Life on the Road

By Justin

Well I am going on the road for work.  It has been a while, and never with two kids at home.  I am headed to El Paso to lend a hand to my coworkers.  I will be gone for two weeks followed by a week at a conference.  Starting Monday I will spend two nights in my bed in eighteen days.  It will be a challenging time for our family, mostly for Holly.  I will be home on labor day weekend, but we are in Friona for the holiday.  The following weekend I get home on Friday and leave Saturday morning for the conference.  Bad timing all around, but necessary.

I have been surprised at the overall lack of response on the previous posts.  The original post is the number one visited post on our blog in the last year.  More interesting than that is the follow up post.  I can see 'referring site' stats and the site that is the number one referrer is quite interesting.  I won't put that out here for everyone to see, cause it really doesn't matter, but it definitely amuses me that I know people are reading, but not commenting.  Maybe I am underestimating how much people care.

Maybe people just want to see pictures of the kids.  Guess I can make that happen and really leave my ranting to my friends.  They love it...no really they do...wait do I have friends..

hmmmmm  Guess i will give you what you really want.

We’ve Got It Wrong – Part Two

By Justin

If you are just joining me, you should go back and read We’ve Got It Wrong.  It really lays out the foundation of how this has developed.  The second part of my opinion is how the conservative branch of the Christian church is doing far more harm than good in the debate over homosexuality.

I am going to start with this.  I am going to attempt to withhold my closely held beliefs on this topic and instead focus on what I see as a great misunderstanding and injustice being served by the more conservative parts of the Christian denominations.

In being emphatically driven to shout how wrong homosexual relationships are, we have become that which we work our lives not to be: judgmental, unloving hypocrites.  We have decided to let people scream at the top of their lungs the evils of this behavior and preach condemnation from the pulpit. But let’s take a look at our universal example of how we should deal with these issues, Jesus.

Jesus lived in times of active and accepted homosexuality by the roman rulers of the day.  While the Jews did not practice and condemned it, Jesus spoke out on issues of Roman and Jewish natures.  I find it telling that not once in his recorded ministry did Jesus condemn homosexuality.  Now he did reaffirm the biblical concepts of creation and of Adam and Eve’s union, but he stopped short of same sex condemnation. 

Instead Jesus focused on support, love and openness.  He saw sin, confronted it, forgave it and invited the individual to walk with him.  So if we go to the least possible situation, at the most homosexuality could be classified as unrepentant sin.  Jesus confronted this with the women caught in prostitution.  What was his reaction to the crowd that was going to stone this woman?  Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.  Then him, being the only one able to cast a stone, went to her and forgave her.  Then invited her to go and walk in a new life.

If we were to model our view of homosexuality after this model, how could it be different?  I think we’d be surprised how wrong we have gotten it.

On the other end of the spectrum is that homosexuality isn’t a sin at all.  That God made all people and all things for one and only one purpose to love and cherish him.  We should live our lives honoring and fulfilling that which he created us to do.  If we’d understand that our purpose on this earth has less to do with who someone is in a relationship with and more to do with the condition of their relationship with God, I think this whole mess would be solved.

I think we should all just shut up and love one another.  We should follow the commandments of our Lord and God to love the Lord your God and to Love your Neighbor as yourself.  Our churches are filled with unrepentant sin, if in fact homosexuality is a sin, why do we have to treat it any different?

We’ve Got It Wrong

(Post 350, wow)

By Justin

Sometimes things just get in my craw.  This one has been there for awhile.  And since I have decided that my blog is my own personal vent space, you have been warned.  A few disclosures to start:

This is my opinion, and not that of my wife.  You don’t have to agree, but you have to be respectful in your disagreement.  If you enjoy a healthy discourse, then by all means add a comment and let’s roll!

For the most part, I subscribed to the more conservative Christian theology.  I do not believe everything my denomination preaches and teaches is right, nor important.  But for the most part they have it right on the major things of death, burial and resurrection.  My heart has been heavy, for some time, over the discourse that has long since been brewing over homosexuality and the church.  I believe that we on the right have it all wrong.

There are two main things that bother me.  First is the political environment the second is the stance of the church on this issue.  I plan to tackle these in two separate posts.  First to the politics.

It is true that our founding fathers, for the most part, identified themselves as Christians.  The effects of their Christian values are weaved throughout our founding documents.  But important points have been lost, in my opinion.  The pilgrims left their homelands over religious persecution.  The founding fathers spent years debating the role of a republic form of government to prevent abuses by the majority on a minority.  So concerned were they that a defacto monarchy could rise again, that they went out of their way to prevent the federal government from proclaiming a national religion, among other rights.  Be clear about this, Christian men had an overwhelming majority in the drafting and ratifying the Constitution.  They could have easily formed a ‘Christian Nation’, but they didn’t and went out of their way to prevent it.

So as we evaluate the political issue, let us seek to minimize the influence of religion on this portion of the discourse.  In all honesty, I believe the government should do away with marriage.  The states should simply get out of the marriage license business.  The federal government should do away with married exemptions.  Simply put, let us be a nation of individuals where ‘all men are created’ and treated ‘equal’. 

Now how does this work?  Pretty simple.  If I want to buy a house and I need your income and credit to provide assurance, I will cosign.  Just like my dad did on my first new car.  Should we decided we are not longer ‘partners’ in the house then we will have to settle that amicably or go to the courts to resolve it.  Should I die, then you are contractually required to settle the debt or surrender the asset.  We do what we have been doing for years in contractual law.

Now before you have a heart attack, I’m not saying do away with marriage.  I am saying do away with government sanctioning of marriage.  For I believe that marriage, biblical marriage, has nothing to do with my marriage license.  I couldn’t care less what the state of Texas has given me permission to do.  What is important to me is the covenant vow I made with my Wife and my God in church two weeks after Texas gave me permission to marry.  I say, leave marriage to the vows with God and your spouse and leave the government out of it.

Now I am a realist.  This will never happen.  So back to reality.  Since this isn’t going to happen, then state sponsorship of marriage should be open to whomever wishes to marry.  If you want to enter into a legal contract, also known as a marriage license, so be it.  I don’t care if your gender is the same or not.  If something goes wrong then go dissolve your legal agreement in court, regardless of your gender.  I simply care not and honestly believe that our government shouldn’t either.

In the same vein, legal contracts (marriage licenses) should be treated fairly and equitably by all parties.  I’m not forcing you to go ‘against my religion’ for our Christian beliefs teach at length about justice.  See it as an ‘opportunity’ to love your neighbor. 

But let us also be clear that the separation of church and state is a two way street.  The government should not interfere with the practice of my religion, short of the protection of the weak, sick and young.  The government (state or federal) should not require my church to perform, recognize or even support same gender legal contracts should my church decided it is ‘against our religion’.  In fact, I’d argue that the Constitution protects our right for us to be the largest, loudest bigots on the face of the planet, should we so choose (westboro church, anyone?). 

I’d also admit this is a slippery slope.  If this goes to the extreme, then I can craft a ‘religion’ to allow or disallow anything.  Polygamy could be deemed to be legal and the government really not have a right to prevent it, unless it can show cause of harm.  ‘Child Brides’ and other controversial practices could become ‘acceptable religious practices’.  I am going to opt not to be crazy extreme about this.  I am sure FoxNews and MSNBC will do this for us. 

So I will close on this: Government: get out of the business of marriage and if you decide you can’t, the let’s get it all equal.  It is the least we can do.