Empathy
Never mind walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, I want to walk a mile in my own. High heels are pretty, and all, but why should so many women’s shoes have such thin soles?
Onywye. Some people have no empathy at all. You may have seen the nutcase pastor, Charles L Worley, a Baptist from North Carolina, who wants to take the lesbians, and the queers, and the homosexuals and put us behind an electrified fence. We would die out because we don’t reproduce. Obviously he imagines that we do not have straight parents. But for me the most striking thing he said was that it made him puking sick- “Can you imagine kissing some man?”
Presumably he has some women- straight women- in his congregation who quite like kissing men, and can imagine that easily. He cannot empathise even with his own congregation. He says The Bible and God are against homosexuality, but he is not preaching the word of God: he is preaching his own feelings, his own disgust for other people who feel differently from himself. Whereas Christianity is about Love for others, which must include some attempt to understand where they come from. Not telling them that his way of feeling and thinking is the only way.
Ron Racer has a blokish blog, I quite like it, and here he supports gay marriage while expressing his feeling that gay people are “a bit ‘off’.” He does not think we can be born that way: there might be a genetic predisposition, but “a dick in the butt is a choice!” Well, yes and no. I asked him, can you imagine not being attracted to women, but only to men? So, sex with women did not do anything for you, and your only chance of having your jollies or building a physical relationship was with a man. Then “a dick in the butt” is choosing not to be celibate. Ron, you choose not to be celibate, don’t you? Can you begin to understand that choice now? He replied that in that case he would probably try straight marriage.
Most people can empathise with someone in a directly similar situation to one they themselves have experienced, though some fail even in that. It is a worthwhile struggle to accept others’ choices, because that enables me to accept my own.
And I hope that Jonathan Grant Galleries will forgive my breach of copyright when I extol this wonderful image. The Chieftain is seeking to understand others. We who are in a position of weakness get the practice. With thin soles, I feel the ground beneath my feet.
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Another thought on Leviticus. Those opposed to equal marriage often cite Leviticus 18:22:
22 Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
It is more rare for the Oppressors to cite Leviticus 20:13:
13 If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Even the Oppressors realise that the call for Death is nutty, and few of them (except Charles Worley) really support it. So why do they not realise that the condemnation of gay love is equally nutty?
Let “us” put “them” behind a high, barb wire, electrified fence so that we can send them away from us, criminalise them, justify and excuse our violence against them, demonise them, hate them without bothering to reason, cut them down, root them out, let them die alone “among their own kind”. That way, we never have to look in their eyes, we never have to know their names, their stories, their families, their children, their friends.
Is this what Jesus would have done?
Sometimes the hatred and the injustice are so stark, that we cannot co-operate. “They” are currently in the process of criminalising and casting out refugees, stateless persons, those with no rights to remain in the uk who cannot work, who are homeless and have no access to medical care or subsistence benefits. These families too, are subject to the same programme of de-personalisation, which de-humanises, demonises and casts out.
In every case, “they” activate such thinking and such inhumane policies by refusing to look in the eye of the person they condemn.
Is this what Jesus would have done?
Jesus looked at everyone, always, and straight in the eye. He saw the smile, he felt the love, the humour and the joy. When we look each other in the face, we can safely come to our own conclusions, and safely ignore what “they” are trying to tell us. We can come to our own conclusions. Which is what Jesus did.
XXXX
Yes Jesus did those things. Remember the woman who touched his robe so that she could be cleansed from her constant bleeding? She was instantly healed but Jesus told her not to sin anymore for she’d had several ‘husbands’. Yes, jesus loves homosexuals, just as we should BUT Jesus wants people to refrain from sin. Homosexuality is a sin. I didn’t say it, God did.
Shirley Anne x
I have to wonder if god said that to Shirley directly or if it was second, third, fourth, umpteenth level hearsay…something that wouldn’t even stand up in a court of law. Again, I don’t shove my book of Nathan lane down anyone else’s throat, so don’t shove ur bible down mine. Anyway, grt post, Claire. I’m writing about something similar today. Xo sm
Who’s shoving Nathan? I only repeat was is written in Scripture. If you don’t believe in Scripture, what is written in the Bible, that’s fine by me but I have to wonder who the god is that you believe in and where your information about him(it, she et al) comes from. The God I worship is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of creation, the one written about in the Bible, the inspired word of God. God is the epitomy of love but He is also a God who will judge the sinner. By the way I do not judge what others do, I accept people for who they are but I don’t have to like what they do. In love I try to point them to God for it is He alone who will judge them, judge all of us, me included!
Shirley Anne x
I am a little surprised that a trans woman is taking this line. Sorry if you feel I should not judge your beliefs by that characteristic, but I would have thought a trans woman would have been more open to the argument that the bible condemns homosexual sexual violence, and situations which would be contemnible in the case of heterosexuals; apart from Leviticus 20, which calls for gay men to be executed. Evangelicals realise that the call for Death is nutty, so quote it rarely: why do they not realise that the condemnation of gay sex is at least as ignorable as the call for Death? I normally refer people to Word of a Woman for a clear explanation of the meanings of the relevant passages, with reference to the Hebrew and Greek: she is an Evangelical straight woman.
I am not a trans woman Clare. I am a woman. I am not homosexual or lesbian. The Bible does show that God, through Jesus will judge people. It is the Son who judges us. The Bible does show there is condemnation for those who sin which includes all forms of sexual deviantcy, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, sodomy amongst them and any other sin which is going against God’s wishes. BUT there is no condemnation for those who repent and place their faith in Jesus for in Jesus there is salvation. there is no other name under Heaven by which we may be saved (saved from eternal damnation) but by Jesus. If you haven’t got Jesus, you haven’t got salvation, you haven’t got forgiveness for sins, you have no hope. So I say, believe whatever you want to but for me I believe in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him, God my Father. All I can do is witness. Every decision is made by the individual. You either take what I witness as being the truth else you believe in something else but do not condemn me or accuse me of pushing my faith upon anyone, I am simply the messenger. In love
Shirley Anne xxx
On the semantic point, I see nothing embarrassing in being transsexual, so do not care what words are used to describe me. On the Biblical interpretation point, the Will of God point, the morality point, we disagree. Thank you for expressing your view here. If you are right about Christianity, then I reject Christianity. If you are right about God and Heaven, I reject God and Heaven.
IF I am right? God help you
Shirley Anne xxx
Indeed. But according to your system, if you are right God won’t. Ears to hear and all that. Instead I say, God help us.
God, for me is only Unconditional Love. So god does not condemn as sinful any aspect of human beingness or human behaviour. That would be like saying, “I give you everything your heart desires, but you can have only what I say you can….”
And if god is anything, God is a love so deep, so firm, so absolute and so wide, as to embrace all things and all conditions of things, with love. To god, there is only behaviour that helps us to define who we are, and behaviour that does not. And we get to choose, so, as has been said many times before, behaviour between two happy people need only concern those two, and has nothing to do with me. I would never condemn their happiness. I would rejoice with them in their joy and that would be enough for me.
Bless you Clare, for all the love you show!
Thank you. Yes, this is my view too. And I know that sexual orientation is never a choice: so the choice to express sexuality in a loving relationship is to be celebrated. It is not right for the person to be alone. Ecclesiastes; “If two lie together they are warm, but how can one be warm alone?”
Nice post Clare.
I pray to my Goddess (check out “When god was a Woman” by Merlin Stone) whereas I can have a bacon and shrimp sandwich after I get off of work Sunday and hang out with some lesbian friends wearing cotton/silk threaded clothes, some menstrating and some not.
We are not “sinful” creatures. We simply ‘are’.
I find that it is in this moment, we are living in a state of love.
Indeed. Your references are all Old Testament, but the St Paul references are also probably about ritual purity. Also on Goddess.
I hate when people have to bring God into it, in all honesty. God’s name has been used to oppress people since as long as mankind can remember. More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason. Frankly, who can honestly say it is the word of God anyway? It was all written as second hand accounts by the hands of people who sometimes were there and sometimes weren’t even there to witness these things. It was originally written in another language and has been translated and re-written thousands of times, with something being lost in the translation each and every time. Every single account is from a human being’s perception…not God’s words. At best, you could say it was God being paraphrased…and what proof do you have that it wasn’t just the voices in their head and their imaginations at work? Several books of the bible have even been left out, at the direction of the Catholic church. There were things in those that they didn’t want everyone to see and to believe because it “wouldn’t have been good for the church”. So the bible is censored to a great extent and you only have half truths…if any of it is indeed the truth. Until the heavens have opened and you are lifted up and spoken to by the true voice of God, then you are doing nothing but quoting from a novel of it’s time. I feel sorry for those misled and ignorant souls who believe that if there really is a God, that He’d want them to hate, judge, spew ignorance in His name or quote things that weren’t His but just more words from the other misled. In fact, I would imagine that He’d be pretty pissed off that human beings would skew his words, censor his commandments and his teachings to suit their own purposes and oppress those whom they didn’t agree with. Those folks are the ones who should probably be worried. Me? I feel fine. I’m okay with me and I’m sure He is too. That’s good enough for me. If it isn’t good enough for you …. well, then I’ll pray for YOU.
Now, when the Jews copy a bible they take great care to get each single letter right, but that was not the case two thousand years ago, as can be seen from the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, much of the Masoretic Text, the currently accepted Jewish Hebrew Bible, does not make sense.
Quakers know there is that of God in every one, and we can listen to God speaking to us directly. We then test these “leadings” by the regard of the Group, or get wildly solipsistic: but the leadings are individual before they are corporate, and they are perceived as received directly.
God wants gay people to be gay. Otherwise, God would not have made us that way. That God would make people gay, give us this deep drive, and then tell us to fight it, makes God a monster.
I agree wholeheartedly. I have always contended that God doesn’t make mistakes. God made me. Therefore, I am perfect in His eyes. I don’t need anyone to validate me, for I know it deep inside my being. I am part of a whole, and each and every one of us was created with love.