"You Will Know We Are Christians By Our _____"

When the LTR and I checked into our cabin here in Love, Virginia, we both saw the Holy Bible on the nightstand in the bedroom. The LTR brought it up later, and it turned out we both had the same gut reaction. As the LTR put it, "I thought, 'I hope I don't meet the mean, intolerant, judgemental person who put it there.' And then I felt sad that I felt that way."

But, given how many Christians behave, it's no wonder we each had that reaction.

A family member who is a devout Christian, teaches Sunday School, leads the family in prayer and regularly spouts bible verses found out about the true nature of the LTR's and my relationship this year. This year, she failed, for the first time, to send a Christmas card.

"And they'll know we are Christians by our love," I used to sing in Vacation Bible School. Either that was a lie or the Christians today running around passing laws and generally foaming at the mouth have no concept of what Jesus actually meant. Like when He said "Love one another as you would yourself."

Jesus

Well, it is Palm Sunday.

Considered by some as blasphemous, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar does at least one thing brilliantly -- it captures a human, doubting, angry, defiant and ultimately compliant Jesus. And all at once in the moving Garden of Gethsemane "I Only Want to Say" scene (both my favorite part of the Gospel and the Musical).

Some Christians don't like this side of Jesus, but isn't Jesus' humanity sort of like, well the point?

See if chills don't go up your spin at the climatic point in the song when Jesus sings "Die!"

Oh, and hunky disciples in the beginning don't hurt.

God Hates Fags

The video is here.

Who is this guy? From his Web site:

A lot of people have been asking me, "Where are you coming from, Donnie?" Well, I was hoping that in my song The Bible Says that I had made myself clear, but there is only so much you can say in a 3 minute song.

I am in fact a Reformed Homosexual and I'm trying to let people know that there is an escape from being Gay. By letting people know that "God hates a Fag" I am doing Gods work, I'm preaching.

When I was in highschool I kept having feelings for the boys I was in school with. Often I would let these feelings take over. I got into lots of trouble when I was Gay.

I stopped listening to secular music and started going to my fathers church services. I was so miserable, being gay, something had to happen. I found Jesus! I found Jesus and He showed me the way. The right way to live that is. Loving, Gods Way!

Sad.

Over the holiday I read a book by Daniel Helminiak titled, "What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality." Helminiak argues that:

Recent research on the Bible shows that, at the very least, the same-sex acts that are the focus of biblical concern were not what we mean by “homosexuality” today. Put the Bible back into its original cultural and historical setting, and it becomes blatantly obvious that the Bible conceived of the matter very differently in a very different world. Even more, this research shows that the Bible is basically indifferent to homosexuality in itself. The Bible is concerned, as with heterosexuality, only when practices violate other moral requirements….

The Bible supplies no real basis for the condemnation of homosexuality. Therefore, people must stop opposing homosexuality merely by quoting the Bible because, taken on its own terms, the Bible simply does not support their case. If they have some other reason for their opposition, they ought to get clear what that reason is and state it up front.

I found his arguments both persuasive (on refuting today's common interpretation of Leviticus's condemnation of homosexuality as an "abomination") and a bit strained (the passages in St. Paul's writing in Romans).

But the most powerful part of his book, I think, was the evidence he presents that Jesus met someone gay (as we understand the term today) and the love triangle that may have existed between King Saul, David and Jonathan in the old testament.

UPDATE: The God Hates Fags guy is a hoax...or is he? Much debate on the blogosphere. Here is Dan Savage's take.