It really does not matter. The purpose of the question is not to assess what your impact on this world would be, but to honestly your current struggle with lust.
Mine? It's as common as dust.
Paul tells us that there are two gifts God gives us to tame lust. The first is rare, and that is a gift of Grace to live a celibate life.
Grace as in grace, or grace as in strength and encouragement? And certainly grace as in celibacy is indeed super rare. It takes a lot of strength and encouragement.
The second is a partner to satisfy our sexual passions.
"A partner?" Excuse me, "a partner?" How LGBT jargon is that.
A husband is the spouse of a woman. A wife the spuouse of a man. Christianese wise. Please, let us as Christians stay within OUR world.
If you were not gifted with the first, and society decreed that your only choice for the second was someone who was clearly unable to ignite your passions, much less satisfy them,
"Society" decreed? Society has almost no bearing on The Church and Christians. Just soem laws we must follow with boundaries even to that.
No, you haven't. You have attempted to deflect the question.
I answered it 100%. You just didn't like my answer.
Are you prepared to face a life of celibacy despite not having recieved the Grace to live such a life?
Grace is offered when I sin and repent. Commitment to a life of celibacy is a commitment to a life of celibacy.
Can you honestly say that your current struggle against lust will not overwhelm you, that you will not burn? You can choose marriage rather than burning. Why do you deny that choice to gays?
"Gay" is an invention of
the world. Lust is a condition of mankind. Pop psychology does not have any power or authority over scripture.
Very familiar. And it was written by Paul, who had been given the gift of Grace to live a celibate life.
Oh really? It appears, do to the very context of the passage, that Paul couldn't stop certain things from happening. Maybe it was anger or maybe it was fleshly mistakes. But even here, marriage is in no danger of being homosexualized. Like "the world" has done to it.
As a life-long celibate myself, I can assure you that the Grace given to live such a life does not make celibacy easy. All it does is make celibacy possible. It is still a struggle every day.
Welcome to the war brother.
If you don't have the Grace, you will fail.
What? What kind of theology is that? If you DO fall, you have
grace to cover those sins.
That is why he tells those without the gift to marry. That is why Paul tells us that marriage carries the obligation to satisfy one's partner.
"Partner?" It's a husband and wife situation. Same gender definitions do not apply. A man is not the husband of another man in Christian truth. A woman is not the wife of another woman in Christian reality. You are reaching into a worldly bag and pulling out worldliness.
And yet you do just that. Scripture tells us there are only two things that help us get a grip on our sexual drive. (A drive that was given in order to enable most of us to obey the Scriptural order to be fruitful and multiply).
Our sexual drive? Where in the Bible has God been able to control that? Sarah and Abraham? Judah and Tamar? David and Bathsheba? Absalom? Oh yes . . ., David's mighty warriors, when they were comitted by oath to the Lord. A large group of powerful fighting men that curbed their liust for a mission to fight for the Lord's annointing.
One is the Grace to fight against the sexual drive. The other is marriage, to channel the sexual drive. No other help is mentioned, or even hinted at.
And no other "marriage" is hinted at but that between a man and a woman.
So anyone who does not have the Grace, should marry, and channel the sex drive into a loving relationship with a single partner.
"Partner?" There's that worldly word again. In Christian reality a marriage "partner" is exclusively (literally, exclusively) someone of a different gender.
It is better to marry than to burn. Yet you would deny marriage to some people who do not have the Grace for celibacy, and when they fail at celibacy as you would fail at celibacy you condemn them.
And when and where have I been doing that? In fact, "I" am setting people starting as is the proper formula with myself, back on the right track when they (I, me, they, them) lust off of it. Just like I am taught to do for myself and for my brothers and sisters in the faith. I have not appealed to pop psychology or leftist politics "The World and its ways" for my agenda goals. I appeal to God and the witness and testimony of the Christians that have written extensively about this IN the New Testament.
Or maybe you do encourage them to marry, but only to someone to whom they cannot channel their sexual drive.
Are you saying that human beings are like animals? Seriously, is that what you are asserting? Your logic makes my desires for promiscuity and inappropriate content absolutely achievable in a Christian life. All I have to do is gather around me enough supporters of my lust to redefine them to the OK bracket.
Such a marriage is a perversion of both purposes of marriage. If he cannot give himself fully to her, they cannot become one flesh; if she is physically ill-equipped to satisfy his sexual needs, she cannot help channel his drives away from extra-marital lusts.
And that is your apologia to alter
marriage forever?
Then I am going to ask Hugh Hefner to start a Church. I lie Mega Churches anyway. And his is going to be huge. As big as a worldwide Hollywood even.
I do uphold the ideals of the scriptural purposes of marriage. I just don't uphold the cold, sterile rules that you impose on gay couples.
Cold sterile rules that cost Peter and Paul a cold hard death. I am not willing to also redefine grace and forgiveness for political correctness either. I will sing the Fifty-first Psalm as a love story written for me. I am not going to even try to excuse away my errors because I have emotional feelings to the contrary.
Rules that are nowhere stated in Scripture, and are only implied by the unloving interpretation you attach to three NT passages . . .
Three??? The entire testimony of scripture is unsupportive of gay theology. And "rules" that is a rather inappropriate concept, to say the least, about holiness.
. . . that, in context not only do not single out the sins that you choose to read as "any 'homosexual' activity" from the dozen or so other sins listed, but specifically warns against judging people for these sins, since we are all guilty of some of them.
You are frustrated that I disproved your position FROM your setup analogy. And in any case, you are free to grow your worldview in places you label as Christian Churhces and win approval of through secular means. I will never and can never support that. I will live as Christians do through the Gospel and through theolgy like the amazing grace offered in Pslam 51. Obvioulsy there is a reason Jesus thought the concept of "born again" was universally known.
I don't support it because the Scriptures don't support it. Paul tells anyone who does not have the gift of celibacy to marry, and to marry someone who will help fight against temptation to improper lusts by "coming together" with them to quench the sexual desires. You would deny some people any opportunity to follow that Scriptural advice.
All I am doing is denying that marriage can be a same gender defintion, and, I will never support tha gay agenda. Paul didn't (nor Jesus, nor any other person in scripture) and neither will I.
Surely you are joking that adultery and promiscuity are of "NO HARM" (Why, I must ask, did you need to shout those two words?).
There are literally thousands of magazines (and movies) to support my worldy view on that.
I guess a case could be made that there is no harm from inappropriate content, but I tend not to agree with such a statement.
It's all how you want to twist Christian truth. The World and its ways says inappropriate content and promiscuity is no problem. Of course reality says otherwise, but hey, what's to stop an agenda huh?
Neither do I know of anyone who insists that same-sex marriage be acceptable in your church.
The slippery slope of immorality being clebrated to the corporate body being corrupted is the easiest form of evil to prove. We now have a vaccine for promiscuity cancer that little girls have to take because they are encouraged to be promiscuous as a way of life. And
so I've heard, that even people of the same gender are "getting married." How absurd huh????? Another Christian paranoid.
But in a country which needs to be fair to the beliefs of many churches, and is dedicated to treating all people equally under the law, same-sex civil marriage must be recognized.
You are appealing to The World and its ways for your worldviews to be celebrated??? And with that . . . my position is ratified.
And those churches which see nothing wrong with same-sex marriages must be free to bless them. It is your position that is trying to force other churches to accept your beliefs.
Please show me the concept of "other Churches" in Christian reality? My position is just to call heresy heresy. False teachings offered up by false teachers. If these people win power over we Christians that will never approve of them, that is what happens. The radical anti-Christians that are running our secular worldy governments
YOU will have to agree with, as they continue to attack we Christians that oppose gay advocacy.
I assume that those behaviors were from a time both before you became a Christian and before you were ready to settle down and be faithful to one spouse.
Try not to assume anything. Make assertions based on presentation. That's the basis of honest debate and Christian truth. No matter what I do with my body, it is either sin or not sin based on reality.
Yes, there are a lot of people who indulge like that, both gay and straight. Most of them are not Christians. Of course they will ignore the advice and even the commands of the Scriptures.
Excuse me, but "marriage" is a man and a woman. No amount of socialist-leftist ideology and political power is going to change that.
But I don't judge all straight people based on the actions of those hedonists.
Of course not. Only judge those that support the hedonists and hedonism and preach about their bad ways.
I especially don't judge straight Christians, who have left that kind of hedonism behind, or who have grown up trying to avoid sexual temptation.
Not judging people is a dangerous Church environment. A very, very dangerous Church environment. Jesus made it absolutetly clear that there is a limit to what bad people can do or say in The Church. Then they must be confronted. And Jesus used scripture for that confrontation to occur properly.
A Christian who is trying to live a Godly life needs encouragement, not misplaced blame. Likewise, I do not judge all gay people based on those hedonists. It is unfortunate that you do.
A sinner is as a sinner does. As Jesus says, it is even worse sin to encourage others to sin.
It is unfortunate that we have so many people celebrating that in The Church today. The World and its ways has never changed. But, that is what was written as to how it's akways been and to what was going happen.