{"id":267,"date":"2010-07-23T02:00:58","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T08:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2010-07-23T02:00:58","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T08:00:58","slug":"gay-marriage-support-wed-to-view-of-bible-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=267","title":{"rendered":"Gay Marriage Support Wed To View Of Bible & God"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Results from a recent poll <\/a>conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute show that the theological views of Californians,\u00a0namely how they view God and how they view the Bible, largely shape how they view gay marriage.\u00a0 Candace Chellew-Hodge, writing in a recent post for\u00a0Religion Dispatches Magazine<\/a>, points out<\/p>\n

Californians who see the Bible as the literal word of God were less likely to support gay\u00a0marriage (only 26 percent), than those who saw the Bible as a book written by men and not the word of God (76 percent of whom support gay marriage). The literalists tend to be among protestants of the Latino, white evangelical, and black groups. Latino Catholics and white mainline Protestants tend to view the Bible as not literal, though still as a sacred text to be taken seriously.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A person’s view of the Bible and their support or opposition to gay marriage should not surprise us.\u00a0 In fact, we have witnessed this trend within the mainline Protestant denominations over the last decade, from the Episcopal Church’s ordination of Eugene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop to the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.’s approval of\u00a0 non-celibate\u00a0homosexuals serving as ordained clergy<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

When individuals or denominations no longer view the Bible as the literal, authoritative Word of God, then by their actions — not their words — they demonstrate that they really do not take the sacred text seriously.\u00a0 If they\u00a0do take Scripture\u00a0seriously, then they would refrain from\u00a0using un-serious and convoluted interpretations of the text to support that which cannot reasonably be supported by the plain meaning of the words.\u00a0 If one wants to argue that they do not believe what the Bible says about gay marriage or any other topic, that’s fine by me.\u00a0 But do not try to re-imagine and re-interpret the God-breathed Word to say what it clearly does not.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you abandon Scripture as the very Word of God, as many within Hispanic Catholic and mainline Protestant faith communities have, then you will likewise jettison a Biblical view of who God is.\u00a0 Writes Chellew-Hodge,<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference also lies in how Latino Catholics and Protestants view God. Overall, most of those polled from all religious factions (53 percent) say God is \u201ca person with whom one can have a relationship.\u201d Thirty-one percent view God as an impersonal force. Latino Catholics, the pollsters report \u201cstand out for the relatively high proportion who believe that God is an impersonal force.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rev. Madison Shockley, the pastor at Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, California, says when viewed in that light, it\u2019s easy to see why the theological gap is so great\u2014it all turns on the how religious groups value human freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think of God as personal then you wonder, \u2018What does God say about this?\u2019 and that then determines how you feel about it. But, if God is a force in the universe, then people tend to understand that force as one for good, for love, a positive force. Then it\u2019s incumbent on the human to interpret what is good, what is love, what is positive? That leaves a lot more room for human freedom to determine in a particular moment in time, \u2018What does God desire of us?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If your view of God is based upon the Bible, then you not only will\u00a0think, but will know, that God is personal.\u00a0 God,\u00a0in the person of Jesus Christ, came to this earth to establish relationships with sinners.\u00a0 He came to seek and to save that which is lost.\u00a0 God, through His Son, Jesus, and through the work of the Holy Spirit,\u00a0continues to establish relationships with people.\u00a0 You can’t get more personal than that.\u00a0 If you do not believe that God is personal — three Persons in One —\u00a0then I’m\u00a0quite sure\u00a0that you do not\u00a0understand what it means to be a Christian or a follower of Christ.\u00a0 God is not some mystical force from Star Wars.\u00a0 He is God!<\/p>\n

And we see in these poll results that a\u00a0deficient\u00a0view of Scripture leads to a deficient view of God.\u00a0 If you don’t hold to Scripture as God’s Word, then you can really make it up as you go.\u00a0 You\u00a0begin to think that you have freedom to determine God’s “desire” for you as opposed to knowing what God has already told you are\u00a0His desires for you.\u00a0 Two very different things.<\/p>\n

As denominations continue to reject the authority of God’s Word, we will see an increased acceptance for gay marriage and for many other behaviors that the Bible says are wrong.\u00a0 Within culture and within the Church,\u00a0the Bible and God\u00a0are not what\u00a0they used to be.\u00a0 And because of that, proponents of same-sex marriage just need to wait it out.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe message I take away from this research is that opponents of Proposition 8 can sit tight because time is on their side,\u201d said Diane Winston, the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. \u201cEach year, as more young people become eligible to vote, if the demographics hold, they will be supporters of marriage equality. It\u2019s great to keep educating people but it looks like there is a certain inevitability that change will come.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you want to know why culture impacts the Church more than the Church impacts culture, ask your neighbor how they feel about same-sex unions.\u00a0 If they tell you they approve, ask them their views on the Bible and God.\u00a0 Their answers will not surprise you.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Results from a recent poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute show that the theological views of Californians,\u00a0namely how they view God and how they view the Bible, largely shape how they view gay marriage.\u00a0 Candace Chellew-Hodge, writing in a recent post for\u00a0Religion Dispatches Magazine, points out Californians who see the Bible as the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[144,431,807,3392,3399,886],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homosexual-agenda","tag-bible","tag-gay-marriage","tag-prop-8","tag-religion","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-scripture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-4j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}