Know When to Hold ‘em, Know When to Run
LOLFunny687 has made a comment on A gay man and a fundamentalist Christian were on a plane….
Homosexuality is a sin, just as any other sin, we are all sinners, which is why we need Jesus to save us from our wicked ways. homosexuality, drunkeness [sic], lust, murder, coveteousness [sic], greed, list goes on and on they are all sins and we must not partake in it
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Hmm. I didn’t really “approve” of the message Laugh Out Loud (LOL) Funny left on YouTube for me after watching a five-minute segment of my two-hour corporate presentation, but I felt that he or she had the right to participate in a dialogue about religion and homosexuality, and perhaps I might have a positive influence on his or her thinking. You never know. It’s happened lots of times in the past. So, I responded by saying, “You are citing a mistranslation of the Bible, a book that has relevance only to those who accept it as the literal word of God. I don’t. I wish happiness to those who do and hope they wish the same to me.”
LOLFunny responded immediately by saying,
actually, I am not “citing a mistranslation of the Bible”. have you ever read your Bible? Do you consider yourself a Christian? Do you believe Jesus is your saviour?
Now, there are really a ton more verses confirming this in the Bible. I suggest you check out a good site detailing this. I would post the link but I cant, so I’ll tell you how to get to it by googling it:
type in to google: scripture homosexuality sin new testament
click on the first one, should be a site called bible-truths
Peace be to you, and I pray that you may see your error and that you may come to Jesus as your true saviour before it is too late.
God bless.
Were we building a dialogue? He or she seemed nice enough. They wished me peace and the blessings of God. So, I responded, “Thank you — as I do you.”
Regrettably, it didn’t end there. LOLFunny apparently had the same goal of conversion as I had with him or her. He or she next wrote:
From what I can see, you are spending your life trying to gain acceptance from humans rather than acceptance from God. God tells us what happens to those who sell themselves to the devil and seek unholiness rather than righteousness.
Let me give you some scripture to show what God thinks about this sin called homosexuality.
I am going to list New Testament only since you probably are so blind you think that Old Testament has no meaning. I’ll give the summary of what the scriptures say since there are a lot with long passages talking about this.
Romans1:26-32 God adresses [sic] sinners including those who partake in homosexuality and he says he blinds them that are not repentant and have pleasure in it…
Paul states that none who continue to commit the sins listed above “shall inherit the kingdom of God.” These sins need to be repented of and put in the past. And that is what the chosen Few in these Gentiles churches were doing.
It seemed to me that he or she was getting a little testy and my inclination was to back away, but I thought maybe I could clear up a misunderstanding about the use of the word “homosexual” in the Bible, so I wrote, “The word homosexuality was never used in the Old or New Testament. The term was created in 1869 in Germany and pre-dates the term heterosexuality. I hope that one day Christians who quote the Bible to condemn the behavior of others will come to realize that they give Christ a bad name.”
I know. I know. That last line was probably unnecessary, but I’ve got feelings too and I get more than a little tired listening to people who think they speak for God using the Bible to justify their biases and to try to force the rest of us to think poorly of ourselves. I just can’t imagine Jesus doing so.
So, of course, he or she wrote back, but I didn’t publish anything further that they had to say. I felt it was too much for gay visitors to the YouTube site to have to bear, and I’m only allowed 36 comments from viewers and from myself. Then I need to edit. But the person who began his or her correspondence with a “peace be to you,” and a “God bless,” didn’t give up and decided to take a different tack. He or she most recently wrote:
Read 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and think to yourself if what you are doing is right or wrong in God’s eyes.
You are disgustingly blind and perverted trying to make God look like a liar. You can twist scripture all you want. you could make “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” to be anything in your imagination you want it to be. homosexuality is a sin, and you trying to make it right is also a sin. you are calling God a liar.
Sometimes you have to walk away, which I now have from this person. Ray wants to know why I even bother to engage them in dialogue. “They’re nuts,” he says.
Some of them are nuts, I suppose, just as there are gay people who are crazy and whose behavior scares me. But I have had far more successes than failures in life in my attempt to establish dialogue with people whose religious perspectives are different from my own. The fundamentalist Christian man on the plane to whom I referred in the video clip that so upset LOLFunny is a wonderful example. When we finished our conversation, he said, as many of you know, “Brian, as sure as I’m sitting in this seat, I know that God had you sit next to me, and I will never think about homosexuality in the same way again.” Now, that was worth the effort.
As the song says, you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.
