Well, I hit my 3 comment limit on the previous thread, but I wanted to add some thoughts.
First, from Dan:
“oldgeek said:
The Scriptures are very clear, that homosexual acts are wrong. And these are stated in very strong terms. Actually all sexual acts outside of marriage (of which these scriptures always show is between a man and a woman) are wrong. I am very well aware that this is considered old fashioned, out dated in this day. My question is: When did the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob change his mind?
oldgeek said:
But I still think my question earlier is a valid one.
this one? I think it might have been politely ignored a smidge because this issue can spiral out of control very quickly. I’d say lightly that a lot of people of faith these days “interpret” the bible rather than follow it literally taking what spirituality and inspiration they need from it. Some on the internet (I’m sure a quick google can find some) will say the bible has some other controversial things in it that we don’t all do today or pick and choose from personally like slavery, circumcision, and anything else to do with sex and marriage like adultery, premarital sex, divorce. Sure some people chooses to circumcise, remain celibate till marriage, or not get divorced, but lots of others don’t and also still consider themselves people of faith within the abrahamic religions. And this hint gets us the important historical perspective on this process and issue. This process has actually been going on for a long long time, even the catholic church’s split into protestants is a relatively recent part of this, clocking in several hundred years ago. The splits into christianity and islam are older fractures on the topic of how faith should work in this family of religious. The point is they are always and always have been evolving.
One could argue that this type of evolution is a trying to stay relevant to the masses and or keep current with the times. If you tried to put forth that only a literal interpretation of the abrahamic religions was acceptable, well you’d loose a lot of people. And that’s exactly what has been happening forever. More orthodox or literal faith has been forever fracturing into different splinters and “loosing” people. They didn’t die out either though, there are still plenty of orthodox chruches and people but there are now also a lot of less orthodox/literal splinters around too, like most of the protestants in christianity and even probably some catholics. And the other religions also have many splinters of deeper or lesser “literalness”, as @bryanlunduke mentioned, his rabbi is gay. People of all different types and lives can need faith so religion has had to adapt and has been for millennia. This isn’t anything of a new process, just a continuation or an evolution and process that has been going on forever.
So to answer:
oldgeek said:
When did the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob change his mind?
Never and always. It’s all in the people and their interpretation. For some it’s never changed, for others it changed in their lives now, and for some it changed hundreds and thousands of years ago.
Does that help?”
I want to thank you Dan for a polite, reasonable answer to something that is obviously very important to you. What you said about the fragmentation of religion actually makes me sad. Made me think of how life and the universe can be likened to a huge wonderful and beautiful painting of which I am a very insignificant particle of paint of an insignificant brush stroke. While one can learn things about the artist from looking at the work, it’s a quite different thing if I, as that insignificant particle of paint were to try to define the artist. Is that a good analogy? Maybe not. I’m not the brightest.
Both Dan and Bryan mention interpretation of scripture. Yes, there is a lot of that happening. A lot. But from observation, I have seen is that interpretation is the result of either taking scripture out of context and/or attempting to meld philosophy with it. It always strays from what the entire body of scripture actually says and always is used to justify the thinking and attitude of the person doing it.
What both Dan, Jon, and Bryan has said made me realize that I made a mistake in posting at all. Did I want to start a religious discussion? NO. Do I really want to be involved in a political discussion? Politics disgust me. And that is how I see this whole Mozilla mess.
Again I want to thank Dan, Bryan and Jono for the respect in which they answered my posts. Sorry for wasting your time.
