Bad Religion
Note: I've moved my blog to my own web site - the new address is:
www.nonaverage.net/insomanywords/
Comments can only be left at the new location.
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I have noticed that people here in America sometimes - well, alot of the time - get the wrong impression about God. For example, there is a popular bumper sticker here that you may have seen - it reads “Don’t drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly!” Personally, I have never thought it was even possible to drive a car faster than an angel can fly. If you believe in God and believe that He created angels as supernatural beings, capable of performing His miraculous work - the very idea that we as humans can make a machine that can travel faster than an angel is either somewhat foolish or a bit arrogant. And I think that this kind of misunderstanding of God misrepresents God.
But there are different ways that people misrepresent God. There is a web site - I’m not going to print an address so as to not give it any more publicity (and there are probably several websites like this anyway) - a web site that is more than just foolish or arrogant… it promotes hatred of people in the name of God. Unfortunately, there are multiple websites that do this, but this particular web site claims to be “Christian”, to being followers of God and believers in Jesus… yet preaches that God hates people. Not all people, of course - just people who are homosexual. The group responsible for this web site recite their favorite bible verses in an effort to convince visitors that God truly hates homosexuals. And that homosexuals are going to hell, no questions asked. But what this website is really doing is misrepresenting God. They are misrepresenting God by twisting His words in an obvious effort to defend and promote their personal beliefs. Now, I’m no one in particular and certainly not in the position to engage these misguided people, nor do I simply want to get involved in an argument for argument’s sake or throw my pearls before swine. But what I do want to say, to gay and straight people, from what I have read and learned and lived and know about God, is that these gay-hating-website people are as wrong about God as is humanly possible. That God loves homosexuals. That He loves homosexuals as much as He loves hetros. That He loves homosexuals as much as He loves Baptists, soccer moms, priests, yuppies, car thieves, Catholics, liberals, Muslims, goth teenagers, Bill Gates, hippies, bikers, African children with AIDS, conservatives, drug addicts, my first wife, rude fast food workers, high school cheerleaders with perfect teeth, socialists, Wal-Mart greeters, Ronald Reagan, the jerk who promised to build me a custom guitar body and then gave me nothing but kept my $90 deposit, Nicolas Sarkozy, porn stars, drunken neighbors, tree-huggers, Joe Walsh and me. In other words, God loves people. All people. This is such a central theme of the Bible that to suggest anything else is highly deceptive at best and plain evil at worst. Evil not just because they are spreading hatred in the name of God… that of course is bad enough. But even more evil because these people claim to represent God and claim that they are declaring His words. So visitors to that web site might assume that these hate-preachers know God and know his desires, and the visitors may be deceived into believing that this is what God is really like… in other words, that web site is misrepresenting God, with the real evil being that they are causing people to misunderstand God. They are describing God based on personally selected, self-serving portions of scripture instead of understanding the full message of the gospel, which is a message of love, forgiveness, restoration and reconciliation. They are confining God to their limited understanding of His love instead of accepting that God’s love is beyond our understanding. And they are creating a god who is too small to love everyone instead of preaching about the god who is big enough to love anyone.
And God even loves these hate-preachers… yes, I do believe that He does love them. But I also believe that He hates what they are doing.
www.nonaverage.net/insomanywords/
Comments can only be left at the new location.
*********************************************************
I have noticed that people here in America sometimes - well, alot of the time - get the wrong impression about God. For example, there is a popular bumper sticker here that you may have seen - it reads “Don’t drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly!” Personally, I have never thought it was even possible to drive a car faster than an angel can fly. If you believe in God and believe that He created angels as supernatural beings, capable of performing His miraculous work - the very idea that we as humans can make a machine that can travel faster than an angel is either somewhat foolish or a bit arrogant. And I think that this kind of misunderstanding of God misrepresents God.
But there are different ways that people misrepresent God. There is a web site - I’m not going to print an address so as to not give it any more publicity (and there are probably several websites like this anyway) - a web site that is more than just foolish or arrogant… it promotes hatred of people in the name of God. Unfortunately, there are multiple websites that do this, but this particular web site claims to be “Christian”, to being followers of God and believers in Jesus… yet preaches that God hates people. Not all people, of course - just people who are homosexual. The group responsible for this web site recite their favorite bible verses in an effort to convince visitors that God truly hates homosexuals. And that homosexuals are going to hell, no questions asked. But what this website is really doing is misrepresenting God. They are misrepresenting God by twisting His words in an obvious effort to defend and promote their personal beliefs. Now, I’m no one in particular and certainly not in the position to engage these misguided people, nor do I simply want to get involved in an argument for argument’s sake or throw my pearls before swine. But what I do want to say, to gay and straight people, from what I have read and learned and lived and know about God, is that these gay-hating-website people are as wrong about God as is humanly possible. That God loves homosexuals. That He loves homosexuals as much as He loves hetros. That He loves homosexuals as much as He loves Baptists, soccer moms, priests, yuppies, car thieves, Catholics, liberals, Muslims, goth teenagers, Bill Gates, hippies, bikers, African children with AIDS, conservatives, drug addicts, my first wife, rude fast food workers, high school cheerleaders with perfect teeth, socialists, Wal-Mart greeters, Ronald Reagan, the jerk who promised to build me a custom guitar body and then gave me nothing but kept my $90 deposit, Nicolas Sarkozy, porn stars, drunken neighbors, tree-huggers, Joe Walsh and me. In other words, God loves people. All people. This is such a central theme of the Bible that to suggest anything else is highly deceptive at best and plain evil at worst. Evil not just because they are spreading hatred in the name of God… that of course is bad enough. But even more evil because these people claim to represent God and claim that they are declaring His words. So visitors to that web site might assume that these hate-preachers know God and know his desires, and the visitors may be deceived into believing that this is what God is really like… in other words, that web site is misrepresenting God, with the real evil being that they are causing people to misunderstand God. They are describing God based on personally selected, self-serving portions of scripture instead of understanding the full message of the gospel, which is a message of love, forgiveness, restoration and reconciliation. They are confining God to their limited understanding of His love instead of accepting that God’s love is beyond our understanding. And they are creating a god who is too small to love everyone instead of preaching about the god who is big enough to love anyone.
And God even loves these hate-preachers… yes, I do believe that He does love them. But I also believe that He hates what they are doing.
Labels: church, Faith, gays, God, homosexuals
posted by Ruben at
10:51 PM
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