Acts 18:1-8
I am as out and proud as just about anyone. I'm not wearing rainbow belts and scarves and the like, but I am out and proud and I am politically, religiously and socially active. I am often at odds with people over a variety of issues. I suppose most of all about being gay. When you say for example that gays shouldn't marry or that it's not a real marriage, I do take it personally. You are talking about my relationship with my husband, our commitment, our love. As a Christian, I believe my marriage as Sacramental as well.
So what of those e people that disagree with me? The ones I would view as misguided or worse, hard hearted and outright wrong. Should I shake the dust off my feet and pretend they do not exist? Should I write them as as idiots and have nothing more to do with them?
One of the things I have learned and this has nothing to do with right, wrong, left, write, Jew, Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, is that life is a journey. Each and every one of us is on a journey to wholeness. It can take a lifetime. Well, really, it does take a lifetime. We all learn at different rates, we have different experiences, different frames of reference. What you learn at 9 years old I may not learn until I am ninety and visa verse. Who am I to judge your journey? When I dust the sand off my sandals for good, I am closing my mind to the possibility of change and growth in the other and myself. I am judging in the worst possible way. I have to respect the others journey. That doesn't man I am not going to try to reach out, teach, educate and expose people to what a decent life is like. I wish to convert people to respect by good example and a loving life. Dusting the sand off your shoes forever won't do that.
This reading seems to be one of the ones that Paul writes that one could take issue with. He has a problem with the Jews for not accepting the word and so he condemns them that they will have blood on their heads. I am glad that Paul so eloquently argued that Christ's message of love and salvation was open to the gentiles, the non-Jews. But at the same time I think Paul's message of condemnation is not from God. The same generosity he would heap on the gentiles is absent in his speech towards the Jews. This is just another example of the scriptures written by imperfect humans about a perfect God. Does the perfection of the creator translate to perfection in us fallible humans who write their story about God?
Love, forgiveness, tolerance, understanding and respect for journey must be universal and reciprocal. I know it isn't always so but I would rather die living a good life than taking up the banner of intolerance and hatred that is often foisted on the gay community.
I am as out and proud as just about anyone. I'm not wearing rainbow belts and scarves and the like, but I am out and proud and I am politically, religiously and socially active. I am often at odds with people over a variety of issues. I suppose most of all about being gay. When you say for example that gays shouldn't marry or that it's not a real marriage, I do take it personally. You are talking about my relationship with my husband, our commitment, our love. As a Christian, I believe my marriage as Sacramental as well.
So what of those e people that disagree with me? The ones I would view as misguided or worse, hard hearted and outright wrong. Should I shake the dust off my feet and pretend they do not exist? Should I write them as as idiots and have nothing more to do with them?
One of the things I have learned and this has nothing to do with right, wrong, left, write, Jew, Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, is that life is a journey. Each and every one of us is on a journey to wholeness. It can take a lifetime. Well, really, it does take a lifetime. We all learn at different rates, we have different experiences, different frames of reference. What you learn at 9 years old I may not learn until I am ninety and visa verse. Who am I to judge your journey? When I dust the sand off my sandals for good, I am closing my mind to the possibility of change and growth in the other and myself. I am judging in the worst possible way. I have to respect the others journey. That doesn't man I am not going to try to reach out, teach, educate and expose people to what a decent life is like. I wish to convert people to respect by good example and a loving life. Dusting the sand off your shoes forever won't do that.
This reading seems to be one of the ones that Paul writes that one could take issue with. He has a problem with the Jews for not accepting the word and so he condemns them that they will have blood on their heads. I am glad that Paul so eloquently argued that Christ's message of love and salvation was open to the gentiles, the non-Jews. But at the same time I think Paul's message of condemnation is not from God. The same generosity he would heap on the gentiles is absent in his speech towards the Jews. This is just another example of the scriptures written by imperfect humans about a perfect God. Does the perfection of the creator translate to perfection in us fallible humans who write their story about God?
Love, forgiveness, tolerance, understanding and respect for journey must be universal and reciprocal. I know it isn't always so but I would rather die living a good life than taking up the banner of intolerance and hatred that is often foisted on the gay community.
After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers. Every sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks.
When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’ Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshipper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a believer in the Lord, together with all his household; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptized.
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