Scratchy Sweaters and Unpopular Views

Lately, God has been changing me and I've been resisting the change... I guess that's not the way to put it... I'm not changing per se; what I'm about to write has for the most part always been how I feel about things but the need to speak these things have been like a scratchy sweater or wool blanket... oh so warm and comfortable but you often want to put something on to buffer the skin irritation... I've got to think of a better analogy! But I digress.

Let me start off with a basis for what I'm going to say. I think that everyone can agree that we live in a broken world. There is abuse and corruption and all sorts of ichiness. Over a week ago, part of our church family lost a two year old girl... Everyday, children are being beaten and abused... People are using guns to kill others and at times to kill the most innocent and I think, what is going on? Why is this all happening? I want to grab my family and move like a protected blob through life so that none of us gets hurt. But that's unrealistic. I love reading. I love watching TV. I love learning; just don't give me a test;). I love reading Scripture as God teaches and reminds me of His truths. What a beautiful God that I serve! There's a problem though. The more I read about God, the more the world makes less sense to me. While He is not growing, my knowledge of Him and His ways certainly do. I was watching a documentary of a young Jewish kid who was preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. He had Down's Syndrome and yet his innocence and reliance on God was so inspiring. (The documentary is called Praying for Lior). Here he was and he didn't understand a lot of things, but he constantly sang his prayers to God. He had that blind innocent faith that many children and child-like thinkers have. When I read through the Scriptures I find the same thing; especially in the Old Testament. God is seen as a refuge and relief from all of the battling. When they remembered, the Israelites were able to see just how holy God was. When Moses asked Who God was, God simply answered, "I AM." He is the Alpha and Omega; the be all and end all. He didn't begin and He won't end. He created us all. This is the basis of where my thoughts and comments begin. This is my foundation and the back story behind this particular entry.

As I said earlier, I love reading and I love watching TV. I love how God has wired us up to be story tellers and how in the end, Love wins. My problem is our culture's definition of love. Often I find that what we think of as love is not the same as God's Love. Because of this, we give love parameters.  Love can only look this way. If it doesn't then it's not love. To me, this is a scary thing and it's something that plagues our culture and our world. God's Love is everlasting and wise and just. God's Love comes with parameters and rules. While there were hundreds of rules in the Old Testament that had to be followed for one thing or another, in the New Testament, some of those rules were no longer needed because of health improvements or because God was teaching new things and those rules became symbols. For example,  Peter is told that there is no longer any food that was unclean. Also, after Christ's death and resurrection, you no longer needed to go through the religious rituals and see your local Rabbi to sacrifice something for you because Jesus made that practice obsolete. Also, Jesus made it a point to reach out to others whose views were not the same as His own and encouraged His disciples to do the same.  In all of those cases, God was very clear about how things were to work and why these rules were no longer necessary. On the other hand, there were several things that continued to ring true in both the Old and New Testament. God still wanted us to remember where we'd come from; in the OT, they were to use stones. In the NT, we use communion and celebrate significant occasions like Christmas and Easter. Jesus tells us in both the Old and New Testament that He is the Messiah and He is coming back to set things right.
Now here is where I start to struggle. Gender roles continue to hold consistently in both testaments. Men are still supposed to be the head over women. As a woman, I want to balk against that. In a lot of ways, I want to say that it's not fair as I've known so many wise women and so many foolish men. And then of course, there's Romans 1:16-32. Paul starts off by saying that he's not ashamed of the Gospel because it's through the gospel that power from the Holy Spirit comes. The righteous live by faith. I wish that I could say that whole-heartedly but in many ways I can't. This is why I'm putting it here on my blog instead of on my Facebook page. But I have to start somewhere, right? In the list that Paul uses, he basically gets everyone. I mean, look at Romans 1:18- 23:
                      ¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and   wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Paul just lays it out. If it ended there, we could say, "Yeah, that Paul. Preach it brotha!" and shake our heads at the foolishness of others. BUT Paul keeps going just to make sure that we understand exactly what he's talking about:
²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
As a people, we want to skip verses 24 through 27 and censor it so that it's not there. We don't mind the other things, but those? How heartless and prejudice can Paul be? I was watching a movie the other day and the premise was that this woman was being nominated for "Catholic Woman of the Year" meanwhile, her son was having an affair and about to leave his wife and two children (whom he'd gotten pregnant when they were younger and married her) and a daughter who was a lesbian. She's doing everything that she can to do penance for their lifestyle and basically shuns her daughter choosing to live in denial and shames her son trying to convince him to return to his wife and kids. At one point, her daughter is getting married and she's at the ceremony. The priest who is there in secret is about to marry them and he asks the audience to pray that God will bless their "holy" union. At this point, I can sense my itchy sweater. Why? Because God is not going to bless sin; EVER. I am not just talking about same sex relationships; I'm talking about all sin. If you sleep with a person that you're not married to, God's not going to bless that. It's sin. If you lie and steal to get ahead at work, God's not going to bless that... even if it's to feed your family or whatever other excuse we come up with. Then, to make matters worse (I stopped watching at that point), today, they talked about the Pope resigning and American Catholics were asked what they hoped for as far as change in the papacy. They replied that they wanted more religious tolerance because the Church was old fashioned and not current. I really became angry at that. How can we as a people who haven't been around for very long dictate to the God of the universe; the One Who created us and made everything of beauty... how can we have the audacity to tell God that He needs to get with the times and culture? Seriously? That to me is like Joshua telling me that discipline is so over-rated and I just need to let him do whatever because I don't know anything. I think you know what my response would be... and how he would react. 
Don't think that this is about Catholics. In Protestant churches as well the same thing is happening. The Boy Scouts are thinking about renigging the policy of gay boy scout leaders, churches all over are blurring the lines of Scripture to keep current with culture and turning their heads from infidelity and sin of all types simply because of the gain that they get from it... or simply to remain "relevant" and not offend. 
Yes, God wants us to love each other. I don't believe in treating people like lepers and prosecuting them because they struggle with sin. I have many gay friends and they have no doubt that I love them; however I don't agree with their lifestyle and pray for them daily. I honestly believe that God wants to free us from sin and only He has that power. I don't believe that this makes me prejudiced. I don't believe that it makes me closed minded or even ignorant. Last time I checked, compared to God, I'm quite young... I choose to believe that maybe He knows what He's talking about regardless of whether or not I agree. God is not the One with the problem. He's the One with the solution. I think that my view can be summed up with the end of Job. Job was upset because he'd lost everything except for unsupportive friends and  a nagging wife. Towards the end, God's basically asking him, "And who do you think you are?" Job wisely says, 'No one compared to you... so I'll just shut up and listen and do whatever you say." I don't think Job liked that time in his life. I'm sure that he looked back on that thinking how unfair it was that he lost everything in such a short amount of time. But regardless, he remembered that he was a baby who knew nothing compared to God. I pray for our culture who boxes their god in their own version of truth and then tries to convince us who know the True God to do the same. I think that Paul hit the nail on the head in his prayer to the Ephesians... may we as followers of Christ live in this way:
¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Amen.