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[catholic_heart]

This is going to be a difficult post to make, because as personal as I've gotten in many posts, this will be the most personal of them all. It's mostly in response to the recent post on homosexuality, which for whatever reason seems to bring out the worst in us. We are a gay-obsessed society, and the truth is that isn't just limited to Christians

Comments

[sybbis]

And I don't see any scripture supporting the Rapture. I mean, people have showed me the verses, but to me they definitely don't say that, and yet to other people they do. I would certainly not accuse someone of believing in the Rapture only for self-serving reasons.

How hard is it to realize that genuinely seeking Christ is not going to lead everybody to complete agreement with you? I could just as easily say that it's only your pride that keeps you from reading it my way. I could suppose that perhaps you are vested for some reason in wanting it to be a sin. You could have any number of reasons for that--and I'm not saying that "hate" would necessarily be a major one. It could be jealousy if you have those sorts of feelings yourself and have never expressed them freely. It could be a fear of changes in a status quo that you happen to like. Maybe you would just like it being a sin because it gives you one thing that's safe because you're secure in your heterosexuality, or just because you like having as many rules as possible. Any number of things could give you that bias.

Or maybe you've just come to a different conclusion from your genuine study and prayer on the subject than I've come to on mine.

[sybbis]

But I'm not disagreeing with scripture, in point of fact. I think scripture agrees with me just fine. *You* don't agree that scripture and I agree.

The fact that something is widely held does not make it true. At the time of the Reformation, what church history and tradition held was that the Roman Catholic Church was it. And yet now here we are, you and I, Protestants. At the time, they definitely would have seen that as an issue of sin and salvation, and yet it doesn't stop us now from having civil conversations with Catholics. Speaking of which, the Roman Catholic official position is that birth control of any variety is a sin... and yet millions of Protestants have no problem with it. So are immortal souls hanging in the balance there, too, for all of the unrepentant Pill-poppers and condom-users?

Or else we could acknowledge that the important thing is to be obedient to our understanding of what God wants, and that if we are trying to obey, that we might expect to be forgiven even the things we don't know to ask forgiveness for specifically. Given that the list of things someone calls a sin encompasses just about every known action, I'm pretty sure we're all going to be a little surprised when we reach heaven, but I'm okay with that.

I'm not saying that *you* have to change your mind about the issue, whatever your reasons are for believing that it is so. I'm fine with you holding whatever belief that God has laid upon your heart. This this isn't about whether *you* are going to believe it's a sin or not. It's about you slinging around insults towards those who don't believe it is. If you genuinely believe that homosexuality is a sin, that's fine. But if you're suffering for believing it, that's not my doing.