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Considering that marriage (correct me if I'm mistaken) originated as a religious ceremony, it would indeed be difficult to seperate the two. The fact that the government introduced financial benefits to being 'married', was discriminating to non-religious people, thus non-religious marriages were introduced. Next step, gay people feel discriminated against and so now they also want to be married.
This is all pretty much factual and I agree with it.
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Personally, I couldn't care less if 2 same sex people wanted to consider themselves married, however to try to do such is a religious context is futile.
"In" a religious context, it is already done. All the time. It may be futile to try in your church, but there are many others.
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Little bit bias statement.
No, no bias. Factual statement. I have seen it several times and stated the facts, generalized for those several situations.
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Churches generally could be seen as way to rid oneself of 'guilt' of sin. My cousin forinstance had a very bad relationship with her husband, neither in any way religious, but when things got bad, including him trying to commit suicide, they turned to the Church for moral support and became 'Christians'.
It's great that they found that support. But I'm talking about people who have been in the church or churches all their lives, who are upstanding members of the community and seen as authority figures and mentors, who use this to hide their misdeeds. I never said it was everyone. Please try to view my statement in the context of the post to which I was replying.
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I can well imagine that many child molesters are not happy about their circumstance and want to find a way to solve the problem. Not difficult to go to church and become a 'Christian' really.
Especially if you're already a pastor.
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PS, your statement is actually pretty hatefull. Your experience is one thing, but no Christian church EVER condones paedofiles or adulterers.
There goes the h-word again... please understand that I am not accusing churches of condoning such behavior. I am saying that the us-vs-them mentality of many churches leads people to trust so-called men of God to an irrational degree, to such a degree that they ignore credible accusations of abuse and such. I have seen this with my own eyes.
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'Love and honour your wife' ... yeah sounds alot like those Christian women beating men.
Don't go telling me it doesn't happen just because it's not supposed to happen.
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Funny, but this entire post is about typecasting ONE apparent 'Christians' hatred onto an entire Christian community. Nothing is mentioned about any prior threads in that discussion, just that one post saying 'Look at how Christians HATE people', how can they be like that.
What? What are you talking about? I personally know of the behavior of many people, not just one, and I never claimed that it represented all. I'm only saying that it is a well-established pattern observed by me and by people to whom I am very close. I don't claim that Christianity is responsible for the abuse. I claim that it is an undeniable fact that Christianity fails to prevent abuse within its own ranks. That's all I see.
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I am truely sorry for your discomfort.
Don't worry, I'm well on my way to getting over it. Life goes on, y'know....
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I am good friends with 2 women that have been abused in their youth, and pray that such a thing would never happen to any of my children. Having said that if your best friend does such a thing, and is being accused and you honestly believe him to be innocent, I am sure you would also stand as a character witness.
Of course I would.
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