Originally posted by Chin Eng:
Thanks for your reply.....
A couple of things emerged from your explanation....
Firstly the understanding that the OT is no longer the law because
Jesus the messiah has come etc etc... - this is exactly what I have
been telling to tell you, plus the fact almost the entire OT is
addressed to the Jews. I am glad we can finally agree on this
point. Are you now able to draw any conclusion on whether the
Ecclesiastes verse is a reference to homosexuality or not?
Secondly, true, that Paul is a human.... [b]if that being true, the
entire NT is irrelevant and all writings are written by humans, be
it Paul, Peter, James or John. This being the case, we
should throw it out of the window, because each individual is or
can be prejudiced and we can now PICK AND CHOOSE what to
believe at our convenience.
However, it will be hard to imagine any true Christian going on
this line because the Bible is believed to be the word of God,
beyond any human prejudices. If this is the case, the writers of
all gospels, the epistles and the prophetic words are inspired by
God and no prejudices were put in place.
I have no wish to argue on whether the Bible is the word of God or
not as this has been discussed in other threads. The issue
is whether an individual - you - believe the Bible is the word of
God. The understanding on whether any individual has
written prejudiced opinions is important - if there are prejudiced
opinions then the Bible is NOT the word of God and we (both you and
I) should not quote from it and throw everything out of the window;
if the Bible is THE word of God, we need to examine the books and
context of each book. Books are written in many forms eg the
Gospels give the account of the life of Jesus, while Acts gives the
account of the Christian in the early church. The epistles are
lessons for good Christian behaviour, be it on marriage, moral,
responsibilities or lifestyle. If you subscribe to the notion of
personal prejudices, than we might as well say that bigamy is fine
and adultery is fine.
[/b]
very simply, in reply to all u've said, i only wish to point out
that, certain bits of Matthew and John have recorded the actual
words of Jesus, like a secetary would write down what her boss
dictates to her, so I find that believable as divine word of the
law. Anything else, especially such a touch and grey topic like
sexuality, what Paul has said, is simply not impartial enuf to be
taken 100% for sure as the law. And in such a case, where something
is so unclear that if not clarified, it can be debated either way,
since neither Jesus nor God themselves have choosen to clarify that
homosexuality is a sin, I rest my case that not only is it
justified for me, but for millions of Christians in general, to
believe homosexuality is not a sin as well.
