REPENT!
Sunday, July 5, 2009 at 02:20PM Oh dear! Hasn't the Bishop of Rochester Dr Nazir Ali quite the stir by calling on homosexuals to repent and "be changed" in comments that have infuriated equality campaigners!
We believe that God has revealed his purpose about how we are made. People who depart from this don’t share the same faith. They are acting in a way that is not normative according to what God has revealed in the Bible. The Bible’s teaching shows that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the way to express our sexual nature. "We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed." The bishop added that it is not just homosexuals who need to repent, but all who have strayed from the Bible’s teaching.
I agree with this. It is NOT just homosexuals that need to repent but ALL of us. That is the teaching of Christ and I do accept this. However homosexuals ain't excluded from this requirement and therein lies the problem. The Gay Rights uber alles brigade do not accept this and seek "equality of degeneracy" and that is the uncomfortable message that the Bible carries.
Look, I do not seek to condemn people for what they do in private but IF one is a Christian - as is the Bishop - then all he is doing is speaking out for the values he espouses. In a modern pluralist society, what's the problem with that?
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Reader Comments (4)
The Bishop is perfectly entitled to his opinion and those of us who disagree are perectly entitled to ignore him.
David, I kind of see your point, but shouldn't the Bishop also be calling for Bankers and savers to repent and be changed as the Bible is quite clear that Usury is a deadly sin? As a Christian did you tempt others to sin by taking out a mortgage to purchase your home?
Most bankers don't commit usury - charging an exhorbitant rate of interest - on their ordinary loans ( credit card interest is another story )
The Phantom -
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that Christians until the late middle-ages were religiously prohibited from charging any interest on loans at all (i.e. Usury was originally defined as charging interest full stop, not the modern definition of charging exorbitant interest). Jews had a get out-clause - Deuteronomy, 23:20-21, that allowed interest to be charged to foreigners (taken to mean Gentiles, in Europe Christains)
Thou shalt not lend upon interest to thy brother: interest of money, interest of victuals, interest of any thing that is lent upon interest. Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou puttest thy hand unto, in the land whither thou goest in to possess it. (Deuteronomy, 23:20-21)
This enabled Jews who were often discriminated against in political life and terms of property ownership etc in Europe to earn money as successful money lenders / financiers without any competition from the indigenous Christians who were prohibited from so doing.