Tolerate the Intolerance?

One of the big issues of our modern world is the issue of "tolerance" and "acceptance", especially of homosexuals. It is not a big surprise when the secular culture preaches the message that homosexuality is no big deal and is just an "alternative lifestyle", but when the church starts to do the same thing I begin to get worried. It is not as though the Bible is not clear on the issue so that it has to be argued and debated among Christians, at least among true, Bible-believing Christians. Here is just a sample of what the Bible has to say:

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." - Leviticus 18:22

"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." - Leviticus 20:13

"Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." - Romans 1:26-27

It seems pretty clear to me that homosexuality is not something to be condoned, no matter how much the world and men say that it should be. There is an old saying that says that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually come to believe it. I think that saying can easily be applied to our situation today.

One of the most popular articles on the Yahoo news site this morning was one entitled "God and gays: Churchgoers divided". The entire article made me sad. It makes it seem that the churches are just stubborn and behind the times in changing their views on homosexuality.

"Many, gay or straight, seek a community of souls that welcomes them and shares their sense of the Scriptures and the sacred.

It may mean staying in their church of a lifetime, finding ways to accept - or overlook - teachings with which they disagree.

Most people (72%) have stayed with one religion all their lives, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup survey of 1,002 adults June 9-11. Brian Flanagan, 28, a cradle Catholic, openly gay and studying to be a theologian, says not even an unbroken line of rulings from the Vatican can drive him from his church because what truly matters is the "way it talks about Christ, about God.""

In other words, homosexuals want a church that overlooks the fact that the Bible says that what they are doing is a sin and that just talks about the loving, caring, nice aspects of God. They do not seem to want to deal with the fact that God is also a wrathful God who detests sin of all kinds. There is a penalty for sin: death. That is why Christ had to die, to pay that penalty for those who will accept what he did and repent of their sin and ask for forgiveness. Yet, people do not want to face the fact that what they are doing is sin. They just want a place to go to where they can feel good.

The article also goes on to state that:

"Once, black people, women and homosexuals were viewed the same way by the leading theologians of the times: "They were all cursed by God in Scripture, inferior in moral character and willfully sinful and deserving punishment," says the Rev. Jack Rogers, former head of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and author of a new book, Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality.

Eventually, most churches found a biblical basis for changing their stance on race and gender but not on homosexuality."

There is a difference between gender, race, and homosexuality. The Bible says absolutely nothing about it being sinful to be a woman or to be black or Arab or Hispanic or Caucasian or oriental. In fact, it is very positive when it comes to women and different races. Just open up your Bible and read it. The Bible is not positive at all, however, when it comes to homosexuality. As I pointed out earlier, it says clearly that homosexuality is a detestable act.

The last section of the article is given the heading "Churches slow to change", as if it is a bad thing. It then points out that:

"The largest U.S. denominations - Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and Lutherans in the Missouri Synod - clearly proclaim that homosexual behavior is a sin.

They don't allow a different theological direction, however welcoming individual congregations may be. Change is not on their agendas."

Even though this strong stance on the issue was made to seem like a bad thing in the context of the article, it made me proud to be a member of the Southern Baptist church. I pray that it will continue to resist the influences of the world and maintain the stand that the Bible is the ultimate authority and that God does not change with the culture. The movement towards the liberalization of the church is not, as the article seems to say, a good thing when it means moving away from the basis of the Christian belief so that the church can be a fun, accepting social club.

God does love homosexuals and yes, we should be accepting of them and loving them as people who, like everyone else in the world, including myself, are sinful and in need of a Savior. However, God does not love homosexuality, and we should not accept it as an acceptable practice, no more than we accept murder, adultery, and stealing.

The Loss of Sense and Cents

I read some of the greatest words of sense that I have heard in a long time while reading the editorials today. Orrin Pilkey talks in his article about the stupidity of rebuilding along the Gulf Coast with the recent experience of the destruction of last year's hurricane season and the knowledge that more big hurricanes are coming in the near future.

"Today, the new hurricane season begins, in a time of rising sea levels and increasing intensity of storms. It makes no sense to simply rebuild and even increase building density after Katrina. It might be difficult to accept, but reconstruction near the beach should be prohibited. Strong consideration should also be given to halting future federal storm bailouts, including taxpayer-supported flood insurance and the handout of post-storm cleanup and reconstruction funds - all of which only encourages rebuilding in the most dangerous locations. Government purchase of vulnerable beach properties, as costly as it might be, would pay off in the long term."

I have been considering almost the same thing ever since the advent of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans last year when the question of whether or not to rebuild came up. People have been building along the beautiful shore in a place that is widely known to be venerable and dangerous, and yet they are shocked when their property is destroyed and demand for the government to bail them out year after year. How much longer will it last?

Not long after the Hurricane Katrina vs. New Orleans fiasco last year I was reading Bob Sheets and Jack Williams' book Hurricane Watch. It was a very interesting and insightful read, especially with all of the Hurricane talk in the news and everywhere else at the time. The part of the book that stuck with me the most, though, was where they wrote, pre-Katrina, about what would happen if New Orleans was indeed hit by a large storm. It was scary how well they had predicted the things that would happen, including the impossibility of complete evacuation with the amount of warning that would be available at best, the overflowing of Lake Pontchartrain, the inability of the pumps to handle the direct hit of a hurricane, the flooding of certain parts of the city, and the awful conditions that would be faced by those unable to evacuate the city. The things that happened with Hurricane Katrina should not have been a surprise but were merely the fulfillment of previous predictions.

Yesterday I came across an article in the news that helped move me even further towards the opinion that the city of New Orleans should not be rebuilt, at least not how and where it was. It seems that New Orleans is not only below sea level, but has been and continues to sink even further. The levees that were built were not able to withstand the surge of the storm since they had sunk to lower than they were supposed to be, making the city that much more venerable.

I realize that there are many people who call New Orleans home and do not want to move from there. They want things to go back to the way they were. Perhaps if I were to actually live down there I would have a different opinion. As it is, I have never even visited New Orleans. However, does sentimentality really make for a good reason to rebuild a city with billions of taxpayer dollars when there is a very good chance that it will be facing the same kind of destruction again in the near future? Why do people insist on building multi-million dollar homes, not just in New Orleans, but all over the Gulf Coast in the face of such odds? And why does the government insist on subsidizing it year after year?

The meteorological community is predicting another active hurricane season this year. The news is full of headlines such as "US weather experts forecast above-normal hurricane threat", "Forecaster expects active hurricane season", and "Forecaster sees nine Atlantic hurricanes in 2006". However, people seem to still feel invincible as they rebuild buildings and homes that may have to rebuilt again by the end of the summer. More money will be poured out as people insist on living in places that are almost assured of destruction and then demanding financial aid when that destruction arrives. No, I do not have the answers and solutions to the problem, but I still continue to wonder why people continue to put themselves and their property in the path of such danger and then expect not to pay for that decision. It is as if they have lost their sense and so are willing to lose both their own and the tax payer's cents.