01-26-2015, 04:53 PM
I went through a major crises of faith long long ago and thought I was losing my faith in God.
Nope, what happened is I lost my faith in Church and gained a faith in God.
Right now it sounds like you have a lot of faith tied up in church. The organized religion aspect here. You are in or part of a congregation of individuals who are not loving, kind, compassionate, tolerant. So your impression of this God person may have been tarnished by the type of people who claim to know Him.
http://www.gaychurch.org/find_a_church/ will help you to find a gay affirming church, that site also has other resources such as different interpretations of those passages used to beat LGBT over the head.
Take this passage that this so-called minister decided to teach. The words used in the King James Version to describe what happen comes closest in meaning. 'God gave them over to....'
In reality what happened is God decided that if they wanted to be so far removed from God and be beasts then so be it. He punished them by turning them into lustful creatures who burned in their lust for one another without satisfaction.
Lust - not love is what was discussed. It was a punishment devised by God, most likely these were straight people who were loath to have no satisfaction with sex with the opposite gender. This would be a fitting punishment given the circumstances.
Your pastor is not a good person and has failed to do his job.
I think you are given a good chance here to make a compromise to your commitment to your parents needs/wants and to get a bit of better understanding of the nature of God and Christ.
Some smart fellow once remarked, "Oh, I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ." (more) I think you are a victim of the same mindset which has pushed many from the potential of understanding God to them isolating themselves from any and all concepts and ideologies about this God Person.
Perhaps to meet the religious requirements of your parents you can get into a Methodist or Presbyterian or other well known and long accepted church which is on the list of the gay affirming churches in your area.
You can say that you just disagree with the interpretation of the denomination your parents are with and find that say liturgical mass is more fitting to your ideas and understandings of what Jesus and God wants for us.
Liturgical mass would be something more formal like Episcopalian and Catholic.
Nope, what happened is I lost my faith in Church and gained a faith in God.
Right now it sounds like you have a lot of faith tied up in church. The organized religion aspect here. You are in or part of a congregation of individuals who are not loving, kind, compassionate, tolerant. So your impression of this God person may have been tarnished by the type of people who claim to know Him.
http://www.gaychurch.org/find_a_church/ will help you to find a gay affirming church, that site also has other resources such as different interpretations of those passages used to beat LGBT over the head.
Take this passage that this so-called minister decided to teach. The words used in the King James Version to describe what happen comes closest in meaning. 'God gave them over to....'
In reality what happened is God decided that if they wanted to be so far removed from God and be beasts then so be it. He punished them by turning them into lustful creatures who burned in their lust for one another without satisfaction.
Lust - not love is what was discussed. It was a punishment devised by God, most likely these were straight people who were loath to have no satisfaction with sex with the opposite gender. This would be a fitting punishment given the circumstances.
Your pastor is not a good person and has failed to do his job.
I think you are given a good chance here to make a compromise to your commitment to your parents needs/wants and to get a bit of better understanding of the nature of God and Christ.
Some smart fellow once remarked, "Oh, I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ." (more) I think you are a victim of the same mindset which has pushed many from the potential of understanding God to them isolating themselves from any and all concepts and ideologies about this God Person.
Perhaps to meet the religious requirements of your parents you can get into a Methodist or Presbyterian or other well known and long accepted church which is on the list of the gay affirming churches in your area.
You can say that you just disagree with the interpretation of the denomination your parents are with and find that say liturgical mass is more fitting to your ideas and understandings of what Jesus and God wants for us.
Liturgical mass would be something more formal like Episcopalian and Catholic.