No, God would not have approved of gay bishops
By Matthew Parris
The London Times
August 2003
VOL NOTE: Matthew Parris is a former conservative MP, journalist and is now a radio and television presenter and pundit. Parris came out in a late-night debate in the House of Commons in 1984. He later also announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. In August 2006, Parris entered into a civil partnership with his long-term partner, Julian Glover, a speech writer for David Cameron. This article was first published in August 9, 2003 but its message is still timely and relevant today.
Anglican evangelicals are right. Knowingly to appoint gay bishops robs Christianity of meaning. It is time that convinced Christians stopped trying to reconcile their spiritual beliefs with the modern age and understood that if one thing comes clearly through every account we have of Jesus's teaching, it is that His followers are not urged to accommodate themselves to their age, but to the mind of God. Christianity is not supposed to be comfortable or feel "natural". The mind of God, contemplating the behaviour of man, is not expected to be suffused with a spirit of "whatever".
As it happens I do not believe in the mind of God. But Christians do and must strive to know more of it. Nothing they read in the Old and New Testaments gives a scintilla of support to the view that the God of Israel was an inclusive God, or inclined to go with the grain of human nature; much they read suggests a righteous going against the grain.
Certainly it is true that Jesus departed from conventional Judaic teaching in the emphasis He put on forgiveness, but neither the story (for example) of the woman taken in adultery, nor the parable of the prodigal son suggest that He countenanced a continuation of the sins of either. What these stories teach is that repentance is acceptable to God however late it comes, and that the virtuous should not behave in a vindictive manner towards sinners. That is a very different thing from a shoulder-shrugging chuckle of "different strokes for different folks".
Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org
By Matthew Parris
The London Times
August 2003
VOL NOTE: Matthew Parris is a former conservative MP, journalist and is now a radio and television presenter and pundit. Parris came out in a late-night debate in the House of Commons in 1984. He later also announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. In August 2006, Parris entered into a civil partnership with his long-term partner, Julian Glover, a speech writer for David Cameron. This article was first published in August 9, 2003 but its message is still timely and relevant today.
Anglican evangelicals are right. Knowingly to appoint gay bishops robs Christianity of meaning. It is time that convinced Christians stopped trying to reconcile their spiritual beliefs with the modern age and understood that if one thing comes clearly through every account we have of Jesus's teaching, it is that His followers are not urged to accommodate themselves to their age, but to the mind of God. Christianity is not supposed to be comfortable or feel "natural". The mind of God, contemplating the behaviour of man, is not expected to be suffused with a spirit of "whatever".As it happens I do not believe in the mind of God. But Christians do and must strive to know more of it. Nothing they read in the Old and New Testaments gives a scintilla of support to the view that the God of Israel was an inclusive God, or inclined to go with the grain of human nature; much they read suggests a righteous going against the grain.
Certainly it is true that Jesus departed from conventional Judaic teaching in the emphasis He put on forgiveness, but neither the story (for example) of the woman taken in adultery, nor the parable of the prodigal son suggest that He countenanced a continuation of the sins of either. What these stories teach is that repentance is acceptable to God however late it comes, and that the virtuous should not behave in a vindictive manner towards sinners. That is a very different thing from a shoulder-shrugging chuckle of "different strokes for different folks".
Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org
