Buring Wrote:I am really hoping he will come around.
I can't say we ever had a "close" relationship, he would always bully me when I was a kid growing up.
But now, even if he can't accept me for being gay, he doesn't have to continue telling me about how I will be burning in hell.
*shrugs*
Oh well, all I can do now is just wait and see how it plays out.
Hell. Hell is not a place of torment and fire. THat is the Lake of Fire which is reserved for those in the End Time that cast their lot with The Beast.
Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and all of the other names for that place is the grave.
We all go to Hell, and few humans ever get to heaven. If you really read the bible including the final book, Revelation (no 's' at the end, there is only one of them) you discover we all lay in our graves waiting for the final Trump where the dead are judged first, those found unworthy are cast out (sent to the second death, oblivion) the others get to come back to Earth to be with Jesus.
Not heaven. Jesus comes down to Earth, we stay on earth, which gets retrofitted, the oceans dry up, the mountains are leveled so all 15-20 billion of us will have plenty of room on the retrofitted Earth.
The teachings of a place of punishment and a place of reward (Hell and Heaven) is Church Doctrine, devised along with many other mythical, magical things in order to keep the masses in line as the Catholic Church became the the Super Power of the political world.
Your father is yet one of billions who is a victim of Doctrine. He has been purposefully lead astray by a priesthood who know exactly what they are doing. They all but stand up in seminary and say point blank 'We are teaching falsely'.
How do I know? I went through seminary, got my Doctorate of Ministry. I still qualify to wear a collar.
There is 'The Truth' and 'The Truth' - Yeah these look the same/sound the same - but one is based on real hard research and study (unless you can read Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Aramaic you will never really know the real truth). The other is based on having a faith in the Church - or a Church were a few select individuals are trained in how to tell you a 'truth' and how to spoon feed you the bible and teach you how to read the bible.
Instead of reading it like any other book, we are taught to take sentences from here and there and string them together out of their context to make up new meanings. If we did that with the Complete Works of Shakespeare we could have Shakespeare saying many terrible things.
Leviticus, that quote about man laying with another man. That has nothing to do with homosexuals. Put back into its chapter, its train of thought we find that its an admonishment of straight men having gay sex in order to worship a False God (in that case Moloch). What is unclean? Idoltry, not two men in love who share the same bed.
In context every other 'admonishment' against gays (pagans and many others) becomes far different than what the people who abuse those words want it to mean.
Dad has issues with homosexuality? Fine - ask him about shell fish, pork, wearing cotton-poly blends and all of the other fine details of Mosaic (Moses' Law) that Jesus lived to the letter in His life here on Earth.
Jesus did not abolish the Law. Paul/Saul abolished the law without Authority to do so. So that splinter and beam thing comes up, Dad's list of sins is far greater than he imagines/understands. He is focused on one perceived 'sin' here (which as long as you are not promiscuous is not a sin) instead of being focused on all that he does wrong.
This is yet another way that Organized Religion has made Christianity into a weapon. They weaponized Jesus and the Bible and have taught the laity to make war.