INSERT INTO `wp_posts` VALUES (9042,204,'2013-06-04 08:40:27','2013-06-04 15:40:27','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of the Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  The panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production “Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-32','','','2013-06-04 08:40:27','2013-06-04 15:40:27','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-32/',0,'revision','',0),(9043,204,'2013-06-04 08:42:43','2013-06-04 15:42:43','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of the Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  The panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-33','','','2013-06-04 08:42:43','2013-06-04 15:42:43','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-33/',0,'revision','',0),(9044,204,'2013-06-04 08:42:48','2013-06-04 15:42:48','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of the Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  The panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-34','','','2013-06-04 08:42:48','2013-06-04 15:42:48','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-34/',0,'revision','',0),(9045,204,'2013-06-04 08:42:51','2013-06-04 15:42:51','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of the Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  The panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-35','','','2013-06-04 08:42:51','2013-06-04 15:42:51','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-35/',0,'revision','',0),(9046,204,'2013-06-04 08:44:26','2013-06-04 15:44:26','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of the Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  The panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-36','','','2013-06-04 08:44:26','2013-06-04 15:44:26','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-36/',0,'revision','',0),(9047,204,'2013-06-04 08:45:48','2013-06-04 15:45:48','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  The panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-37','','','2013-06-04 08:45:48','2013-06-04 15:45:48','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-37/',0,'revision','',0),(9059,204,'2013-06-04 09:43:39','2013-06-04 16:43:39','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-49','','','2013-06-04 09:43:39','2013-06-04 16:43:39','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-49/',0,'revision','',0),(9048,204,'2013-06-04 08:46:30','2013-06-04 15:46:30','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-38','','','2013-06-04 08:46:30','2013-06-04 15:46:30','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-38/',0,'revision','',0),(9049,204,'2013-06-04 08:47:09','2013-06-04 15:47:09','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-39','','','2013-06-04 08:47:09','2013-06-04 15:47:09','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-39/',0,'revision','',0),(9050,204,'2013-06-04 08:47:15','2013-06-04 15:47:15','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-40','','','2013-06-04 08:47:15','2013-06-04 15:47:15','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-40/',0,'revision','',0),(9051,204,'2013-06-04 08:48:48','2013-06-04 15:48:48','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-41','','','2013-06-04 08:48:48','2013-06-04 15:48:48','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-41/',0,'revision','',0),(9052,204,'2013-06-04 08:48:58','2013-06-04 15:48:58','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-42','','','2013-06-04 08:48:58','2013-06-04 15:48:58','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-42/',0,'revision','',0),(9053,204,'2013-06-04 08:49:26','2013-06-04 15:49:26','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-43','','','2013-06-04 08:49:26','2013-06-04 15:49:26','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-43/',0,'revision','',0),(9054,204,'2013-06-04 08:49:31','2013-06-04 15:49:31','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-44','','','2013-06-04 08:49:31','2013-06-04 15:49:31','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-44/',0,'revision','',0),(9055,204,'2013-06-04 08:58:38','2013-06-04 15:58:38','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-45','','','2013-06-04 08:58:38','2013-06-04 15:58:38','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-45/',0,'revision','',0),(9056,204,'2013-06-04 08:58:43','2013-06-04 15:58:43','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If they are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-46','','','2013-06-04 08:58:43','2013-06-04 15:58:43','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-46/',0,'revision','',0),(9057,204,'2013-06-04 09:11:53','2013-06-04 16:11:53','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-47','','','2013-06-04 09:11:53','2013-06-04 16:11:53','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-47/',0,'revision','',0),(9058,204,'2013-06-04 09:11:59','2013-06-04 16:11:59','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit The Gay Christian Therapy Center','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-48','','','2013-06-04 09:11:59','2013-06-04 16:11:59','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-48/',0,'revision','',0),(9060,204,'2013-06-04 09:43:46','2013-06-04 16:43:46','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-50','','','2013-06-04 09:43:46','2013-06-04 16:43:46','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-50/',0,'revision','',0),(9061,204,'2013-06-04 09:45:03','2013-06-04 16:45:03','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-51','','','2013-06-04 09:45:03','2013-06-04 16:45:03','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-51/',0,'revision','',0),(9062,204,'2013-06-04 09:47:50','2013-06-04 16:47:50','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-52','','','2013-06-04 09:47:50','2013-06-04 16:47:50','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-52/',0,'revision','',0),(9063,204,'2013-06-04 09:54:07','2013-06-04 16:54:07','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-53','','','2013-06-04 09:54:07','2013-06-04 16:54:07','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-53/',0,'revision','',0),(9064,204,'2013-06-04 10:21:31','2013-06-04 17:21:31','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\n\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\n\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\n\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\n\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\n\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\n\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\n\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\n\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\n\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\n\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\n\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n&nbsp;\n\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-54','','','2013-06-04 10:21:31','2013-06-04 17:21:31','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-54/',0,'revision','',0),(9065,204,'2013-06-04 10:38:18','2013-06-04 17:38:18','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-55','','','2013-06-04 10:38:18','2013-06-04 17:38:18','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-55/',0,'revision','',0),(9066,204,'2013-06-04 12:47:25','2013-06-04 19:47:25','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\n\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\n\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\n\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\n\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\n\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\n\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\n\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\n\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\n\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\n\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\n\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n&nbsp;\n\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-56','','','2013-06-04 12:47:25','2013-06-04 19:47:25','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-56/',0,'revision','',0),(9067,204,'2013-06-04 12:49:32','2013-06-04 19:49:32','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-57','','','2013-06-04 12:49:32','2013-06-04 19:49:32','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-57/',0,'revision','',0),(9068,204,'2013-06-04 12:50:04','2013-06-04 19:50:04','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-58','','','2013-06-04 12:50:04','2013-06-04 19:50:04','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-58/',0,'revision','',0),(9069,204,'2013-06-04 13:13:12','2013-06-04 20:13:12','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\n\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\n\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\n\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\n\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\n\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\n\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\n\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\n\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\n\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\n\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\n\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n&nbsp;\n\n*photo credit Gina Grover/Regina Joy photography','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-59','','','2013-06-04 13:13:12','2013-06-04 20:13:12','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-59/',0,'revision','',0),(9070,204,'2013-06-04 13:13:14','2013-06-04 20:13:14','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover/Regina Joy photography','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-60','','','2013-06-04 13:13:14','2013-06-04 20:13:14','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-60/',0,'revision','',0),(9071,204,'2013-06-04 13:13:24','2013-06-04 20:13:24','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover/Regina Joy photography','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-61','','','2013-06-04 13:13:24','2013-06-04 20:13:24','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-61/',0,'revision','',0),(9072,204,'2013-08-07 20:35:36','2013-08-08 03:35:36','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo courtesy of Dr. Matthew Clark\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-autosave','','','2013-08-07 20:35:36','2013-08-08 03:35:36','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(9076,204,'2013-06-04 14:34:46','2013-06-04 21:34:46','','images','','inherit','open','open','','images-2','','','2013-06-04 14:34:46','2013-06-04 21:34:46','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/images.jpeg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(9077,204,'2013-06-04 14:34:49','2013-06-04 21:34:49','','images-2','','inherit','open','open','','images-2-2','','','2013-06-04 14:34:49','2013-06-04 21:34:49','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/images-2.jpeg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(9080,1,'2013-06-04 13:14:08','2013-06-04 20:14:08','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo credit Gina Grover/Regina Joy photography','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-62','','','2013-06-04 13:14:08','2013-06-04 20:14:08','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-62/',0,'revision','',0),(9081,1,'2013-06-04 21:19:11','2013-06-05 04:19:11','Recently at the Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids, Mathew Clark of The Gay Christian Therapy Center hosted a panel discussion called <a href=\"http://mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\"><em>Homosexuality and Christianity: A new approach in a polarizing debate</em></a><a href=\"http://http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/05/daniel_dobson_son_of_prominent.html\">.</a>  Along with Mathew Clark, the panelists included Stephanie Sandberg, who directed the Actors Theatre production <em>“Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians”</em>; Ruth Bell Olsson, president of the Grand Rapids Red Project for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; and Jim Lucas, longtime chaplain of the Gays in Faith Together support group. A highlight of the evening was the official public coming out of Dan Dobson, son of the legendary and venerable Ed Dobson who is the retired pastor of Calvary Church here in West Michigan.\r\n\r\nThis was my first meeting of this kind, and I actually didn\'t know what to expect—perhaps some protests or signs, maybe even some threats of violence—but none of that occurred. To be honest, the meeting was mesmerizing and deeply interesting. Why? Well, I\'m a heterosexual male married to the same woman for the past thirty-three years. We practice monogamy and fidelity and frankly, those seemed to be the main themes of the night—except it was monogamy and fidelity between same-sex partners. Anyway, after thinking and talking about this issue, there are a few take-aways from this meeting that I\'d like to share with you.\r\n\r\n<strong>We (Christians and society in general, but mostly Christians) really make life hard for the LGBT community.</strong>\r\n\r\nThere are a lot of ways we do this—heterosexism, homophobia, etc., those are the easy ones, but as a Christian, I can speak for my team and frankly, my team is very good at making life difficult for the LGBT community. We do this by not having conversations about homosexuality. There is pressure on us, however, to shift from the \"abomination\" stage of the conversation to the \"neutral\" stage of the conversation. By this, I mean we spoke out angrily against homosexuality (and some churches still consider this an intramural sport), but now we are content not to talk about it at all. The code word here is \"neutrality.\" There are several reasons for this, the main one is that we do not want to create another church split that isn\'t about the color of the carpet we need to replace in the Sunday school rooms. Certainly, like any major change in thinking, steps need to be taken wisely and with great care. But even this plays into the \"neutrality\" state. Another way is to create two issues out of one: Should we affirm gay marriage? And, then should we go further and affirm homosexuality also (I think they mean gay sex)? Aren\'t they both the same thing? Finally, I think we make it hard for the LGBT community when we invoke spiritual warfare when it comes to dealing with this issue. This comes about when those of us who have gay friends are guilty by association—that is when the \"putting on the whole armor of God,\" and the \"we must constantly be on guard against Devil\" arguments are invoked. I think the Devil gets really happy when we focus so much attention on him.\r\n\r\n<strong>Reading the Bible literally is actually, really dangerous.</strong>\r\n\r\nWooden literalism gives us silly things like the rapture, snake handlers and prosperity gospel preachers. Sure, there are some things in the Bible that you should take literally like, \"Jesus wept,\" and \"Love one another.\" But ultimately, reading the Bible literally gives us dualisms that create an \"us versus them\" mentality. A good example of this is \"love the sinner but hate the sin.\" Nice, except that Jesus taught in Matthew 7:1-5 that we should love the sinner and hate our own sin. And if being gay is a sin, then it also is covered by the cross. And speaking of the Cross, Jesus\' death on the Cross was not to appease an angry God so He would change his mind about us. It was about US changing our minds about God. It\'s about a God who identifies with all of us through his death, burial and resurrection.\r\n\r\n<strong>Marriage equality and homosexuality are not good reasons to leave your church.</strong>\r\n\r\nOf course, this assumes that your church is having a dialogue about marriage equality and homosexuality in the first place. If you are, you should hang in there because you may be creating a sacred space for your son or daughter who have not yet come out. IF you do want to break up with your church, I suggest you consider unnecessary capital campaigns and ornate building programs as the proper reasons. Clean water, mentoring, adoption, refugees, world hunger, and the HIV Aids pandemic are also good reasons to break up with your church IF they ignore these important issues.\r\n\r\n<strong>We can affirm gay marriage and still affirm fidelity and monogamy.</strong>\r\n\r\nI realize a lot of people were at this meeting, and they may have different take-aways than mine. And to be honest, I do not have a handle on all the implications of marriage equality and homosexuality. I do think it\'s a problem when a gay person might marry a person of the opposite sex, hoping it \"works\" or \"cures\" them and then later leaves the other spouse and children behind in order to come out. But to be fair, this problem is not endemic to gay marriage. Too often it occurs in heterosexual marriages for different reasons. Which brings me to the conclusion that we all must be on the side of fidelity and monogamy in any kind of marriage.\r\n\r\nThis issue requires humility and a huge capacity to love in all of us. I\'m convinced that the only viable response to the hostility about this issue is love, empathy, compassion and understanding—not more hostility.\r\n\r\nI welcome your thoughts and opinions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n*photo courtesy of Dr. Matthew Clark\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Gay And Christian:  Believers Speak','','inherit','open','open','','8993-revision-63','','','2013-06-04 21:19:11','2013-06-05 04:19:11','',8993,'http://provoketive.com/2013/06/04/8993-revision-63/',0,'revision','',0),(9315,67,'2013-11-21 12:26:41','2013-11-21 20:26:41','It\'s often true that the obviously simple is found in the often deceptively complex. When weeding through the trivialities of life and faith, one often finds that the unnecessary usually obscures the fundamental truths of our religious beliefs. When broken down to the essential aspects of spirituality, most of us unite on common beliefs and aspirations.  <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Jesus-David-Wilkie/dp/0830836624\">Coffee with Jesus</a>, the book version of the popular internet comic strip from <a href=\"http://www.radiofreebabylon.com/\">Radio Free Babylon</a>, not only brings simplicity to the often convoluted tenants of Christianity, but does so in a manner that will make you laugh while encouraged to think as well.\r\n\r\nThe just-released Coffee with Jesus from InterVarsity Press and written and illustrated by David Wilkie, is a series of sarcastically humorous comic strips developed from old advertising clip art and Sunday school illustrations. With a demeanor that never changes, Jesus guides, advises and occasionally reprimands five main characters that seem to be constantly stumbling through their faith journey with clumsy ignorance. The reader will find it easy to warm up to these Christian misfits. They might seem all too familiar to the typical church folks that we all know, and at times their antics may hit closer to home, as the mirror stands in full view. You\'ll find no stones to throw at Kevin, Carl, Ann, Lisa or Joe, but can reserve any judgement at Satan, who occasionally shows up for heated debate with Jesus and a hot cup of joe.\r\n\r\nIn this four panel comic strip, the characters are often found to be self-centered, hypocritical, materialistic and at times a bit arrogant. They begin their discussions with Jesus with innocent requests, trivial frustrations and child-like blissful comments, but as clueless as they often appear, Jesus never loses his cool. With unending patience, he never belittles and always seems to make the character comfortably feel as if their presence is the most important to him. And this is the juncture where humor intersects the thought provoking aspects of faith. Where the unnecessarily complex can be made simple.\r\n\r\nFor as you will find yourself chuckling at these ridiculous comic prayers answered by a sarcastic Christ, you will also find that fiction resembles truth more than we like to admit. There is a comforting aspect to Coffee with Jesus and a refreshing image of how our conversations with God can be. At a time in Christendom when the faithful are often force-fed a steady diet of everything from deep theological discourse to transparent self-help, it\'s refreshing to find resource that encourages the reader to not take themselves too seriously.\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Jesus said in <i>Matthew 18:3</i> that <i><span class=\"text Matt-18-3\" id=\"en-NIV-23731\"><span class=\"woj\">\"unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.\"</span></span></i><span class=\"text Matt-18-3\" id=\"en-NIV-23731\"><span class=\"woj\"> Perhaps there is much that we can learn from these childlike characters and Jesus\' untiring patience. For as they often seem to be caught up in their own little materialistic and often selfish man-made kingdoms, perhaps they\'ve haphazardly stumbled upon access to a Kingdom that needs to be realized more often than it is. And they found it in their goofy request, superficial observations, silly frustrations and over a simple cup of coffee with Jesus.</span></span>\r\n<a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/coffeewithjesus217.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-9313 aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/coffeewithjesus217-300x107.jpg\" width=\"338\" height=\"102\" /></a></p>','Review of Coffee With Jesus by David Wilkie ','','inherit','open','open','','9311-revision-v1','','','2013-11-21 12:26:41','2013-11-21 20:26:41','',9311,'http://provoketive.com/2013/11/21/9311-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(9371,0,'2014-02-11 10:42:17','2014-02-11 18:42:17','Hi, I am an amateur painter, who loves this photo, http://provoketive.com/2012/04/16/o-brother-where-art-thou-2/ of 4 friends on a dock. I would like to have permission to paint this. Can you provide, this please? Best regards, rene orlin\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: rene orlin\nAUTHOR EMAIL: rene_orlin@hotmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Contact Us\nIP: 50.79.232.45\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; rene orlin\n    [Email] =&gt; rene_orlin@hotmail.com\n    [Comment] =&gt; Hi, I am an amateur painter, who loves this photo, http://provoketive.com/2012/04/16/o-brother-where-art-thou-2/ of 4 friends on a dock. I would like to have permission to paint this. Can you provide, this please? Best regards, rene orlin\n)\n','rene orlin - 2014-02-11 10:42:17','','publish','open','open','','18ca0c29facc4c6aa45a6f531103a863','','','2014-02-11 10:42:17','2014-02-11 18:42:17','',16,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9371',0,'feedback','',0),(9087,12,'2013-06-06 19:59:31','2013-06-07 02:59:31','','devilmade','','inherit','open','open','','devilmade','','','2013-06-06 19:59:31','2013-06-07 02:59:31','',0,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/devilmade.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(9088,12,'2013-06-06 20:02:07','2013-06-07 03:02:07','','jezebel','','inherit','open','open','','jezebel','','','2013-06-06 20:02:07','2013-06-07 03:02:07','',0,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jezebel.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(9089,12,'2013-06-06 20:04:32','2013-06-07 03:04:32','','peretti','','inherit','open','open','','peretti','','','2013-06-06 20:04:32','2013-06-07 03:04:32','',0,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/peretti.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(9090,12,'2013-06-06 20:07:47','2013-06-07 03:07:47','','peter6','','inherit','open','open','','peter6','','','2013-06-06 20:07:47','2013-06-07 03:07:47','',0,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/peter6.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(9260,0,'2013-08-31 13:47:44','2013-08-31 20:47:44','Hi\r\n\r\nI am doing a thesis &amp; would appreciate some names &amp; details of fallen pastors.\r\n\r\nThanking you in anticipation\r\n\r\nBlessings in Jesus name\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Petrus\nAUTHOR EMAIL: npo@vodamail.co.za\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: Submit A Question\nIP: 41.13.152.247\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Petrus\n    [Email] =&gt; npo@vodamail.co.za\n    [City] =&gt; Pennington\n    [Your question] =&gt; Hi\r\n\r\nI am doing a thesis &amp; would appreciate some names &amp; details of fallen pastors.\r\n\r\nThanking you in anticipation\r\n\r\nBlessings in Jesus name\n)\n','Petrus - 2013-08-31 13:47:44','','publish','open','open','','9e87ee8685bb20536031387721ef696d','','','2013-08-31 13:47:44','2013-08-31 20:47:44','',4432,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9260',0,'feedback','',0),(9244,0,'2013-08-14 00:09:43','2013-08-14 07:09:43','apakah ada lowongan pekerjaan di bagian desain grafis?\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: eca\nAUTHOR EMAIL: lalaochek@yahoo.com\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Contact Us\nIP: 180.214.233.34\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; eca\n    [Email] =&gt; lalaochek@yahoo.com\n    [Comment] =&gt; apakah ada lowongan pekerjaan di bagian desain grafis? \n)\n','eca - 2013-08-14 00:09:43','','publish','open','open','','a9f10f52b0cca25334a91ca9cfc6046b','','','2013-08-14 00:09:43','2013-08-14 07:09:43','',16,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9244',0,'feedback','',0),(9245,0,'2013-08-14 02:27:55','2013-08-14 09:27:55','Islamic law and international law\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Kamilia Lahrichi\nAUTHOR EMAIL: kamilia.lahrichi@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.kamilialahrichi.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 203.218.82.101\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Kamilia Lahrichi\n    [Email] =&gt; kamilia.lahrichi@gmail.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; www.kamilialahrichi.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Islamic law and international law\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; KLahrichi\n)\n','Kamilia Lahrichi - 2013-08-14 02:27:55','','publish','open','open','','4affb1893e7c4434dcd65e71ee2572b9','','','2013-08-14 02:27:55','2013-08-14 09:27:55','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9245',0,'feedback','',0),(9364,0,'2014-01-21 14:20:03','2014-01-21 22:20:03','Hi,\r\n\r\nPlease accept my samples from my blog for consideration.  I can write on any host of issues from culture and art to current events and theology.  \r\n\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/04/16/cowboy-hat-hero\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/02/26/cash-grace\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/01/14/louie-giglio\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/01/09/god-sandy-hook/\r\n\r\nIf you need any other samples or information please let me know.\r\n\r\nThanks,\r\nDarian\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Darian Burns\nAUTHOR EMAIL: darian@tobesalt.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.darianburns.com\nSUBJECT: Nominating A Writer For Provoketive\nIP: 24.9.197.102\nArray\n(\n    [Your Name] =&gt; Darian Burns\n    [Your Email] =&gt; darian@tobesalt.com\n    [The Writer\'s Name] =&gt; Darian G. Burns\n    [The Writer\'s Website or Post] =&gt; www.darianburns.com\n    [The Writer\'s Email] =&gt; darian@tobesalt.com\n    [Why You Think They Should Write For Provoketive?] =&gt; Hi,\r\n\r\nPlease accept my samples from my blog for consideration.  I can write on any host of issues from culture and art to current events and theology.  \r\n\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/04/16/cowboy-hat-hero\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/02/26/cash-grace\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/01/14/louie-giglio\r\nhttp://www.darianburns.com/2013/01/09/god-sandy-hook/\r\n\r\nIf you need any other samples or information please let me know.\r\n\r\nThanks,\r\nDarian\r\n\n)\n','Darian Burns - 2014-01-21 14:20:03','','publish','open','open','','4999479fa9a6e6c73ba7e670115544e2','','','2014-01-21 14:20:03','2014-01-21 22:20:03','',1537,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9364',0,'feedback','',0),(9274,82,'2011-11-16 08:49:34','2011-11-16 16:49:34','As most of American society knows, the upheaval at Penn State has brought to the surface many deep emotions - all of which are justifiable. What isn\'t exactly justifiable, however, are the choices some are opting to make based on those emotions.\r\n\r\nMany words have been flying around Facebook, Twitter, blogs and overall mass media about the dissent many hold for Joe Paterno...and even supporters of him. Many of these words have disheartened me due to the fact many of them have come from the fingertips of Christians.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2283\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\" caption=\"Football by Nikki Johnson\"]<a href=\"http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/s/su/supercolor/655092_football_5.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2283 \" src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/football-300x195.jpg\" alt=\"Football by Nikki Johnson\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" /></a>[/caption]\r\n\r\nAs Christians, we\'re called to hold fast to a higher standard (His); not a conceited standard.\r\n\r\nIn engrossing myself this term in school in the Book of Genesis, some amazing insights have been revealed - ones I never even realized before. Such as in <a title=\"Gen 4:8-16 (ESV)\" href=\"http://bible.us/Gen4.8-16.ESV\" target=\"_blank\">Gen 4:8-16</a> where Cain experiences God\'s grace upon Him...despite the fact that he murdered his own brother in cold, premeditated blood.\r\n\r\nThough the consequences Cain had to endure we\'re rough, God still let Cain live - plus he protected Him! This unto itself is a grace that is absolutely baffling to the logical mind of us humans. It’s something that’s quite difficult for us to even fathom, for sincerely...isn\'t giving grace simply \"letting people off the hook?\"\r\n\r\nAbsolutely not.\r\n\r\nIt\'s interesting to note that the Hebrew word for grace, <em>hen</em>, translates out to be \"favor\"...just as the Greek word for grace, <em>charis</em>, translates out to be the exact same word.\r\n\r\nGrace is simply being in God\'s favor...to be chosen for a purpose that is His to be fulfilled through the ones He chooses. Therefore, grace, like forgiveness, doesn\'t reveal weakness...it reveals a strength unlike any other.\r\n\r\nIt takes strength to not react to the person who caused harm to you, or someone you know.\r\n\r\nIt takes strength, in turn, to love those who have harmed you, or someone you know...and turn the other cheek.\r\n\r\nGod could have taken Cain\'s life from him as “payment” for his actions toward his brother, but God took a higher road. He took the very one He created. The very one, as Christians, we truly need to be always seeking to emulate.\r\n\r\nCertainly, what Joe Paterno did was wrong. He should have said something right when these incidents occurred. Due to his lie of omission, his punishment is justified...his being fired as head coach of the football team. However, what isn\'t justified is the onslaught of judgment calls being made on him, and/or his supporters, by those who embrace Christ.\r\n\r\nChrist doesn\'t condemn.\r\n\r\nChrist doesn\'t cast judgment.\r\n\r\nChrist doesn\'t hate anyone.\r\n\r\nHe loves. He accepts. He forgives. He extends grace.\r\n\r\nSo, now let\'s discuss.\r\n\r\n<em><strong>As Christians, how can we extend the same love, acceptance, forgiveness and grace He calls us to have toward others that do heinous things, or even let them happen without saying anything, without watering down our own passions…or averting the law? Is it even possible to do such?</strong></em>','Learning from Paterno','','inherit','open','open','','2282-revision-v1','','','2011-11-16 08:49:34','2011-11-16 16:49:34','',2282,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/16/2282-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(9263,0,'2013-09-10 08:59:52','2013-09-10 15:59:52','Greetings, saya Pingkan dari Universitas Indonesia, ingin mengajukan\r\nkerja sama media partner di event Teater Sastra UI. Untuk prosedurnya\r\nbagaimana ya?\r\nTerima kasih atas perhatiannya.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Pingkan\nAUTHOR EMAIL: pingkan.persitya@ui.ac.id\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Contact Us\nIP: 152.118.24.10\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Pingkan\n    [Email] =&gt; pingkan.persitya@ui.ac.id\n    [Comment] =&gt; Greetings, saya Pingkan dari Universitas Indonesia, ingin mengajukan\r\nkerja sama media partner di event Teater Sastra UI. Untuk prosedurnya\r\nbagaimana ya?\r\nTerima kasih atas perhatiannya.\r\n\n)\n','Pingkan - 2013-09-10 08:59:52','','publish','open','open','','34ccda3dde11e4479965628cf1917bbb','','','2013-09-10 08:59:52','2013-09-10 15:59:52','',16,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9263',0,'feedback','',0),(9354,0,'2014-01-10 11:52:41','2014-01-10 19:52:41','I have a piece I  call \"Jodi Foster, Me and You\" which addresses human lonliness and our longing for community.  It also speaks to authenticity.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Darian Burns\nAUTHOR EMAIL: darian@tobesalt.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.darianburns.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 24.9.197.102\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Darian Burns\n    [Email] =&gt; darian@tobesalt.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; www.darianburns.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; I have a piece I  call \"Jodi Foster, Me and You\" which addresses human lonliness and our longing for community.  It also speaks to authenticity.\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; grace\n)\n','Darian Burns - 2014-01-10 11:52:41','','publish','open','open','','388310e8e0a396e27f400e77cfba899a','','','2014-01-10 11:52:41','2014-01-10 19:52:41','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9354',0,'feedback','',0),(9200,0,'2013-07-19 19:14:03','2013-07-20 02:14:03','Faith, Family and Frugality. I am facinated with human behavior and especially inspired by stories of kindness.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Suzy Quick\nAUTHOR EMAIL: collequi@aol.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://onDVM360VeterinaryresourcesiteasSuzyQ\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 98.157.196.34\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Suzy Quick\n    [Email] =&gt; collequi@aol.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; on DVM360 Veterinary resource site as SuzyQ\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Faith, Family and Frugality. I am facinated with human behavior and especially inspired by stories of kindness. \n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; suzqkicks \n)\n','Suzy Quick - 2013-07-19 19:14:03','','publish','open','open','','7f867f02ada439f2524de9f83c02d442','','','2013-07-19 19:14:03','2013-07-20 02:14:03','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9200',0,'feedback','',0),(9428,0,'2014-05-25 09:31:43','2014-05-25 16:31:43','Pharaoh\'s Wife or Pharaoh\'s Daughter\r\n\r\n                                                 Rabbi Allen S. Maller\r\n\r\nWhat does one do when two Sacred Scriptures have some verses that are in direct opposition to each other? \r\n\r\nThe easy answer is to claim that \'my\' Holy Book is true and the other person\'s Holy Book is false or corrupted. After all, if there is only one God, then there can only be one true revelation. \r\n\r\nThe problem with this easy answer is that every Sacred Scripture contains some verses that even true believers in that Holy Book think contradict other verses in the same Holy Book. \r\n\r\nSometimes believers maintain that such conflicting verses are not contradictions between two eternal truths but simply an indication of one verse abrogating another. \r\n\r\nMost often the commentaries maintain that the two verses\' differences are only apparent, and can be easily harmonized in various ways. \r\n\r\nAlthough I am a Rabbi, I follow the words of the Qur\'an that direct Muslims to say, \"We have believed in Allah and in what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [submitting] to Him.\" (3:84) \r\n\r\nThus I believe we should always try to harmonize differences between the Sacred Scriptures of Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad, and avoid claiming that only one Holy Book (ours) can be true. \r\n\r\nBut some people might object that the very next ayah contradicts the previous ayah when it states:“And whoever desires other than Islam as religion - never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.” (3:85)  \r\n\r\nThere is no abrogation here. The word Muslim in the Qur\'an sometimes refers to a member of the Muslim religious community, and sometimes refers to all those who believe in one God; and strive to live faithfully according to teachings of their prophet and their Scripture. \r\n\r\nThus, the Qur\'an states that: “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [a person who submits to Allah ]. He was not of the polytheists.” (3:67) Only polytheists are excluded from the truth of monotheism.\r\n\r\nThis is why I think of myself as a Reform Rabbi and a Muslim Jew. Actually I am a Muslim Jew i.e. a faithful Jew submitting to the will of God, because I am a Reform Rabbi. As a Rabbi I am faithful to the covenant that God made with Abraham – the first Muslim Jew, and I submit to the commandments that God made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. \r\n\r\nI think the Qur\'an refers to people like me when it states: \"They are not all alike. Some of the People of the Book are (also) firmly committed to the truth. They recite the Verses of Allah during the hours of night, and remain in the state of [prayer] prostration before their Lord.\" (3:113 – Qadri)\r\n\r\nBut what about a Hadith narrated by AbuNamlah al-Ansari that once when he was sitting with the Apostle of Allah, and a Jew was also with him, when a funeral passed by him. He (the Jew) asked (Him): Muhammad, “Does this funeral speak? The Prophet said: “Allah has more knowledge (only Allah knows)”. The Jew said: “It speaks.”\r\n\r\nThe Apostle of Allah said: “Whatever the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell you, do not verify them, nor falsify them, but say: We believe in Allah and His Apostle. If it is false, do not confirm it, and if it is right, do not falsify it.” (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 25, Number 3637) \r\n\r\nDoesn\'t this mean Muslims are not to look to the earlier Holy Books of Moses, David and Jesus for knowledge about their own religion?\r\n\r\nIt seems to me that the general principle is that all of us need to “make no distinction between any of them,\" (3:84) provided they (the other religions\' believers) show equal respect for our prophet and Holy Book. \r\n\r\nIn the Hadith narrated by AbuNamlah al-Ansari, this Jewish man sitting with Muhammad claims he knows more about the dead or the afterlife than Prophet Muhammad, so with people like him: “Whatever the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell you, do not verify (believe) them, nor falsify (disbelieve) them,”\r\n\r\nThis is made clear in another Hadith narrated by Ubaidullah: \"Ibn \'Abbas who said, \'Why do you ask the people of the scripture about anything while your Book (Quran) which has been revealed to Allah\'s Apostle is newer and the latest? You read it pure, undistorted and unchanged, and Allah has told you that the people of the scripture (Jews and Christians) changed their scripture and distorted it, and wrote the scripture with their own hands and said, \'It is from Allah,\' to sell it for a little gain. \r\n\r\n“Does not the knowledge which has come to you prevent you from asking them about anything? No, by Allah, (you are not prevented from asking but) we have never seen any man from them asking you regarding what has been revealed to you!\' ( Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 92, Number 461)\"\r\n\r\nHere it is clear that until Jews and Christians respect the Qur\'an as much as they respect their own Sacred Scripture, and seek guidance from the Qur\'an, Muslims should not seek guidance and knowledge from them. But from “any man from them asking you regarding what has been revealed to you!\' you may ask of him and learn. \r\n\r\nMutual respect is the key. There are people in all three Abrahamic religions who distort the meaning of some verses in order to denigrate and abuse other \'enemy\' religions. \r\n\r\nThis intolerance come about through the influence of Greek philosophy, with its requirement that truth must be unchanging and universal. This influenced many teachers of sacred scripture during Medieval times to believe that religion was a zero sum game; the more truth I find in your scripture the less truth there is in mine. \r\n\r\nInstead of understanding differing texts as complementary, they made them contradictory and declared the other religion\'s sacred text to be false.\r\n\r\nIf religion is to promote peace in our pluralistic world we must reject the zero sum game ideology and develop the pluralistic teachings that already exist within our sacred scriptures. After all “all prophets are brothers. They have the same father (God) but different mothers (mother tongues, motherlands and unique historical circumstances that account for all the differences in their scriptures).  \r\n\r\nWe should not believe in the two other religions, but we should not disbelieve and denigrate God\'s other Prophets and Sacred Scriptures. As Abu Huraira narrated: \r\n\r\n\"The people of the Book used to read the Torah in Hebrew and then explain it in Arabic to the Muslims. Allah\'s Apostle said (to the Muslims). \'Do not believe the people of the Book, nor disbelieve them, but say, \'We believe in Allah and whatever is revealed to us, and whatever is revealed to you.\' “(Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 92, Number 460)\r\n\r\nLet me share a simple example of anti zero sum thinking. The Torah says that Moses was rescued by Pharaoh\'s daughter. The Qur\'an says Musa was rescued by Pharaoh\'s wife. \r\n\r\nFor almost fourteen centuries religious scholars have argued over wife vs. daughter; and therefore who “changed their scripture and distorted it, and wrote the scripture with their own hands and said, \'It is from Allah,\' to sell it for a little gain.” \r\n\r\nToday we know that both the Torah and the Qur\'an are right because Pharaoh\'s Wife was Pharaoh\'s Daughter. \r\n\r\nThe Pharaoh of the Exodus was Ramses II (1303 BCE-1213 BCE). He reigned from 1279 BCE to 1213 BCE (66 years). Ramses married three of his daughters, who eventually became principal wives along with Nefertari his first principal wife. \r\n\r\nDebating about which Sacred Scripture is the most accurate or true is pointless because only God knows the ultimate answers and we will only find out what they are  at final judgement time. The real test is how well each religious community lives up to its religious commitments to do good deeds. \r\n\r\nAs the Qur’an teaches: “For every one of you did We appoint a law and a way. If God had pleased He would have made you one people, but [He didn’t] that He might test you in what He gave you. Therefore compete with one another to hasten to virtuous deeds; for all return to God, so He will let you know [at Judgment Day] that in which you differed.” (5:48)\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Rabbi Allen Maller\nAUTHOR EMAIL: maller.allen1948@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://rabbimaller.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 99.60.176.208\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Rabbi Allen Maller\n    [Email] =&gt; maller.allen1948@gmail.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; rabbimaller.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt;                                     Pharaoh\'s Wife or Pharaoh\'s Daughter\r\n\r\n                                                 Rabbi Allen S. Maller\r\n\r\nWhat does one do when two Sacred Scriptures have some verses that are in direct opposition to each other? \r\n\r\nThe easy answer is to claim that \'my\' Holy Book is true and the other person\'s Holy Book is false or corrupted. After all, if there is only one God, then there can only be one true revelation. \r\n\r\nThe problem with this easy answer is that every Sacred Scripture contains some verses that even true believers in that Holy Book think contradict other verses in the same Holy Book. \r\n\r\nSometimes believers maintain that such conflicting verses are not contradictions between two eternal truths but simply an indication of one verse abrogating another. \r\n\r\nMost often the commentaries maintain that the two verses\' differences are only apparent, and can be easily harmonized in various ways. \r\n\r\nAlthough I am a Rabbi, I follow the words of the Qur\'an that direct Muslims to say, \"We have believed in Allah and in what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [submitting] to Him.\" (3:84) \r\n\r\nThus I believe we should always try to harmonize differences between the Sacred Scriptures of Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad, and avoid claiming that only one Holy Book (ours) can be true. \r\n\r\nBut some people might object that the very next ayah contradicts the previous ayah when it states:“And whoever desires other than Islam as religion - never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.” (3:85)  \r\n\r\nThere is no abrogation here. The word Muslim in the Qur\'an sometimes refers to a member of the Muslim religious community, and sometimes refers to all those who believe in one God; and strive to live faithfully according to teachings of their prophet and their Scripture. \r\n\r\nThus, the Qur\'an states that: “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [a person who submits to Allah ]. He was not of the polytheists.” (3:67) Only polytheists are excluded from the truth of monotheism.\r\n\r\nThis is why I think of myself as a Reform Rabbi and a Muslim Jew. Actually I am a Muslim Jew i.e. a faithful Jew submitting to the will of God, because I am a Reform Rabbi. As a Rabbi I am faithful to the covenant that God made with Abraham – the first Muslim Jew, and I submit to the commandments that God made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. \r\n\r\nI think the Qur\'an refers to people like me when it states: \"They are not all alike. Some of the People of the Book are (also) firmly committed to the truth. They recite the Verses of Allah during the hours of night, and remain in the state of [prayer] prostration before their Lord.\" (3:113 – Qadri)\r\n\r\nBut what about a Hadith narrated by AbuNamlah al-Ansari that once when he was sitting with the Apostle of Allah, and a Jew was also with him, when a funeral passed by him. He (the Jew) asked (Him): Muhammad, “Does this funeral speak? The Prophet said: “Allah has more knowledge (only Allah knows)”. The Jew said: “It speaks.”\r\n\r\nThe Apostle of Allah said: “Whatever the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell you, do not verify them, nor falsify them, but say: We believe in Allah and His Apostle. If it is false, do not confirm it, and if it is right, do not falsify it.” (Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 25, Number 3637) \r\n\r\nDoesn\'t this mean Muslims are not to look to the earlier Holy Books of Moses, David and Jesus for knowledge about their own religion?\r\n\r\nIt seems to me that the general principle is that all of us need to “make no distinction between any of them,\" (3:84) provided they (the other religions\' believers) show equal respect for our prophet and Holy Book. \r\n\r\nIn the Hadith narrated by AbuNamlah al-Ansari, this Jewish man sitting with Muhammad claims he knows more about the dead or the afterlife than Prophet Muhammad, so with people like him: “Whatever the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) tell you, do not verify (believe) them, nor falsify (disbelieve) them,”\r\n\r\nThis is made clear in another Hadith narrated by Ubaidullah: \"Ibn \'Abbas who said, \'Why do you ask the people of the scripture about anything while your Book (Quran) which has been revealed to Allah\'s Apostle is newer and the latest? You read it pure, undistorted and unchanged, and Allah has told you that the people of the scripture (Jews and Christians) changed their scripture and distorted it, and wrote the scripture with their own hands and said, \'It is from Allah,\' to sell it for a little gain. \r\n\r\n“Does not the knowledge which has come to you prevent you from asking them about anything? No, by Allah, (you are not prevented from asking but) we have never seen any man from them asking you regarding what has been revealed to you!\' ( Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 92, Number 461)\"\r\n\r\nHere it is clear that until Jews and Christians respect the Qur\'an as much as they respect their own Sacred Scripture, and seek guidance from the Qur\'an, Muslims should not seek guidance and knowledge from them. But from “any man from them asking you regarding what has been revealed to you!\' you may ask of him and learn. \r\n\r\nMutual respect is the key. There are people in all three Abrahamic religions who distort the meaning of some verses in order to denigrate and abuse other \'enemy\' religions. \r\n\r\nThis intolerance come about through the influence of Greek philosophy, with its requirement that truth must be unchanging and universal. This influenced many teachers of sacred scripture during Medieval times to believe that religion was a zero sum game; the more truth I find in your scripture the less truth there is in mine. \r\n\r\nInstead of understanding differing texts as complementary, they made them contradictory and declared the other religion\'s sacred text to be false.\r\n\r\nIf religion is to promote peace in our pluralistic world we must reject the zero sum game ideology and develop the pluralistic teachings that already exist within our sacred scriptures. After all “all prophets are brothers. They have the same father (God) but different mothers (mother tongues, motherlands and unique historical circumstances that account for all the differences in their scriptures).  \r\n\r\nWe should not believe in the two other religions, but we should not disbelieve and denigrate God\'s other Prophets and Sacred Scriptures. As Abu Huraira narrated: \r\n\r\n\"The people of the Book used to read the Torah in Hebrew and then explain it in Arabic to the Muslims. Allah\'s Apostle said (to the Muslims). \'Do not believe the people of the Book, nor disbelieve them, but say, \'We believe in Allah and whatever is revealed to us, and whatever is revealed to you.\' “(Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 92, Number 460)\r\n\r\nLet me share a simple example of anti zero sum thinking. The Torah says that Moses was rescued by Pharaoh\'s daughter. The Qur\'an says Musa was rescued by Pharaoh\'s wife. \r\n\r\nFor almost fourteen centuries religious scholars have argued over wife vs. daughter; and therefore who “changed their scripture and distorted it, and wrote the scripture with their own hands and said, \'It is from Allah,\' to sell it for a little gain.” \r\n\r\nToday we know that both the Torah and the Qur\'an are right because Pharaoh\'s Wife was Pharaoh\'s Daughter. \r\n\r\nThe Pharaoh of the Exodus was Ramses II (1303 BCE-1213 BCE). He reigned from 1279 BCE to 1213 BCE (66 years). Ramses married three of his daughters, who eventually became principal wives along with Nefertari his first principal wife. \r\n\r\nDebating about which Sacred Scripture is the most accurate or true is pointless because only God knows the ultimate answers and we will only find out what they are  at final judgement time. The real test is how well each religious community lives up to its religious commitments to do good deeds. \r\n\r\nAs the Qur’an teaches: “For every one of you did We appoint a law and a way. If God had pleased He would have made you one people, but [He didn’t] that He might test you in what He gave you. Therefore compete with one another to hasten to virtuous deeds; for all return to God, so He will let you know [at Judgment Day] that in which you differed.” (5:48)\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; malleraj\n)\n','Rabbi Allen Maller - 2014-05-25 09:31:43','','publish','open','open','','4161e4446163809e0ecce00824d074d9','','','2014-05-25 09:31:43','2014-05-25 16:31:43','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9428',0,'feedback','',0),(9434,0,'2014-06-20 13:54:14','2014-06-20 20:54:14','Gender Equality, anything in faith category\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Elizabeth Hagan\nAUTHOR EMAIL: eevansduke@yahoo.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://elizabethhagan.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 98.168.159.35\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Elizabeth Hagan \n    [Email] =&gt; eevansduke@yahoo.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; http://elizabethhagan.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Gender Equality, anything in faith category\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; elizabeth\n)\n','Elizabeth Hagan - 2014-06-20 13:54:14','','publish','open','open','','08af71aea51d138936f0b1b2bc3e92ac','','','2014-06-20 13:54:14','2014-06-20 20:54:14','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9434',0,'feedback','',0),(9421,157,'2014-05-16 23:10:58','2014-05-17 06:10:58','<a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185.jpg\"><img src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_0185\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9420\" /></a>\r\n\r\n   Monday evening, May 5th, was gorgeous. It was a perfect evening to go out for a ride on my motorcycle. So, naturally I did. There is nothing like it. I get a sense of complete freedom.  There is the thrill of risking life and limb, but also a certain confidence in my ability to engage the risk with hyper awareness, reasonable caution, and a well maintained machine. \r\n   \r\n   But nothing can protect one from the stupidity and carelessness of others. So on Monday evening, May 5th, it was my turn. It was my turn to have someone driving a full size truck casually turn left right in front of me like I wasn\'t even there. But I showed him. I tore the side mirror off his truck with my rib cage when I slammed into it at thirty-five or so miles per hour. Over all the noise, I heard my ribs break. It felt like being kicked by a mule. And let me tell you, broken ribs are a gift that keeeeeep on giving.\r\n\r\n   This is what I wrote on May 9th when I got home from the hospital:\r\n\r\n<em>I’m dead! \r\nShit! \r\nSearing pain \r\nHearing the impact \r\nFeeling it inside \r\nLaying in the street knowing \r\nI’m dead \r\nFumbling to find my phone\r\nCalling Joy\r\nLeaving a message I was in an accident \r\nBut I’m alright\r\nWanting to hide the truth from her for as long as I can because \r\nI’m dead \r\nThinking about my kids\r\nThinking about my friends\r\nThinking about the many people that I love\r\nKnowing that they love me back\r\nBut, I’m dead\r\nSeeing my helmet lying in the street\r\nFinding my cap and putting it on\r\nWishing I had brought my emergency pair of clean underwear\r\n(I really have some, they come in a can)\r\nLaughing because it hurts, and hurting lets me know\r\nNot Fucking Yet!\r\n</em>\r\n	I didn’t die, even though I really thought I was going to. I broke six ribs down my left side, some bones in my left foot, and lost a chunk of meat from my left arm, but I’m still here.  I was balled up in pain in the street moaning when he asked ‘You ok?’ I had to tell him to call for help. He apologized … Said he didn’t see me … that he was looking at some girl on the sidewalk. \r\n\r\n   Some friends showed up and called an ambulance. They ended up getting my bike to a safe place, and trailered it home later. One of them got ahold of Joy and went and got her and brought her to the hospital. Me … I got an ambulance ride to The Med. The evening ride didn’t turn out like I planned. It has dramatically altered my life for the short term and who knows about the long. I’m ten days into a six week to six month recovery, and it still hurts worse than anything I’ve ever done to me, and I’ve been busted up a lot to still be here. \r\n\r\n   I didn’t do anything wrong, wasn’t being a fool, was paying attention, and was riding slightly under the speed limit. I saw him in the turn lane. I saw when he started to turn. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. So, for me it boils down to, “how do I make any sense out of it?” and “why do I need to?” \r\n\r\n   I need to because it feels like I\'ve been bitch-slapped by God. Don’t get me wrong, I love God. I give God the credit for anything good in my life, and for any real good that comes out of it. I believe in a creator God who designed a universe perfectly suitable for the flourishing of human beings who God created in God’s image. I believe in a God who is love, and who desires individual relationships of love and trust with each of us.\r\n\r\n   But my experience is that God sometimes allows me to suffer the consequences of my choices, and I’m not talking about my choice to ride a motorcycle, in order to get my attention <em>about</em> the choices that I make. I don’t believe in a god so insecure that it needs to punish me for any choice I make. Like I said ... I’ve busted myself up before, and I’m not blaming God for any of it.\r\n\r\n   But these near death experiences get me to thinking about the choices I make that don’t really hurt anybody (rationalization alert), aren’t against the law (mostly), and don’t seem to cause any problems in my life (the jury is still out on that one). I don’t feel particularly guilty about any of them. And don’t worry, this isn’t a detailed confessional.\r\n\r\n   But the truth is, I know many of the choices I make today do not reflect the Imago-Dei in me. And so I give away the blessing of the richly abundant life I was created to live for a facsimile of life full of could have been, would have been, and should have been bitch-slapped, by god. ','Bitched-slapped by God','','inherit','open','open','','9419-revision-v1','','','2014-05-16 23:10:58','2014-05-17 06:10:58','',9419,'http://provoketive.com/2014/05/16/9419-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(9426,0,'2014-05-19 23:56:21','2014-05-20 06:56:21','Ads for http://provoketive.com/\r\n\r\nHi!\r\n\r\nI found your website http://provoketive.com/ through search engine. I want to place some of my “Blogpost Links” on your website in case you show an approval. I guarantee that my links are non spammy and contains no adult material. A handsome amount will be paid to you in case you agree to place my links on your website. The proposal will be sent after your approval of this message.\r\n\r\nWaiting for your reply,\r\n\r\nRegards,\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: lorenjett\nAUTHOR EMAIL: lorenjett786@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Contact Us\nIP: 39.36.252.75\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; lorenjett\n    [Email] =&gt; lorenjett786@gmail.com\n    [Comment] =&gt; Ads for http://provoketive.com/\r\n\r\nHi!\r\n\r\nI found your website http://provoketive.com/ through search engine. I want to place some of my “Blogpost Links” on your website in case you show an approval. I guarantee that my links are non spammy and contains no adult material. A handsome amount will be paid to you in case you agree to place my links on your website. The proposal will be sent after your approval of this message.\r\n\r\nWaiting for your reply,\r\n\r\nRegards,\n)\n','lorenjett - 2014-05-19 23:56:21','','publish','open','open','','678665aefd8e3e3eae2fdb0997c5784c','','','2014-05-19 23:56:21','2014-05-20 06:56:21','',16,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9426',0,'feedback','',0),(9430,0,'2014-05-29 23:40:11','2014-05-30 06:40:11','- Life \r\n- Culture\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Putri Kinanti\nAUTHOR EMAIL: putri280295@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 111.68.123.33\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Putri Kinanti \n    [Email] =&gt; putri280295@gmail.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; \n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; - Life \r\n- Culture\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; puceeeh\n)\n','Putri Kinanti - 2014-05-29 23:40:11','','publish','open','open','','408432e5eb49fe1c1056f0eff43226e1','','','2014-05-29 23:40:11','2014-05-30 06:40:11','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9430',0,'feedback','',0),(9418,0,'2014-05-13 09:11:21','2014-05-13 16:11:21','Abstract:  \"The Braided Way: Toward a Universal Spirituality\"\r\nOne of the greatest causes of division between human cultures has been religion, and any strategies to increase multicultural tolerance, collaboration, communication and community must address the destructive nature of religious separatism.  The “insterspiritual movement”—begun by Wayne Teasdale—offers a philosophical and theological approach to spiritual eclecticism (or syncretism); however, it is a movement with terminology that is cerebral and academic.  The current interspiritual discussion may provide the philosophical underpinnings of an inter-faith movement, but our culture is in need of a framework that inspires both the intellectual and the common seeker. I offer “The Braided Way” as a framework for inerspiritual practice and religious unity.  The Braided Way allows people to visualize and accept that all faith traditions are a valid, necessary, but partial element of the Sacred Mystery.  It is a visual metaphor and theological framework to accepting the diversity of our religious traditions as a resource for unity, not a cause of division.  My article “The Braided Way: Toward a Universal Spirituality” is written for the common reader, but with scholarly integrity.  It includes diagrams for various approaches to inter-faith perspectives and builds toward a new diagram for unifying diversity.  It’s a big deal.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Michael Olin-Hitt\nAUTHOR EMAIL: olinhimr@mountunion.edu\nAUTHOR URL: http://michaelolinhitt.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 184.56.117.134\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Michael Olin-Hitt\n    [Email] =&gt; olinhimr@mountunion.edu\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; michaelolinhitt.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Abstract:  \"The Braided Way: Toward a Universal Spirituality\"\r\nOne of the greatest causes of division between human cultures has been religion, and any strategies to increase multicultural tolerance, collaboration, communication and community must address the destructive nature of religious separatism.  The “insterspiritual movement”—begun by Wayne Teasdale—offers a philosophical and theological approach to spiritual eclecticism (or syncretism); however, it is a movement with terminology that is cerebral and academic.  The current interspiritual discussion may provide the philosophical underpinnings of an inter-faith movement, but our culture is in need of a framework that inspires both the intellectual and the common seeker. I offer “The Braided Way” as a framework for inerspiritual practice and religious unity.  The Braided Way allows people to visualize and accept that all faith traditions are a valid, necessary, but partial element of the Sacred Mystery.  It is a visual metaphor and theological framework to accepting the diversity of our religious traditions as a resource for unity, not a cause of division.  My article “The Braided Way: Toward a Universal Spirituality” is written for the common reader, but with scholarly integrity.  It includes diagrams for various approaches to inter-faith perspectives and builds toward a new diagram for unifying diversity.  It’s a big deal.\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; molinhitt\n)\n','Michael Olin-Hitt - 2014-05-13 09:11:21','','publish','open','open','','928c5f377f2ca8ee078d4d6f1255b0a8','','','2014-05-13 09:11:21','2014-05-13 16:11:21','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9418',0,'feedback','',0),(9419,157,'2014-05-18 10:28:46','0000-00-00 00:00:00',' <a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185.jpg\"><img src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_0185\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9420\" /></a>\r\n\r\n   Monday evening, May 5th, was gorgeous. It was a perfect evening to go out for a ride on my motorcycle. So, naturally I did. There is nothing like it. I get a sense of complete freedom.  There is the thrill of risking life and limb, but also a certain confidence in my ability to engage the risk with hyper awareness, reasonable caution, and a well maintained machine. \r\n   \r\n   But nothing can protect one from the stupidity and carelessness of others. So on Monday evening, May 5th, it was my turn. It was my turn to have someone driving a full size truck casually turn left right in front of me like I wasn\'t even there. But I showed him. I tore the side mirror off his truck with my rib cage when I slammed into it at thirty-five or so miles per hour. Over all the noise, I heard my ribs break. It felt like being kicked by a mule. And let me tell you, broken ribs are a gift that keeeeeep on giving.\r\n\r\n   This is what I wrote on May 9th when I got home from the hospital:\r\n\r\n<em>I’m dead! \r\nShit! \r\nSearing pain \r\nHearing the impact \r\nFeeling it inside \r\nLaying in the street knowing \r\nI’m dead \r\nFumbling to find my phone\r\nCalling Joy\r\nLeaving a message I was in an accident \r\nBut I’m alright\r\nWanting to hide the truth from her for as long as I can because \r\nI’m dead \r\nThinking about my kids\r\nThinking about my friends\r\nThinking about the many people that I love\r\nKnowing that they love me back\r\nBut, I’m dead\r\nSeeing my helmet lying in the street\r\nFinding my cap and putting it on\r\nWishing I had brought my emergency pair of clean underwear\r\n(I really have some, they come in a can)\r\nLaughing because it hurts, and hurting lets me know\r\nNot Fucking Yet!\r\n</em>\r\n	I didn’t die, even though I really thought I was going to. I broke six ribs down my left side, some bones in my left foot, and lost a chunk of meat from my left arm, but I’m still here.  I was balled up in pain in the street moaning when he asked ‘You ok?’ I had to tell him to call for help. He apologized … Said he didn’t see me … that he was looking at some girl on the sidewalk. \r\n\r\n   Some friends showed up and called an ambulance. They ended up getting my bike to a safe place, and trailered it home later. One of them got ahold of Joy and went and got her and brought her to the hospital. Me … I got an ambulance ride to The Med. The evening ride didn’t turn out like I planned. It has dramatically altered my life for the short term and who knows about the long. I’m ten days into a six week to six month recovery, and it still hurts worse than anything I’ve ever done to me, and I’ve been busted up a lot to still be here. \r\n\r\n   I didn’t do anything wrong, wasn’t being a fool, was paying attention, and was riding slightly under the speed limit. I saw him in the turn lane. I saw when he started to turn. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. So, for me it boils down to, “how do I make any sense out of it?” and “why do I need to?” \r\n\r\n   I need to because it feels like I\'ve been bitch-slapped by God. Don’t get me wrong, I love God. I give God the credit for anything good in my life, and for any real good that comes out of it. I believe in a creator God who designed a universe perfectly suitable for the flourishing of human beings who God created in God’s image. I believe in a God who is love, and who desires individual relationships of love and trust with each of us.\r\n\r\n   But my experience is that God sometimes allows me to suffer the consequences of my choices, and I’m not talking about my choice to ride a motorcycle, in order to get my attention <em>about</em> the choices that I make. I don’t believe in a god so insecure that it needs to punish me for any choice I make. Like I said ... I’ve busted myself up before, and I’m not blaming God for any of it.\r\n\r\n   But these near death experiences get me to thinking about the choices I make that don’t really hurt anybody (rationalization alert), aren’t against the law (mostly), and don’t seem to cause any problems in my life (the jury is still out on that one). I don’t feel particularly guilty about any of them. And don’t worry, this isn’t a detailed confessional.\r\n\r\n   But the truth is, I know many of the choices I make today do not reflect the Imago-Dei in me. And so I give away the blessing of the richly abundant life I was created to live for a facsimile of life full of could have been, would have been, and should have been bitch-slapped, by god. ','Bitched-slapped by God or Bitch-slapped, by god','','draft','open','open','','','','','2014-05-18 10:28:46','2014-05-18 17:28:46','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=9419',0,'post','',0),(9420,157,'2014-05-16 23:00:50','2014-05-17 06:00:50','','IMG_0185','','inherit','open','open','','img_0185','','','2014-05-16 23:00:50','2014-05-17 06:00:50','',9419,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(9443,0,'2014-07-23 11:30:38','2014-07-23 18:30:38','Can We Be Friends? \r\nby Darian G. Burns\r\nTo my progressive brothers and sisters in Christ.  I’m not your enemy.  I promise.  In fact, I am just trying to find my way and figure this thing called life out as best I can.  Just like you.  I may be a little more conservative than you are and not have as much confidence in government solutions as you sometimes do.  We may sometimes disagree, but I am not your enemy.  I am your brother, and I would like it if we could be friends.\r\n\r\nTo begin with, relax.  I am not out to change your mind about politics, social issues, progressivism or evangelicalism.   I have lived long enough that I am not sure enough about anything that I would try and change another’s mind.  What I do want to ask is, can we talk about our souls and spirits and God’s heart for us as his family?\r\n\r\nIn the 1980’s I was a young college student at a fundamentalist school, and I drank the religious right’s kool-aid.  I uncritically took my marching orders from its leaders.  I marched, wrote letters, and even became a Republican party delegate.   Don’t worry, I became disillusioned with the whole movement long ago.  But many of the destructive things that the right did to you and to Christ’s body I was a part of and I am sorry.  I truly am.  \r\n\r\nSince I was in the thick of things, I can tell you that many of your judgements of the religious right during that time are dead on.  Did we trade humility for power, the spirit for politics, servant hood for being served?  Yeah, we did.  We did that and a lot more.  From outward appearances, what we were doing seemed to work for a while.  We won a lot of elections, passed a lot of laws, raised up a number of powerful and vocal leaders.  We became the Moral Majority and established the Christian Coalition.  We got our own television networks and had radio stations filling the world’s airwaves.  We had power and influence.  Things were looking good if you were a conservative Christian.  Or so we thought.\r\n\r\nBut something happened on the way to our modern Canaan; we traded grace for law, spirit for influence, prayer for persuasion.  We changed laws but not hearts.  We lost the soul of a generation while we pursued amendments to constitutions.  We alienated a lot of people we should have loved.  We chose power over mercy and decided to wage battles over values rather than see people as individuals.  I am very sorry that I was a part of something so foolish.\r\n\r\nWhen I spend time with my progressive friends, there are things I recognize in their eagerness to right the religious right’s wrongs.  They want change the world, create a world and country where the poor are fed and clothed; the homeless housed; the sick healed and accomplish so many other things.  I see the fire in your eyes and hear the conviction in your voice. It is familiar.  It is me not so long ago.  The issues are different, and the politics have changed but the passion is the same.\r\n\r\nLooking back, are there issues the religious right got wrong, and I would not longer support?  Of course.  There are many.  But ultimately what caused the most damage to the cause of Christ was how the religious right did what they did.  They abused power and were judgmental. They were heavy handed when dealing with those of you who disagreed with them.  They even went so far as to proclaim you were not part of Christ’s body.\r\n\r\nHere is my fear - are you going about things in the same way?  \r\n\r\nI am in process.  Ideologically I do not fit anywhere anymore.  I escaped the religious right years ago, but I have not found a home.  Recently, I have dipped my toe into the progressive’s water, and it has not always gone as well as I would have hoped.  I’ve seen how ugly things can get if you are not progressively pure enough.  I’ve been called ignorant, uneducated, hateful, mean-spirited, homophobic, un-Christ-like, and, yes, unchristian.  If I have asked questions, I have been labeled, placed on the fundamentalist shelf and ignored.  I have been seen as an enemy by those that I have sought out as friends.  It has been assumed that I do not care for the poor because I have not agreed with one political party’s approach to helping them.  \r\n\r\nI have seen pictures of your leaders with the president, Democratic big wigs and powerful leaders of the left.  It reminded me of the night I shook Ronald Reagan\'s hand and had my picture taken with him.\r\n\r\nYou can pass laws as we did.  You can gain access to power as we did.  You can win elections as we did.  Your influence can reach throughout the world as ours did.  You can do all these things but miss the mark and lose a generation.  Power corrupts.  Be careful.  Guard your hearts because, you see - it is so easy to become that which you despise.\r\n\r\nI am not your enemy.  I want to be your friend.\r\n\r\n\r\nDarian Burns is a writer, poet, minster and speaker who lives in Greeley, Colorado.  He blogs regularly on the intersection of faith and culture at www.darianburns.com.  Darian hopes that his memoir \"Micah\'s Touch\" will soon be published.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Darian G. Burns\nAUTHOR EMAIL: darian@tobesalt.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.darianburns.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 71.237.94.22\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Darian G. Burns\n    [Email] =&gt; darian@tobesalt.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; www.darianburns.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Can We Be Friends? \r\nby Darian G. Burns\r\nTo my progressive brothers and sisters in Christ.  I’m not your enemy.  I promise.  In fact, I am just trying to find my way and figure this thing called life out as best I can.  Just like you.  I may be a little more conservative than you are and not have as much confidence in government solutions as you sometimes do.  We may sometimes disagree, but I am not your enemy.  I am your brother, and I would like it if we could be friends.\r\n\r\nTo begin with, relax.  I am not out to change your mind about politics, social issues, progressivism or evangelicalism.   I have lived long enough that I am not sure enough about anything that I would try and change another’s mind.  What I do want to ask is, can we talk about our souls and spirits and God’s heart for us as his family?\r\n\r\nIn the 1980’s I was a young college student at a fundamentalist school, and I drank the religious right’s kool-aid.  I uncritically took my marching orders from its leaders.  I marched, wrote letters, and even became a Republican party delegate.   Don’t worry, I became disillusioned with the whole movement long ago.  But many of the destructive things that the right did to you and to Christ’s body I was a part of and I am sorry.  I truly am.  \r\n\r\nSince I was in the thick of things, I can tell you that many of your judgements of the religious right during that time are dead on.  Did we trade humility for power, the spirit for politics, servant hood for being served?  Yeah, we did.  We did that and a lot more.  From outward appearances, what we were doing seemed to work for a while.  We won a lot of elections, passed a lot of laws, raised up a number of powerful and vocal leaders.  We became the Moral Majority and established the Christian Coalition.  We got our own television networks and had radio stations filling the world’s airwaves.  We had power and influence.  Things were looking good if you were a conservative Christian.  Or so we thought.\r\n\r\nBut something happened on the way to our modern Canaan; we traded grace for law, spirit for influence, prayer for persuasion.  We changed laws but not hearts.  We lost the soul of a generation while we pursued amendments to constitutions.  We alienated a lot of people we should have loved.  We chose power over mercy and decided to wage battles over values rather than see people as individuals.  I am very sorry that I was a part of something so foolish.\r\n\r\nWhen I spend time with my progressive friends, there are things I recognize in their eagerness to right the religious right’s wrongs.  They want change the world, create a world and country where the poor are fed and clothed; the homeless housed; the sick healed and accomplish so many other things.  I see the fire in your eyes and hear the conviction in your voice. It is familiar.  It is me not so long ago.  The issues are different, and the politics have changed but the passion is the same.\r\n\r\nLooking back, are there issues the religious right got wrong, and I would not longer support?  Of course.  There are many.  But ultimately what caused the most damage to the cause of Christ was how the religious right did what they did.  They abused power and were judgmental. They were heavy handed when dealing with those of you who disagreed with them.  They even went so far as to proclaim you were not part of Christ’s body.\r\n\r\nHere is my fear - are you going about things in the same way?  \r\n\r\nI am in process.  Ideologically I do not fit anywhere anymore.  I escaped the religious right years ago, but I have not found a home.  Recently, I have dipped my toe into the progressive’s water, and it has not always gone as well as I would have hoped.  I’ve seen how ugly things can get if you are not progressively pure enough.  I’ve been called ignorant, uneducated, hateful, mean-spirited, homophobic, un-Christ-like, and, yes, unchristian.  If I have asked questions, I have been labeled, placed on the fundamentalist shelf and ignored.  I have been seen as an enemy by those that I have sought out as friends.  It has been assumed that I do not care for the poor because I have not agreed with one political party’s approach to helping them.  \r\n\r\nI have seen pictures of your leaders with the president, Democratic big wigs and powerful leaders of the left.  It reminded me of the night I shook Ronald Reagan\'s hand and had my picture taken with him.\r\n\r\nYou can pass laws as we did.  You can gain access to power as we did.  You can win elections as we did.  Your influence can reach throughout the world as ours did.  You can do all these things but miss the mark and lose a generation.  Power corrupts.  Be careful.  Guard your hearts because, you see - it is so easy to become that which you despise.\r\n\r\nI am not your enemy.  I want to be your friend.\r\n\r\n\r\nDarian Burns is a writer, poet, minster and speaker who lives in Greeley, Colorado.  He blogs regularly on the intersection of faith and culture at www.darianburns.com.  Darian hopes that his memoir \"Micah\'s Touch\" will soon be published.\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; grace\n)\n','Darian G. Burns - 2014-07-23 11:30:38','','publish','open','open','','cdb2e239f55f4abdc96dbc0cf9701917','','','2014-07-23 11:30:38','2014-07-23 18:30:38','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9443',0,'feedback','',0),(9422,157,'2014-05-16 23:16:37','2014-05-17 06:16:37','<a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185.jpg\"><img src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_0185\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9420\" /></a>\r\n\r\n   Monday evening, May 5th, was gorgeous. It was a perfect evening to go out for a ride on my motorcycle. So, naturally I did. There is nothing like it. I get a sense of complete freedom.  There is the thrill of risking life and limb, but also a certain confidence in my ability to engage the risk with hyper awareness, reasonable caution, and a well maintained machine. \r\n   \r\n   But nothing can protect one from the stupidity and carelessness of others. So on Monday evening, May 5th, it was my turn. It was my turn to have someone driving a full size truck casually turn left right in front of me like I wasn\'t even there. But I showed him. I tore the side mirror off his truck with my rib cage when I slammed into it at thirty-five or so miles per hour. Over all the noise, I heard my ribs break. It felt like being kicked by a mule. And let me tell you, broken ribs are a gift that keeeeeep on giving.\r\n\r\n   This is what I wrote on May 9th when I got home from the hospital:\r\n\r\n<em>I’m dead! \r\nShit! \r\nSearing pain \r\nHearing the impact \r\nFeeling it inside \r\nLaying in the street knowing \r\nI’m dead \r\nFumbling to find my phone\r\nCalling Joy\r\nLeaving a message I was in an accident \r\nBut I’m alright\r\nWanting to hide the truth from her for as long as I can because \r\nI’m dead \r\nThinking about my kids\r\nThinking about my friends\r\nThinking about the many people that I love\r\nKnowing that they love me back\r\nBut, I’m dead\r\nSeeing my helmet lying in the street\r\nFinding my cap and putting it on\r\nWishing I had brought my emergency pair of clean underwear\r\n(I really have some, they come in a can)\r\nLaughing because it hurts, and hurting lets me know\r\nNot Fucking Yet!\r\n</em>\r\n	I didn’t die, even though I really thought I was going to. I broke six ribs down my left side, some bones in my left foot, and lost a chunk of meat from my left arm, but I’m still here.  I was balled up in pain in the street moaning when he asked ‘You ok?’ I had to tell him to call for help. He apologized … Said he didn’t see me … that he was looking at some girl on the sidewalk. \r\n\r\n   Some friends showed up and called an ambulance. They ended up getting my bike to a safe place, and trailered it home later. One of them got ahold of Joy and went and got her and brought her to the hospital. Me … I got an ambulance ride to The Med. The evening ride didn’t turn out like I planned. It has dramatically altered my life for the short term and who knows about the long. I’m ten days into a six week to six month recovery, and it still hurts worse than anything I’ve ever done to me, and I’ve been busted up a lot to still be here. \r\n\r\n   I didn’t do anything wrong, wasn’t being a fool, was paying attention, and was riding slightly under the speed limit. I saw him in the turn lane. I saw when he started to turn. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. So, for me it boils down to, “how do I make any sense out of it?” and “why do I need to?” \r\n\r\n   I need to because it feels like I\'ve been bitch-slapped by God. Don’t get me wrong, I love God. I give God the credit for anything good in my life, and for any real good that comes out of it. I believe in a creator God who designed a universe perfectly suitable for the flourishing of human beings who God created in God’s image. I believe in a God who is love, and who desires individual relationships of love and trust with each of us.\r\n\r\n   But my experience is that God sometimes allows me to suffer the consequences of my choices, and I’m not talking about my choice to ride a motorcycle, in order to get my attention <em>about</em> the choices that I make. I don’t believe in a god so insecure that it needs to punish me for any choice I make. Like I said ... I’ve busted myself up before, and I’m not blaming God for any of it.\r\n\r\n   But these near death experiences get me to thinking about the choices I make that don’t really hurt anybody (rationalization alert), aren’t against the law (mostly), and don’t seem to cause any problems in my life (the jury is still out on that one). I don’t feel particularly guilty about any of them. And don’t worry, this isn’t a detailed confessional.\r\n\r\n   But the truth is, I know many of the choices I make today do not reflect the Imago-Dei in me. And so I give away the blessing of the richly abundant life I was created to live for a facsimile of life full of could have been, would have been, and should have been bitch-slapped, by god. ','Bitched-slapped by God or Bitch-slapped, by god','','inherit','open','open','','9419-revision-v1','','','2014-05-16 23:16:37','2014-05-17 06:16:37','',9419,'http://provoketive.com/2014/05/16/9419-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(9424,157,'2014-05-18 10:28:30','2014-05-18 17:28:30',' <a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185.jpg\"><img src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_0185\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9420\" /></a>\r\n\r\n   Monday evening, May 5th, was gorgeous. It was a perfect evening to go out for a ride on my motorcycle. So, naturally I did. There is nothing like it. I get a sense of complete freedom.  There is the thrill of risking life and limb, but also a certain confidence in my ability to engage the risk with hyper awareness, reasonable caution, and a well maintained machine. \r\n   \r\n   But nothing can protect one from the stupidity and carelessness of others. So on Monday evening, May 5th, it was my turn. It was my turn to have someone driving a full size truck casually turn left right in front of me like I wasn\'t even there. But I showed him. I tore the side mirror off his truck with my rib cage when I slammed into it at thirty-five or so miles per hour. Over all the noise, I heard my ribs break. It felt like being kicked by a mule. And let me tell you, broken ribs are a gift that keeeeeep on giving.\r\n\r\n   This is what I wrote on May 9th when I got home from the hospital:\r\n\r\n<em>I’m dead! \r\nShit! \r\nSearing pain \r\nHearing the impact \r\nFeeling it inside \r\nLaying in the street knowing \r\nI’m dead \r\nFumbling to find my phone\r\nCalling Joy\r\nLeaving a message I was in an accident \r\nBut I’m alright\r\nWanting to hide the truth from her for as long as I can because \r\nI’m dead \r\nThinking about my kids\r\nThinking about my friends\r\nThinking about the many people that I love\r\nKnowing that they love me back\r\nBut, I’m dead\r\nSeeing my helmet lying in the street\r\nFinding my cap and putting it on\r\nWishing I had brought my emergency pair of clean underwear\r\n(I really have some, they come in a can)\r\nLaughing because it hurts, and hurting lets me know\r\nNot Fucking Yet!\r\n</em>\r\n	I didn’t die, even though I really thought I was going to. I broke six ribs down my left side, some bones in my left foot, and lost a chunk of meat from my left arm, but I’m still here.  I was balled up in pain in the street moaning when he asked ‘You ok?’ I had to tell him to call for help. He apologized … Said he didn’t see me … that he was looking at some girl on the sidewalk. \r\n\r\n   Some friends showed up and called an ambulance. They ended up getting my bike to a safe place, and trailered it home later. One of them got ahold of Joy and went and got her and brought her to the hospital. Me … I got an ambulance ride to The Med. The evening ride didn’t turn out like I planned. It has dramatically altered my life for the short term and who knows about the long. I’m ten days into a six week to six month recovery, and it still hurts worse than anything I’ve ever done to me, and I’ve been busted up a lot to still be here. \r\n\r\n   I didn’t do anything wrong, wasn’t being a fool, was paying attention, and was riding slightly under the speed limit. I saw him in the turn lane. I saw when he started to turn. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. So, for me it boils down to, “how do I make any sense out of it?” and “why do I need to?” \r\n\r\n   I need to because it feels like I\'ve been bitch-slapped by God. Don’t get me wrong, I love God. I give God the credit for anything good in my life, and for any real good that comes out of it. I believe in a creator God who designed a universe perfectly suitable for the flourishing of human beings who God created in God’s image. I believe in a God who is love, and who desires individual relationships of love and trust with each of us.\r\n\r\n   But my experience is that God sometimes allows me to suffer the consequences of my choices, and I’m not talking about my choice to ride a motorcycle, in order to get my attention <em>about</em> the choices that I make. I don’t believe in a god so insecure that it needs to punish me for any choice I make. Like I said ... I’ve busted myself up before, and I’m not blaming God for any of it.\r\n\r\n   But these near death experiences get me to thinking about the choices I make that don’t really hurt anybody (rationalization alert), aren’t against the law (mostly), and don’t seem to cause any problems in my life (the jury is still out on that one). I don’t feel particularly guilty about any of them. And don’t worry, this isn’t a detailed confessional.\r\n\r\n   But the truth is, I know many of the choices I make today do not reflect the Imago-Dei in me. And so I give away the blessing of the richly abundant life I was created to live for a facsimile of life full of could have been, would have been, and should have been bitch-slapped, by god. ','Bitched-slapped by God or Bitch-slapped, by god','','inherit','open','open','','9419-revision-v1','','','2014-05-18 10:28:30','2014-05-18 17:28:30','',9419,'http://provoketive.com/2014/05/18/9419-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(9423,157,'2014-05-18 10:23:53','2014-05-18 17:23:53',' [contact-form][contact-field label=\'Name\' type=\'name\' required=\'1\'/][contact-field label=\'Email\' type=\'email\' required=\'1\'/][contact-field label=\'Website\' type=\'url\'/][contact-field label=\'Message\' type=\'textarea\'/][/contact-form] <a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185.jpg\"><img src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/IMG_0185-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_0185\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-9420\" /></a>\r\n\r\n   Monday evening, May 5th, was gorgeous. It was a perfect evening to go out for a ride on my motorcycle. So, naturally I did. There is nothing like it. I get a sense of complete freedom.  There is the thrill of risking life and limb, but also a certain confidence in my ability to engage the risk with hyper awareness, reasonable caution, and a well maintained machine. \r\n   \r\n   But nothing can protect one from the stupidity and carelessness of others. So on Monday evening, May 5th, it was my turn. It was my turn to have someone driving a full size truck casually turn left right in front of me like I wasn\'t even there. But I showed him. I tore the side mirror off his truck with my rib cage when I slammed into it at thirty-five or so miles per hour. Over all the noise, I heard my ribs break. It felt like being kicked by a mule. And let me tell you, broken ribs are a gift that keeeeeep on giving.\r\n\r\n   This is what I wrote on May 9th when I got home from the hospital:\r\n\r\n<em>I’m dead! \r\nShit! \r\nSearing pain \r\nHearing the impact \r\nFeeling it inside \r\nLaying in the street knowing \r\nI’m dead \r\nFumbling to find my phone\r\nCalling Joy\r\nLeaving a message I was in an accident \r\nBut I’m alright\r\nWanting to hide the truth from her for as long as I can because \r\nI’m dead \r\nThinking about my kids\r\nThinking about my friends\r\nThinking about the many people that I love\r\nKnowing that they love me back\r\nBut, I’m dead\r\nSeeing my helmet lying in the street\r\nFinding my cap and putting it on\r\nWishing I had brought my emergency pair of clean underwear\r\n(I really have some, they come in a can)\r\nLaughing because it hurts, and hurting lets me know\r\nNot Fucking Yet!\r\n</em>\r\n	I didn’t die, even though I really thought I was going to. I broke six ribs down my left side, some bones in my left foot, and lost a chunk of meat from my left arm, but I’m still here.  I was balled up in pain in the street moaning when he asked ‘You ok?’ I had to tell him to call for help. He apologized … Said he didn’t see me … that he was looking at some girl on the sidewalk. \r\n\r\n   Some friends showed up and called an ambulance. They ended up getting my bike to a safe place, and trailered it home later. One of them got ahold of Joy and went and got her and brought her to the hospital. Me … I got an ambulance ride to The Med. The evening ride didn’t turn out like I planned. It has dramatically altered my life for the short term and who knows about the long. I’m ten days into a six week to six month recovery, and it still hurts worse than anything I’ve ever done to me, and I’ve been busted up a lot to still be here. \r\n\r\n   I didn’t do anything wrong, wasn’t being a fool, was paying attention, and was riding slightly under the speed limit. I saw him in the turn lane. I saw when he started to turn. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. So, for me it boils down to, “how do I make any sense out of it?” and “why do I need to?” \r\n\r\n   I need to because it feels like I\'ve been bitch-slapped by God. Don’t get me wrong, I love God. I give God the credit for anything good in my life, and for any real good that comes out of it. I believe in a creator God who designed a universe perfectly suitable for the flourishing of human beings who God created in God’s image. I believe in a God who is love, and who desires individual relationships of love and trust with each of us.\r\n\r\n   But my experience is that God sometimes allows me to suffer the consequences of my choices, and I’m not talking about my choice to ride a motorcycle, in order to get my attention <em>about</em> the choices that I make. I don’t believe in a god so insecure that it needs to punish me for any choice I make. Like I said ... I’ve busted myself up before, and I’m not blaming God for any of it.\r\n\r\n   But these near death experiences get me to thinking about the choices I make that don’t really hurt anybody (rationalization alert), aren’t against the law (mostly), and don’t seem to cause any problems in my life (the jury is still out on that one). I don’t feel particularly guilty about any of them. And don’t worry, this isn’t a detailed confessional.\r\n\r\n   But the truth is, I know many of the choices I make today do not reflect the Imago-Dei in me. And so I give away the blessing of the richly abundant life I was created to live for a facsimile of life full of could have been, would have been, and should have been bitch-slapped, by god. ','Bitched-slapped by God or Bitch-slapped, by god','','inherit','open','open','','9419-revision-v1','','','2014-05-18 10:23:53','2014-05-18 17:23:53','',9419,'http://provoketive.com/2014/05/18/9419-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(9617,0,'2015-06-16 17:12:17','2015-06-17 00:12:17','This is a message to the webmaster. I came to your page via Google but it was hard to find as you were not on the front page of search results. I know you could have more traffic to your site. I have found a website which offers to dramatically increase your website rankings and traffic to your site: http://garye.co/8k I managed to get close to 1000 visitors/day using their services, you could also get a lot more targeted traffic from Google than you have now. Their services brought significantly more traffic to my website. I hope this helps!\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Donna\nAUTHOR EMAIL: dvhacbe@yahoo.fr\nAUTHOR URL: http://anders.ga/-fn4j\nSUBJECT: Nominating A Writer For Provoketive\nIP: 104.168.45.42\nArray\n(\n    [Your Name] =&gt; Donna\n    [Your Email] =&gt; dvhacbe@yahoo.fr\n    [The Writer\'s Name] =&gt; Donna\n    [The Writer\'s Website or Post] =&gt; http://anders.ga/-fn4j\n    [The Writer\'s Email] =&gt; Donna\n    [Why You Think They Should Write For Provoketive?] =&gt; This is a message to the webmaster. I came to your page via Google but it was hard to find as you were not on the front page of search results. I know you could have more traffic to your site. I have found a website which offers to dramatically increase your website rankings and traffic to your site: http://garye.co/8k I managed to get close to 1000 visitors/day using their services, you could also get a lot more targeted traffic from Google than you have now. Their services brought significantly more traffic to my website. I hope this helps!\n)\n','Donna - 2015-06-16 17:12:17','','publish','open','open','','f338669d54dacacce4dfc8deb1e0edf6','','','2015-06-16 17:12:17','2015-06-17 00:12:17','',1537,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9617',0,'feedback','',0),(9587,0,'2015-04-10 13:43:17','2015-04-10 20:43:17','Leaving fundamentalism\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Kelly Beane\nAUTHOR EMAIL: Kelly_beane@yahoo.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://kellbell-justmythoughts.blogspot.com/\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 174.61.143.137\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Kelly Beane\n    [Email] =&gt; Kelly_beane@yahoo.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; http://kellbell-justmythoughts.blogspot.com/\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Leaving fundamentalism \n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; kellbell2\n)\n','Kelly Beane - 2015-04-10 13:43:17','','publish','open','open','','b893789dcbf623ef9ccee0222c1ee6ab','','','2015-04-10 13:43:17','2015-04-10 20:43:17','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9587',0,'feedback','',0),(9554,0,'2015-02-10 15:27:59','2015-02-10 23:27:59','reaching out to communities.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: james\nAUTHOR EMAIL: reachoutambassadorsnews@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://n/a\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 2.123.109.100\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; james\n    [Email] =&gt; reachoutambassadorsnews@gmail.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; n/a\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; reaching out to communities.\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; reachoutambassadors\n)\n','james - 2015-02-10 15:27:59','','publish','open','open','','1d7ee7634f911281e6227b7467b6b850','','','2015-02-10 15:27:59','2015-02-10 23:27:59','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9554',0,'feedback','',0),(9555,0,'2015-02-10 15:27:59','2015-02-10 23:27:59','reaching out to communities.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: james\nAUTHOR EMAIL: reachoutambassadorsnews@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://n/a\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 2.123.109.100\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; james\n    [Email] =&gt; reachoutambassadorsnews@gmail.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; n/a\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; reaching out to communities.\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; reachoutambassadors\n)\n','james - 2015-02-10 15:27:59','','publish','open','open','','1d7ee7634f911281e6227b7467b6b850-2','','','2015-02-10 15:27:59','2015-02-10 23:27:59','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=9555',0,'feedback','',0),(10029,0,'2015-09-23 12:03:46','2015-09-23 19:03:46','Hello,\r\n\r\nI am a big fan of your blog and have been a reader for quite a while. Are you currently accepting guest posts? If so, I would be happy to write one for you want - The choice is yours! (The only thing I ask for in return is just one or two do-follow links back to my website). I am professional writer with a lot of blogging experience, so you can count on me to produce quality content. As soon as you reply with a topic, I will get started right away.\r\n\r\nI saw that you featured some guest posts in the past and I thought the piece was an excellent fit for your site and your readers. Let me know if you’d be interested in reading and possibly hosting and article, I’m excited about the possibility of working with you.\r\n\r\nI look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.\r\n\r\nBest wishes,\r\n\r\nSincerely, \r\n\r\nAngela\r\n\r\nWebsite: olwomen.com\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Angela\nAUTHOR EMAIL: angelaabram629@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Contact Us\nIP: 180.92.150.46\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Angela\n    [Email] =&gt; angelaabram629@gmail.com\n    [Comment] =&gt; Hello,\r\n\r\nI am a big fan of your blog and have been a reader for quite a while. Are you currently accepting guest posts? If so, I would be happy to write one for you want - The choice is yours! (The only thing I ask for in return is just one or two do-follow links back to my website). I am professional writer with a lot of blogging experience, so you can count on me to produce quality content. As soon as you reply with a topic, I will get started right away.\r\n\r\nI saw that you featured some guest posts in the past and I thought the piece was an excellent fit for your site and your readers. Let me know if you’d be interested in reading and possibly hosting and article, I’m excited about the possibility of working with you.\r\n\r\nI look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.\r\n\r\nBest wishes,\r\n\r\nSincerely, \r\n\r\nAngela\r\n\r\nWebsite: olwomen.com\n)\n','Angela - 2015-09-23 12:03:46','','publish','open','open','','e7986626dc324c6d355aec5bdb84b2c3','','','2015-09-23 12:03:46','2015-09-23 19:03:46','',16,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=10029',0,'feedback','',0),(10026,0,'2015-09-23 03:52:23','2015-09-23 10:52:23','Dear Sir / Madam\r\n\r\nI am Manish Kumar Arora, KP Astrologer, Numerologist, Tarot Card Reader &amp; Vastu Consultant.\r\n\r\nI would like to associate with your publication and submit  monthly predictions of zodiac signs \r\nin it.\r\n\r\nFurther, I can answer individual queries of readers related to astrology if they submit time, place \r\nand \r\ndate of birth.\r\n\r\nMy zodiac sign predictions are published in following magazines &amp; newspapers :\r\n\r\n\r\n1. Australia’s Magazine “INDUS AGE”.\r\n2. USA’s magazine, “BIBI’s website\r\n\r\n3. USA’s Magazine “LAW OF ATTRACTION”\r\n4. USA’s Magazine “ËLEGANT”\r\n\r\n5. England’s Magazine “LIFESTYLE MONTHLY.’\r\n6. England’s Magazine “HAT TRICK\r\n\r\n7. England’s Magazine, “H EDITION”’\r\n8. USA &amp; Australia’s Magazine, “Retreat”’s website\r\n\r\n9. Indian magazine “What’s On”\r\n10. USA magazine, “’Desi Express””\r\n11. South African’s Magazine, “’SA India””\r\n12. USA’s magazine, “”CURLS, TWISTS, COILS &amp; KINKS “”\r\n13. USA’s magazine, “ASIA TREND””\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHoping a favourable response from you..\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRegards\r\n\r\nManish Kumar Arora\r\n106, Bhera Enclave,\r\nPaschim Vihar, New Delhi – 87\r\nIndia\r\nPh ; 91-9871062000\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Manish Kumar Arora\nAUTHOR EMAIL: manish@manishastrologer.com\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Contact Us\nIP: 122.161.186.52\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Manish Kumar Arora\n    [Email] =&gt; manish@manishastrologer.com\n    [Comment] =&gt; Dear Sir / Madam\r\n\r\nI am Manish Kumar Arora, KP Astrologer, Numerologist, Tarot Card Reader &amp; Vastu Consultant.\r\n\r\nI would like to associate with your publication and submit  monthly predictions of zodiac signs \r\nin it.\r\n\r\nFurther, I can answer individual queries of readers related to astrology if they submit time, place \r\nand \r\ndate of birth.\r\n\r\nMy zodiac sign predictions are published in following magazines &amp; newspapers :\r\n\r\n\r\n1. Australia’s Magazine “INDUS AGE”.\r\n2. USA’s magazine, “BIBI’s website\r\n\r\n3. USA’s Magazine “LAW OF ATTRACTION”\r\n4. USA’s Magazine “ËLEGANT”\r\n\r\n5. England’s Magazine “LIFESTYLE MONTHLY.’\r\n6. England’s Magazine “HAT TRICK\r\n\r\n7. England’s Magazine, “H EDITION”’\r\n8. USA &amp; Australia’s Magazine, “Retreat”’s website\r\n\r\n9. Indian magazine “What’s On”\r\n10. USA magazine, “’Desi Express””\r\n11. South African’s Magazine, “’SA India””\r\n12. USA’s magazine, “”CURLS, TWISTS, COILS &amp; KINKS “”\r\n13. USA’s magazine, “ASIA TREND””\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHoping a favourable response from you..\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRegards\r\n\r\nManish Kumar Arora\r\n106, Bhera Enclave,\r\nPaschim Vihar, New Delhi – 87\r\nIndia\r\nPh ; 91-9871062000\r\n\n)\n','Manish Kumar Arora - 2015-09-23 03:52:23','','publish','open','open','','82966d77aa42dc557c54913caeff62bb','','','2015-09-23 03:52:23','2015-09-23 10:52:23','',16,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=10026',0,'feedback','',0),(10027,0,'2015-09-23 03:52:25','2015-09-23 10:52:25','Dear Sir / Madam\r\n\r\nI am Manish Kumar Arora, KP Astrologer, Numerologist, Tarot Card Reader &amp; Vastu Consultant.\r\n\r\nI would like to associate with your publication and submit  monthly predictions of zodiac signs \r\nin it.\r\n\r\nFurther, I can answer individual queries of readers related to astrology if they submit time, place \r\nand \r\ndate of birth.\r\n\r\nMy zodiac sign predictions are published in following magazines &amp; newspapers :\r\n\r\n\r\n1. Australia’s Magazine “INDUS AGE”.\r\n2. USA’s magazine, “BIBI’s website\r\n\r\n3. USA’s Magazine “LAW OF ATTRACTION”\r\n4. USA’s Magazine “ËLEGANT”\r\n\r\n5. England’s Magazine “LIFESTYLE MONTHLY.’\r\n6. England’s Magazine “HAT TRICK\r\n\r\n7. England’s Magazine, “H EDITION”’\r\n8. USA &amp; Australia’s Magazine, “Retreat”’s website\r\n\r\n9. Indian magazine “What’s On”\r\n10. USA magazine, “’Desi Express””\r\n11. South African’s Magazine, “’SA India””\r\n12. USA’s magazine, “”CURLS, TWISTS, COILS &amp; KINKS “”\r\n13. USA’s magazine, “ASIA TREND””\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHoping a favourable response from you..\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRegards\r\n\r\nManish Kumar Arora\r\n106, Bhera Enclave,\r\nPaschim Vihar, New Delhi – 87\r\nIndia\r\nPh ; 91-9871062000\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Manish Kumar Arora\nAUTHOR EMAIL: manish@manishastrologer.com\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Contact Us\nIP: 122.161.186.52\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Manish Kumar Arora\n    [Email] =&gt; manish@manishastrologer.com\n    [Comment] =&gt; Dear Sir / Madam\r\n\r\nI am Manish Kumar Arora, KP Astrologer, Numerologist, Tarot Card Reader &amp; Vastu Consultant.\r\n\r\nI would like to associate with your publication and submit  monthly predictions of zodiac signs \r\nin it.\r\n\r\nFurther, I can answer individual queries of readers related to astrology if they submit time, place \r\nand \r\ndate of birth.\r\n\r\nMy zodiac sign predictions are published in following magazines &amp; newspapers :\r\n\r\n\r\n1. Australia’s Magazine “INDUS AGE”.\r\n2. USA’s magazine, “BIBI’s website\r\n\r\n3. USA’s Magazine “LAW OF ATTRACTION”\r\n4. USA’s Magazine “ËLEGANT”\r\n\r\n5. England’s Magazine “LIFESTYLE MONTHLY.’\r\n6. England’s Magazine “HAT TRICK\r\n\r\n7. England’s Magazine, “H EDITION”’\r\n8. USA &amp; Australia’s Magazine, “Retreat”’s website\r\n\r\n9. Indian magazine “What’s On”\r\n10. USA magazine, “’Desi Express””\r\n11. South African’s Magazine, “’SA India””\r\n12. USA’s magazine, “”CURLS, TWISTS, COILS &amp; KINKS “”\r\n13. USA’s magazine, “ASIA TREND””\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHoping a favourable response from you..\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRegards\r\n\r\nManish Kumar Arora\r\n106, Bhera Enclave,\r\nPaschim Vihar, New Delhi – 87\r\nIndia\r\nPh ; 91-9871062000\r\n\n)\n','Manish Kumar Arora - 2015-09-23 03:52:25','','publish','open','open','','75d70c3567a4c90d423dd9472661acfa','','','2015-09-23 03:52:25','2015-09-23 10:52:25','',16,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=10027',0,'feedback','',0);

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