After writing this I actually feel a little closer to divinity. I always feel a strange sort of heady dissidence when I write about god. My own personal faith so deeply and strongly conflicts with the many religions that I often feel much closer to the divine when I argue against God. Its strange. Surreal, almost.

The problem is, once you start saying morality is a deeply personal thing, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, you’re admitting to moral relativism. Your morals may be different from someone else’s morals, simply because you, as an individual, see things differently and have different priorities than they do. You cannot say something is objectively right or objectively wrong because you have no single standard upon which to make that determination. This is especially true when you jettison religion, which, while certainly not being an objective standard, can offer people a common standard for making moral determinations, again, if they accept the same teachings and ideas about the religion which many do not.

Morality is something that you determine on your own, guided by the society and culture in which you live, often influenced by whatever religious beliefs or philosophies you hold. It is, as you correctly point out, an intensely personal thing and it is, therefore, subjective and relative.

“The problem is, once you start saying morality is a deeply personal thing, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, you’re admitting to moral relativism.”

Alot of people decide what is and isn’t moral based upon their own preferences. I decide what is and isn’t moral based upon wheather harm is inflicted upon others. You might think its relative in the sense that some people like one thing, while others may loathe it. You can’t call it relative in the sense that there is a single universal definition that does not and will not change: are you doing harm?

Sex and rape, for instance, are both technically the same act. The difference is that one hurts someone and the other doesn’t. You can call that moral relativsm if you really want to, but I don’t see it as being relative at all. If you’re hurting someone, you’re doing something that is immoral. I think you’re either hurting someone or you aren’t. The definition of “hurting” may change from person to person but the definition of what is and isn’t moral, in my mind, never will.

That depends on your personal interpretation and defintion of “harm”. Religious zealots are convinced that somehow, allowing two gay people who love each other to get married is “harmful”. Muslim fundamentalists think there’s no harm in marrying and having sex with children as young as 1 year old. Christian fundamentalists think there’s nothing wrong with letting a child die of perfectly treatable diseases in favor of praying for God to intervene. Whose definition of harm do we use and why? Because there are so many definitions of harm, even your own view of morality is open to a wide range of interpretation depending on who practices it.

Again, it’s all subjective and therefore all relative.

“Whose definition of harm do we use and why?”

The victim’s because ultimately they’re the ones getting harmed.

I’ve never seen the marriage of two gay people break up the marriage of a strait couple. I’ve never seen anything that would prove that gay parents are any worse than straight parents. I know gay “couples” that have custody of happy well adjusted children and I don’t have to reach very far for stories of straight people who’ve gone to jail for neglect and abuse. And if you want to go down the public health road, monogamy is monogamy.. gay people with one partner aren’t going to spontaneously contract STDs. If you’re cheating or swinging, you’re no different than straight people who do the same.

I can easily point to a number of mental and physical health issues associated with having sex at such a young age, not to mention the lack of consent involved. Children who don’t know and understand what they’re consenting to are being abused just as much as adults who don’t know the medicine they’re taking is tainted or the car they bought has bad breaks. The people who are taking advantage of them are defenately immoral. I don’t think arranged marriages are inherently immoral but I do think that forced marriages definitely are. We could quibble over the definition of forced and if social pressure qualifies as coercion but I think if you’re mentally capable of deciding for yourself and you agree with your societal norms, you’ve made your own decision.

If someone dies who does not want treatment, I don’t think that its immoral. Stupid, certainly, but not immoral — they’re doing it to themselves. I’d argue that parents who teach their children such practices are immoral if that teaching harms their children as a result of them not seeking treatment. If someone dies who wanted help and was prevented treatment, its murder. Plain and simple.

And what would you say to someone that said that gay marriage hurt them by making them uncomfortable or depressed or outraged? You don’t think people have the right to have their beliefs respected? You don’t think that spitting in the face of God is a victimless crime? If insulting someone and degrading everything they believe in isn’t immoral, what’ about calling people the n-word? Is that okay too? If its okay to hate Christians, is it okay to hate black people? If you really think that I will pray for your soul.

Its a huge leap to go from allowing gays to marry to harassing Christians and embracing racism. I get the feeling that you feel like you’re being discriminated against for being Christian. The problem is, no one is discriminating against Christians by allowing gays to get married. You can’t argue that allowing someone to have equal rights under the law is discrimination against a group of people that already has equal rights under the law. That’s like saying freeing the slaves was discrimination against whites. Its ludicrous.

I don’t agree with aggressive protests like those which are conducted by the so-called “gay anarchists” groups. That’s not a peaceful demonstration. That’s a riot. Riots hurt people. They damage property, they threaten innocent bystanders, they disrupt services, and on occasion they even get people seriously hurt. That is, without a doubt, an immoral practice.

This is what I say to Christians who freak out when they think of gays getting married:

“One of two things is happening here. Either you’re not being honest with yourself and you aren’t really uncomfortable with gays getting married, in which case you are either irrational or aren’t really being harmed by gay marriage, or you are incapable of being happy without harming someone else. People who are only happy when they are hurting others are sociopaths. Those people are mentally ill. They need help to become rational, well adjusted people.”

Yet you find a lot of religious zealots who say that gay marriage harms them because it violates their Bible-based morality. You really can’t win by awarding the definition to the victim because everyone has a victim mentality. Christians think they get to make the rules because in their minds, anyone who doesn’t do what they say is going to hell.

So now, how do you define “victim”? Again, how do you determine which view is actually right when there’s no objective means of making that determination?

I think we have to be honest with ourselves here. Are you genuinely hurt by people who disagree with you? Really?

If someone has a persecution complex then they aren’t a healthy, well adjusted person. Harassment is one thing, but sane people are in no way harmed by people who are different from them.

Christianity 101

God exists. He is true Love in his essence and the righteous Creator of all things. Our first parents chose to go their own way and sinned.

That sin separated them and us from a holy God. This resulted in immediate spiritual and eventual physical death. We are now sinners by nature and choice.

The Bible is a theological narrative, the inspired Word of God. It tells the true and wonderful story of Grace, God redeeming back that which was lost at great cost to Him.

Enter Jesus. He existed historically as God in the flesh. He lived a sinless life. He died on a cross to pay, as God, the furious and just penalty for our sins.

In return He offers us, the spiritually dead, new life in His name and His righteousness credited to our account if we will believe His Word and trust in Him for salvation.

We are then adopted into his family as children of God and the relationship is restored. We strive to live our lives out of that relationship.

God speaks to us through His Word, the Bible. We speak to Him through prayer and respond in worship and serving. We are free by Grace to truly love others.

As the people of God, the Church, we gather in local congregations to celebrate Him, encourage one another, and remind ourselves of the truth an authority of God’s Word.

We redeploy to make a difference in the world for the One who has made all the difference for us. We are to steward the relationships He has entrusted us with.

Much of our life as Christians is the constant exchanging of a pack of lies for God’s truth.

Religion as a performance based system to merit God’s favor leads either to arrogance or despair. It is one of the many lies. Satan has no problem with all the lies, just the Truth.

The ultimate temptation is the oldest lie in the Book, to doubt the goodness of God. To imaging Him more restrictive and less generous that He said.

To imagine that sin is somehow less offensive to Him than He said. That maybe, just maybe, if I called my own shots, ran my own show, life would be more, not less.

Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead, to destroy once and for all the enemies of Satan, sin, and death, and to establish His kingdom forever.

On that day only the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection will cause Him to look on us as friends and not enemies. How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?