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Originally Posted by Teuthida
Thanks for the response. Makes sense. Although the whole notion of the Holy Spirit guiding so much seems to remove free will to an certain extent. I actually don't know the Church's stance on that. Free will? Yea or nay?
If the old testament rules are mostly void, then why follow so many of them? The whole anti-homosexual thing is from that portion correct?
Quick wikipedia search led me to:
So yeah, what's the deal with being anti-gay?
Sorry I'm asking questions quicker than you can answer. I do find this stuff fascinating though.
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The Holy Spirit does offer a lot of guidance, but it's up to us whether we listen or not.
The church teaches that free will is necessary and essential. For instance, God desires that we love him. How can love be love however if it is not freely given? If love is not freely given, then it becomes obligation and loses all its meaning. In order to truly love God, we must be free to choose whether to do so or not.
First of all, the church is not anti-gay. I aware that this seems unusual to people considering the recent reaction to the Pope's statements on homosexuality, but the church is not anti-gay and futhermore
has never been anti-gay.
The church has always been accepting of gay people. The issue is homosexual acts are sinful. In other words, having attraction to someone of the same sex is part of who you are and cannot be controlled. We are all tempted to sin. This manifests itself differently for all of us. However, to give into that temptation and engage in homosexual acts, that is where the trouble lies.
As far as what the bible says about this, no, the condemnation of homosexual acts is not confined to the old testament. The new testament makes several references as well. I will give two examples:
This quote comes from Jesus directly:
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”. Matthew 19:4
Secondly, from Paul's letter to the Romans:
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.. Romans 1:26-27
There are many other areas where marriage is discused and homosexual acts are regarded as sinful, but I will limit it to these two.
As far as the laws of the bible, there are multiple types. The ceremonial law is the law that was fulfilled by Jesus. These laws mostly concerned ritual cleanliness and the like. (E.g. Don't eat pork, don't touch a woman who is menstrating, etc.). The natural law however remains. It is called the the natural law because it is naturally available to all without the revalation of God. An example of the natural law would include don't murder people. The condemnation of homosexual acts is considered a part of the natural law.