1. DAN "And to be clear, Craig, I've never told you that you were evil for disagreeing with your opinions (although, I've certainly been told that by conservatives, probably including Marshall), so that IS something to laugh at.
What I HAVE done is say that it is evil to counsel someone, "You know, your choice about marriage will lead you to a longer, healthier and happier life... but you shouldn't do that. You should embrace the odds of a shorter, sicker, sadder life because I think it's what God wants you to do..."
If you're taking that sort of action, I'd call that evil. If you're not doing it, I'm not calling it evil.
See the difference?
Do you agree that someone - like Marshall, perhaps? - who would do this is going to be seen as advocating an evil, ugly, awful position?"
2. DAN " Craig, I steadfastly asked you this question directly about half a dozen times in a previous post. You just as steadfastly refused to answer the question directly.
Marshall DID answer the question in the probably typical fundamentalist/evangelical manner, stating that he'd counsel people to die younger and more miserable rather than marry and live longer and happier and healthier.
You can't really blame me for not knowing your position if, when asked repeatedly, you opted to not answer.
It's not fantasy, evangelicals like Marshall demonstrate that it's not an uncommon position to hold (I know many, many others. Hell, I would probably have been one to take that position in my more fundamentalist days!)
Further, I didn't SAY you counseled this. I merely noted that those who DO counsel such harmful behavior are not acting in a loving, moral, manner. (indeed, here is literally what I said:
"If you're taking that sort of action, I'd call that evil.
If you're not doing it, I'm not calling it evil."
Are you agreeing, then, that those who engage in such counseling ARE engaging in harmful, ugly... nay, even evil! ... manner?
Further, I use "evil" sometimes specifically with evangelicals/fundamentalists because it is their language, to try to help them understand how they are coming across.
So, seeing as I never even remotely SAID that you counseled people thusly (and indeed, in spite of your repeated refusal to make yourself clear, I literally directly specifically gave you an "out..."), I'm deeply amused by your nonsensical spin.
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May 15, 2018 at 1:17 PM
- No spin on our parts, Danny-boy. That's YOUR thing, as you now
try to pretend I claimed I would counsel any to die younger. That's
simply another blatant lie to add to your long list of lies. Indeed, my
response demonstrates a far greater concern for the mortality for those
whose sexual immorality you promote and celebrate, particularly given
the FACT that your counsel does lead to premature death on average, even
if it results in living longer than would what they are currently
doing.
Again, you do them no favors by telling them to get only "so" drunk every day than the completely falling down and puking drunkenness to which they are accustomed. You do them no favors by counseling them to use clean needles when they shoot smack as opposed to using whatever is handy. But at least with the drunkard and addict there is no permanence attached and you could at least maintain that you're taking baby steps toward sobriety.
But what you're doing is counseling ongoing engagement in a behavior that all honest medical professionals attest is dangerous in a way heterosexual sex never is. You're delaying the inevitable to which the culmination of damage will result. I prefer the more medically intelligent and the totally Christian advice of abstaining from the harmful lifestyle and repent, replacing it with a truly and absolutely supported-by-Scripture moral existence.
Thus, by comparison, and in light of clearly obvious Scriptural teaching on the subject of sexual morality, you are most certainly and beyond any doubt evil for promoting, celebrating and counseling homosexuals toward a sinful immoral lifestyle. It is not hyperbole. It is fact.
Too many have left the lifestyle with Christ's help to suggest that my counseling is anything less than the most beneficial, as so many of them insist they live a happy and fulfilling life (and we know how self-reporting is regarded by you when it's homosexuals doing the reporting). And again, despite YOUR evil promoting advice possibly resulting in less risk, it is more than risk that continues to exist in continuing to engage in dangerous behavior. It's a given.
Let's assume two homosexuals are virgins, neither ever having engaged in ANY form of sexual behavior. They meet. They "fall in love". They deny themselves sexual pleasure until after committing fully to each other, forsaking all others. They have now begun a path that will lead to a shorter life than they would have had had they not chosen to "marry" and engage in homosexual behavior. This is the fact of things, and once more, no honest and honorable medical professional would say otherwise.
Thus, my answer was NOT "typical fundamentalist/evangelical manner", unless by that you mean THE TRUTH, in which case, thank you very much for noticing. And if you meant that, it also means it is pleasing to God to respond to the false choice you present in the manner I do. Yours is not, and is rebellion. You are advising sin. I am advising rejecting sin. That you dare try to pretend it is anything less means you are indeed evil.
If I'm a promiscuous normal person, whoring about bedding as many women as I please, and then I am counseled to marry and remain faithful to one woman, and then I do, I am now no longer sinning because the sexual behavior to which I now restrict myself is the one form of sexual behavior never prohibited and is faithful to God's plan for human sexuality (don't even think of demanding I provide the verse that requires "God's plan for human sexuality" in order for this to be true). But if I were a homosexual, and ceased my wild days for a lifelong monogamous life with only one man, I am still sinning, because God prohibits homosexual behavior with not so much as a hint that there is any context or scenario in which it would not still be sinful and an abomination. So not only are you counseling them to physical harm, but spiritual harm as well. Again, that's evil.
- That lie was that I encouraged homosexusls considering "marriage" to
instead remain in their single, unattached life and die sooner.
Again, if you never directly answer a question but give vague indirect comments about the question, do you understand how it is difficult to know what your position is. But here, make it clear:
Again
IF YOU KNEW
That the data said that gay folk who didn't marry (assuming they wanted to, for now) would
die younger, be sicker and less happy...
AND they wanted to marry...
WOULD YOU DISCOURAGE THEM FROM MARRYING?
Answer THAT question directly so I can know your position.
Also, please cite where I said this was your position?
I can find THIS one...
Do you agree that someone -
like Marshall, PERHAPS?
- who would do this is going to be seen as advocating an evil, ugly, awful position?
But that one is clearly STILL in the form of a question. Do you know WHY I asked it in the form of a question?
Because I do not know your position for sure because you have not answered the question directly. You have given vague indirect comments that made it sound like you'd still encourage people to NOT marry, even knowing that they'd be sicker, sadder and die younger, but I don't know. Because you haven't directly answered the question.
I guess I did say it here, in the context of having just ASKED it again...
Marshall DID answer the question in the probably typical fundamentalist/evangelical manner, stating that he'd counsel people to die younger and more miserable rather than marry and live longer and happier and healthier.
What I meant, no doubt, there, is that you DID SEEM to answer the question... so, there, I can clarify that. It SOUNDS like that's what you're saying. BUT YOU TELL ME. Answer the question.
How can I know your position in response to the question asked if you won't answer the question asked?
And, by the way, HERE is your answer that makes it sound a whole helluva lot like you are answering just as I said...
"IF you knew the data said that gay folk who married the person of their choice lived longer and with greater happiness and health than those gay folk who didn't, WOULD YOU counsel them to embrace the shorter and more miserable, sickly life?"
One needn't answer directly if the person asking had spent years supposedly reading the comments of the persons being asked.
WHAT?
The proper answer would be to encourage the homosexual to
reject his urges and desires for strange flesh altogether
and live a life according to Scripture
Is that NOT saying "Yes, I'd tell them not to marry?"
I don't think I got you wrong at all. But answer the question and we'll know."
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May 15, 2018 at 8:23 PM
- 7. ART ""Again, if you never directly answer a question but give vague
indirect comments about the question, do you understand how it is
difficult to know what your position is. But here, make it clear:"
Again you lie. I was crystal clear in my response, which was that I would encourage them to reject homosexuality entirely and live a life that reflects Christian teaching with regard to human sexuality, which is that the ONLY moral expression of human sexuality is that which takes place between a husband (male) and his wife (female). That's basic stuff. If you don't see this response as direct, then you have no business asking questions.
"
Again
IF YOU KNEW
That the data said that gay folk who didn't marry (assuming they wanted to, for now) would
die younger, be sicker and less happy...
AND they wanted to marry...
WOULD YOU DISCOURAGE THEM FROM MARRYING?
Answer THAT question directly so I can know your position."
Though I just answer this, I wanted to make sure you got it: It doesn't matter what the data says. I'm not going to encourage someone to sin, which suggesting SSM is. If sinning makes you happy, less sick and likely to live longer, I'm still not going to recommend sinning. So, it's not that I discourage them from "marrying" (except to find someone of the opposite sex for the purpose), but that I discourage them from engaging in sinful and physically damaging sexual practices. Is this getting through to you at all, or is preaching a moral life that's pleasing to God offensive and evil to you?
"And, by the way, HERE is your answer that makes it sound a whole helluva lot like you are answering just as I said...
"IF you knew the data said that gay folk who married the person of their choice lived longer and with greater happiness and health than those gay folk who didn't, WOULD YOU counsel them to embrace the shorter and more miserable, sickly life?"
One needn't answer directly if the person asking had spent years supposedly reading the comments of the persons being asked.
WHAT?"
What's so unclear about this answer? The clear and unmistakable point is that if you've been paying attention at all to all I've ever said over the years on the subject of homosexuality, there's no way my position would need to be restated yet again to answer this ludicrous question. The answer should be easily imagined as what I've stated above. The choice is not between SSM or no SSM. The choice is between engaging in homosexual behavior or living a moral life according to God's clearly revealed Will for indulging our sexual urges. After all these years, only an idiot would wonder at what my answer might be. I sure know what yours would have been without you having told us.
"Is that NOT saying "Yes, I'd tell them not to marry?"
No. The answer is "I'd tell them to reject homosexual behavior." You can tell by the fact that according to my quote about which the above inquires, The proper answer would be to encourage the homosexual to reject his urges and desires for strange flesh altogether and live a life according to Scripture"
"I don't think I got you wrong at all. But answer the question and we'll know."
This is a lie as well, for yo udon't have me wrong. You simply choose to characterize encouraging sinners to repent and live according to God's Will to be evil. So, I definitely have YOU pegged. You believe God's Will, and the preaching of it, is evil. "
19 comments:
I guess suggesting that I might copy some of Dan’s comments, which were off topic for the thread, back where they would be on topic is being characterized as a “troll attack”. I fail to see how posting the words Dan wrote on Dan’s blog is either “trolling” or an “attack”.
Being afraid of having one’s own words posted on one’s own blog seems counterintuitive to me, but I’m not into prior restraint.
That you don't see how off topic comments, lifted out of context from one place and put into another place IS off topic and not helpful... that you don't see that when you make plans to do that when I've asked you politely not to... that you don't see the rudeness of the action does not mean it's not rude, it's not off topic, it's not trolling.
Put another way: Your ignorance does not condone your bad behavior.
The road to hell, and all that.
And to suggest that I'm somehow "afraid" of having my own words pasted out of context on a post is a lie and just stupid as shit... so stupid as to be hard to believe that you'd actually be that stupid. In fact, I'm pretty confident that you couldn't be so very stupid, that it is, instead, a deliberate attack and instance of being a troll, as opposed to an adult conversationalist.
Your actions speak much louder than your words.
But, I’m sorry you chose to persist in off topic comments to the point that necessitated the actions you forced me to take.
"So then, the charge that I was misrepresenting you is false."
The charge is absolutely true, as my several explanations clearly demonstrated. You knowingly accused me of advising homosexuals to die by not encouraging them to "marry" each other rather than live singly and whore about. But I've been crystal clear that a one seeking to be a good Christian cannot encourage sinners to simply sin in a different way on the premise the the different way is healthy (when it is only less risky and not at all healthy). You demand therefore that my position is damning them to an early death. That's absurd since homosexual behavior is what shortens their lives, even if there is a way to lessen the risk by "marrying" each other.
More importantly is that rejecting that lifestyle in favor of a Christian life not only prolongs their lives on earth over either of your sinful choices, but it also does not cut them off from eternal life in God's presence. Your choice damns them both ways. Thus, your advice to them is evil and mine is not.
It's also evil for you to suggest that one's happiness has any value at all over leading a moral life rather than the sexually immoral life you celebrate, enable and encourage (which makes you evil). If indulging their immoral desires is that important...that they can only be happy by doing so...then it's too late for them as they are clearly given over to their sin. Their fate is sealed either way. "Marry" or not, they are facing a shorter lifespan than they otherwise would by being unhappy as they bear their crosses.
"YOU have me wrong. I do NOT EVER IN ANY PLACE EVER characterize repenting and living according to God's will to be evil"
Another lie, as this is what you absolutely said as soon as you realized that I would not select from your two sinful choices with regard to your hypothetical homosexuals. And that's because you falsely insist that there's no way a homosexual can be happy denying himself his sinful homosexual urges and living according to the clearly revealed Will of God regarding sexual behavior. According to you, I MUST encourage them to marry or their lives will be shorter and unhappy. I MUSTN'T encourage them to repent of their immorality, because YOU think it will lead to a shorter and unhappy life. You continued to equate my wish for them to repent and live for God with a death sentence and therefore evil. Stop lying about it.
"I DISAGREE with your human opinions on the topic and thus, don't believe the human religious traditions and biases against gay folk that have resulted in them having certainly more miserable lives, observably and demonstrably so."
This statement is chock full of lies.
1. I don't have "opinions" on the topic. I have the only rational understanding the clear and unequivocal teaching of Scripture can imply to an honest person seeking to know God's will on the subject. So you lie about it being an "opinion", and you lie about there being any question about what Scripture teaches about human sexual behaviors.
1b. And by extension, you lie about this understanding being an "opinion" and that "honest people of good faith" can come to some other valid understanding. It's a lie to pretend it's possible, since it isn't.
2. "...don't believe the human religious traditions and biases..."
This is a lie. It's not a matter of disbelief or lack of belief. You're simply in open rebellion against God's clear an unmistakable teaching on the subject of human sexual behaviors. I wouldn't even corrupt the word "hunch" to apply it to your purposeful and willing rejection of what is unambiguous.
3. "...that have resulted in them having certainly more miserable lives, observably and demonstrably so.""
Only a liar would attribute the suffering a sinner brings upon himself for choosing to sin to those who recognize his sin and respond in opposition to him continuing to do sin. You're basically blaming God for their suffering because He prohibits the practice of homosexual behaviors. Do you really believe it's pleasurable for any other sinner to abstain from that which gave him gratification, or to have their shortcomings pointed out and opposed? Get real. What a crock to even attempt such a heinous ploy!!
It’s interesting that Dan’s question is essentially, “If you know XYZ for certain, wouldn’t you recommend XYZ.”, yet you wonder “If God’s design for human sexuality is chastity in singleness and fidelity in marriage. If Jesus meant that the original design of marriage was 1 man/1 woman “from the beginning”. Then why would you ever advise anyone to do anything else “.
Or
“If the truest, highest happiness is found in close communion with God, why would you ever recommend any substitute for that happiness ?”
That's it in a nutshell. But Dan's premise is founded on the baseless assertion that there is no difference between hetero and homo behaviors, which is a lie.
Let's put it this way: Imagine a homosexual friend who, like Dan, rejects the plain and unambiguous truth regarding the sinfulness of homosexual behavior. This friend insists on expressing his abominable urges whenever and with whomever he can. No matter what, homosexuality is his preference and intention. If this person was indeed a friend, I can't say that I wouldn't agree that to commit to only one other deviant in a marriage-like would be healthier and less likely to shorten his life as would be his current status. But that's a far cry from pretending there's no third alternative that is not only the healthiest, but is also the moral choice, which neither of Dan's two choices are.
Dan's choice puts me in mind of Christ's lesson from Mark 8:26, “For what profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul”. How could I possibly concern myself with the "happiness" of the homosexual when he'll face damnation if I encourage him in any way to embrace one expression of the sin over another? How is THAT not evil and my refusal to choose from one of Dan's choices is?
And by the way, it would not matter if my homosexual friend was an atheist. I still couldn't counsel him limited by the only two choices Dan presents. But Dan has no problem supporting sexual immorality.
My thought is that the approach one would take with a gay person who identifies as a Christian would be different than the approach one would take with a non believer.
Clearly the artificially limited (2) extreme and ridiculously worded choices Dan provides are a problem. In the real world, this false dichotomy misrepresents and ignores the plethora of options open to people and demeans those who find happiness in ways that Dan can’t fathom.
While I might, for the secular, lean more toward the health issues associated with homosexual behaviors, my approach would be pretty much the same regardless of whether or not the homosexuals in questions were Christians or not. The secular, and the pretend Christian, believes that "harm" is the guiding principle of morality. With that in mind, there is little that separates the approach one might use to dissuade the homosexual from limiting his choices to "marrying" or not "marrying". Harm is present either way to a degree almost never experienced by his hetero (oops! I mean heterosexual :D) counterparts. Thus, it's also a moral question even for the non-believer...unless the subject is totally corrupt, in which case I would have long ago shaken the dust from my sandals.
I’m not suggesting a different message, but a different approach.
Not seeing the distinction at this point. Immoral and unhealthy works regardless of whether or not the homosexual is atheist or otherwise. I'm referring to the atheist position that belief in God is unnecessary for morality, so that even by their own standards of what constitutes moral and immoral, their choice is still immoral. The health problems don't matter to questions of faith as it is purely a physical proposition. So how would your different approach play out?
If it’s simply about the heath statistics I’d agree, those are bad no matter where you start.
However, I don’t think I’d necessarily start a conversation with an atheist there. My hope with an atheist would be a conversation about the gospel first in the hope that it moves toward a heart change not just a behavior change.
Ultimately Dan is simply addressing behavior, but God changes hearts and desires which lead to changes in behavior.
God is sovereign, He is in control, and He does do miracles. I’ve become really aware of this over the past couple of weeks and have had to recalibrate my thinking.
There are certainly plenty of examples of homosexuals, atheist or otherwise, successfully leaving the lifestyle by turning to Christ. But there are those times where one's opinion on the behavior itself is sought after the subject arises in the form of a question like Dan's. Any suggestion of the religious can easily be rejected as if irrelevant if the person asking is atheist. Yet, as atheists insist, there is still such a thing as morality, and by their own harm-based definition, either chouce is still immoral as harm is present either way.
How about this.
“God loves you and wants you to be united with Him for all eternity in Heaven. Do not give in to your temptation or let it define you. God doesn’t tempt you, but He does give you the grace to overcome temptation if you ask for it. Keep up the fight. Your soul is worth it.”
Is even the potential if exchanging eternity in the presence of a living God worth giving in to any sexual temptation during our brief time on this earth?
It’s interesting that Dan shut down comments on his blog against an “attack” ( me suggesting that I was going to post his off topic comments at his blog), for “a few days” and now over 2 weeks later it’s still shut down.
I wonder what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from this. Clearly he’s back to commenting, but only where he knows he can’t.
I wonder...
I'm on vacation, thank you very much. I just finally figured out the technology that let's me create new posts from my phone on blogger, and that same fix now let's me add comments on your blog, where, previously, I had been unable to comment on your blog from my phone. I could add comments to everyone else's but yours.
THAT is the factual conclusion one should draw, but you are free to make up wild non-factual guesses if you wish.
Generally, when one goes on vacation, one should not advertise that fact, for security reasons, you see, so I had not done so.
Sorry if my choosing to take some time off causes you duress.
Also, because you seem so emotionally distraught by it, I sometimes post something to Stan' s blog because he has made a false claim or advocated a dangerous policy. I know he doesn't post my comments, but he does often read them. So, if someone makes a false claim and I correct it, then I have done what I need to do. If he ignores reality and chooses slander, false claims or dangerous policies, that's on him. I've done my part.
You see, I post to try to help, not to see my words online. It's about truth and kindness or wisdom, not about me. Perhaps that can make sense to you.
Perhaps if you’re going to comment about the danger of jumping to conclusions, avoiding jumping to conclusions might be wise.
Curious is nowhere near emotionally distraught.
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