Another Christian has an epiphany that tolerating gay people is wrong and that they should be forced into heterosexual marriages. They will suffer, but that suffering will lead to something beautiful - as all suffering for God does.
Quote:A conversation in a gay bar changed my opinion on sexuality
It is probably worth saying that I began theological college with fairly standard liberal views on sexuality. But as we recorded our interviews in the heart of Chicago’s LGBT community, I realised that I was hearing a range of perspectives that confounded my neat certainties. If part of being a liberal meant honouring everyone as they shared their story, I had to face my own hitherto dismissive personal attitude towards those championing traditional sexual ethics.
And what Brian was about to say did not compute with my view of Christian flourishing. He told me that he had always known himself to be gay – but because of his theological convictions he had chosen to marry a woman, and had since fathered a child. He said that falling in love with his wife was “an experience that I can only say was through God himself bringing my wife and me together.”
There was one story shared at this time which proved as pivotal for me as meeting Brian on the dancefloor. One woman participant shared her fear, and her tears, about the fact that her female partner had recently started binding her own breasts, and was exploring having a double mastectomy as she explored a change of gender identity. A complicating factor was that at the same time she was pursuing IVF via a sperm donor. The participant in the seminar was trying to come to terms with the fact that her own identity as a lesbian would be profoundly changed, if in a few years’ time she and her partner presented to the world as a straight couple with a child.
But as I returned to the UK, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether the scenario that woman was facing, considered alongside other deeply personal stories shared within the group, really represented an authentic expression of ‘life in all its fullness’. Over the coming months, rather to my surprise, my continued study of Christian Ethics led to my being fully persuaded by the existing teaching of the church on sexual ethics.
In the course of making this documentary, I had met two kinds of people who confounded my expectations: those living joyfully and (in their own words) flourishing within the bounds of a traditional sexual ethic; and those living with fear and confusion (in their own words) when embracing the opportunities of a progressive vision.
In the book that I wrote, I explore whether there is a way to hold together the compassion of Christ towards all people with the traditional teaching of the church, and whether a commitment to ‘compassionate orthodoxy’ can offer a conceptual way forward in the damaging disagreements we face.
https://www.premierchristianity.com/opin...44.article
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
