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quote: So that would be like a smoker with the flu coughing into your face or your childrens and responding with "Children won't be hurt unless you are." That's not at all similar. Using 4 letter words are illegal in some situations, but they don't expose anybody to disease. How ridiculous. The state agrees with you that if you swear in public you can be arrested. That is like disorderly conduct or creating a disturbance. A disrespect misdemeanor. But you know as well as I do that most people who use 4 letter words don't always do it to show disrespect. Those words can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, interjections, even conjunctions, like most other words. They can express hubris and other abbrasive moods, but most twi fellowships I ever attended did not include them. Does Christ in you disappear when those words are uttered? A certain twi leader once related an incident in which he was talking to a minister and he let the s word slip out. The minister went ballistic and started casting the "spirit of foul language" out of him. The leader folded his arms and waited for the minister to finish, then said, "Didn't f'ing work, did it?" Do you think that minister was controlling his tongue? How about his mind? If it's OK for that minister to get 'spiritually angry', then it's OK for anybody else to also. If it's about respect then it's about quality of life. As you say, we each make those choices for our own lives.

Two fine examples of how our minds were manipulated, IMO. "The integrity of 'the word' is always at stake!" A trusting, unquestioning mind hears that and says to itself, "Oh my, how awful! We can't have that! We must defend God's integrity! Man battle stations!!" "It's still 'the word', even if NOBODY believes it!" The same trusting, unquestioning mind hears that and says to itself, "Oh my, we can't have that! I love God sooo much, I want to believe! I'm with you, tell me more!!" Today, anytime I listen to a public speaker stand before a microphone and scream, I'm suspicious. The microphone is there to record and amplify the voice, there is no need to scream. In my memories of hearing these two statements, spoken either in person or on tape, he was always screaming, which made me feel like I must be stupid because I wasn't understanding or agreeing with him fast enough. The statements themselves, as far as they go, are fine. Except they don't go very far. They do not instruct. They are brickbats, hurled at us to further injure our critical thinking skills, hurry our slow and stupid selves along, and keep us in line.

As for Spong...? He's a dweeb, sorry, he's just not on my radar. His write includes this: Obviously there is no way to know for certain the cause of Paul's anxiety prior to that moment of final revelation in the Kingdom of Heaven. But that does not stop speculation. The value of speculation in this case comes when a theory is tested by assuming for a moment that it is correct and then reading Paul in the light of that theory. Sometimes one finds in this way the key that unlocks the hidden messages that are present in the text. Once unlocked, these messages not only cease to be hidden but they become obvious, glaring at the reader, who wonders why such obvious meanings had not been seen before. Hidden messages? Why do there have to be hidden messages that need to be unlocked? What if I were to read the epistles speculating that Paul is not gay? What hidden messages reveal themselves then and what theoretical conclusions can be made? Spong struggles with the language of the epistles and the profile he takes from them about Paul as if that Paul is unusually conflicted in such a way and to an extreme that he needs to be understood in ways that will explain them. I don't know why to be honest. I don't know what's driving Spong, it may be good it may be bad - it might just be his own internal battles and conflicts with the general state of humanity which can yield some pretty horrible results. It can also yield some very good things too. Whatever's driving him I dunno but when I read about people looking for and finding hidden messages in the bible - dunno.

[First of all, this should be in DOCTRINAL, because this is about DOCTRINE, and is clearly not "ABOUT THE WAY." So, I'll ask the mods to move this thread. Second, this person said a lot of things. I will reply in boldface and brackets, as is my style. And so I don't trip the "too many quotes" error in the software.] Was the Apostle Paul... Gay...?by Pope Reverend I, BV (no login) [No, he was not. And this was quoted from someone arrogant enough to stack titles in front of his name, and yet timid enough to "post a drive-by." (He didn't LOG IN to the forum he posted this to, thus admitting he was the same person who posted this.] What accounts for Paul's self-judging rhetoric, his negative feeling toward his own body? An Episcopal bishop mulls the issues. BY: John Shelby Spong Comments (36) Excerpted from "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" with permission of HarperSanFrancisco. [Actually, HarperSanFrancisco gave no permission for THIS POST in any form, so the original poster was deceitful in this. He was quoting someone who had permission to print the excerpt. Supposing even that is true. As for Paul's "rhetoric" being "Self-judging", we can already see a HECK of a slant in this article. If an "Episcopal bishop" can read Paul's struggles with life and imperfection on top of the external suffering he dealt with, and call it "self-judging", "rhetoric", and say the issue was Paul having issues with his body, then this "bishop" is not worthy of his office.] Nothing about Paul was moderate. He was tightly drawn, passionately emotional, filled with enormous feelings of self-negativity, seeking to deal with those feelings in the timehonored way of external controls, unflagging religious zeal, and rigid discipline. He could not, however, master the passions that consumed him. [Paul had a thirst to do what he believed to be RIGHT. He began as "a Hebrew of the Hebrews", a by-the-book example of a member of the Pharisees, and one in a family line of Pharisees, which meant he had a lot to live up to. He prepared to put these "rebels" in prison and didn't mind death to "heretics" like Stephen. When he received a personal visit from Jesus, Paul changed his mind, and after several days to adjust, became just as obsessed a Christian as he had been a Pharisee. He was educated, disciplined, passionate in his beliefs, and rueful that his own body could not be reasoned with the same way the mind is reasoned with. Others could injure him, he suffered the usual aches as age advanced. Those are perfectly understandable frustrations to any intellectual who is over 30. If he cares to think it over. To take all of that and to say he had "enormous feelings of self-negativity" or that he overcompensated against imperfection by retreating into religious extremism is to leap to amazing distances for no reason. Look- Jesus appeared to him PERSONALLY, knocked him off his horse with a beam of light, and chatted with him- when Paul didn't believe Jesus was anything but a dead man (or possibly a dead prophet or a dead insurrectionist.) Paul was fully convinced by this that Jesus was the Messiah. If this is hard to imagine, one is not trying very hard... possibly because one wants to discard the truth and push an agenda even if lies are needed to advance that agenda.] What were these passions? There is no doubt in my mind that they were sexual in nature, but what kind of sexual passions were they? [What is provided to support the bald assertion that Paul had sexual issues? Oh, it's obvious to this man's mind. Period. That's it. It's equally obvious to someone else that Jesus Christ will appear in glory holding an orange pfal book in his hand. Why should I believe EITHER of them just on their say-so? And on this only, the guy keeps going. Having ASSUMED Paul had sex problems (was this projection? Does the writer have sex problems?), he then begins to SPECULATE on top of his ASSUMPTION about the TYPE of sex problems he IMAGINES Paul had. This is hardly off to a rousing start...] Searching once again through the writings of Paul, some conclusions begin to emerge that startle and surprise the reader. Paul's passions seemed to be incapable of being relieved. Why was that? [Paul burned to see Jesus Christ return to Earth during his lifetime. How do you relieve that passion without Jesus returning bodily at that time? Paul wanted to "be present with the Lord." This is not difficult to see. Look- if a dearly loved one dies, you ache to spend time with them again. Until you do so (for those who believe there is any way to do so ever), there's no way to truly relieve that ache. Oh, you do other things and focus on other things, and possibly have other loved ones, but that doesn't RELIEVE it, it exists alongside it. It's the same reason a minority can't get past their twi days. They miss the honeymoon phase so much they can't have another "relationship" with other Christians.] Paul himself had written that if one "could not exercise self-control" that person should marry. "For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion" (1 Cor. 7:9). But we have no evidence from any source that Paul ever married. [Except, of course, that members of the Sanhedrin were expected to be married, over 30, and in good standing in the Jewish community. What we DON'T know is what happened to Paul's marital status between that point and the point where he's obviously single and remaining so.] Indeed, he exhorts widows and the unmarried to "remain single as I do" (1 Cor. 7:8). A primary purpose of sexual activity in marriage, according to Paul, was to keep Satan from tempting people "through lack of self-control" (1 Cor. 7:5). [And he's correct. People who are in a working marriage relationship channel their base passions into the "one flesh" God declared at the beginning of the Book of Genesis. By contrast, the Corinthians he addressed this to were sex maniacs who were likely to have casual sex whenever they felt like it and had time. The Corinthians were distinctly LACKING in self-control and moderation- so he urged them to both- and not because he was "obsessed" with self-control. He controlled himself just fine and had no need to obsess over it-nor did he have TIME. Why does an Episcopalian BISHOP not understand that ONE of the purposes of marriage is to channel base impulses into a beautiful union, and that God set it so, and said so all over the Bible? Has he not READ the Old Testament?] Why, when Paul seemed to be so consumed with a passion he could not control, would he not take his own advice and alleviate that passion in marriage? He did write that marriage was an acceptable, if not ideal, way of life. Still, however, marriage never seemed to loom for him as a possibility. [Again, ASSuming Paul was obsessed with sexual passions based on nothing except the man having zeal and drive, and the writer projecting those as sublimated sex urges.] Paul has been perceived as basically negative toward women. He did write that "it is well for a man not to touch a woman" (1 Cor. 7:1). [He told the CORINTHIANS that the guys shouldn't just go up and feel up women. That's "BASICALLY NEGATIVE" towards them? Ok, try it tomorrow. Walk up to a woman on the street, a total stranger, cop a feel off her, then explain how that's basically POSITIVE towards her. Then get back to us and tell us how the food tastes in jail. (I just checked with a woman offline. She would be offended by this, and I suspect she's typical in that respect.)] The passion that burned so deeply in Paul did not seem to be related to the desire for union with a woman. [Why does an Episcopalian BISHOP not understand the zeal that can overcome a person who has an encounter with God, an angel, Jesus Christ, etc.? Why did he even seek the PRIESTHOOD?] Why would that desire create such negativity in Paul, anyway? Marriage, married love, and married sexual desire were not thought to be evil or loathsome. Paul's sexual passions do not fit comfortably into this explanatory pattern. But what does? [Paul never said he had sexual passions-and he was not a young man when we even pick up his story. Surely any man who's over 40 can understand that it's possible for a man to master his lusts more effectively when he's no longer a youngster. If that man WANTS to understand.] Obviously there is no way to know for certain the cause of Paul's anxiety prior to that moment of final revelation in the Kingdom of Heaven. But that does not stop speculation. [Oh, nothing even slowed down the most WILD speculation, as we can all clearly see...] The value of speculation in this case comes when a theory is tested by assuming for a moment that it is correct and then reading Paul in the light of that theory. Sometimes one finds in this way the key that unlocks the hidden messages that are present in the text. Once unlocked, these messages not only cease to be hidden but they become obvious, glaring at the reader, who wonders why such obvious meanings had not been seen before. [Actually, looking at the evidence the speculation may be incorrect often saves a lot of time wasted on wild speculation. There's plenty of evidence this silly dissertation contradicts the Paul of the Epistles, let alone the Paul of Acts. However, he's ASSuming this is correct and then looking around to see if anything MIGHT agree with him, maybe. That has often led to some wild doctrines. twi has had a history of this, and ex-twi groups have as well. This is what led to "God wants you to have sex with the leader" and "God wants you to have an abortion" and "I saw a vision of spiders coming out of your nose."] Some have suggested that that Paul was plagued by homosexual fears. [some have suggested just about everything. Without anything more than suggestion, the whole subject of each suggestion is of no more value than speculating on whether Harry Potter would be better off marrying Ginny Weasley or Hermione Granger.] This is not a new idea, and yet until recent years, when homosexuality began to shed some of its negative connotations, it was an idea so repulsive to Christian people that it could not be breathed in official circles. [The repulsiveness of an idea is no guarantee it won't be heard. I've seen speculation that just about every man in the Bible was homosexual- speculated by people eager to try to twist the text to approve of something it calls a SIN. Except for twi, I didn't see adulterers pulling the same thing....] This is not to say that our cultural homophobia has disappeared. It is still lethal and dwells in high places in the life of the Christian church, and it is a subject about which ecclesiastical figures are deeply dishonest, saying one thing publicly and acting another way privately. The prejudice, however, is fading slowly but surely. With the softening of that homophobic stance we might consider the hypothesis that Paul may have been a gay male. [The phrasing of this makes this plainly obvious. The writer is eager to advance a pro-homosexuality agenda and will not hesitate to make up "supporting evidence" out of whole cloth, and bash any more direct reading of what the Bible says on a subject he's obsessed with promoting.] We might test that theory by assuming it for a moment as we read Paul. When I did this for the first time, I was startled to see how much of Paul was unlocked and how deeply I could understand the power of the gospel that literally saved Paul's life. When I suggest the possibility that Paul was a homosexual person, I do not mean to be salacious or titillating or even to suggest something that many would consider scandalous. I see no evidence to suggest that Paul ever acted out his sexual desires and passions. He lived in an age and among a people that cloaked the way he would have viewed this reality with layer after layer of condemnation. But for a moment assume the possibility that this theory is correct and look with me again at the writings of Paul and, more important, at the meaning of Christ, resurrection, and grace in the life of this foundational Christian. Paul felt tremendous guilt and shame, which produced in him self-loathing. The presence of homosexuality would have created this response among Jewish people in that period of history. Nothing else, in my opinion, could account for Paul's self-judging rhetoric, his negative feeling toward his own body, and his sense of being controlled by something he had no power to change. The war that went on between what he desired with his mind and what he desired with his body, his drivenness to a legalistic religion of control, his fear when that system was threatened, his attitude toward women, his refusal to seek marriage .as an outlet for his passion-nothing else accounts for this data as well as the possibility that Paul was a gay male. Paul's religious tradition would clearly regard gay males as aberrant, distorted, evil, and depraved. When discovered, gay males were quite often executed. The Law stated: "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Lev. 18:22). Do not defile yourself by these things, the Torah continued, for God will cast out those who defile themselves. God will punish, promised the Law, and the land will vomit out those who are thus defiled (Lev. 18:24ff). To do these things is to be cut off from the people of Israel (Lev. 18:29). Later in the Torah death is called for as the penalty for homosexuality. "If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death" (Lev. 20:13). Paul was a student of the Law. If homosexuality was his condition, he knew well that by that Law he stood condemned. His body was a body in which death reigned. He lived under that death sentence. What Paul knew himself to be, the people to whom he belonged and the Law to which he adhered called abominable, and Paul felt it to be beyond redemption. Is it not possible, even probable, that this was the inner source of his deep self-negativity, his inner turmoil, his self-rejection, his superhuman zeal for a perfection he could never achieve? Could this also be his thorn in the flesh, about which he wrote so plaintively? With this possibility in mind, listen once more to Paul's words: "And to help me keep from being too elated by the abundance of revelation, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I sought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' " (2 Cor. 12:7-9). On another and perhaps earlier occasion, Paul had written, "You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first; and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus" (Gal. 4:13). The word angel can also be translated messenger. Paul is the possessor of a condition that he believes to be incurable. It is a condition for which people might scorn or despise him. I have heard and read of commentators who suggested that this physical condition was some kind of chronic eye problem. This is based, I suspect, on Paul's words to the Galatians that they would have "plucked out their eyes and given them" to Paul (Gal. 4:15). But chronic eye problems do not normally bring scorn or the activity of despairing, and through the eye, which Paul called "the window of the body," life and beauty as well as death and pain enter the human experience. Paul, in these words to the Galatians, told them that he had now "become as they are," one in whom "Christ has been formed," and assured them that they "did him no wrong" (Gal. 4:12, 19). That refers to an inner healing not an external healing. Others have suggested that epilepsy was the condition from which he was not free. Epilepsy was thought of as demon possession, but it was a periodic sense of being possessed by an alien spirit, not a constant malady. Also, in the biblical narrative the epileptic elicited a sense of pity, or at times fear, but seldom did it elicit despising or loathing. Epilepsy does not appear to me to account for the intensity of the feelings that Paul expressed. The realization that he was a homosexual male does. It is a hypothesis that makes sense of the data and accounts for the tone, the fear, the passion, and the behavior. If this hypothesis is correct, it also illumines in powerful ways Paul's experience of conversion, his understanding of Jesus, his view of resurrection, and his move toward universalism. Furthermore, it provides us with a means to step into Christ as Paul did and to see the Christ experience outside the context of limited words and in the context of a universal human experience. It thus becomes for us a point of entry into a universal spirituality inaugurated by Christ that may endure into the unlimited future in a way that the narrow and brittle religious forms from our Christian past no longer seem capable of doing. [Obsession bred speculation, which bred speculation, which bred wild stories, and any evidence he might be completely off-track lies discarded on the road-side. That's disgraceful for any Episcopalian Bishop, moreso than someone like myself who claims no leadership capacity. This was disgraceful when twi leadership did it to push a "sex with me" agenda, and it is disgraceful when this sex maniac does it to push a "sex with him" agenda. I'm mildly curious what's in it for him. Paul was obsessed with Jesus because what was in it for him was Salvation and following The Truth. Why is this bishop obsessed? And how did he get to BE a bishop with such shoddy research skills?]

some people can't conceive of a sensual loving affectionate relationship without trying to rip it apart with their own musings about sex for Paul I might know a little, more of myself and attempted escapes and dealing with why, how, who and where the hell I am seems just plain honest with himself in many a set of the riddles of the mind and spirit