A Quote by Alan Chambers
Well, I find it interesting first that this all centers around the issue of homosexuality and we don't bring in any other sin issue into the picture - the ones that are running rampant within our churches largely go unaddressed. Issues of pride and judgment and gossip and slander and other types of sexual immorality, gluttony, you name it.
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For other people who are involved in unrepentant sin whether it's the sin of homosexual sexual expression or gluttony or pride or heterosexual sexual expression outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage or any other thing - are those people in danger of losing their salvation over those issues? Would Rob Gagnon and other people make as big a deal about that as they are with this? I don't think so.
But the issue of sexual harassment is not the end of it. There are other issues - political issues, gender issues - that people need to be educated about.
I think it's hypocritical and inconsistent for us to attack this one group of people over any other group of people that are within our churches today. If we were talking about one of their sin issues we wouldn't have addressed this at all. I find that hypocritical and inconsistent.
Girls face two major sexual issues in America in the 1990s: One is an old issue of coming to terms with their own sexuality, defining a sexual self, making sexual choices and learning to enjoy sex. The other issue concerns the dangers girls face of being sexually assaulted. By late adolescence, most girls today either have been traumatized or know girls who have. They are fearful of males even as they are trying to develop intimate relations with them.
But the Bible speaks against it, and because the Bible speaks against it, we allow rampant sin including homosexuality and lying, and to me lying is just as b ad as homosexuality, and we've allowed this sin to run rampant in our nation.
However, there is a fundamental difference between the issue related to Japan's history and our negotiations with China. What is it all about? The Japanese issue resulted from World War II and is stipulated in the international instruments on the outcomes of World War II, while our discussions on border issues with our Chinese counterparts have nothing to do with World War II or any other military conflicts. This is the first, or rather, I should say, the second point.
In the Catholic view of things, abortion is a justice issue, not an issue of sexual morality... it is a civil rights issue, arguably the greatest civil rights issue of our time.
You know my issue isn't whether gay people go to heaven or straight people go to heaven. The point that I'm trying to make is that we as believers can have security in Christ when we are believers. We will all struggle, we will all fall prey to some type of sin, some will fall prey to the same types of sin over and over again. I don't differentiate between this one sin struggle than any other.
Certainly anyone who comes to faith in Christ has a new heart and they have an opportunity for new life and that's a wonderful thing. But it doesn't say anywhere in that passage that the people didn't still struggle with temptation or that they never fell prey to that sin again whether it was the issue of homosexuality or any of the other things that are listed there.
You can go online now and find really thoughtful, in-depth, considered, well-informed communities around virtually any issue. If it's your issue, there are now new ways of mobilising knowledge that weren't there before. There are real bodies of significant knowledge on the web that are valuable that we haven't done nearly enough with.
The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should insist on the need to engage in a meaningful debate on the entire issue of the truth or falsity (or probability or improbability) of religious tenets, without being subject to accusations of impiety, immorality, impoliteness, or any of the other smokescreens used by the pious to deflect attention from the central issues at hand.
I think on this issue more than any other we're going to see sort of a bipartisan longing to get something done, and hopefully you're not going to find the fisticuffs that you would find on lots of other issues. I think you'll be able to glean a sense of progress without us revealing the specifics.
When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that. But what you do find is the idea that gluttony is a sin and that it's something that we ought to be ashamed of.
It's very important to understand that climate change is not just another issue in this complicated world of proliferating issues. Climate change is THE issue which, unchecked, will swamp all other issues.
The first and most fundamental issue of sin is pride.
Most poor people in America are white. The family breakdown issue is an issue that crosses all sorts of racial lines. High school dropout issues. But because of the flow of events which involve the racial component, we've sometimes confused racial issues with other issues which are trans-racial.
