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Originally Posted by Gilda
Nonsense. Not all sins are equal to one another merely because they are sins. If someone consistently eats more than they need to (gluttony), I'm going to neither dislike nor judge them for that. Why? Because it doesn't harm me or any other person, and the degree to which that behavior is a sin or not and how that sin is to be resolved is a matter strictly between that person and God. God judges and forgives sins. It isn't my place to do the first, and I have no power to do the second.
We dislike and judge murders and thieves because they inflict harm on others, that is, we react to them because of the effect of their actions on others, not because those actions are sins. We all sin a dozen, two dozen times a day. I sin every time I open up Tilted Exhibition, especially threads with colors in the title. I sin every time I go to the KFC buffet. I don't believe what I do with my wife sexually is a sin, but if it is, the degree to which that harms my soul and whether or not I need to be punished for that sin is strictly God's place to decide, not anybody else's.
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The trend to not judge things that people do in their private life is exceedingly recent. Particularly for religious purposes, the private life has been judged just as harshly as the public life. Masturbation, homosexuality, dietary requirements, impure thoughts, disbelief in god or belief in the wrong god, lust and envy, to name a few. Fair or universal enforcement aside, it is neither uncommon nor unprecedented for people to be judged on the basis of things that would seem to have no direct effect on others, often fairly harshly, largely because of the belief that such conduct would would corrupt the society because of its impurity.
That's not to say it's right or it's in line with modern theological ideas or modern societal norms, but it certainly is not a bizarre outlandish concept of sins and how religions/societies have treated/judged sin. It is a product of liberal democratic thought that people are individuals and as long as what they do doesn't directly harm another, they should be allowed to do it. Most of human history and most of human society does not follow that pattern, nor necessarily value it.
Again, I'm not saying it is right, but to simply dismiss that explanation of why homosexuality has gained the status it has in some schools of religious thought, Christian and otherwise, doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The private is something that a minority of people in a minority of countries value as being supremely important. The United States is having a severe clash between those who think the private needs to be protected and those who believe that the private needs to be controlled.
I agree with you; I think the private life is exactly that, private, and that our society has evolved to a point where we don't need to worry about corruptions of society through individual actions or impure thoughts. It is apparent that others do not feel that way and responding to that belief simply by saying "what I do is my business and doesn't hurt you" has failed for as long as they've been slinging it.
Right or wrong, some people believe that homosexuality does harm others. Some others believe it doesn't. There is not common ground because, by definition , the paradigms are on opposite sides of the spectrum. If it does harm others, it shouldn't be allowed. If it doesn't, it should. I know how I believe, but I don't have an argument that could convince someone who believes otherwise that they're wrong.