"A Swedish court has sentenced Ake Green, a pastor belonging to the Pentecostal movement, to a month in prison, under a law against incitement, after he was found guilty of having offended homosexuals in a sermon, according to Ecumenical News International.
Green had described homosexuality as "abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumor in the body of society" in a 2003 sermon.
Soren Andersson, the president of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights, said on hearing Green's jail sentence that religious freedom could never be used as a reason to offend people."
I couldn't google any more origonal material about these events: so I'll just go with the story as stated; as it is genuinely carried in the Ecumenical News International.
Is it good that this man was found guilty of a crime; yes.
These are good and evenhanded laws, posing no difficulty whatsover for genuinely religious and spiritual people.
Was a month in the slammer the appropriate sentence, I do not know.
Such crime is not victimless. Being denied grounding on God, as this pastor was denying to some; has gross impact on others.
Should freedom of speech be absolute; of course not. We all have responsibilities to others (Jesus suggested that we love our neighbours, and in God), and no rights can be allowed to trump these.
I have the licensed right to drive a car: I am not allowed to drive through your fence, and into your garden; nor am I allowed to run over your child. All rights are qualified by these basic decencies; which Jesus suggests shoud extend to loving, and in God.
So, given that this lad appears to have been an evangelical Christian, just where do these decencies start, just where does religious free speech need to be qualified.
IMO religions should no longer be able to run with conceptions such as sin and evil; nor should God be allowed to condemn others, for not sharing some subcription. You might harbour these ideas in your heart, we all have wierd and dark residues in our basements: but witnessing in these terms, outwith licensed private gatherings; should be gathered up as illegal actions.
Religions have to learn to be affirmative. To focus exclusively on the approach to God of the subcribing subject. If in this approach, you need the outrigger of condemning other people: then you have a personal problem of balance and faith; that should be addressed in proper setting.
No Christian should feel threatened by any of this. Jesus, while being clear about what will lead to departure from the narrow way: gives us a clear and affirmative path to follow; where we can deal exclusively with our own approach to God, with our own endeavours to be as children of God. There is aboslutely no need, for any Christian to engage in condemning others: my own suspicion is, that such indiscipline begins when a subject finds that they do not have what it takes, in that moment, to sustain their own faith filled approach to God through Jesus; and in the angst of this, they begin to lash out at others, and are then simply never again able to break the habit.
What the Swedish court has demanded of this pastor, is that he love, and respect his neighbour.
Is it not ironic that a country and institution that so many identify with the secular, and even with antipathy to Christianity; should so rudely drag us back to our first duty; to our neighbours, in Jesus's name, and in God.
