[Linux4christians] OOT: My stand on Gay/Lesbian

[Timothy Butler]

On Sep 29, 2010, at 12:32 AM, David Kuntadi wrote:

>>        Escape from desire is not a Christian goal. Christians are aiming to desire what God desires for us, not to desire nothing at all.
>> This is a very key difference between Buddhism and Christianity. Hence, we have no interest in what Siddhartha did, at least with
>> respect to what Christians ought to do.
> 
> I beg your pardon, but do you want to ignore below verses:
> 
> 1Pe 2:11  Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims,
> abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
> 1Jn 2:16  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the
> lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is
> of the world.


	No, not at all. We have to understand what these passages mean in context. For example, 1 John means certain things by "the world," that other New Testament writers such as Paul may not. The big point, here, however is that we ought not to be prideful or fall into lust. Sex within marriage is not lust, but is something good created by our God (see, for example, Song of Songs, which is one big story about the goodness of the physical marriage relationship).

> 
>>        Unless Paul's instruction in 1 Cor. 7 was wrong (and surely we all agree it is not), then, yes, Peter should have been (and
>> probably was) having intimate relations with his wife.
> 
> Paul has mentioned that he did not need sex, so, it is surely
> something else but sex.

	No, what I mean is that Paul has said marriage partners should not abstain from sex for more than a short while (1 Cor. 7.5).


>> 
>>        The Father and the Spirit do not have physical bodies, so obviously two of the three persons of the Trinity never desired sex. However, since Jesus was "in every respect has been tempted as we are" (Heb. 4.15), we have every reason to believe he not only desired sex but found the feminine form alluring, though he never allowed lust to enter his mind.
> 
> That is what Jesus said about pig and dog: Human full of earthly
> desires. Then sex is included in the earthly desires, right?

	Right, but there is nothing wrong with earthly desires, per se. Jesus was a human full of earthly desires, yet he did not sin. For example, Jesus was hungry at times and he desired to sleep at times -- these are "earthly desires," but they are good desires for humans. The desires aren't bad. God made us earthly, fleshly, material people and that fleshly existence was good (Genesis 1.28-31).

	-Tim