NB! This article can hurt your religious feelings.
“I was deprived of my Christian right to stone sodomites to death”, this phrase haunts my mind since the very same presentation, we wrote about before. Christian. Right. To stone. To death. Listen attentively, ah? Oh, obviously you are doing something totally wrong.
Brothers and sisters, what are you doing? Surely, you are brothers and sisters! What body part should one use when reading the Bible in order to find there that “sodomy” is the most infernal sin? And to overlook entirely such sins as pride, wrath, vanity, greed? Those are deadly sins, by the way. And what is about lack of love to fellow creatures and enemies? And what is about beating, attempted murder?
This article does not deal with the essence of Christianity and religion, and please, do not take it as the text about all Christians. It deals only with the people, who use a Cross and the commandments of God as a cover to commit violence, spread slander, malign and do other things that make them “unclean”. Also, I will not delve into theological excursusand tell a fairy tale that once upon a time there was Judaism, the only monotheistic religion. Then a good fellow Jesus of Nazareth came. It is easy to find on the Web how the story ended. Just be sure to sort out the crazy ideas by especially talented people about Maria, the mother of Jesus, being a nice Russian girl who ran away to Israel from Tatar-Mongol Yoke or from Ivan the Terrible.
Furthermore, I will not convince you that homosexuality is a norm according to the Christian religion. As the saying is, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's. But we live in a secular state, and even overrepresentation of the Christian churches within its territory does not require anyone to become a participant in a regional fan club of the Creator.
There is a line in the Jewish texts which says „A man shall not lie with a male as with a woman“. You can also find there a list of dos and don’ts, a list of what can be worn and what may not be worn, what can be shaved and what may not be shaved. And slavery is a norm there. And there is a rampant polygamy. And a pictorial description of incest, when the daughters of Lot made drunk his righteous father, and decided to sleep with him. The both of them got pregnant. But the first Christians were much more agitated by the paragraph about two men having supposedly unconventional sexual needs. They were excited to take it on board, and to put an end to the eating of pork and prawns, to idolising and to any dispraise of murders.
And now let’s start from the beginning.
Christianity distinguishes between mortal and venial sins. There are seven deadly sins (initially there were eight sins, later “sadness” was removed from the list), all other sins derive from them. And they deal directly with a human nature.
The deadly sins in Western Christianity are:
• Superbia (pride). Immense pride, believing oneself to be perfect and sinless, pride up to self-adoration, i.e. “ready to go up to heaven and act like God”.
• Invidia (envy). It is also vanity or jealousy, which carries off a person to all possible evil deeds against a neighbour.
• Ira (wrath). Irascibility, acceptance of angry thoughts, revenge, indignation, rage, aberration, outcry, argument, dirty, rude, and sharp words. Hatred, feud, vengeance, slander, condemnation,indignation and insult of a neighbour.
• Acedia (sloth). Failure to act, indolence, despair, carelessness. Disinclination to any act of kindness. Depression, despair, suicidal thoughts, lack of fear of God, lackadaisical attitude toward penance until one’s last days.
• Avaritia (greed). The love of money acquired mainly by injustice, which prevents a person from thinking about spiritual values.
• Gula (gluttony). Uncontrolled desire to consume beyond one’s needs, not knowing what is fasting, it is connected with an excessive desire for amusement.
• Luxuria (lust, lechery). Sexual relationship before marriage, adultery. Evil life. Not to have control over… one’s sense of touch. Bad language and reading of books full of salacity.
Now tell the truth who sinless is? Furthermore, where is something about homosexuality here? Where is it about homosexuality at all? Oh! That’s it! The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians.
“Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortioners, will inherit the Kingdom of God”. So, according to Paul nobody will inherit the Kingdom of God who has ever worshipped the relics or icons, gone on a binge, scolded somebody, written the Facebook posts filled with hatred, been untrue to the wife or had sex before marriage, taken part in mobbing and been involved in the beating of another person.
A human being is an amazing creature. It manages to distort more or less any good idea. By the way, I consider the Christianity to be a good idea. It is hard to believe that a good fellow Jesus of Nazareth would welcome hate-motivated murders, beatings and mobbing.
But in the real world everybody sets one’s priorities by himself. For somebody religion is a list of taboos, and it is necessary to spread it immediately among the others without asking. These people stick to the rules and limitations what they comprehend; they judge forgetting that it is exactly, what is not allowed to do. Who are you to judge? This option does stand for much virtue but it is about much pride, vanity and anger.
Some people feel comfortable with a postulate about “God is Love”, humility, forgiveness, and that Kingdom of God is in itself and not among the abstract pastures of Heaven. These people will not start beating other people just because those follow other rules. Unlike the previous social aggregate these people keep in mind the following things about Christianity: “he who is without sin can cast the first stone” and “do not judge, and you will not be judged”. That way. Unfortunately, there are much more people, who are ready to judge without thinking twice, who are intolerant to other people’s sins, and do not pay much attention to their own sins. Or are they much in evidence?
Relying on different sacred texts God has given man a freedom to make choices. People also make that choice when it comes to homosexuality. Not about „to be or not to be a gay“, not at all. A human being still has a choice to accept oneself and love oneself as it was born, or not to.
Oh, by the way, every person has a choice “to be a moron” or “not to be a moron” whatever the orientation. Whatever the level of religious commitment as well.
P.S. When writing this article, minimum one serious sin was committed from a Christian perspective. Neither of female journalists was hurt.
Автор: Kira Kovalski
