Sex, freedom and community

As many of us see it, you guys had your chance in the Victorian era, and 15% of the population had syphilis then. It took the invention of a cure to put a end to what the political normalization of Christian values couldn't even dent.

The key is "normalization." Christian values are actually rather inspiring in many ways, and you have a compelling arguments for the validity of your faith. But the Bible outright tells Christians that your values will never be adopted by the rest of society. So why try to make hypocrites of us all?

Sorry, the last sentence was directed at me. Seems that those who may stray are seeking to have an itch scratched that isn't being properly scratched at home. But is self-fulfillment the be-all end-all of life? Or is being a devoted, loving, patient father and husband?

... even when your extremely "itchy".

Hodge,

As many of *us* see it, *you* guys had *your* chance in (ahem) the gay old days of the 70's and 80's and we see what the impact of non-Christian, even anti-Christian sexual norms turned out to be.

I can't believe that you have the gall to suggest that promiscuous polygamy is *healthier* in any conceivable way as a sexual norm than monogamy is.

Then again, yes I *can* believe it, since you clearly have as little capacity for telling sheer gall from good sense as you do for making any other kind of moral distinction.

Oh, I had one more thought. Since the transmission of HIV is primarily (though not exclusively) through promiscuous sexual relationships, isn't the legal establishment of a civil union for two members of the same sex a way of legitimizing monogomous behavior? I would think that honest, legal openness to gays would help them form healthier relationships.

You can't believe that I would suggest it- but you can't offer any evidence that it isn't.

I'm not sure what the horrible consequences of the 70s and 80s are (unless you mean financial market deregulation, of course). Looking back on what came before them, I'm pretty sure that I'd rather be alive now than then. If you're referring to AIDs, it currently infects 0.7% of the North American population. Contrast that with the above figure, which was for syphilis infections in Europe in the 19th century. Also note that that figure only includes syphilis infections, not other venereal diseases. I'm actually a little suspicious of the figure, since its source is the estimates of physicians in the period and I do not know their methodology. Still, in terms of STDs, Western society doesn't have nearly the problem it did between the late fifteenth century and the eradication of syphilis in the 1940s.

Twentyfive years after The Seventies ended on The Coasts, they're being lived in the center of The Heartland.

What people tend to forget is that the forms didn't create the underlying dysfunctions. The unresolved traumas, the bad judgment, the ugly desires, the willingness to abuse and insult that are acted upon were already there.

Bobby's story is so sad. Even though you love your old friend, you know he has totally lost his bearings.

Anyone who brings a child into this world owes that child dedicated love, support and guidance for 18 years (if not life). No exceptions, no excuses.

I don't know what's happened. Maybe no one does.

In my parents' generation, that would be the WWII generation, divorce was much less frequent. There were certainly unhappy marriages - my parents' marriage was one of them - but it doesn't seem to me as a casual observer that the easy availability of divorce has resulted in a situation where there are fewer unhappy people. Rather the contrary, if anything.

Like Rod, I'm seeing all this unhappiness and feeling pretty helpless about it. Do we force people to stay together in the face of the kind of behavior Rod is describing? Do we criminalize sexual misbehavior, ie adultery? That way lies madness, clearly, but what we have now isn't frankly looking all that sane.

Let's leave the gays out of this calculation for once. My gay neighbors next door have been together for over 20 years, and they're happy as clams so far as I can tell. People like that are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Bobby sounds like a case of someone falling, tasting forbidden fruit, getting in touch with that part of the self which the Christian religion tells us is to be rejected. But most people do not want to be holy, let alone have the capacity for it - they would much rather be holy after having lived, after having racked up some sins for which to repent.

We don't really appreciate innocence until we have lost it.

Puisque je suis français ... errr.... sorry, my Gallic esprit was pricked by this topic, I should rephrase à l'anglaise ... since I am French, I feel obliged to offer une riposte to this universal condemnation of amour hors du mariage.

Can one perambulate a jardin des fleurs without admiring their beauty, sniffing their sublime scent, stroking their soft petals, even plucking the most alluring of them? How then to content oneself with the same long accustomed saveur when so many other épices exotiques entice one's sensualité?

Did le bon Dieu plant the forbidden fruit with the expectation that frail man would spurn its allure? That myth demanded no supernumerary serpent; the instinct of man, the image of God, would have craved the going into and the knowing.

The règle inviolable of extramarital love is that one cherishes the children in all events. This is the concession one makes to conventionality and the indispensable requirement of maturity and sophistication. We live for others, else love and life have no meaning.

Love does not last forever, it changes with the vicissitudes of experience; its flame sputters and dies, its light dims and its heat is chilled. The mature amoureux ou amoureuse concedes the ineluctability of temporal felicity and protects his or her progeny from désespoir.

hodge,
first of all, a study came out just this summer which found that 25% of teenaged girls tested positive for an STD. Among African American girls it was about 48%. 19 million Americans catch a new STD each year (obviously, many of these are repeat customers). Your 15% syphalis rate is laughable. Second of all, the rise in sexually transmitted diseases in Victorian England was directly linked to the repression of sex in marriage which men responded to by seeking out prostitutes - literally no one is advocating for the repression of sex in marriage and the increased use of prostitutes today. Victorian Europe is hardly "our way" of doing things.

Secondly, how telling that the only concern you have is about sexual anarchy's effects on the person engaging in sexually immoral behavior ie catching an STD. What about 1/3 of children born to homes without dad present? Or the increased poverty (requiring government and community intervention) associated with single parenthood? What about men who are wiped clean financially in a divorce which may not have been his doing? Schools where classrooms are increasingly unmanageable due to so many kids being brought up in chaotic and unstable homes? Or do these things not bother you? Only concerned with the person doing the do, eh? Sadly telling.

I think that whether we agree with homosexuality or not, we need a new ethic.

I would agree with that.

As a lawyer, and hence one interested in keeping order, I would like to see a bright-line test (as opposed to all the current fuzz about domestic partners and sort-of-important-people and powers-of-attorney and whatever whatever).

You commit. Or you don't. If I were Empress, that's how we'd do it. That was easy, wasn't it. If you commit, you get the societal recognition, the tax breaks, all that jazz. If you don't, you don't.

But it's not free. Commitment, aka marriage, now, that's not to be a bed of roses, understand. I'd make divorce a whole lot harder, especially when children are involved. Not impossible. Just harder. And I'd lean very hard on the obligation spouses have to support not just the children, but one another as well, financially, for life, regardless of how the emotional relationship is going.

My guess is that in spite of all the sound and fury, if it were set up this way there would be fewer homosexuals getting married than you might think from listening to everyone talk. But to me, if they do want to commit, and they know what they're getting into, well, I'd back them up.

I fully realize that a lot of Christians (and other religious people) do not approve, morally, of homosexuality, but those who take that position have to realize that there are also a lot of Christians, perfectly good Christians and Christian denominations, who have no problem at all with homosexuality. So, if the State is to choose a religious or a Christian position on this matter, which one? I'd argue that the secular State has no business making religious judgments among Christian denominations. Horrors.

And, to drag in yet another nearly-dead cat, what if three or more adults wish to make this kind of yes-we-really-mean-it commitment to one another and to whatever children may become involved? I'd back them up too, subject to the same difficulties in getting out of those responsibilities. Again, I'd be astonished if there were more than a mere handful of such groups who would be willing to step up to the plate.

I don't, by the way, think any of this would solve the problem Rod is identifying. That can't be solved by law. We need to build up new folkways, a new "ethic" as Joe puts it. The thousands of little and big social pressures that used to prevent people from splitting up families except under the gravest circumstances.

Kevin - October 24, 2008 9:36 PM - "But most people do not want to be holy," You are right, people are not saints because they don't want to be.

Well, it's not like they have a bunch of good examples walking around everywhere in the church to stimulate and compel them to sainthood. Most are ordinary Xians with the same earthly attachments, activities and conversation (both behavior and language) as Joe Nonbeliever, and few "clergymen" (whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox) manifest an otherworldliness that lets you know that you're in the presence of the numinous when they walk by.

Old Susan: .... there are also a lot of Christians, perfectly good Christians and Christian denominations, who have no problem at all with homosexuality.

Good Lord, woman. Hast thou never read the Testaments?

Thou shalt not bugger thy neighbor is not only written between the lines, it is the lines.

Jillian You say that as if there were actually unambiguous text to back up your assertions. Exactly what constraints are placed on "love thy neighbor" would appear rather assertion-based as well....

I didn't say "love thy neighbor". I said "bugger thy neighbor". Back to the Book, Jillian. It's in there. Read it all. A lot of good stuff. Not Socratic. Not rocket science. Accessible even to the intellectually and morally challenged. Tolle, lege.

Dear Rod,
I have gone through exactly the same kind of sadness and shock and disappointment with my dearest friend. It's a long story but exactly the same one you write about your friend Bobby.

It isn't that you are too immature or haven't had enough hard knocks to be compassionate. It's that you, like many people of faith, know that there is a better way....a true way....to be whole and to deal with suffering. You know that God, be he the Christian God, the Jewish God, the Islamic God, has laid down some guidelines that help human beings make decisions so that they can experience the fullness of human life. One of those guidelines is that sex belings within the confines of marriage only. And that there is unending forgiveness for failures.

The truth is that your heartbreak stems from the fact that your firend, and mine know this to be true but have been able to turn against all they know in order to experience fleeting happiness and to h**l witht he consequences. Your next call from Bobby may be 6 months from now as he tell you all his woe's because this un-committed sexual relationship is not going the way he had hoped....because the communication isn't what it should be, etc.

I have asked myself what would I do in my friends shoes. I would hope that I would stick to the plan,,, the one I see in almost every holy text ever written....

I would hope so. There but for the grace of God.....you know?

PPS to Golly Gee Whiz:

Grow up, would you? That was unnecessary.

John M. And PS to Roland: Your smarmy frenchiness seems a bit gay to me, no matter how you read Scripture. I find there to be a great deal of affirmation of same-sex love in Scripture, and believe me, I read the same Bible as you.

You apparently know neither Scripture nor "frenchiness." Your predilection for smarminess and gayness is nonetheless patent. Vade in pace.

Jillian: I see you dodged the question of whether it really backs up what you assert

No dodge, Jillian. It's in there. Both Testaments. Explicit. You can read it for yourself without the boon of my pedagogy.

I can assist you in your quest for Truth. But I charge by the hour and my rates are exorbitant. But the grace that will accrue to you is concomitantly abundant.

I would suggest we try arguing this from a natural law and societal good angle, in addition to "Christian values." Christianity as taught (if less so as practiced) values sacrificial love above all other character traits and societal systems. When this concept is applied to the family, and there is some unity of practice, it can truly be said that marriage and family will have reached their fullest potential, for each person will put the needs of spouse, children, and parents above their own.

But marriage and family predate Christianity, and it is perfectly feasible to argue for them without insisting that all and sundry agree with its tenets. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists can all benefit from the societal and individual stability that marriage and family obligations bring. The dissolution of all such bonds leaves young children and young people vulnerable to instability during the most impressionable periods of their life. It also leads individuals to discard loyalty, duty, honesty, and selflessness in favor of self-centeredness and easy gratification. Such a person is not strong and of good character. By extension, neither will a society made up of such people.

There are, of course, individual cases where one partner is truly abusive, or where the parents are irresponsible to the point of endangering their children. We can't turn a blind eye to that. But as a culture, we need to do better than we are doing. We can't condone faithlessness, and I mean that in a sense broader than the merely sexual.

My parents divorced when I was seventeen, due to my mom chasing after greener grass with another guy. Little wonder that that relationship crashed out after a short while-- I spent the wee hours of my eighteenth birthday hauling her stuff out of the dude's house while they stood in the doorway screaming at each other.

I found it very difficult--many years passed-- before I could truly forgive my mom for what she did to my dad. As it was, she did not snap back to reality until she found herself pregnant out of wedlock at the age of 44. Not exactly what she had planned when she started out on this little adventure. For my dad's part, he absolutely stayed with the program and raised us-- my two sisters and me-- with all the energy and devotion he could muster. I still jokingly give him a Happy Mother's Day since for many years he played both roles a whole lot better than my mom was doing with one.

Looking back, though, I can see that we were the odd ones in that we came out as we should despite what my mom did, rather than being screwed up because of it.

Rawlins: Great, great post. Thanks.

D.

"Charles Cosimano
October 25, 2008 3:14 AM
It is a waste of time to fight a war that is over"

****

Tru dat. Unless of course one has an eye out for that which transcends time altogether.

Hodge,

One would have thought that in this brave -- and "bright" -- new world, someone like you would have had better things to do on a Friday night than salving his or her insecurities and fears playing troll on a Christian conservative website.

Why, even mean old "Victorian" Rufus got some last night, albeit from *Mrs.* Thomas, so I guess that doesn't count in your book.

But I digress.

Your logic has flaws more numerous than I have time to itemize here.

But, to begin:

(1) You equate the word "Victorian" -- which connotes quite a lot of different things -- with the sexual attitudes of readers who are more sympathetic than not toward Rod Dreher's ideas.

(2) You assume that whatever the word "Victorian" connotes *for you* was a set of attitudes that were shared by *everyone* who lived in "Victorian" times -- i.e. everyone who lived from 1837 to 1901 in any place where Victoria was Queen, including whatever percentage of that population was infected with syphilis.

(3) You assume that syphilis infection was *caused* by "Victorian" sexual norms, rather than concluding (as one has to, given the facts) that "Victorian" sexual norms were *conditioned* by syphilis infection and other forms of sexual incontinence "Victorians" endeavored to combat, in a sensible way, by inculcating healthier norms with regard to sex.

(4) You assume -- incorrectly -- that there are any reliable statistics on STD rates in "Victorian" times, and, in so doing, you contradict yourself, by claiming on the one hand that the "Victorians" were characterized by sexual hypocrisy and, on the other hand, that they were so forthcoming about their sexual lives that we can generalize about them in other than a speculative way.

In any case, I would submit that the 565,000 U.S. deaths from AIDS since the 1970's -- a total whose magnitude comes into focus when compared to the 655,000 combat deaths in all the wars in U.S. history since the 1770's -- I would submit that those deaths are a rather less "negligible" cost to have paid for our "liberation" from "Victorian" norms than you seem to imply.

Perhaps you would have better luck making that argument to someone who has never known anyone who's died of AIDS.

Before attempting that, you might also want to index the 565,000 deaths against the U. S. population most at risk for contracting HIV, as opposed to the U. S. population as a whole.

Doing so would give you rather worse odds of the consequence-free promiscuity you seem to imagine is ours for the having should we just discard our "Victorian" norms.

Rod: "there is a connection between the choices we adults make to wreck our own moral lives, and ruin our marriages and communal lives"

Welcome to Babylon, Rod. Why are you so surprised? Since for so many everything revolves around "whatever makes me feel good", it's therefore little wonder they think nothing—if they're in a position to do it and are clever enough—of swindling an entire nation out of billions and billions of dollars.

And is there anything anyone can do to make this family whole again? Can someone step in and help?
MJ

I've been thinking about this Berry quote since last night. While I agree with the essence of his assessment, there is a faint whiff of hopelessness about it.

The fabric of human institutions are certainly fragile, especially if too many threads are pulled too far at once. But there is also the factor of human insight and determination that can tug threads back into place. As Anon for Now indicated, people can make the best of the situation they've been handed by parents or spouses and still have their kids land on their feet. Have some faith in the power of love and clear seeing to correct our mistakes, please!

My folks divorced in the wild early 70s, when 20-50 year marriages crumbled daily. While I was 18 and in college, it devastated my already fragile sense of safety (the marriage was never happy and tension ruled) to hear inappropriate material about their emotional and dating lives - I became a friend rather than daughter. Oh, the unpleasantness of having each of them confide about how much they had disliked the other, and why.

I married late and had the one child we were blessed with. People can decide to do better and avoid the parental mistakes- like immature marriage. Our son is solid, relaxed, and focused, with much more trust in his ability to navigate difficulties than either his mom or dad managed to have at his age. What is damaged in a generation can be repaired in the next, with sacrifice and dedication to certain principles.

Thanks, elizabeth, I had a similar experience, except that my parents did not divorce. Maybe life would have been easier if they had.

But the rest of it, very much including the "confiding" in me as a daughter about what a bad person the other one was, went on apace. It drove me crazy. It drove me to get very high grades in high school actually, because the one thing they would respect was the statement: "Please leave, I have to study now."

Nevertheless, by the grace of God I guess, I married before I got out of college - so much for maturity I suppose - and we had four children, all of whom, except for our mentally ill son, seem to be doing well, and even he's doing well, considering. And we're still very much together.

God can do more in our lives than we ever asked or imagined. We will not be doomed by our parents' misbehavior, nor will we be automatically saved if they are saints. Some of this is quite mysterious.

Larry,

In light of this, any Biblical texts that seem to accommodate slavery must be seen as cultural accommodations to what was, before the advent of Christianity, a universal human institution...Remember that the Bible is a very human book, some have described it as "incarnational", it meets humanity where we are, or were when the books were written.

You're saying that we should read the Bible intelligently. My point exactly.

Now, consider the possibility that St. Paul, say, was speaking as a man of his own culture when he made glancing and derogatory references to homosexuality. (Or demanding that I wear a hat in church. Or where Moses says that eating calamari is "an abomination." Or forbids wearing wool-blend shirts. Or any number of other examples.) Being very human, in your terms, meeting the audience where they were. Rather than enunciating Eternal Truth on these particular points.

Notice that Paul never wrote a whole letter condemning homosexuality, as he wrote an entire letter sending a runaway slave back to his master, in effect blessing the institution (if it wasn't valid, why should Onesimus go back for cryingoutloud?) and yet you're willing, and I'm willing, to say, "Well, that was coming out of that culture, the letter to Philemon, that doesn't mean that slavery is perfectly OK in all times and places, or at all really, that was just the situation."

You see the argument. Except that I guess you don't. That you don't see the argument the Christian Southern slaveholders made in the 1830's just means that you are so certain that you're right that you can't see the other side.

I happen to think you're right too, obviously. Whatever the details the Testaments enunciate, they are in my opinion overridden by the larger principle of the freedom of the children of God.

So also here. That's the argument anyway. I'm just saying, in this case of homosexuality (the slavery argument, powerful though it was, is dead now), there is an argument. Not all Christians agree, and both sides can support their position from Scripture, though like you anti-slavery types, sometimes people have to fudge a little.

And not all Christians take every single word of Scripture literally anyway, and it would seem from your argument about slavery that you, to your credit in my opinion, are one who does not.

as he wrote an entire letter sending a runaway slave back to his master, in effect blessing the institution (if it wasn't valid, why should Onesimus go back for cryingoutloud?)

Because Paul, and the church, wasn't in any position to directly challenge the prevailing culture at the time. Rome had a very low tolerance for socially disruptive new religions and Christians were already facing persecution, keep in mind that Paul wrote Philemon while in prison and his correspondence was likely monitored. Paul thought that the spread of the gospel was more important than writing a futile rant against slavery that would not affect the institution one bit, and likely would not even be read, and that if read might lead to the destruction of the church, or at least to increased persecution. Remember what I said about the Bible being incarnational? Paul, instead, did something much more subtle and subversive of the institution of slavery. He returned Onesimus, not as a slave, but as a beloved brother (along with strong reminders of what Philemon owed to Paul), this can hardly be considered as a "blessing" of slavery. He changed the terms of the debate from slavery to brotherhood. This was a far more effective strategy both in the short term, the freed slave Onesimus was later a bishop, and in the long term. By the fifth century or so slavery had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared in areas where the gospel had penetrated, due in large part to Paul's insistence that the slave was also a brother (or sister). How can one enslave or sell a brother with whom one has shared the body of the Christ? One can't. (This is probably why, when slavery was lamentably reestablished in the 15th century that slaves generally had their own religious services; it spared masters having to face their slaves while consuming the Eucharist.)

Whether or not you can apply this same type of analysis to homosexuality is debatable, but the way homosexuality was practiced in the first century is somewhat different from today, it was strongly associated with all kinds of debauchery, including pedophilia, it is unlikely Paul was envisioning two men (or women) in a stable, long term relationship when he wrote Romans 1 or the 1 Corinthians passage mentioned above. It is also of interest that Jesus had nothing to say directly about the subject. Is this sufficient to overturn or modify the traditional understanding of the texts? Possibly. In any event, if I am going to err on this issue I want to err on the side of grace, acceptance and love. I'm sure that most gay men and women who have had any contact with the church know what the applicable verses in the Bible say, they have had them thrown in their faces enough, if God wants to convict them of sin on that basis, He can do so. It's not my job, I am not an instrument of wrath or judgment.

John M: The word "homosexual" did not exist in ancient hebrew or greek.

As it is an English word, you are technically correct. In fact, the word is philologically deviant, a linguistic hermaphrodite and an intrinsically disordered locution that ought to be proscribed as vilely antisemantic.

But the societies that spoke Greek and Hebrew were familiar with the perversions of catamites, sodomites, pathics, cinaedi, irrumatores, paedicatores, spintriae and other debauched grotesques. It is this ilk that Paul rails against.

The euphemistic KJV translators describe buggers as "abusers of themselves with mankind"; quaint, but that lacks the directness of πόρνοι, μαλακοί, ἀρσενοκοῖται.

The NKJV explains "homosexuals" as "catamites." So your point about "bad" translation is duplicitous. The NKJV does in fact convey the meaning that Paul intends. You practice the very deception Paul excoriates.

Pastor John, I fear you are leading your poor sheep astray by polluting the very pasture where they ought safely graze.

Whether or not you can apply this same type of analysis to homosexuality is debatable, but the way homosexuality was practiced in the first century is somewhat different from today, it was strongly associated with all kinds of debauchery, including pedophilia, it is unlikely Paul was envisioning two men (or women) in a stable, long term relationship when he wrote Romans 1 or the 1 Corinthians passage mentioned above. It is also of interest that Jesus had nothing to say directly about the subject. Is this sufficient to overturn or modify the traditional understanding of the texts? Possibly. In any event, if I am going to err on this issue I want to err on the side of grace, acceptance and love. I'm sure that most gay men and women who have had any contact with the church know what the applicable verses in the Bible say, they have had them thrown in their faces enough, if God wants to convict them of sin on that basis, He can do so. It's not my job, I am not an instrument of wrath or judgment.

Good points, Larry. As I say, there's an argument; it's not cut-and-dried, I believe. Your last comment is much to your credit I believe.

For myself, I am far too broken in my own life to have the standing even in my wildest imagination to be the one to call this and condemn gay men and women or call anyone else to condemn them.

No dodge, Jillian. It's in there. Both Testaments. Explicit. You can read it for yourself without the boon of my pedagogy.

You say that so easily, Roland, and in your next entry or two you're already walking back that claim. Curiously enough, I did take a look at all the well known passages of supposed applicability some time ago. I don't remember too much, because it struck me as preposterously weak evidence for the absolute pose/stance taken by traditionalists.

Since I've forgotten a great deal of it, maybe you can point me to where lesbianism is addressed and condemned. As for 'arsenkoitai' and the other Pauline terms, those are notoriously biased in conservative translations to 'homosexual' where more accurate renderings into contemporary English would be something like 'lecherous selfprostituting male'.

I'll gladly concede that the Bible views homosexual carnality as fairly disgusting. But that in a context of a cold, disdainful, annoyed eye cast on heterosexual carnality.

I can assist you in your quest for Truth. But I charge by the hour and my rates are exorbitant. But the grace that will accrue to you is concomitantly abundant.

At such prices I must passionately insist that you dress in the high pumps and the pink plastic skirt for our rendezvous. :D :P

Oh, MH, that's par for the course for Rufus. I've somehow wounded his ego and the only partly controlled choleric bitterness vented in my direction has become something of a theme lately. It's better that he takes his rage out on someone in cyberspace than on his family is my thinking on it.

Nobody has ever devised a better set of principles than Christianity to live by. Some dishonestly point to those who corrupt them and try to prove they're faulty on that basis, but such illogic is easily spotted.

The Bible notes that the Devil was perfect until the day evil was found in him... and calls that a "mystery". Engaging in psychologial analysis, or any other kind of analysis of your friends, to try to determine the "fault" that led them to choose behavior they would have rejected before is to fail to realize that you didn't know what they thought when they were "behaving" as expected.

My best friend from all my grade school years suddenly left his church, wife, and launched a whole new hedonistic life just before he turned 40. Bewildering enough to see what he did to his son, but also to his parents.

But I learned some things about his past, his parents, and his upbringing that shed light on it. I doubt he ever believed any of his stated beliefs, nor that he cared, really, about anything.

He had grown up being taught to live to other people's expectations and never look under the surface. Both ways of his life have been a failure... Emotionally, financially, etc. HE never changed. He simply stopped play acting.

In no way am I attempting to equate this to your friend, Rod... Only to illustrate that we really DO NOT know what is inside other people's heads, even though we may know them for 30 years.

You know and I know that his change in behavior isn't going to make him happy or successful. Maybe even he knows that. Maybe he doesn't. Pray for him, be his friend, no matter what. When appropriate, be clear you don't approve of bad behavior, but that you're his friend, no matter what. Our commandment is to be a neighbor, a friend, and to improve the lives of people around us. You can't make others be perfect, but you can fulfill your own mission. Even when it hurts.

Elizabeth, I think you are right and that any apparent difference in our ideas is based on a different way of using words. In practice I would guess that we are pretty much in agreement. ; )

Dear Rod
My computer crashed to i can't access any e-mail addresses. But you have got to see this article. Granted, it's just an idea, but never the less, it is an idea being presented to the US House by one, Teresa Ghilarducci, to eliminate private pension plans and establish government guaranteed pensions.....read it!

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/10/23/would-obama-dems-kill-401k-plans.html
Shelley

I'm wondering how a post about heterosexual depravity and the moral and social damage that ripples from heterosexual betrayal turned into a long series of messages about homosexuals?

Someone has a fixation.

I'm probably going to take this on a different route than the experience that many on this post have talked about. In my Jurisprudence class, we've been talking a lot about Rousseau, Emerson, and Mill over the past two weeks--and their ideas on the state, self-reliance, the individual, and utopia.

I read a few dozen posts back about sexual exploration, people getting in touch with themselves, and monogamy. If we only peel back the layers and get in touch with our true selves, free of societal constraints, everything will be much better. I really have a hard time with that.

First, we are all social beings, and like it or not our types desires and practices, to some extent, exist in the context of the "societies"--mini or macro--that we create around ourselves. I think this proposition is the single most cause of controversy and argument on this blog. Because I agree with this, it seems silly to me the idea that sexual practices, sins, or what have you, are the same in all societies--and if the beliefs are different they the practices are just being repressed by the society's beliefs. It goes both ways. Beliefs affect the practices and the types of desires in a society.

It is a utopian concept (ie. Rousseau--getting to the true good self by going back to the state of nature/throwing off society) to think that by divorcing one's spouse, engaging in polygamy or adultery, or by going on a sexual binge to regain a sense of control and power in life, that somehow one will be led to happiness.

maryQ: I suggest getting a copy of The Art of the Commonplace. It's a collection of Berry's essays from throughout his career. Some of his best stuff is there. It will give you a very substantial introduction to his work and thought. Enjoy.

"Pastor John, I fear you are leading your poor sheep astray by polluting the very pasture where they ought safely graze."

Your entitled to that view. In fact, if my "sheep" accepted any real "leading," rather than the simple abiding with them in a particular role that they seem to seek from me, I would feel that I was actually "unpolluting" the pasture or mitigating the toxic waste that has been fed to them for generations. But believe me, I offer my opinion and they all have their own. We disagree often, and it still works.

Pray for them if you'd like. We can all use all the prayers we can get.

Thanks Dianne.

"It is sad because these churches--I was once a Methodist--were once orthodox, strong, and vibrant and had a powerful mission and witness in the world."

C'mon now. Certainly Methodists have had a great impact on America, and through three "Great Awakenings" were part of mooring America in the mainline Protestant tradition.

Consider this: Secularism could not exist without liberalism, Liberalism could not exist without Protestantism. The Enlightenment is a result of Protestantism. America is the creation of the Enlightenment. We owe it to ourselves to acknowledge that we are a Protestant, Enlightenment, Liberal nation.

But orthodox? Not in any sense of the term.

Startling revelation: not everyone agrees with you on every point, and disagreeing with you does not, of itself, prove someone wrong.

Amen to that.

"Why belong to a church that believes just what liberal, secular people believe, about sex or anything else? Why have a Bible if the New York Times is a more authoritative guide to the good life, and the arbiter of your opinion on every social and cultural issue?"

Oh Lancelot, you devil! If a church does not believe as you think it should, then we are no doubt on our way to hell in your mind. I would say that you are trapped in a hell of fear and not faith.

We invite folks to meet us where they are and provide a place for them to grow in their faith journey. Funny, but it's worked for over 30 years. We were the "emergent" church before there was a name for it. True, we're small, but Jesus changed the world with the 12.

I'm so intrigued that what I said about marriage has upset posters on this site. What was it that was so upsetting? That couples should know each other as much as possible before tying the knot? That sexuality can shift and change over time? That some marriages fail and we need to accept that? None of this seems outside the canon to me.

As it is an English word, you are technically correct. In fact, the word is philologically deviant, a linguistic hermaphrodite and an intrinsically disordered locution that ought to be proscribed as vilely antisemantic.

Yes, that's the objection that A.E. Housman has to the word "homosexual" in Stoppard's play The Invention of Love ;-)

Of course, the same could be said of the word "television". (I suppose we could have said "telorama" instead.)

antisemantic

Now that's a good one! I'm going to have to remember that!

Let us, as Meg urges, give credit where it is due. The Catholics (along with a number of other institutional churches, but I'm most familiar with the Catholics) have certainly tried of late to do what can be done to prepare people for the responsibilities of marriage ahead of time, as well as conduct rescue operations later when a marriage runs into trouble (and all of them do sooner or later). If you're going to take the position that you can't get out of it later, you can in good conscience do no less, and the Catholics have been working diligently in those fields. I imagine they could use all the help they can get, given the messages the culture is sending out.

It was different when we got married in 1966. Our "marriage preparation" consisted of a meeting with the pastor at Newman Hall, who only wanted to see baptismal certificates and who scheduled us two weeks later, when he had a day free. (We were in a hurry. I was not pregnant, but we had other problems.)

We found out later that this priest was himself secretly married already. He left the Catholic Church not long after we were married. Of course I knew nothing of this at the time, and at 21 I could not possibly have cared less.

In spite of rather than because of this rather hasty and inauspicious beginning, we've done rather well I think. 42 years and counting.

I told our four adult kids two years ago that we're having a big party for our 50th wedding anniversary, and that we're neither giving this party nor paying for it. My friends said, "Do they really need ten years' notice?"

The answer to that would be, Yes.

Arsenokoitai are men who lie with men, irrespective of love or lucre.

Interesting assertion, but 'paederastes' would have fit that bill nicely, indeed have been substantially better. Surely Paul didn't want to license man-boy sex. 'Arsenokoitai' is obscure and arcane in Koine. It only makes sense as a usage if there is a further element or connotation to it that strikes Paul as salient.

Paul is a prude, no doubt. I prefer the OT. The Tanakh is far more positive on erotic delights. It does push the envelope, as in the case of Lot's lusty daughters and Onan and his anachronistic foray into coitus interruptus.

Paul is definitely annoyed with all the impious youngsters and the messes they get themselves into. The Tanakh writers see sex with, um, a bit less of a task-directed view.

But then there is the Song of Songs, and the woman with breasts like roes and thighs like jewels, not to mention the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense. My kind of religion.

The Garden, as in that book (and in Genesis), is- fortunately or unfortunately- a famous allegorical device in ancient Middle Eastern literature for portraying the inward universe successfully accessed by prayer. :-)

Of course, taken to its logical conclusions, that makes the Hebrew Bible to a guidebook for individual human spiritual journey via subtle allegorical narratives and advices rather than a manual for setting up and running worldly societies in the material world. But that can't possibly be true, can it?