The GirlAlive Blog

I'm about to make a bunch of enemies among my friends and family.  But I don't care.  I just heard about the changes of the laws in California allowing gays to marry, and I'm happy about it.

I'm a Christian.  I believe in the Bible.  I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died for our sins.  Do I believe that homosexuality is wrong?  Who cares?  Some of the nicest, coolest people I've known in this world are gay.   And I believe that God loves them as much as He loves me.  The Bible tells me to love my neighbor as myself, and a lot of my neighbors are gay.  So I love them as much as I love any of my straight friends.

A lot of my Christian friends and family strongly believe that gays are part of some grand conspiracy to undermine Christianity.  I've known too many gay people to believe that.  My friends are not part of a political agenda.  They are real people with problems and pain and joy and happiness like anyone else.  

But that's not the main reason that I'm happy about the changes in California law.  The main reason is that I'm a strong supporter of the US Constitution.  The first line of the first amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."  Why do people want gay marriage to be illegal?  Because "traditionally" marriage is a man and a woman.  Where did this tradition come from?  Judaism, Christianity, and later adopted into Islam.  Western society has believed that homosexuality is wrong for as long as it has been dominated by Christianity. 

American society is no longer just Christian European white people.  As the world becomes smaller and cultures interact, we must accept that religion-tied traditions are not the necessarily the norm of everyone in America.  Imagine that you are a devout Buddhist from a hypothetical Pacific island.  In Buddhist teachings, being faithful to your partner (regardless of sex) is a virtue, and you hope to follow the established rituals of your new country and get married.  But you find out that because you want to marry someone of the same sex, this is illegal.  If you asked around to find out why, it would always be because of Christianity.  But didn't the constitution say that there is no state religion in America?  Why is this hypothetical Buddhist being forced to remain single? 

By prohibiting gay marriage at the governmental level, we are forcing a single religious belief on all people, regardless of their personal religious beliefs.  And that is not a very American thing to do.

Back in the 1500's the Bible was first being printed in "normal" languages instead of just in Latin.  Normal Christians could start to read it and determine for themselves what was right.  A group of them decided that it was more Biblical to baptise adults rather than infants.  So they baptised each other as adults, and the Catholic church hunted them down and killed them because Catholicism was the official state religion, and they broke the religious rules.  Christians today do the same thing when they try to mandate Christian moral law into American statutory law. 

If a church or a minister wants to refuse to marry gays, I don't have a problem with that at all.  Churches are there to interpret scripture.  That is not the purpose of the US government.   

My own pastor wouldn't perform my wedding because I was marrying a non-Christian.  I don't have a problem with that pastor's decision.  He was only following his personal moral beliefs, and I hold no grudge against him for it.  But if the state of Minnesota had refused me a marriage license because I was marrying a non-Christian, I would have been just as hurt and annoyed as my gay friends who are just trying to live their lives like everyone else.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 06:40 PM | Permalink

I forgot to mention that there is a blog that I've been reading every day, and it is amazing.  It is http://thebeautifulfeet.blogspot.com/.

This blog is written by Juli Christiansen, who is a member of my parents' church in Duluth, and I knew her back in college, back when she was just dating Dave.  Now they are married and they have a whole mess of kids.  Along with the ones Juli gave birth to, they adopted a little girl named Elisha, who is from Sierra Leone.  Now Juli and the kids are living in Sierra Leone while they fight through the government red tape to be able to adopt Elisha's brother Joseph.  It's fascinating and funny and touching.  Read it from the beginning, and keep reading.  She posts nearly every day.

Alana 

Posted by Alana at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know how many times you've heard this, but I've heard this far too many times:

"Follow which ever one you wish, just don't push anyone into believing as you do."

The problem of this statement isn't the statement itself, but what inevitably follows, which is some story about how some Christian was telling them how they should be a Christian. Why is this a problem? Because it shows a very basic lack of understanding of Christianity.

As a Christian, my belief system has two parts that these people find offensive. First of all, there is a belief in absolute truth. What is true is true. What is false is false. There is no such thing as "true for you but not for me". Something is either true or it isn't. So telling a Christian to treat your lack of belief as truth, or your beliefs that conflict with Christianity as truth is telling that Christian to stop practicing their religion. You are not going to get a Christian to say, "That's fine for you and I'm sure that you'll find your way to heaven." That is against our religion. And a non-Christian expecting me to follow that line of thinking is really just trying to force their lack of religion on me. Forcing their belief system on the Christians.

The other complaint that non-Christians always level against Christians is that they're trying to "convert" everyone. In most cases that I've seen where that charge is leveled against a Christian, what they really mean is that the Christian stands up for what they believe and won't just agree with their lack of conviction. In cases where the Christian really is evangelizing, they are doing it because that is part of our religion. The Bible tells us to tell the world about the truth of Jesus. So telling a Christian not to try to tell anyone else what they believe is really just telling them to stop being a Christian. It's the same as saying, "Go ahead and practice Islam, but just don't do any praying to Allah," or "You're free to practice Buddhism, as long as you don't meditate."

No one can ever "force" someone into believing anything. No Christian on earth has ever made someone else become a Christian. It's impossible. Christianity is a belief system, and a spiritual state. No person can cause spiritual change or belief in another person. So accusations of "forcing" a religion on someone else are always just a situation where a non-Christian is trying to make a Christian stop practicing their religion. And the really funny part is that the non-Christians never notice their own hypocracy. Whenever they tell a Christian to stop "pushing people into believing as they do", they themselves are trying to push the Christians into believing as they do. They are guilty of the very thing they accuse the Christians of.

And by the way, you can believe whatever you want. But believing whatever you want won't get you into heaven. Only Jesus can do that. I know that it is true, not because I'm better than you or because I'm smarter than you or any crap like that. I know that Jesus is the true way to heaven the same way that I know that I love my family. It's not something I can explain. It just is. I know that for a non-Christian it isn't like that. It isn't that simple. And I can't make it that simple for you. I just wish you could see Christianity from our side sometime. We aren't trying to hurt you or force you into something bad. We just want to give you the chance to have the peace and understanding that we've experienced. I love God, and I wish you could see Him the way I do because I'm sure you'd love Him too.

Alana

www.girlalive.com 

Posted by Alana at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)