Aspies For Freedom

We don't get to overwrite the Bible, we are stuck with it.  We do not need to like everything it says, though.

Mr. Phelps, I presume he doesn't like homosexuals either?

Not liking someone does not mean you don't have to act to meet their basic needs as people, including basic respect.  You are still required to treat them with respect, with love.  

So the question is does Mr. Phelps treat homosexuals in a destructive manner?  Maybe he does.  If he hates homosexuals, he'd better read that verse I gave you, about hating your brother equals forfeiting eternal life.  

And yes, God does have a problem with homosexual sexual activity or any sexual activity outside of a heterosexual marriage (reporting the religious regulation accurately, as I am obliged to).

However, should any person be saved, Jesus wipes the slate clean, so God says, "Sodomy?  What sodomy?"

Holy amnesia, Batman!  

Of course, any forgiven person stops acting in an offensive manner and does the best to forgive fellow humans, or that person has learned NOTHING.

Yes, Electric Dragon.  You are required to love and feed and respect everyone.  
If you did not, you would miss out on some friends.

Gay feelings?  So what?  I have straight feelings.

The difference is doing nothing with your feelings, sans marriage.

Granted, marriage being a heterosexual thing only does not seem fair to me.  But plenty of things don't seem fair to me, such as being single for an awfully long time.

We at the office, I am sure everyone has feelings.  We do nothing about them, treat each other platonically like brothers or sisters.  Sometimes it is a good idea not to do what you feel.

I know.  Mom said why give someone a desire and punish them for using it.  That really made sense for a good many years, pre-Christ.

Hyke, some men are evil.  I'm not sure what the heck the problem is with rapists.  Power, I've heard.  Rejection?  I've wondered.  I know what you said, you think the Bible old fashioned for what it said in the Old Testament about things like rape.  

Regretfully, M, the common suggestion for homosexuality is to walk away from exercising it.  That is an accurate description of Christianity, yes.  As that is not my personal hardship I do not worry about whether people do that or not.  It doesn't make a sinner any less a sinner to die a virgin.  

Yes, it would be better to die saved, yet make the honest mistake of giving into gay sex on occasion, than to be a virgin and unsaved.  

I'm glad the United States has ceased being as backward as it was.  Homosexuality is not a legal problem.  It's not even my problem.  God calls a wide range of sexual behavior a problem and He is free to do so.  God is free to punish as He sees fit but He saves the forgiven, the repentant.  

God even gets to punish the good guys.  Read Job.  And then reflect on why a good person can be denied a job or a relationship.

Homosexuality is not a political problem.  We have enough real problems to worry about.  If we ignore them they'll strike us with our eyes closed.

Again, to accurately report the religious tenants, and to stop there

1.  The Father punishes
2.  unless the Son saves
3.  sin is a large category not a narrow one and has little to do with sex
4.  followers are instructed to love, not to punish, is my message, and I do a reasonably good job of doing the first but not the second
5.  the fact that so-called followers punish instead of love is a valid observation
6.  Christians do not sit around on Sunday morning dreaming this stuff up like some Spaghetti Monster
7.  Christians learn about the existence of invisible omnipotent power through prayer, meditation, and Bible study
8.  We are obliged to consider the Holy Scriptures as written by God through human agents

If you witness a "Christian" engaging in a hostile act, your issue is with him or her, otherwise, your issue is with God.   I have done my best not to make the mistakes of hypocrites.

Reporting the faith accurately is not a hostile act.  It is a duty, just in case you come to accept it.

I hated Christians once and became one.  I didn't like homophobia or Creationism.  I still think Creationism denies God the chance to create the universe in a scientific manner.

Whoops.... flaw in my last post
1.  I hated the idea that gay marriage was bad before converting
2.  I don't like it much now, but that was God's call, and I am a nobody next to God
3.  I don't like hatred any better now than I did then.

Well, Duck, I know waiting till marriage is intended to protect me, but I feel screwed that only Christians are a good idea and most Christian ladies I've met seem to think I am spiritually inadequate.  Check Sheenalasvegas' thread on advice on being a Christain wife.

I read a pamphlet on forgiveness.  It does not mean welcome your rapist into your life.  The rapist probably doesn't deserve to go near her.  Forgiveness IS NOT AT THE COST OF SAFETY!  It is at the cost of anger and hate, though.

We oblige ourselves by being Christians, Max, and God is a lousy cop- the neighborhood is out of hand.  You have a valid point on living a good life versus sin, that is definitely part of doing the right thing.

I think it is important to say how I came to respect God acting through people:

In 1988, I went to college.  I was a bit of a studying machine (a stud-ent not a stud) and I really didn't pay attention to the folks around me.  Friendships were in the context of a classroom.  I had forgotten what friends were for, high school and such, escaped into my books, if you will.

But I did join a Christian fellowship.  I figured college was the time to tend to unfinished business like my alcoholic mom and workaholic dad (well, there weren't any drunks at the office).

A year later over the summer I start getting mail from one of the women in the fellowship.  Maybe she had had enough of everyone else not taking the first move.  She did sign my birthday card in April but hey, that name could have belonged to any woman.  Initiating friendship with a missionary motive, love bombing, some would call it.  Very well in fact.  I didn't know what her deal was but she acted as though she liked me or something, confusing message.  I did start to get attached (I did feel inadequate not dating) and I did start to initiate a deeper relationship.  She understood but her boyfriend did not.  She ended up discontinuing me to keep him from going after me violently.

It is fortunate for her that he gave up on her anyway.  The guy she did marry is so much nicer, and after being married a year she explained everything.

In the meantime, I collapsed emotionally, the burning USS John C. Stennis in the movie Sum of All Fears comes to mind.  Perhaps I should have been in dry dock in therapy back home, I was not, I dropped from 3.6 to 3.8 to 1.16.   Kind of like the damage AIDS does to the immune system, to my emotional and academic functioning.   Time and a separate set of non-Christian friends did repair the damage but I graduated college a non-Christian with extreme prejudice.

It is important to note that the central woman in the non-Christian network was after me to forgive the Christian woman.  I would have been happy to do it for present-day Mrs. M but I could not.  Mrs. M was something of a Buddhist, vegetarian, anti-Gulf-War, forgiveness, love, and did not trust Christians herself either.

After six months of antagonism against a bunch of thirtysomething Christians in and around Martinsburg WV, I had to respect my foe, they did not respond in anger.  When I figured it that God was the difference, I gave in and joined them.  

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So...... summary

1.  I really do think God lives outside people, before people were made, now, and forever, and sometimes people in Christ do do some amazing things (give up drugs, etc.)

1b. but not always.  I did not raise any romantic attention at all as a graduate student in Marshall University's Baptist Student Union the whole three years I was there.  My time in Washington's Equally Yoked Christian singles did draw some dates but nothing else.  I am concerned that NTs may believe what the USA Today article said.

2.  I oppose love bombing and especially across gender lines.  (male) Nerds do not get the time of day much from high school or college-aged women, so getting a hefty dose of feminine attention is going to do more harm than good eventually.  

I've recently been encouraged to date a non-Christian because "maybe she will convert".  Nope, not a chance.  Either take a woman as she is, faith based recommended, or not at all.

Not At All.

But in an unexpected way her tactics worked.  I became a Christian, a little more painfully than she had intended.  My only concern now is that I might not trust a woman today if she is really serious, or that women may punish me for playing hard to get.

To accept God, you have to believe He exists.

Hating God (and Christians) is one way to believe He exists.

As a literal minded Aspie I cannot dismiss the negative wording of the Bible.  I had hoped that maybe lesbians could be off the hook technically.  But the spirit expressed by Paul in Romans hits them too.

I thought it was funny when Queen Victoria passed a law forbiding male homosexual acts but that ignored lesbian sex- she couldn't believe women did that.

Real Christianity, minus the hatred that you see in practice.  You begin to think that maybe when your fellow Christians remind you to struggle with your Aspie burden, they are saying "don't ask me for a date."  You earnestly wonder if God is punishing you, or if you as an innocent victim are part of the learning process for your Christian sister.

About a year ago, the aforementioned missus (possible love bomber) said she had wished (prayed) for a long time that something like my last girlfriend would lead to marriage.  No, marriage is a partnership of equals, and we are intellectually, academically, and occupationally unbalanced, even if we are Christians with disabilities.  My last girlfriend has BPD and she will need a group home, or even closer supervision, when her mother dies.  

I am starting to think like my Christian sister here.  After confusing and rejecting me, she is hoping it will all be over when I am married, as perhaps I am the least bit deterred from sticking my nose too closely into a woman's mental-romantic process.  Perhaps she feels partly responsible.  I mean, when you introduce something that looks like the real thing but is not, or is a weapon, to the immune system, you have a vaccine.

Hateful Christianity is a vaccine to prevent people like you from accepting honest Christianity (with love for all).

Love bombing might be a vaccine to inhibit the usual process of investigating a possible partner.

Love bombing can happen in the non-Christian camp.

I met a wonderful residence assistant over at Shepherd in our third year, a humanist.  I was distasteful of Christianity and humanism sounded like a nice way of helping resolve the world's problems, better hands on than hands together eyes closed, you know.  I thought she was a she-Buddha, my mom liked her too.  Mom even said if she could have picked a mate for me, it would be that classmate, and why not, both Mom and the R.A. were pro-choice Democrats, top undergraduate scholars majoring in English and going on to graduate study, grown up in rural settings, were Christian skeptics with penchants toward Far Eastern religions (Mom favored Hinduism), and oh by the way had the same first name with subtle differences in spelling.  But she met a guy at a peace rally who married her four years later after she got out of grad school.

I had a Swedish colleague here, Sara Bjerde, before she ran off to sell real estate.  She made me glad to be maybe 25% Swedish (and maybe 25% Finnish).   Rah rah Raoul Wallenberg!  Long live the communal beer pot!  

I feel a heck of a lot better around tolerant people.  As Martin Niemeyer said, they came for and got everyone else, and then they came for me.

1.  You had said "love bomb so you can hate bomb", so temporarily I thought my mentor who introduced me to the concept of compassionate Christianity was being dragged in, too.  Sorry I brought up the subject of love bombing at all, but I wanted to demonstrate why I hated Christians before I became one.

2.  You are correct.  In the United States so-called Christians generally give persecution, in Saudi Arabia or China the genuine Christians generally get it.  But babysitters still occasionally think it is funny or justifiable to have [generally speaking inappropriate contact] with special needs children.  I don't have a problem with either gays or Mormons (mine was) mind you, but the Christian God has a place for unrepentant child molesters and it is hot, so he'd better discover salvation in the time he has left.

3. Ever wonder if there is a connection between what Christians experience as kids and how fast they jump to somebody's defense, I am suggesting even more, anybody's defense?   My mentors might get testy if King David is conjectured to be bisexual, anyone gets touchy about the truth of a holy book.  But when the tire hits the road and somebody's dignity or safety is at stake, at least a few of us really give a damn.  

Another example from FBCI land: the government wants to promote healthy Hispanic marriages.  

As if that ranks equally with eliminating the national debt.

I sleep a little less well at night wondering if the State wants to control people through the Church.  Does Bushie want more power over the average John, Jane, and Juan?  The Christian church never needed the approval of Rome and did better without it.

4.  I think when Bushie adds faith based to the treasury he gets the church dirty with red ink.  I am not a right winger.  If my dad hadn't drawn the Hitleresque moustache on Ralph Reed on the USNWR cover I would have.

You will understand if I don't bring up my fellow Christians, even by initials, again.

I am no fan of what an owner of a pickup puts on his bumper.

Inwood, WV, 1998: The locals told their kids to back off from my brother, a computer programmer at the library automation company in town, probably because my brother did not seem like a womanizer.  But they said it a little too loud and with my brother around.

I almost wrote I hate Inwood second only to Waldorf MD, but I can't hate anybody: it is suicide.  I just have an ill feeling about the places.