurt us. We should clothe the naked and feed the poor and house the homeless.
We also should pray in private, without beating our breasts loudly and rending our garments in the streets like hypocrites.
Jesus' words, not mine.
Maybe he meant we were supposed to just pick and choose the parts we liked.
Source: http://www.sptimes.com/2004/11/14/Columns/The_Pharisees_line_up.shtml
I increased the font size on one of these comments for hypocrites to read and think then reread and rethink. About this comment:
Maybe he meant we were supposed to just pick and choose the parts we liked.
He nailed it beautifully about these hypocrites.
