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 The author backs same-sex marriage because of his faith, not in spite of it.
May 19th, 2012
02:00 AM ET
My Take: The Christian case for gay marriage
By Mark Osler, Special to CNN I am a Christian, and I am in favor of gay marriage. The reason I am for gay marriage is because of my faith. What I see in the Bible’s accounts of Jesus and his followers is an insistence that we don’t have the moral authority to deny others the blessing of holy institutions like baptism, communion, and marriage. God, through the Holy Spirit, infuses those moments with life, and it is not ours to either give or deny to others. A clear instruction on this comes from Simon Peter, the “rock” on whom the church is built. Peter is a captivating figure in the Christian story. Jesus plucks him out of a fishing boat to become a disciple, and time and again he represents us all in learning at the feet of Christ. During their time together, Peter is often naïve and clueless – he is a follower, constantly learning. After Jesus is crucified, though, a different Peter emerges, one who is forceful and bold. This is the Peter we see in the Acts of the Apostles, during a fevered debate over whether or not Gentiles should be baptized. Peter was harshly criticized for even eating a meal with those who were uncircumcised; that is, those who did not follow the commands of the Old Testament. CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories Peter, though, is strong in confronting those who would deny the sacrament of baptism to the Gentiles, and argues for an acceptance of believers who do not follow the circumcision rules of Leviticus (which is also where we find a condemnation of homosexuality). His challenge is stark and stunning: Before ordering that the Gentiles be baptized Peter asks “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” None of us, Peter says, has the moral authority to deny baptism to those who seek it, even if they do not follow the ancient laws. It is the flooding love of the Holy Spirit, which fell over that entire crowd, sinners and saints alike, that directs otherwise. My Take: Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality It is not our place, it seems, to sort out who should be denied a bond with God and the Holy Spirit of the kind that we find through baptism, communion, and marriage. The water will flow where it will. Intriguingly, this rule will apply whether we see homosexuality as a sin or not. The water is for all of us. We see the same thing at the Last Supper, as Jesus gives the bread and wine to all who are there—even to Peter, who Jesus said would deny him, and to Judas, who would betray him. The question before us now is not whether homosexuality is a sin, but whether being gay should be a bar to baptism or communion or marriage. Your Take: Rethinking the Bible on homosexuality The answer is in the Bible. Peter and Jesus offer a strikingly inclusive form of love and engagement. They hold out the symbols of Gods’ love to all. How arrogant that we think it is ours to parse out stingily! I worship at St. Stephens, an Episcopal church in Edina, Minnesota. There is a river that flows around the back and side of that church with a delightful name: Minnehaha Creek. That is where we do baptisms. The Rector stands in the creek in his robes, the cool water coursing by his feet, and takes an infant into his arms and baptizes her with that same cool water. The congregation sits on the grassy bank and watches, a gentle army. Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter At the bottom of the creek, in exactly that spot, is a floor of smooth pebbles. The water rushing by has rubbed off the rough edges, bit by bit, day by day. The pebbles have been transformed by that water into something new. I suppose that, as Peter put it, someone could try to withhold the waters of baptism there. They could try to stop the river, to keep the water from some of the stones, like a child in the gutter building a barrier against the stream. It won’t last, though. I would say this to those who would withhold the water of baptism, the joy of worship, or the bonds of marriage: You are less strong than the water, which will flow around you, find its path, and gently erode each wall you try to erect. The redeeming power of that creek, and of the Holy Spirit, is relentless, making us all into something better and new. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mark Osler. soundoff (15,115 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 Next » |
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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Editor's Note: 
Christians love to rewrite their dogma. It's much easier than facing the fact that you've wasted so much of your life believing in complete bullspit.
I would just like to thank NAACP leaders for doing the right thing this weekend. They are supposed to officially announce their support of gay marriage tomorrow, Monday. It really does mean a lot when groups such as NAACP voice their support for civil rights for the LGBT minority. THANK YOU ! ! !
Is that the truth or just the bible in you talkin'?
We have to support the fight for civil rights,even if we're against two men marrying.I don't like it but I won't be doing it so I don't have the right to deny rights for being different
@BamaDaniel
You just manned-up! Good for you! You are doing the right thing and you know it to be true.
Episcopalians have always been more liberal. Try and tell this to a bunch of Catholics or Protestants and you might be physically beaten, and at very least verbally assaulted, by those so-called followers of Jesus.
Catholic priest love gay males long time
This jesus thing is way overrated.
@ booty Dino in bible,it was a parrot that threw it's voice in the jungle tricked everybody still laughing that tricky toucan.just say no to drugs,kush will make you laugh at somebody dieing. I think all men should be with a woman.I don't understand somethings and don't want to,because I'm a man and happy being man stupid, that's why I have a woman they're pretty and smart.but as an adult(sober got the boys) it's none of my business and it's your civil right.handle not stolen.
your words have no value and less sense.
John 1:41-42: He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).
(**NOTE – The above scripture totally negates the protestant argument that Jesus called Peter "petros" or "petras", which is Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic, which means that he called Peter "Cephas", which means "Rock" in Aramaic.)
How incredibly interesting!
There is only one Rock if you understand that you are to place God first, always.
Jesus was telling us to build our church on God so we can't be washed away when the flood comes. The dragon uses a flood (many words) to go after God's people. If your foundation is built on His Word, you won't be swept aay.
It's all about who you place first.
word for the day Jonny boy – relevance.
adjective
bearing upon or connected with the matter in hand; pertinent:
as in, your comment has absolutely no relevance to the article.
You have to love two crazy nuts not agreeing on what the bible says!
Voice of reason – a billion Catholics believe that Peter is the rock, because their church tells them that is so. Yet, Jesus tells us we are to be taught by God. He didn't say "man". It all comes down to wanting to know the Truth. If a person wants to know the Truth, go to the source instead of listening to others. As to Peter's name maning "rock", of course it does. The RCC had to be built, it's referenced in Revelation. So, they used that line to claim their authority to be the first church. However, when you place God first, as one should, you would realize there can be only ONE rock and figure out what Jesus meant.
Peter is NOT the Rock.
The Old Testament reveals that God is the Rock.
If the author can't even get that right, you can't trust anything this author claims. Another false preacher being peddled to the masses.
"Build your church on GOD".
Do you know what a rock is?
Copyright to the name "The Rock" has been issued to Dwayne Douglas Johnson.
Therefore god must be Dwayne! Hooray!
Doesn't the bible say something about presuming to know what God thinks? Isn't you insistence on your version being the correct one violating the word of God?
LOL LinCA. Spit out my food laughing on that one, nice.
Mark – He says that He does not think like us. Hint – as Jesus said, we are to overcome the earth in order to get it. Sell everything. The willingness to let all you hold dear go.... knowledge wise because it was learned on earth....in order to "hear". We have to shift our spirit.
you'd have to be smoking rock to believe anything in the pages of the so-called holy bible.
@ voice
Dwayne is much more sexier than Jesus. I don't like hairy men. 🙂
Christians should care what the Bible says regarding homosexuality about as much as they care about how it commands parents to stone their disobedient children to death.
Stones = words
Words = stones and stones won't break my bones, proven.
What a crock, Truth7. Stoning has existed as a punishment for thousands of years. Stop lying to protect your pretend god.
Actually, as you all probably know, stoning still exists to this day.
tallulah – and that's because men with evil hearts do not have the Spirit of God to guide them in what He is really saying. What do you think Jesus was trying to convey? That people were not "hearing" God. They weren't hearing the REAL meaning.
Did God kill Cain after he kil.led his brother? NO. He cutoff him off and banished him.
That's a huge clue that many are missing the true meanings. If God Hmself didn't k.ill Cain, why would anyone think He would advocate killing someone with stones????
The Hebrew words used in Deuteronomy 21:21 is translated "death by stoning" or "pual". It means rocks, not words. Stop trying to protect your god and your book of hate with lies.
בָאֲבָנִים = pual = death by stoning
כא וּרְגָמֻהוּ כָּל-אַנְשֵׁי עִירוֹ בָאֲבָנִים, וָמֵת, וּבִעַרְתָּ הָרָע, מִקִּרְבֶּךָ וְכָל-יִשְׂרָאֵל, יִשְׁמְעוּ וְיִרָאוּ. = And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die; so shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
I know you have to actually read the text to find the Hebrew word in there, and you're probably not used to reading the bible, especially in the original language, but it's there in black and white.
Are there a bunch of you strapped to wheelchairs? Don't get me wrong, that would be very unfortunate, just curious.
Why do you ask? People in wheelchairs aren't on your hate list too, are they?
you guys are funny
Christians think Sharia Law is immoral but impose their own Sharia Law in America.
No matter what version, it's immoral to impose your religious superstition and deny others civil rights.
agreed i don't see how they can justify it
Jesus tried to bone me but he couldn't get it up.
Then the Romans came for him and all his buddies ran away like scared rats.
Then Jesus got nailed up and shanked in the gut and died.
Then stray dogs ate his carcass.
Then the scared rat buddies made up a bunch of lies about Jesus flying up into the sky cause they were ashamed to admit they were scared rats.
Everybody laughed at their stupid stories and spit at them.
Then some bloodthirsty maniac Roman emperors made everybody say they believed the stupid stories, or else they'd get their heads chopped off.
The people were forced to hear the stupid stories for so many centuries, and anybody who spoke up and said "that's ridiculous" got their head hacked off, that finally the people didn't know any better, and thought they were real.
The end.
an example of free speech – say that about Mohhamad and lets see your head get wacked off – THERE ARE VIDEO
PROOFS of that, ask that journalist – Islamic free speech
I can get it up for you ,but you're to darn old and wrinkly,and they say old women give you worms,got.any Prost i tuting great great great great great great great great x 10 granddaughters
My only son was gay. I've learned to live with it.
all you have to do is love him
If you've ever been persuaded to change your opinion on a "belief" issue as a result of a CNN forum, please click on "Like"... bet there aren't any or many clicks!!
The lack of a 'like' button may have something to do with the lacks of clicks on a 'like' button.
Tell me if I'm going too fast for you ...
Having a "like" button would reveal that Americans don't agree with the lies and pr.opag.anda. Can't have that now.
hahahahah @ johnfrichardson
if I want to brutally bang a rectum until it tears your intestinal lining with a Jesus figurine I should be able to do that.
I wrote a positve comment and your not going to post it
OK OK
lies! you've never written anything positive.
these guys will POST phok christians bot they wont post Phuk Nuslims
@us
You said, "I wrote a positve comment and your not going to post it"
CNN uses automated censoring that looks for words, or fragments of words, that are considered offensive. Your post must have had a forbidden word in it.
Repeat posts, even those that were previously censored and not displayed, will show a message stating that you posted it before.
The following words or word fragments will get your post censored (list is incomplete):
arse
bastard
bitch
cock
coon
cum
cunt
douche
effing
fag
ftw
fuck
homo
horny
jackass
jap
jism
kinky
kooch
nipple
orgy
pis
porn
poo
prick
rape
sex
shit
slut
snatch
spic
tit
twat
vag
whore
wtf
To circumvent the filters you can break up the words by putting an extra character in, like: consti.tution (breaking the oh so naughty "tit").
LinCA. . . how were you able to get all of those words through the filter ! ! ! LMAO
@DeeCee1000
I'm in cahoots with the dark lord. I have special privileges. To know the secret, you have to view the source. Bwa ha ha ha
omg LinCA, I'm almost afraid to ask. But of course you realize how crazy and totally hilarious it looks when you are able to post up an entire list of words that are supposedly banned by the filters? You're so funny ! ! !
@DeeCee1000
But really, to know the secret, you have to view the source (right-click this web page, select "view source", or something similar).
I love being able to say FUCKING ASSHOLE BIGOTS and it gets posted.
Love the "INNER CIRCLE".
Here's an opinion: PHUKK OFF CHRISTIANS!
You forgot a K
Christians forgive – Muslims murder
Tell it to my great great grandmother
I've never seen an article stay up so long during such a key time. AGENDA
yeah, the christian agenda sux, doesn't it?
Phukkin' Christians.
yeah, mikey, equal rights always bother bigots. wrapped up in a bible or not, it is still bigotry.
Prayer changes things...
A ho-mo-se-xual can find salvation in prayer.A ho-mo-se-xual can find freedom from its sin and deviation by praying. Prayer can change a ho-mo, prayer changes things. God bless
Religion is not healthy for children and other living things.
as proved by history.
A ho-mo-se-xual can find salvation in prayer.A ho-mo-se-xual can find freedom from its sin and deviation by praying. Prayer can change a ho-mo, prayer changes things. God bless !
@booty...
nope
prayer = waste of time
meditation is better for you. so is mas.turbation.
Qu-eers and atheist types always resort to vulgarity when confronted by Truth.
you're hatred is vulgar.
When I think of some of these BIGOT ASSHOLE Christians with their repetitive postings of garbage, it makes me think of those old record players with the bent-out-of-shape LPs that skip like a hiccup. OVER AND OVER AND OVER
***YAWNNNNNNNNNN***
Jesus used to turn hot man loads into sticky poo frostys
"Gay marriage" is more often used to be disparaging, as "gay" is widely used these days as a general pejorative. If writing from a neutral stance on the subject, the preferred form is "marriage equality". If writing from a position in support, the appropriate form is "marriage equality". Your editor really ought to have caught this, but I can understand how the confusion may have emerged if your primary venue for discussing this issue is among other Christians. Please be more thoughtful with your phrasing in the future.
hopefully we get to a point where "g.ay" doesn't have any sort of negative connotation on it.
The word gay had no evil until it was stolen by ho mo se xuals to mask their dirty disgusting lifestyle. Qu-eers the folks that gave the world AIDS, lets be sure not to hurt their little feelings.
PervertAlert,
that sounds like a very appropriate name for you.
did it hurt to have your frontal lobe removed?
So are you a qu-eer ?
why, you hitting on me?
perv alert is a deeply closeted gay individual. It's obvious.
@ pervert alert
Thanks for the warning, by the way.
Also, you brought up the AIDS thing in another thread. You have your facts wrong about how AIDS and HIV came to be. I gave you some actual data regarding the origins of HIV and AIDS, but you never came responded.
HIV started in primates in Africa. The virus mutated and crossed over to humans via the eating of infected chimpanzee meat, which is commonly done in some parts of Africa. Human blood samples containing HIV virus have been identified as early as 1959. It's been proved that a hetero couple died of AIDS as early as 1969, much earlier than the outbreak among g ay men in the 1980s.
This is based on scientific, verifiable, peer-reviewed data from the CDC, the WHO and other medical organizations.
@Dani3l
Actually, "gay" isn't an insult to people who are actually gay. That is why they have "gay" pride parades and such. When they come out of the closet, they're likely to say "I'm gay".
Secondly, whether or not you think it is pejorative, this article is aimed at people who call it "gay marriage". This isn't an article aimed at people who already accept gay marriage. So it makes sense to use the term of the audience to which you are speaking.
Dani, it looks as it you've been living under a rock for a while. . .I, along with most gay men and women are proud to be ourselves and proud to be "Gay". Sure, a bigot would probably use the word in his or her vocabulary in a negative way. . .but calling a gay person "gay" is like calling a Black person Black. Only a bigot would pervert the meaning of the name.
marriage is a legal device, not a religious one.
get married in a church with church approval but without a gov't issued marriage license = not legally married
get married in a courthouse without church approval but with a gov't issued marriage license = legally married
you can add religious or non-religious ritual and ceremony to a marriage, but it's not necessary. marriage is a legally binding contract between two people that g.ays should also be allowed to enjoy.
Booty what up.even cavemen got married come here bia before I club you to death
Yes. I'm a Christian and I don't see how a government sanctioned marriage means anything to me.
BamaDaniel, how's it going?
looks like we agree that g.ays should be able to get married. even g.ay cavemen.
"Yes. I'm a Christian and I don't see how a government sanctioned marriage means anything to me."
are you married, Doobie?
Yep .it's about civil right not personal beliefs.I'm still going to raise my boys that's it's all about girls girls girls.tradition hard to break and marriage isn't a Christian tradition.
Self pleasure of the turd cutter with a cross is a right!
and you gonna raise your girls to be about dudes dudes dudes? lol.
Just two boys
whatcha gonna do if one of your boys comes home with a boyfriend?
Do the same thing my daddy did when my big sister went to his house with her girlfriend.tell him you still my son no matter who you with .
is this the same BamaDaniel? someone steal your handle? i'm a little confused.