1. If Jesus did not mention a subject, it cannot be essential to his teachings.
2. You are not being persecuted when prevented from persecuting others.
3. Truth isn’t like wine that gets better with age. It’s more like manna you must recognize wherever you are and whoever you are with.
4. You cannot call it “special rights” when someone asks for the same rights you have.
5. It is no longer your personal religious view if you’re bothering someone else.
6. Marriage is a civil ceremony, which means it’s a civil right.
7. If how someone stimulates the pubic nerve has become the needle to your moral compass, you are the one who is lost.
8. To condemn homosexuality, you must use parts of the Bible you don’t yourself obey. Anyone who obeyed every part of Leviticus would rightly be put in prison.
9. If we do not do the right thing in our day, our grandchildren will look at us with same embarrassment we look at racist grandparents.
10. When Jesus forbade judging, that included you.
Whereas, in our own country, we can’t get an equal rights amendment passed, and many refuse to change the language of our laws on the false premise that “mankind” includes men and women, it is interesting to find a country that has begun to make space for those who do not fit in binary catagories.
This is an interesting look at the situation going into the 2012 elections, and handful of people who may be buying our highest office.
To read, click here
It is not easy to do business with an empire. This is a letter from an Egyptian military leader trying to help Obama understand that they want to be friends but do not want us to take over their nation. It is a message no American President can hear, but if enough citizens listen maybe we can help our nation return to being a decent neighbor.
To read the letter, click here
Thank goodness this was stopped. I attached the picture for all the men who say, “It wasn’t that bad.” Put yourself in that position. You would never allow the state to do this to you. It took a roomful of sexist men to come up with this idea, and a small group of women willing to sell out their sisters to push for it. As far as I am concerned this was an attempt at statutory rape foiled by people willing to fight back.>To read story, click here
You would think the church would not be an easy thing to kill. It was born at an execution and has weathered two thousand years of oppression and persecution. There is not an external force on earth that can kill the church, but it is easily poisoned from the inside. All it takes is for Christians to grow more concerned with our reputation, than our integrity.
I’m getting the blog thing down pretty well, so I’ve decided to add an advice column with the wonderful questions I get. This email came to me from Michigan,
Reverend Rigby,
Is the church in any way violating the sodomy laws to keep its head up its hinny?
Sincerely,
Rev. Hugo Grunt, III
Rev. Grunt,
Not at all my friend. Tradition is the anchor for our ship of faith. If we were to unfurl our sail, who knows where the winds would lead us? Besides we do not have time to actually sail anywhere. We need all our time to determine who is good enough to be on our crew.
Wishing you God’s limited Grace,
Reverend Rigby
Reverend Rigby,
I’m confused. How can the church say it believes in the priesthood of all believers, and then say gays and lesbian believers shouldn’t be ordained? How can it say it is “reformed and always reforming” and then say that keeping tradition is more important than meeting human need? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical for the church to say we are saved by grace and then judge?
Mary Johnson,
Mary,
You are confused my child. It’s because you are trying to think for yourself. Instead turn to the words of the noble dead. They knew more than we. It’s true that, to an outsider, the church can sometimes appear to be unthinking apes following whichever male is meanest and has the most grey hair, but sometimes we also follow mean males who aren’t that old. So be like the wise horse who does not make a fuss when the bit is placed in your mouth. Surrender your conscience to the system. It may look like we’re leading you off a cliff, but the angels will bear you up before you hit the ground. At least, I think so.
In Mindless Piety,
Reverend Rigby
Now that liberals have won the Biblical debate on homosexuality, and the church must choose between being faithful to scripture or holding on to prejudice, guess what the church decided to give up? This is an amazing verdict. What happens when a denomination is so afraid of change that it throws its rudder at what it fears?
In agreeing with the lower-court decision to censure Rev. Spahr, the commission’s majority wrote that “being faithful to Scripture and the Constitution on other matters does not provide a defense.”
Either the majority report was trying to mislead people by implying that the Spahr case was argued on some other part of scripture, or they were saying our Book of Order now has more authority than Scripture. Either way this is one sick denomination. Why should people trying to be faithful to Christ’s message of inclusion need to be defended from the church in the first place?
When the reporter from the L.A.Times called yesterday, I was still too sad and angry to say anything profound, but, fortunately, others weren’t…
What follows is the Los Angeles Times coverage of the verdict, to read,
click here
I have the full verdict and the minority report, just can’t figure out how to get it posted yet. This is the Reuters story.
To read story, click here
Janie just called. The verdict was guilty by a 6-8 verdict. As far as I am concerned, the church renounced Christ when they said that Janie did what Jesus would do, but they would follow our own human rules over the law of love.
