Falwell and Gingrich

Somehow, even with the excuses, it still smells like hypocrisy to me. Gingrich was slow to go after Clinton for his affair and was careful to point out the problem was lying, but it seems the coverup was on the side of Gingrich and Falwell as well. I believe the hypocrisy would have been avoided if both Fallwell - who seems to have known of the affair- and Gingrich - who had the affair - would have just said something along the lines of "Yes I've had and am having an affair, but the problem is Clinton lied under oath." But then the proceedings towards impeachment wouldn't have gone as far.

Matt Sanchez

Joe My God alerted me to another outing. A presumably straight man protests all the liberal hypocrisy and then we find out that he's been in gay porn. here's the thing I don't get. If you've had sex with another man, please don't claim to be straight. You may be bi; you may be gay; but you're just not straight. I don't care if you never have sex with another man. Once you've been sexually active with men for more than a few ocassions just don't claim to be totally straight.

Lonnie Latham

The anti-gay pastor who was picked up by a police officer (male) for soliciting sex is free. The fact is soliciting for sex isn't and shouldn't be illegal. It is hypocritical to troll for a same-sex encounter, while preaching against it. For that he's paying the price. But it just isn't illegal to ask someone to come with you to a hotel room for sex.

Personally I'd like to be in a life-long relationship with someone before I consider sexual activity. But that didn't happen in Scripture, e.g. Tamar posing as a prostitute and seducing her father-in-law and being judged righteous for doing so in Genesis 38:15, and doesn't happen today.

A war on terror or supporting terror?

I thought the war on terrorism was supposed to be a hallmark of the Republicans, but Afarensis points to a CBS article indicating that the Republican party is being supported (a major donor) by someone with actual ties and donations to support terrorist activity. I'm still waiting to hear that those donations are being returned.

Shame

The former president of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU has been arrested for possessing child pornography. This is a shame. It is not about two consenting adults. It is about abuse of someone who should be protected. Who will guard the guardians? In this case the wolf was caught and good riddance. I get on the fundamentalists and evangelicals for this sort of hypocrisy especially when it seems they are protecting their own, but it is equally despicable no matter from which area of the political spectrum it comes. While I don't believe in the death penalty - it's too irrevocable when mistakes are made - child abuse is the time I start thinking about making an exception.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars pointed me to ABC news on this.

Creationism's Trojan Horse by Forrest and Gross

Barbara Forrest was one of the experts at the trial over evolution Katzmiller vs. Dover. This book which traces the rise of Intelligent Design was one of the reasons. Alone this would have been enough to show that Intelligent Design is creationism dressed up, but with the documents produced for the trial the relationship between creationism and Intelligent Design was shown beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fact that school board members from Dover lied under oath would have been enough, but this book shows the rest of the story.

I, too, can change says the heterosexual

The San Francisco Gate has an editorial on Haggard's change. From straight liberal to closeted bigot - what a change. Once you read the editorial you'll understand.

ADA and righteous/self-righteous

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars skewers the American Decency Association and their little bit of problem with Wal-Mart.

Both ways?

Citizen Crain has a point. Mary Cheney wants to have it both ways. Write a book about her life, but don't let people ask about anything not in the book. Support your father's political ambitions, but not answer questions about how it affects your own life. But real life isn't like that. If you talk and write about your personal life, your personal life is fair game for journalists. If you support your father's viewpoints by campaigning for him, then your life and contradictions are up for review. You can't have it both ways - that's why Mary Cheney, as admirable as she is in many ways, is a hypocrite.

What defiles a person?

When reading the gospels it is clear that Jesus ignored many of the commands, the laws, of the Hebrew Testament. One is defiled if they don't wash their hands and, yet, for Jesus that isn't important. The old categories of ritual purity and impurity, of abomination and purification, of offerings to become cleansed are thrown away. The one sacrifice is being made in the birth, life and death of the one who tells the Pharisees that it is more important to note what comes from within the heart than which ritual is performed.

The question to ask ourselves today is who are the Christians who are like the Pharisees and some of the scribes? Are we those people who concentrate on the defiled hands rather than the heart? I hear more and more TV shows where the pastor(s) seem to concentrate on how others ought to live rather than how the he and the people for whom he is pastor ought to live. If we Christians are not correcting our own problems, we cannot and should not speak to the world.

We are as Christians to be a light to the world, but that light shines more brightly when we speak to our own problems as well as to the problems of the world. We are the mantle and the light is from Christ. We need to polish that glass mantle so that the light of Christ can shine through us.

Saying the right things, e.g. I have a personal relationship with Christ, the Scriptures are inerrant, and more from all sides, is about honoring with our lips. But if our actions are a rejection of other people then we are not honoring with our hearts. If our actions are forcing others to believe (or mouth the words) even if what we believe is correct, then are dishonoring the one we claim to serve.

The harshest words in scripture are not for prostitutes and adulterers – those sexual sins, for tax collectors – betrayers of their country, or those ritually unclean. No, the harshest words are for the religious leaders of the day. And we who are religious leaders in our day should be careful that we are not like those Pharisees and scribes who knew the letter of the law but could not find the heart.

Mark 7:1-23

[1] Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, [2] they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. [3] (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; [4] and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) [5] So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" [6] He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; [7] in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.

"[8] You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

[9] Then he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! [10] For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' [11] But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban' (that is, an offering to God)--[12] then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, [13] thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this."

[14] Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: [15] there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."

[17] When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. [18] He said to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, [19] since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.) [20] And he said, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles. [21] For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, [22] adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.

[23] All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

Our way is the only way

from Straight but not Narrow I found this article about hypocrisy. A bill has been proposed that:

Itse's bill would change the law to allow all "religious officiants authorized by their church, religion, sect or denomination to solemnize marriages in the way usually practiced among them" - with a catch. Those ceremonies would only be allowed "provided that such marriages do not conflict with existing state law prohibiting marriage between persons of the same sex."

What is this but trying to say that the only way to have faith is to believe as we do. Let individual churches, congregations, denominations make up their mind as to what their faith calls them to do. Don't impose burdens that you yourselves are unwilling to bear. (I believe that last statement is one that Jesus said to the Pharisees.)

Cheney and Blitzer

I've been trying to figure out what felt wrong about Cheney not answering some questions from Wolf Blizer about gay marriage, children and his daughter who happens to be a lesbian. I don't have to any more. There's an editorial at The Spectrum that I found courtesy of Page ONeQ.

It is so gay.

Let's see one of the main people in the video "It's not gay" was found to be having sex with men even as he said he'd been cured of homosexuality. And Christians, who say they are for the truth, are promoting this video. Seems to me there's a couple of verses of mistaking the truth and falling into sin that those same Christians ought to be reading. It doesn't matter that Michael Johnston may be back to not having sex with other men, the video is still a lie.

Ken Hutchinson in the state of Washington

Ken Hutchinson, a conservative pastor, is starting a bill to take away civil rights that is rights common to everyone but only taking away those rights if you're GLBT. I always thought supporting equal rights for all was what being Christian was about. But maybe the god Hutchinson worships isn't the same as the God I seek to obey.

Ted Haggard

Could there be any more irony? Ted Haggard - recently discovered to be having sex with a male prostitute - is talking about how evangelicals have good sex.

Another not so ex-gay?

Wayne Besen has an article about the recent re-release of a video by the American Family Association and Americans for Truth that is full of what comes out of the hind end of cattle who have pr0vided the main ingredient for Rocky Mountain Oysters. The problem with the video is that one of the main characters presenting themselves as ex-gay was having sex with people of the same gender while telling the world that he had conquered his same-sex desires. The AFA and Americans for Truth surely know this, but they're still promoting a video that has a distinct lack of truthfulness.

The saved world

Could someone talk about how they see the world as "saved," or "being saved." It looks severly "unsaved" to me, tragic, a mess, unredeemed.

This quesiton came to me as I was going about my work and my answer was:

As I understand it the salvation has happened. It happened in the life, death and resurrection of the one who was fully human and fully divine. But that doesn't mean that we can see or experience the affects of that salvation. We are in the here, but not yet - the birth pangs - the war has been won, but not everyone has laid down the weapons - the climax has happened but the wrapping up of the story - the denoument - is still going on. And these are all analogies and metaphors and attempts to explain what I cannot fully express in owrds, but still feel and believe.

Yet that answer, and any answer I can give, remains incomplete. I would love to be able to explain how this wolrd that has been saved and redeemed from sin is still such a sinful place. Where people go hungry and unclothed, where the stranger and the one who is different is dispised, where the poor are oppressed and the rich walk over others the realm of God seems far away. But in the midst of this the widow puts a coin in the offering for charity, abalnd man listens for someone who can't hear while the one who is deaf watches for one unable to see. The one who is told that he has no family because he is gay cares for the other dying of AIDS and in the midst of this pain and suffering and rejection the Christ is found.

And at the last day some will be told that they didn't meet the one the claimed to have served (Matthew 25:31ff.) and others will find that they met their Savior in unexpected faces and places. (Luke 24:13ff.)

It's for the church

I've been discussing with some friends recently the idea we've come across that 'if it's for the church, then it's o.k.' This idea comes from some who attend church regularly, are active, who tithe and seem to be model parisioners. And then we find out that they've been making a few copies at work for their class or spending some time at work preparing the presenttion for Sunday or something else and they've never talked about it with their employer.

Where does being a good Christian involve stealing from one's employer?

But they don't see it like that. The good Lord needs them to do it and their employer has all of these supplies sitting around or they have time during their work hours or .... and since it is for the Lord they should just get it done.

I wish I could say this was an unusual intepretation of what it means to be a good Christian, but I can't. And so we have those for whom Christianity becomes something they will never do, becasue of the actions of so-called Christians which deny the very one they claim to worship.

Or as Karl Rahner says -

The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable.

Karl Rahner, quoted in _The Wittenburg Door_, June/July, 1988

In denial

David Irving and James Dobson have something in common. They both are in denial about some inconvenient truths. One denies the holocaust, the other that gays and lesbian couples make perfectly good parents. I can understand their wanting to do so. But I don't approve of their misstatements about what actually happens and their cherry-picking of statements to support their views. They are simply dishonest. They have a right and responsibility to say what they believe in spite of what anyone else might say. They don't have the right to distort what others say and have researched in order to support their point of view. When they do distort the words and research of another they need to be called to account immediately by all and sundry. That's what is our responsibility to have the right to freedom of speech.

Ex-gay not so ex

The evidnce seems clear to me. More than one ex-gay leader has not been an ex-gay. One of the recent instances is that of Michael Johnston of publicity campaign fame. I sorrow more for the years he's spent in denial of who he is than for the publicity surrounding his having sex with men. And the biggest problem is that he didn't reveal his HIV status. There's an excuse for being in denial about your sexual orientation, but no excuse for putting other people at risk.