Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer
I often blog, Facebook, and freelance, and sometimes I get into a situation where I have to try to explain myself; this is what happened one day in a conversation about the Bible.
CW…”If you don’t believe the Bible is God’s Word then it makes sense that you don’t believe homosexuality is sinful.”
1. CW, the problem with this line of discussion is that I disagree with your premise to begin with. I’ve asked the question about salvation and redemption because the initial flaw in your analysis is that I don’t think you can equate redemption and salvation. Not one verse in the entire Bible does that. I have attempted to fly this by you on several occasions, but we end up right where we started. The question then is begged, “If you believe the Bible and you follow it literally, if these two words are nowhere equated, how can you possibly equate them and on what basis?” I think the answer is that you do not believe the Bible but rather believe your dogma concerning what you believe about your doctrine. Asking me if I believe when I am using it as the basis for my argument and while you are evading doing the hard reading to support your thoughts is outrageous.
2. If YOU believe that the Bible is God’s word, as you seem to indicate, then it would seem that it would be worth the real work it would take to analyze the context of your statements, not the least of which is that the scriptures are the Psalms, the Law, and the Prophets….Christ did not have anything else to go on, and using the New Testament as scripture opens the doorway for even contemporary writing to be seen as scripture, thus giving support to Catholic doctrines and the Mormons. There is nothing in your analysis to keep that from occurring since there is no stable end to the writing of words…we could just simply add more, and say that we accept it as inspired.
3. Your analysis of my beliefs concerning homosexuality is so far from being accurate that it defies gravity. Yes, homosexuality and hundreds of other things were listed as sins in the Old Testament, and Paul often quotes the Old Testament in his arguments concerning the legalistic minds of his day, BUT if Christ has died on the Cross and we are still under the Law, then we are no better off than we were before the Cross. There is the fine distinction of who was under the Law of Moses in the first place. Paul argued that the gentiles were not under the obligation to be circumcised, and if not one jot or one tittle was to pass from the Law until all be fulfilled, then the entire Law fell at the same time or we are still under the Law. If the Law is still in effect, then Christ died in vain. I asked you this question, “Which will it be, Moses or Christ?” Legalism or grace? You say grace but then you put yourself and others right back under the Law. No man can serve 2 masters. Pick. Grace or the Law? If anything is sinful, then grace is not in effect. This does not mean that the State of Texas or the Federal Government should not pass laws to protect citizens from harm, foreign and domestic, civil and corporate. It simply means that God is not angry with us for what we do. IF he is, then Christ did us no good since we all still sin if we are under the law and if all we have to do is ask for forgiveness then we can do anything and get away with it in heaven anyway! Christ’s death then changed nothing.
4. There is a more intense form of self-deception at work in your analysis though, and I have brought this up over and over on Facebook on various threads, and it simply gets looked over and therefore dismissed. To use the Law as a requirement, believing and obeying, accepting and keeping the Law, subjects you to the same Law. You cannot hold the Law and not keep it yourself. If you subject others to it, you subject yourself to the same Law. 100%. If you believe homosexuality to be wrong as in Biblically wrong, and I differentiate from those who I think more honestly protest homosexuality because of plumbing issues or social morals, then you in effect put yourself in the lineage of those who do not depend on grace but are under the first covenant. The word that Paul uses is the 14th Century legal term in the King James, “reprobate.” I actually followed this term up using scholarly research, and found it in use in Shakespeare’s day, and it is now described as being one who “contests the will.” This was done when one believed that he was erroneously left out of the inheritance, and that he should be added in on some account. Paul argues in Romans 1 that people were turned over to a reprobate mind…and that the list of things they did in relationship to the Law included homosexuality, bragging, being a debater…a host of things. I have reiterated that argument here over and over; if you want anyone to follow the Law, not be gay for example, then you should be aware that you are then saying that you must then abide by the same Laws, all 613 of them. You must keep them 24/7/365. To break one of them is to break all of them. If this is your wish, then please confer with God, and maybe He will arrange to watch you like a hawk to insure that you do not break your pledge. I jokingly said, good luck with that. I believe that if you were held to that standard, you would go the hell, and you know it, but you are not honest in your presentation. In fact, the gays are more honest in that they are open about who they are. You, in fact, hide what you believe to be sin and are therefore duplicitous in your words and deeds. This is a fault with your own analysis of your own beliefs. This makes you neither a believer nor a literalist.
5. And this is the point I think where we have been several times, and we then come to a decision to agree to disagree; there is the matter of faith or belief. You believe that you can believe and that your acceptance of Christ ensures your place in heaven, never mind that literal statement of Christ that we did not believe in Moses and that we would not believe in him either. Never mind that having the faith the size of a grain of mustard seed would enable us to move a mountain and yet we falter in much smaller tasks every single day, if not by the minute or second. The final blow is in the area of the defense of faith, our own faith. We are told not to brag, not to judge, not to offend, not to do many things. We are told to preach, and to take care of widows and orphans, and to take care of the poor. On a thousand points we are asked to apply our Christianity in our daily lives and yet we spend each year more time and money and personal resources on sports, entertainment, and dining out than the average person on this planet makes in a decade. Just having this time on the web to talk on Facebook and argue these minute points of doctrine or dogma, these are points of access and excess that defy the purpose of being redeemed if we are to see our own acceptance of redemption as the final word in our not going to hell. It is beyond comprehension that anyone would sleep or eat beyond being exhausted if he truly believed that anyone who did not believe was going to hell. It is monstrous to think that your laziness might lead to someone else’s eternal torture. You have no faith at all if you are not attempting to get every neighbor you have to believe, if you believe as you say you do. No cost will be too high if you save one soul…if that’s how the story goes.
6. Lastly, and I mean this with all my heart, it is disingenuous to equate salvation with redemption. You have not done even the basic work to understand the process it seems but rather you have picked up a doctrine and run with it until your feet bled. If we are redeemed, Paul agues in Romans, it is because of what Christ did. We are under grace because of his faithfulness to sacrifice himself for us to pay the price for our condemnation. Nowhere in the Bible does it say directly that we are redeemed because of our own faith, beliefs, actions, or awareness. People infer this because they want to feel empowered, as if they have done something of significance in their lives; the lie they tell themselves is that it is all about Christ, but their doctrine and belief is that it is all about their acceptance. “If you believe, you can have it too! I believed and that made God redeem me!” “……I forced God into an obligation?” If this had been possible, then Christ would not have needed to be born and die. His warning before the Cross shows the necessity of his dying not the necessity of our believing. Believe an obey…the prophets had been saying that for thousands of years, and no one really ever listened. No one ever did, and they still don’t, 100%. No one believed…all have sinned. If you believed fully, you would not sin. Only Christ did that. There is, however, an awareness of the work of Christ, and this revelation is called “salvation.” The question I asked is, “What is it that we are saved from?” If we are redeemed and therefore not going to hell, then what is there left to be saved from…..unrighteousness, that is self-righteousness. You cannot follow the law, and that was the point of having it. No fig leaf that you put on, no ritual you do, and no claim of faith you make is going to be of infinite distinction. You will falter. This will nullify your warranty. You can only rely on Christ. Not that he only then begins to sustain you; he has already died for us, so redemption is done since we are already bought with a price: BLOOD. (It would not make sense to say that now that I believe the bill will be paid; Paul calls this retrying the case by crucifying Christ afresh.) What salvation does, what it is, is the ongoing understanding, the growing realization that we are not able to fool God with our self-righteousness. You are human. I am human. God alone is righteous. My acceptance of that does not make it so. I am not righteous because I accept him; I am righteous because he accepted me. The endless mind games of belief and faith, prayer and ritual, claiming and doing in the name of God, are all worthless and do not get anything more than a good report, Paul says. We are in the passive position; Christ does it all. To believe in Christ is not to say I believe in my power to believe so that my acceptance nails a place in heaven for me; Christ did all the nailing you will ever need. He alone is worthy. All your claims of righteousness under the Law are a show to your friends, but even though God knows better, he loves us anyways, because of Christ. To say that your faith or acceptance is what allows you to go to heaven, because you believed in Christ is to believe in yourself. It is not about Christ, and so “Modern Christianity,” as a traditional doctrine extracted from the Bible, is a misleading interpretation of the text perpetuated by those who believe in themselves as the final authority in all things sacred, a misapprehended look at the context of the Bible. This is the tip of the iceberg. You’ve asked me to clarify and so I will finally end with this: Is the Bible the inspired word of God? If you believe it to be so, then stop being dependent on your own beliefs and faith. We were freed from that bondage and yoke. Live your life according to your own conscience and remember that if you even so much as see “sin” in another person, the entire law will be applied to you, and you will face the condemnation of Moses, but that Christ does not condemn you. For those who really believe, there is therefore now no condemnation, of anyone, ourselves or others.
runningturtle87
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