Ch. of England CONDEMNS gay marriage

Christ wasn't dogmatic. I love Jesus and will always trust in God's personal love for me, but I agree with Pope Emeritus Benedict that the church is going to lose a lot of people and become much smaller. I see that happening with a lot of Christian churches, not just the RCC. When the church tries to control people's lives due to their own interpretation of scripture, then I just feel more comfortable worshiping without a particular denomination.

Christians don't even agree with each other about interpretations of scripture, that's why there are so many denominations now. As some of them become more and more intolerant, there will just be more denominations springing into being, each one thinking they are the 'one true church'. It is really sad to me because Christianity should be a force for unity and not division. But human beings are just so ready to exclude and condemn those things they don't understand or want.

I shouldn't say this about Christianity only though because I see the same thing in most religions. They probably start out ok but somewhere along the line they become rigid and intolerant of diversity, all in the name of 'tradition' or other bs reasons. Sad. But human.

 

Christ was God made flesh. We're not.

If you put your own opinions above those of Scripture, you're in essence elevating yourself over God.

This is the basic separation between liberals and the orthodox, and it goes all the way back to Rousseau. Liberals think that they can determine what is best for themselves; the orthodox say that God speaks to us through the Bible, and that Biblical truth must be the guide for our lives. We are saved by faith -- by faith in God, through Jesus Christ our Lord and King. We are not saved by our own opinions, and certainly not by any works we perform (which includes works of the intellect!). We are not saved by any action of our own, but by God the Holy Spirit which indwells us and moves us.

It is a modern pathology to think that God's word is somehow relative to a person's own opinions and inner thoughts. Liberals read the Bible like a tax lawyer reads the tax code, looking for loopholes and exceptions. The Bible is God's Word written. This was part of the project of the Reformers: to pull the Bible back into a place of centrality in our faith, rather than subordinate to Church rulemaking (as in the RC church with their Magisterium).

Consider the Protestant solas of the Reformation:

Sola Scriptura - Scripture alone is God's teaching for a Christian life, and no word of man may overturn it. The Church only teaches truth insofar as it does not contradict Biblical teaching.

Sola Fide - We are saved by faith alone, not by works. God does of course love good works, but these are the outworkings of a saving faith.

Sola Gratia- We are saved by God's grace alone, by faith in Him. We do not earn our salvation, for then it would be by works and thus wages paid. But God forgives us our sins through grace -- an unearned and undeserved gift of mercy and love from God.

Sola Christo - We are saved, by faith, through our Lord Jesus Christ alone. Our salvation was accomplished by his sacrifice upon the cross. There is salvation in no one else. No man, no other book, no other collection of heathen gods or goddesses or philosophies or practices may serve to lead us to salvation. Only Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is our path to Heaven. When we proclaim him as Lord, we put ourselves into bondage to him (which is why Paul and the other Apostles use the word doulos, or slave, to describe their relationship to him). He commands, we obey.

Soli Deo Gloria - Christians believe that God's creation -- the entirety of the Cosmos, and all the creatures in it -- serve one purpose only: to glorify God, to celebrate God as the "all in all". God created us to glorify Himself, much as he did the angelic host. When we reject God's Word as expressed in Holy Scripture, we fail to glorify him and thus commit a grave sin.

It's important to note that we do not "believe in" the Protestant solas, or in the 39 articles, or any other creed or confession. We confess them as true and faithful representations of Biblical teaching. But as Article VI of the Anglican 39 Articles states:

This is the doctrine of Scriptural sufficiency, and it is a doctrine the Anglican church confesses. No other word of man may override Scriptural truth.

Christianity has never been a "come as you are, remain as you are" faith. You must be reborn to enter it. You must cast off the old person and become a completely new one, dedicated to live and work in the light of Christ. Through Biblical teaching, we learn not only what God is and how he revealed himself to us, but also how we are to live our lives. "Sin" is not just some abstract concept of badness -- sin is disobedience to God's will, and the penalty for it is death. Not just physical death (though that does sometimes happen), but spiritual death. It is only through the Bible that we may know God's will, and thus it becomes our roadmap to navigate our lives.

All of this is to say that the Bible is not optional. We cannot disregard it just because it doesn't happen to conform to the cultural currents of any given time or place. The Bible's teaching is eternal because God is eternal, and the Bible is God's Word. What was true in the time of the Apostles is true now. We read the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament, because Christ came to fulfill the promise of the Old Testament. But even Christ himself said that not a "jot or tittle" of the Law would pass away until all was accomplished.

We live in the age of grace, the age of the Church, where we work and hope for Christ's return. Christ will judge us not on how well we obeyed the laws of men, but on how well we obeyed the teachings set down in Scripture.

 

However, it is not the only one. The Church in Wales has approved same-sex marriage. The Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States of America allow same-sex marriages. Others, whilst not currently permitting same-sex marriage, will bless same-sex couples married in civil ceremonies. More and more Anglican churches in the West are moving towards same-sex marriages.

 

It’s a direct result of fundamentalists trying to turn matters of Discipline into Dogmas. It amounts to a new ‘orthodoxy’, which is then employed to sow division in the name of ‘purity’. Such movements typically tend to become victims of their own ideology after a while. They’re best ignored until they fade into obscurity.

 

A dogmatic fanaticism which confuses wisdom and advisability with draconian enforcement and then labels the result orthodoxy. (Sects are very prone to this tendency). The boundaries of such orthodoxies usually circumscribe, neatly and conveniently, the member's own personal proclivities and preferences, as delineated in their interpretation of the rules supposedly laid out in some book or other.
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Tolerance and inclusiveness have good merit, up to some point. Beyond that point they are bad.

Where that point lies is the subject of disagreement, and has led to the existence of many denominations.

We must grant that any denomination's spiritual leaders has the authority and responsibility to set forth where, in their denomination's view, the boundaries lie. Any person is responsible before God to seek first the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit's guidance, and secondarily to evaluate his denomination's teachings and guidance; he then is free (in most of our countries) to migrate to a denomination which best aligns with what he believes Scripture and the Spirit are saying.

None of us perceive every point of doctrine with perfectness. None of us is perfect in hearing what the Spirit is saying. We all bring the baggage of our past to the table of perception. Thus the invisible church has need of many denominations, and our Lord works in and through them (in one way and another) to guide His flock.

With all that said, I don't think we can be too critical when a denomination sets boundaries that are less than totally tolerant of all, and less than totally inclusive. Jesus set forth some specific boundaries in His discourses and teachings, and this is precedential. The epistles likewise set forth boundaries concerning what should not be tolerated within the church. We should not be surprised by--indeed, we should expect and welcome--the setting of moral and behavioral boundaries within our denomination. If there were no such boundaries, the church would quickly become so watered-down and adulterated that it would be rendered unrecognizable as an instrument of the holy God.

Things that we can (and must) be critical of include the following: heresies, teachings that plainly distort or contradict the Bible, and false gospels.