An anonymous contributor on October 22, 2007, posted the following to a topic unrelated to its own content. Because it is written sincerely, I have moved it here from the posting about traffic and parking problems on the Square. Please respect the author’s beliefs. If you don’t agree, fine; but please write respectfully.
“Sincere question:
”Does the morality of a city's highest ranking officer matter?
”Specifically: If a man is willing to debase himself, and his "partners", in acts of homosexual sodomy - sinful acts that brought down the severe and devastating wrath of God against the ancient cities of Sodom & Gomorrah, and are strongly condemned in the New Testament as well - should not the citizens of a city under the rule of such a Sodomite have grave cause for concern?
”If a Sodomitic man is willing to defile himmself and mock the Most High God and His commandments, why should I believe that this man will not also mock and defile his citizens as well? Do not such actions and defilement tell us all that such a man believes he is a law unto himself? Accountable to no one? Not even God?
”Just a question for everyone as I was wondering about comments throughout this website to keep public official's "personal" lives "private" - as if charachter schizophrenia was a virue...or even possible?
"(Note: This is not a rant against homosexuals. I concede all sin is equal. This same question could be asked if the official was a thief, philander, child molester, rapist, murderer, etc.)"
I apologize for the quotation marks. I can’t figure out how to over-ride Microsoft Word’s automatic insertion of close-parenthethes, when I wanted “open”.
Please post only thoughtful responses. Comments that promote thinking will not be removed.
You never know who is interested…
3 months ago
19 comments:
I assume that you are, at least nominally, a "Christian." So I, too, ask a sincere question. When did "Judge not lest ye yourself be judged" get tossed? And "Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone..." well, Jesus didn't really mean to take all the fun out of life, did he?
As for "why should I believe that this man will not mock and defile his citizens as well?," has it not occurred to you that what you believe has absolutely nothing to do with what he actually does? I am a citizen and he has been mayor for long enough to have an impact. If I have been mocked, it has been behind my back, and I haven't noticed. I haven't been defiled, either, but I suspect that's a verb you used without thinking about it much, so we'll ignore it.
More later
Friend:
Straw Man argument, 10 yard penalty.....
I believe "judging" (God's job) and being human (our job) are two separate issues here. God "judges" ("Sinner A, you accepted Jesus and Him alone to save you from the wrath of your sins, go to Heaven; Sinner B, you haven't, you had the chance, it pains Me, but you go to hell..."); we, on the other hand, simply follow His laws which mean (partly) living a right life. Part of this is calling public leaders to account for gross immorality, because, as stated in the comment, it affects us all, and to not do so would be to hate yourself and your neighbor by turning a blind eye to a wicked and immoral leader.
As for "casting stones," (which split a skull open) and prodding a leader to repentance, humility, and reconciliation, I suspect you know the difference between the two.
Lastly, no, Jesus said he came to give us an abundant life, not be a big kill-joy. So, to help us sinners along, He laid out what will rob us of joy and even life itself - sin; and what will bring us true joy - right living and in fellowship with Him.
Note: You state the record of current Mayor Sager and that was not the point of the original question. It was a question in a general sense.
Do all gay men practice sodomy? No, they do not.
Commenter #1: Do you really believe a person can lead a double life? That his "private" actions have no bearing on his "public" actions? I sense in your post that you taunt the original commenter but you do not, in fact, believe this. C'mon, come clean....
No, some practice, how can you even write this in a public forum??, male-to-male f*ll**io. A sin as well. And who knows what else.....(Again, not a rant against homosexuals; all sex, homo or hetero, outside the bounds of mariage, is deemed sinful and life-destroying by a loving God.)
Doesn't sound very loving to me. I don't like your "God".
What would you consider "loving"?
A. To let someone mire in despair, degradation, filth, and hopelessness and not give them a cure?
B. Or, to send His one and only Son to take our wrath in His place - at zero cost to us - and all we need do is accept this incredible cure for our sin and free pass out of hell and into Heaven?
I encourage to reconsider your hatred of God, because He actually loves you.
If you want to intertwine religion and politics, please, move to a different country. Your God has his place as does mine, and for all I'm concerned the Bible is just about the biggest book of fiction in the world. How anyone can follow a book that has been rewritten by dozens of different monarchies through the centuries as factual evidence of a hereafter causes me to laugh in itself. God is nothing but a figment of societies imagination thought up to keep us from going insane knowing that when we die there is nothing but blackness and cold dirt waiting. Please, keep believing in your "God", because without him you'd probably be insane, but leave him out of the running of our country and city, I don't want your "God" telling me how I should live my life.
Way to go Gus. This is all on you.
Dear Anon:
Take God out of the equation and you end up in a Cambodian Killing Field with 2,000,000 butchered; Maoist China with possibly 25,000,000 exterminated; Hitler's Germany with what, 30,000,000 killed worldide in his Nazi-induced WWII; Stalin's Russia with maybe another 25,000,000 starved or murdered; the African continent where butchery is an art form; just to name a quick few in only ONE century.....
It seems pretty easy for you to sit in a country founded on Biblical principles that still protect you to this day and spout that you no longer want that protection. Why not practice what you preach? Forsake your Biblical protection and heritage, leave the US, head over to, say, Darfur? Somalia? Uzbekistan? You pick. Any profoundly Godless nation and see how long you last.
Thought so.....
But, we disagree in Peace. Take care.
What makes your god better than all the others?
Fair question....
Jesus Christ was the only one to claim - in Person - that He was God. This makes Him stand out among all of the other world religions.
Then He proceeded to back up His claims with miracles, which were attested to by hard-core unbelievers, who attributed them to magic or other sources. But did not deny His miracles. Likewise His ressurection from His crucifixtion. I guess rising from the dead is worthy of some consideration, no?
And when you study His own words in the New Testament of the Bible, one can only be profoundly moved by His love, humility, sinlessness, and the perfection of what He taught. I challenge you to compare His teachings to any other world religion.
Lastly, He died for us lowly sinners, you and me; that we might spend eternity with Him in Heaven, and not fry in Hell. No other "god" did that for me or for you, nor for his or her adherents.
So, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, wins out over all other "gods" for me. I pray you choose Him too as your God. He loves you and died for you. If you doubt Him, simply and humbly and in repentance pray to Him that He would reveal Himself to you and save you from an eternity in a brutal Hell. If you are sincere, He surely will.
Your life will never be the same.
If you want to learn more, check out this awesome "Why I Hate Religion" YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXKT8IPdvzA
Let me know what you think.
Peace & take care!
Thats why they call it "faith". you do not need proof you just believe. Kind of why anyone would vote for Hillary.
Well, sort of. We don't believe on blind faith alone, there actually was a historical Jesus who did all that was attributed to Him, but yes, we're not going to have a Crepe and glass of wine with Jesus tonight at La Petite, though we will certainly do so one day in Heaven, so there is an element of faith, for sure.
Hillary: Ha Ha...See the comment that kicked off this article....
A historical Jesus who did all that was attributed to him? By whom? Sounds pretty blind to me.
OK, if I'm a lawyer, and I'm viewing the case for Christ through legal goggles, what am I missing? Anything...? Surely, other analytical legal minds have weighed the evidence in "the case for Christ"...
Again, I was truly stunned to find that great legal minds had already done this...
Check these guys out...
1. Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was one of the founders of Harvard Law School. He authored the authoritative three-volume text, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence (1842), which is still considered "the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure."
Greenleaf literally wrote the rules of evidence for the U.S. legal system. He was certainly a man who knew how to weigh the facts. He was an atheist until he accepted a challenge by his students to investigate the case for Christ's resurrection. After personally collecting and examining the evidence based on rules of evidence that he helped establish, Greenleaf became a Christian and wrote the classic, Testimony of the Evangelists.
Let [the Gospel's] testimony be sifted, as it were given in a court of justice on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination. The result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth.
2. Sir Lionel Luckhoo (1914-1997) is considered one of the greatest lawyers in British history. He's recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "World's Most Successful Advocate," with 245 consecutive murder acquittals. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II -- twice. Luckhoo declared:
I humbly add I have spent more than 42 years as a defense trial lawyer appearing in many parts of the world and am still in active practice. I have been fortunate to secure a number of successes in jury trials and I say unequivocally the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.
3. Lee Strobel was a Yale-educated, award-winning journalist at the Chicago Tribune. As an atheist, he decided to compile a legal case against Jesus Christ and prove him to be a fraud by the weight of the evidence. As Legal Editor of the Tribune, Strobel's area of expertise was courtroom analysis. To make his case against Christ, Strobel cross-examined a number of Christian authorities, recognized experts in their own fields of study (including PhD's from such prestigious academic centers as Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandeis). He conducted his examination with no religious bias, other than his predisposition to atheism.
Remarkably, after compiling and critically examining the evidence for himself, Strobel became a Christian. Stunned by his findings, he organized the evidence into a book entitled, The Case for Christ, which won the Gold Medallion Book Award for excellence. Strobel asks one thing of each reader - remain unbiased in your examination of the evidence. In the end, judge the evidence for yourself, acting as the lone juror in the case for Christ...
As a "lone juror," I sat quiet in my chair...
As jurors often do in the jury room, I asked to return once again to a provoking piece of evidence...
Source:
http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/the-case-for-christ.htm
Mocker: Fear for your soul. Hell is real. It's brutal. Turn away from your sins. Turn to Christ. He truly, truly loves you. He died for you so that you can avoid the wrath of your sin and live with him forever in Heaven.
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John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
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How can you say no to such an offer??
Sorry, some guy that looks like Charlton Heston in flowing robes sitting in the clouds? Not for me.
Live a good life and you will be richly rewarded. No wait, thats Santa Claus. No one has ever died in a war fought over Santa Claus.
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