Titanic Post

Living in a homophobic county as I do, and seeing that most of the anti-gay rhetoric is based on statements from evangelical ministers’ interpretation of the New Testament, I was pleased to find the following piece by Dr. William Stacy Johnson, Princeton Theological Seminary’s Arthur M. Adams Associate Professor of Systematic Theology.

Printed in The Christian Century, January 15, 2008

SEX AND SLAVERY: William Stacy Johnson notes that there are three forms of homoeroticism:

Age-differentiated homosexuality, known as pederasty and common among the ancient Greeks, is when a younger person is expected to give sexual favors to his mentor as a rite of passage.

Status-defined homosexuality, in which a superior performs a sexual act with a passive inferior who is often stigmatized, was common among the ancient Romans.

Egalitarian homosexu­ality, in which the partners are in an equal and mutual relationship, is the pre­dominant form today.

Johnson points out that no biblical text addresses this third type of homosexuality and that the sec­ond (more…)

Perceive the difference between religion and the cant of religion; piety and the pretense of piety; a humble reverence for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the commonest dissensions and meanest affairs of life. . . It is never out of season to protest against that coarse familiarity with sacred things which is busy on the lip and idle in the heart, or the confounding of Christianity with any class of persons who. . . have just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another.

~ Charles Dickens, Preface to The First Cheap Edition, The Pickwick Papers, 1847

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. - Out of Solitude

Found at We Are Wide Awake.

May God bless you with discomfort at:
Easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships-
So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at:
Injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed:
For those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world; So that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

May God bless you with anger at:
Injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed:
For those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in this world;
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Amen

Originally posted at National Council of Churches

Answers to those tough metaphysical questions.

Where did the world come from? Why did God make the world? Where was I before I was born? Where do people go when they die?…

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at [your] watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can’t have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn’t be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.

In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn’t, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself.

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I once saw a poster that read: “I was wandering alone in a dark forest with only the light of a single candle to guide me, and along came a theologian and blew it out.” Today I am grateful for the “theologians,” who by extinguishing that particular candle for me, forced me to look elsewhere.

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Some people are happy inside the Church, some are happier outside. Those who stay outside should write Nature with a capital N. They should bless and venerate the Nature that composes mankind.

That would leave a thin wall between them and those who are inside and write God with a capital G. If you knock, it can be heard on both sides. The disagreement is about the spelling.
~Dag Hammarskjöld