“These homosexuals that are married go against what God has ordained to be an acceptable marriage, so they are in fact not married at all in God’s eyes.  And if they are having sex (as married people do), then that sex is sin, as the act of sex between anyone outside of marriage is sin!”

 

Fair enough, my dear … I respect your vehemence on this matter, AND YET regardless of how certain you are that you are correct, this particular contention of yours has several deep-seated biblical problems … Please consider:

 

First, as I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the only time* that Jesus ever spoke directly to the theme of marriage was in Matthew 22:30 (echoed in Mark 12:25) when he essentially notes that there is no marriage at all in the perfect state of Love – essentially tells us all to avoid marriage completely in order to become “perfect” in our Love, just as the Love of the heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48) …

 

[*NOTE:  And by the way – as I have clarified before for you many times, Matthew 19:3-9 is not a statement from Jesus about what constitutes an acceptable marriage, but is rather a statement from Jesus about what makes for an acceptable divorce.]

 

Secondly, at least as far as God is concerned (at least within the pages of the Bible), He sanctified many different types of acceptable marriages (Ok, it was actually the fallen-angel Elohim who did so, but we’ll leave that Truth for another day), most of which we have already deemed to be immoral or even illegal in our more-enlightened times.  These traditionally accepted variations of marital bliss included bigamy (see 1 Kings 11:3), incest (see Genesis 19:30-38), marrying one’s rapist (see Deuteronomy 22:28-29), marrying one’s concubines against their will (see Abraham, Gideon, Nahor, Jacob etc etc), marrying one’s slaves against their will (see Genesis 16), straight up polygamy (see Lamech, Easau, Gideon, David, etc etc), marrying prisoners of war against their will (see Numbers 31:1-18) and arranged slave marriages (see Exodus 21:4).  So, I guess I will admit that Oliver & Rashad are violating these particular marriages that “God has ordained” – and yet so are you & your husband; and so is every other “one male + one female” marriage in the world!  … You see how tricky things get when we try to apply the Old Testament literally to our modern times, my Friend?  Do you see now why Jesus came to radically reform those often inconsistent & immoral laws for us? …

 

Thirdly, how did sex come into play in this discussion at all, my Friend?   As I have explained to you already on a number of occasions, homosexuality is not a condition that demands sexual intercourse – or sexual expression of any kind, for that matter.   Homosexuality is an innate same-sex attraction with which gay people are born.  And yet just because gays are born attracted to their own sex does not mean they have to act out that attraction … Just like heterosexual men are not required to have sex with women and heterosexual women are not required to have sex with men, homosexuals are not required to have sex either.   And because we are talking here about attending a church service at Oliver Clyde Allen’s church – and not about visiting him in the privacy of his own home – it is frankly completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand what you happen to assume he does in private!

 

My dear Friend, Oliver Clyde Allen’s private sexual sins (if he has any) are HIS BUSINESS, just like your private sexual sins are yours.

 

Fourthly & finally, if you are going to deny Oliver Clyde Allen the honor of your presence during his sermons because you are assuming that he is sinning in the privacy of his own home, then I am afraid the only way for you to avoid living as a hypocrite (something Jesus despised above most other sins – see Matthew 23 et al) is to share the same assumptions about every other preacher on the planet (who at the very least are committing the mortal sins of working on the Sabbath, &/or of blaspheming the name of the Lord, &/or of committing adultery whenever they fantasize about having sex with partners other than their spouses) and thereby not attend any church service … Are you willing to do so, my Friend – or are you going to remain bigoted & hypocritical?

 

“You shall not commit adultery … If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman.” ~ Exodus 20:14 + Deuteronomy 22:22)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” ~ Jesus Christ (Matthew 5:27-28)

Filed under: Burnishing Bigotry by Scaughdt