Saturday, September 12, 2009

Continuing the discussion

An exchange on the Sojourners site has been moved here due to technical concerns. Topics: Obama's health plan, sexual mores, Muslims, idolatry, yeah it's kinda wide ranging. Talk to me, please ;-)


http://blog.sojo.net/2009/09/10/obamas-health-care-speech-hope-over-fear/#comment-16507986

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello, this is Wave Tossed from Sojo.com. I probably won't be able to post here regularly because of time constraints. However, I did want you to see what I had written:

What I wrote at the end of the God's Politics thread is the following (two different responses to two different sections):

"WaveTossed · 8 hours ago
From an earlier thread. The software squeezed us out.

WitnessForPeace wrote: "It's not about being offended, it's about transgressing laws and teachings of all religions. Sex outside of marriage causes pain. Everyone, except the decadent West, knows that, even if many people try to deny it. 'Boys will be boys' is one of the most common, and inadequate, excuses for the awful things people do to each other."

I thoroughly agree with you. I am a huge believer in monogamous, faithful marriages. Though I think that we would have some very sharp disagreements about the genders of who should marry. But I certainly do believe in faithful marriage.

Putting the genders aside for now: Westerners are not the only ones who have been decadent. There are those in the Muslim world (and in most other cultures) where it is believed that only women should be faithful. Men are supposed to be able to have not only wives but also mistresses/concubines. It's a double standard that exists throughout the world.

Gov. Mark Sanford of North Carolina has seen himself as a good Christian; even though Jesus clearly condemns adultery (as do the Ten Commandments), Sanford committed the sin of adultery. And he even used state government money to do so. One doesn't have to be Middle Eastern or Muslim to be shocked by this behavior.

But in many Muslim countries, there are actual laws against behaviors that some find offensive; they seem to believe that there is a right to not be offended and the law should uphold this right. These laws are almost always upheld against women i.e. the clothing laws. Women and men have been put to death over consensual sexual behavior. As I've said, many, many times, I find adultery to not only be offensive, it violates clearly the tenets of my religion. We need to clearly speak out about adultery.

However, what classical liberalism 1 and 2 would state: the government needs to stay out of consensual sexual (or other) actions between adults.

WaveTossed · 4 hours ago
Once more, from a different thread:

WitnessForPeace wrote (about the Japanese Burakumin church that I visited): "I can understand your misconstruing of my words this time. By "Overdoing" ["the outcast thing"] I mean embracing everything about someone without exercising difficult, but clearly specified, discernment of areas of needed change in a person's life."

I think that those Burakumin Christians (gay and straight) that I met knew exactly what they were doing. I really wish you had been there, even if the presence of gay Burakumin and their being accepted, may have made you uncomfortable. But maybe you could have seen the truly Amazing Grace that God gave to that place.