In this story reported by CBN, there is a Bishop in Connecticut named Jay Ramirez who very passionately expresses his concerns about the negative consequences the acceptance of homosexuality will have on society. This is fairly typical right-wing rhetoric, but the reason I post about it here is that there some great truths Bishop Ramirez talked about toward the end of this piece. In particular, he said:
"We must set an example,” Ramirez urged. “We cannot have a close to 50-percent divorce rate in the church. We cannot have Christians that are running around in adultery, running around as single Christians experimenting -- Christians who are living together. All of these things...all of which do occur --and then turn around to this community and say 'We want you to be like us.'"
From what I have seen, many of those people who speak out in public against homosexuality don't make much effort to hold themselves accountable to the higher standards Jesus expects his people to live by. While I disagree with much of what the Bishop said in this interview, we share that fundamental belief.
Before any of us point the finger at others, we need to look in the mirror and see what kind of example we are setting with our own lives. If we are not adhering to the principles God laid out in the bible and the example Jesus set in his ministry, we need to keep out mouth shut and straighten out our spiritual condition!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It is interesting to see how much religious political energy and funding goes into the battle to prevent same-sex marriage on the grounds that it will destroy marriage, while so little effort goes into improving the real situation for straight married people in the States today. Given that a small minority of us are gay, and that probably a minority of this minority want to get married, it is hard to see how that percentage (possibly less than 1% of the total population) will do more damage to married couples and to families than is being done by things like soaring divorce rates and so on.
ReplyDeleteI am not advocating turning to legislation to solve the divorce problem. I think history shows that laws alone can be fairly useless in making social problems go away if they fail to address root causes. But it does seem that the devil is having a field day distracting good and faithful people with the red herring of a handful of gays and lesbians who want to marry when the real problems confronting marriage today as a lived reality (rather than some abstract idealized institution) go unchallenged.