Bible unclear on homosexuality - and more letters to the editors

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Bible unclear on homosexuality

Obedience to the divine will is perfect freedom, but believing all those who presume to expound it is idiocy. The Church of Christ minister says the Bible is clear in its condemnation of homosexuality, but actually this is quite unclear. The gospels record no authoritative preaching on the subject. Saint Paul, the most opinionated figure in all of church history, may have expressed an opinion.

What is clear is that it is easier to use opaque and obscure scriptural passages as weapons against others than to do the hard work of ascertaining their true meaning and their value as moral teaching. For this reason, self-righteousness is always more common than informed consideration.

It is heartbreaking that Detective Kat Cooper and her family have had to leave the church they have so obviously loved for many years. I hope they will soon find peace and welcome in a congregation in which the practice of Christianity is pursued, in which only the sinless are permitted to cast stones, in which the judgmental are admonished to remember the Judgment, and where it is recognized that we must sometimes shake the dust of a town from our feet.

BARBARA S. ARTHUR


Cook, Sohn taken to task

Contrary to David Cook's head spinning histrionics, the church is not stealing Jesus; homophiles are possessing the church. Like Cook, I see broken hearts: Christians painfully watching Matt Nevels perversely endorse the lifestyle that broke his son's heart and body, and David Cook express frustration that the church's leavening with sexual sin comes too slowly for the Coopers.

Jesus preached repentance, not acceptance, for forgiveness of sins. And in Corinthians I: 5, Paul orders excommunication "so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord." Church discipline breaks the old heart to make the new, and Christianity is righteously loving, not necessarily nice.

The alternative interpretations of the Bible Cook mentions sound intellectually superior, but they are a historical pseudo-scholarship ignoring Judeo-Christian tradition. And why isn't the biblical picking and choosing Pam Sohn mentions compelling? Because even a piece mealed Biblical worldview beats the dystopia of government debt, sexual sin, broken marriages, drug addiction, and murdered infants she promotes.

Although David Cook identifies with Huck Finn, he is Tom Sawyer, enslaving the Jims of this world in same-sex attraction when, for the love of Christ, we could be exorcising people from it altogether.

DR. BRIAN HALE, Ph.D, Red Bank


Church invites Coopers to attend

Linda and Kurt Cooper, a couple forced by their church to choose between supporting their daughter and their church, are welcome to worship at Second Presbyterian Church in downtown Chattanooga. To the Coopers: We could consider your presence a distinct honor and privilege. Our church family is humbled by he undeserved grace we receive every day from the living God. Therefore, we take seriously our privilege and responsibility to warmly welcome anyone and everyone through the doors of our church. God bless you and keep you!

DR. PERRY C. McCALLEN, senior minister, Second Presbyterian Church