Sunday, November 18, 2007

[bad theology] tutu should check his bible

Archbishop Tutu is is either:
1. seriously muddled about Christian theology or else
2. pursuing the post modernist agenda which is still in full swing.
He said the Anglican Church had seemed "extraordinarily homophobic" in its handling of the issue, and that he had felt "saddened" and "ashamed" of his church at the time. Asked if he still felt ashamed, he said: "If we are going to not welcome or invite people because of sexual orientation, yes. "If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God."

There are two responses to this:

1. Christianity itself says:

Romans 1:26-27
1:26 For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged the natural sexual relations for unnatural ones, 7 1:27 and likewise the men also abandoned natural relations with women 8 and were inflamed in their passions 9 for one another. Men 10 committed shameless acts with men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Jude 1
1:7 So also 33 Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns, 34 since they indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire 35 in a way similar to 36 these angels, 37 are now displayed as an example by suffering the punishment of eternal fire.
Jude 1 also says:
1:4 For certain men 14 have secretly slipped in among you 15 – men who long ago 16 were marked out 17 for the condemnation I am about to describe 18 – ungodly men who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil...
Which is Tutu – unlearned in the scripture which is his bread and butter or taking a deliberate stance which his dog collar gives him no right to do, whatever his private feelings?

2. Homosexuality itself:

There is a clear political agenda throughout the western world, one such move being the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 removal of homosexuality from their DSM Manual. By doing this, despite clinical evidence of the time, tacitly approves homosexuality as a legitimate “choice” rather than as a disorder.

There is substantial evidence that the major social bodies such as Planned Parenthood [investigate their funding] and the APA [see this article on the upper echelons of the psychiatric profession, for example] are following an agenda very close to that allegedly articulated by one of the Rockefellers in the last post.

The introduction of the term “orientation” and the criminalizing of anyone declaring deviance from the norm for what it is – a “disorder” - is of the same order of magnitude as the Gore/Global juggernaut which the blogosphere is up in arms about – that is, they are pushing an agenda which is politically driven though there are elements of truth attached to it.

Tutu's PC “love for everyone” presumably also includes murderers, paedophiles, wife-bashers and idolators but makes one fundamental error – his view is to love them “along with” their “orientation” whereas Christianity in the gospels is for loving everyone “irrespective of and despite” their orientations.

That's a quantum difference and he either misunderstands this or deliberately ignores it as a result of his political position at the head of the Official Church.

So to homosexuality itself and, as Richard Fitzgibbons, M.D. states:
There is substantial evidence based on years of clinical experience that homosexuality is a developmental disorder.
Dr. Charles Wahl, a researcher in this area, said:
"The vast preponderance of evidence clearly indicates that homosexuality is a learned disorder and is not genetically inherited."
"In Imprints: The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience, Dr. Arthur Janov writes that:
... the homosexuals he has seen in primal therapy have had "catastrophic birth histories." He believes that inutero trauma may bias male-female sex hormones permanently which might result in residual tendencies. He believes that the deviation is a problem of psychological need and not one of sex. It is a way the need gets sexualized (pp. 98-99).
Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof does not believe that the entire origin of homosexuality can be traced solely to problems of birth and near birth. He believes:
... that early childhood events are not the cause of the focus but are seen as necessary conditions for their development and act as reinforcements to pre and peri-natal issues. (Beyond the Brain, pp. 219-220).
And so it goes on. If only for its biological limitations, homosexuality is not a free and equal choice and yet that is not only being taught in schools but is being enshrined in law. In other words, deliberate falsehoods are being enshrined as truth in law and those who call the legislators on the point are prosecuted.

The greatest crime which is being committed by very powerful people in the community is to teach children, such as in the RFID programme and in Britain, that certain things are fine and normal when they're nothing of the kind - another example is glossing over indiscriminate sex before marriage.

Where does that leave me personally, vis a vis homosexuality? In the late 70s I was actually in the gay scene, went to the parties although I'm straight myself and generally got along with the community fine. It was a passing phase and family then called.

Where does that leave homosexuals themselves? For a start, they're not going to take any notice of me other than to vilify me but for what it's worth, may I give an analogy.

I need a cool room to live in and can't even stand a beach on a hot day. There are other people like me but not many. It's a great problem over here where people switch the heating up full bore in flats in winter and that precludes me visiting the majority of people.

However, I'm certainly not going onto the streets to fight for Cool Rights or to get government to legislate against anyone who tries to stop me turning the heating down. They're the majority so that's the way it goes. The few who are like me can visit me and me them.

I'm not going into schools to tell children that Cool Rooms in winter are just as good as Warm just to make myself feel better about it. It has nothing to do with Tutu like "tolerance". It's an aberration and I just live with it.

I still get on famously with Warm Roomers and we can meet in cafes and have a laugh [as long as I can be near the door]. In conversation, where do I get off if I try to push the idea that Cool Rooms are just as good as Warm in winter - of course they're not but for me they're a necessity. That's all.

Now my mate and his girlfriend who can't stand being in a Cool Room - what if they start mocking and calling me Iceberger or something rude like 'shrivel-d--k'? Well, they cease to be friends.

What if a gang of thugs beat me up for being a 'filfthy Iceberger'? That's a police matter and I'll prosecute. What if kids in school have been learning that Icebergers are sickos? Yep - that literature needs changing. But not to the point of telling them that Cool Roomers are normal.

In other words, there are certain realities and we live with them. There are some things which are wrong and we change them. But we don't tell lies about it as a reaction against years of anguish.

14 comments:

  1. That the bible states homosexuality to be immoral, I don't dispute.

    Of course, it also states that black pudding is wrong too.

    The main reason why early cultures had such strong sexual taboos, was to prevent unnecessary spread of veneral disease. Moral taboos were in place for public good.

    These days, we can control the transmission of VD- and it is not unreasonable to hope we will erdaicate them completely one day.

    Once this is so, then all harm has been removed from consenting sex amongst adults.

    In which case, the only difference betwen two men having sex and two women having sex, is the first cannot produce children.
    But why on earth it should be seen as wrong, or less a gesture of love than the other, I can't really see.

    I don't see it as a disorder, myself. I think there are sound reasons why it survives, and why it isn't actually a bad thing. I think sex in human beings has moved on from being purely about reproduction (Desmond Morris argues this), and is also a bonding mechanism.
    In which case, it can't be bad, surely?

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  2. This is the relativism many of us are fighting and sidesteps the assault on the family as a unit. To equate the two forms of sexuality is amazing.

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  3. Well, I don't really know what to say but I'll have a go: I don't have enough biological knowledge to be able to comment on choice/disorder. But wasn't it at some point convenient for the survival of the species for there to be some non-reproducing males and females? I do take your linguistic point about "along with / irrespective of" but I can't see where that leaves the Church. I'm not sure anyone is 100%hetero or homosexual. In some cases it surely depends on circumstances and whom you meet? I think it comes down to "living as a minority" again: ie, you have rights to express your sexuality as you wish, provided it harms no one else but you do not have a right to impose that lifestyle on others. Your "cold" analogy is excellent. But I'm still uneasy with what I find myself saying here..

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  4. I don't agree with you on this one, James - I don't believe that homosexuality is only a lifestyle choice or a learned behaviour, though undoubtedly that is so for some people.

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  5. Well here we have "known to be homosexual" ministers, at least in several churches that I know of. One in a permanent relationship of long standing but dearly loved by his community.

    I don't quite get that but I too do not believe that homosexuality is necessarily a choice for some people. Maybe they have a choice in whether they are sexually active or not, just the same as an unmarried person has that choice. According to the church both should be sexually abstinent.

    I certainly don't believe homosexuality should be classed as a psychiatric disorder and they were right to remove it from the DSM IV, although no doubt homosexuals seek psychiatric help like anyone else for various reasons, even how to deal with homosexuality.

    I guess over the years I have come across some very fine homosexual people and have changed a lot of my ideas because of them.

    I don't think this is such a black and white subject as we would like to think and probably Archbishop Tutu is trying to find his way through the morass and trying to balance his theological ideas with life as he sees it.

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  6. Is seems that the gays have replaced the masons in power and influence.

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  7. James this is just plain wrong. So many aspects of this are wrong that its hard to know where to start but I am going to say three things.

    Firstly tough, homosexuality is biological, it is part of our organism's behaviour. Its also part of the behaviour of most organisms throughout the world.

    Secondly it is not a thing that has a moral flavour. Morality is about the way that we relate to each other. Homosexuals can love, care for, be kind and generous to others and behave morally. The genitals of the person you are sleeping with are irrelevant. What exactly is immoral about homosexuality, apart from the fact that God has ordered it so. And to open a theological problem for you is there any distinction between God's order and your morality if you only beleive that homosexuality is evil because he orders it so.

    Thirdly noone in the UK is being banned for attacking homosexuals, a couple of cases were taken out ill advisedly by the police, compared to what regularly happens to Irish or black people in Britain or Chechens in Russia I'm not exactly terrified for the Christians of the UK. Furthermore plenty of people beleive what you beleive, don't make yourself a martyr.

    And drop the fictional conspiracy, come on tell me what is wrong with homosexuality. Why is it morally so wrong. Is it God's order, in which case do you follow God no matter what he orders or is there something else and if so what is that something else.

    Incidentally on the family point- many homosexuals want to have that relationship, hence why gay adoption has come in, to redeem a problem (current for centuries even millennia) that heterosexual couples often don't want their own children.

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  8. Knew you'd get bashed on this James, stay strong.

    Homosexuality is thought to be biological. Fixed that for you Gracchi.

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  9. Isn't the Bible's take on this, partly to do with the history of the Jews as originally a small population that needed to multiply to ensure survival? Isn't it in Deuteronomy, for example, that a man cannot be part of the congregation if his testicles have been crushed or his penis cut? Surely this is to do with maintaining a population of males in breeding condition. So in that context, homosexuality would be a dangerously unproductive diversion.

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  10. I find it puzzling that Jesus never actually spoke on the subject of homosexuality. Ever wonder about that James? The only references we have in the New Testament to it are from his Jewish followers, written long after his death and lets face it with the modifications that these books have been through over the centuries who knows how accurate those passages are?

    Before Christianity reached Europe homosexuality was tolerated at worst and slightly encouraged (c.f. The Ancient Greeks), this continued until the inclusion of the Torah as part of the Christian teachings. When you consider that Jesus specifically instructed love and tolerance but obviously didn't consider homosexuality important enough to mention, one wonders why we include the chauvinistic [often genocidal] principles of the Israelites.

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  11. Thanks for the responses, people and a lot of good thoughts in there. Tiberius, I knew you'd be over to see it - actually i wrote it a bit for you.

    I've read through what you say but it doesn't negate anything said in the post. It simply adds to it. :)

    Lord Nazh - thanks.

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  12. @ GRACCHI,

    i reckon the juries out on the 'biologically determined' part of your post ....but as for the rest of what you say youre bang on the money.

    many of my friends find moral justification for their cannabis use from the named use of the plant in exodus, me i find it more interesting to take a honest look at the 'war' on drugs and why we appear to be losing.

    for anything in the bible that has any resonance at all with the 21st century there are 100 things that dont

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  13. I am with Gracchi on this.

    Scripture can be used like statistics (depends what you want to 'prove'). For example:

    Exodus 35:2 "On six days work may be done, but the seventh day shall be sacred to you as the sabbath of complete rest to the Lord. Anyone who does work on that day shall be put to death."

    How might you interpret this? Literally?

    I think Tutu is right, the attitude of the Anglican Church is homophobic. The gospel is based on love, justice and forgiveness.

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  14. I didn't say it was biologically determined- I said it was biological. Like most things I would reckon that homosexuality is partly genetic and partly environmental and that the causes behind it are complicated and that its quite possible we'll never understand them fully.

    The more interesting point to me is whether someone can provide me with any reason why homosexuality is wrong. Why do the type of genitals of the person that I sleep with matter to anyone bar me. Who cares so long as we both consent and both enjoy.

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