[MadPoet]

Originally Posted by onion

Homosexuality is not condemned by God except in the Old Testament. It is a sin, YES. But so is lying, so is anger, so is malice, so is cursing, so is using God's name in vain, so is murder. You commit one sin, and you commit them all. There are people who are Christian and are gay, the thing is they should be trying to be more Christlike and control their urges to be with the same sex. Much like we most learn to control our anger, or any other sin.

This is exactly one the many things that pulls me away from Christianity. It is a sin to be who you are? Sure, men and women were created for each other, and to be partnered together. But just because you do fall into the category of what is normal in God's eyes should not mean that you are sinning. What you're saying here is that in order to be accepted by God, gays need to work towards not being gay. I'm sorry but, any God that I'd worship would accept me no matter what. Straight, gay, whatever. Otherwise, in my eyes, he's a complete jerk whose goal is simply to control everyone who believes in him. No way will I ever believe in a God like that.

The thing is many Christian's condemn a lot of things and twist the Bible around. But let me point out another thing. In Matthew, Jesus was tempted by Satan, and Satan was tempting Jesus by the use of Scripture, and Jesus resisted this temptation because He knew scripture better than Satan. The point I am trying to make is that Satan has been there since the beginning, he knows scripture better than any Christian a live because he has been studying it since the beginning of time, now if Satan wanted to confuse people, and lead them astray do you not think that he has people planted in Churches to confuse people? Satan has no rules, he will do any means to lead people away from Christ, as long as they don't believe in the need for a Savior, Satan is winning is his eyes... So although people claim to be Christian, and maybe some of these peoples are Pastors and religious leaders in Churches, this doesn't mean that they are saved, they can be actually under the influence of Satan himself.

I don't understand why you make it sound as if we have to be Christians in order to go to Heaven. What if someone was an amazingly good person, did everything for everyone else, and lived their lives dedicated to working to make others happy. Yet, they were not Christian, and did not fully believe in God. Would they go to Hell? Again, this makes me think, wow "God wants every single darn thing to be about him. No one else but him." In fact, it makes me think that God created the world simply so he could be in control of something. "Believe in me or you will pay."[/quote]

[edit]
Also if you think Abraham had it hard, read about Job. Just because we have faith in God does not mean our lives are going to be easy, or even logical. We just trust that God is doing everything for His glory, again it comes down to denying ourselves and following our Savior. We give up our 80 years on earth, for eternity with God. Even though in this example of Job, God destroyed all he had and known, but because of Job's faithfulness he was rewarded both eternally and on earth by the end of the book of Job.

Well yeah, our lives are clearly not going to be easy if we're under the power of a God who will torture us as he did with Job. Another question, since you brought up Job: In the bible, if I remember correctly, it clearly says that gambling is a sin. Yet here God sits, making a bet with Satan, and then ruining a poor man's life, killing his kids, saying "Oh, I'm so cool, I know this will make him love me even more." Yeah, right! If God did something like that to me, I'd rather worship Satan than worship a God like THAT.