(23-10-2014, 06:44 PM)Samantha Rogers Wrote: Someone I have not particularly liked in the past posted this on another website. I guess I need to think about her again, and in a new light..
Its worth your time.
http://www.annelawrence.com/sermon.html
One thing that this crazy journey of mine has made me revert to is to examine my religious beliefs or deficiencies therein. What follows is strictly my own view; I apologize in advance if I offend any one's sensibilities.
By way of background, my paternal grandfather was an Anglican bishop, and my maternal grandfather was a convinced Unitarian although philosophical about my mother becoming an Anglican. Personally I have always had difficulty with the concept of the Trinity, particularly as it was controversially codified by members of the early Christian church centuries after the death of Jesus. Thus I see it as an artificial, human generated construct, and unconvincing to me. More recently I have been reflecting that the personification of God as found in conventional mainstream flavors of Christian orthodoxy makes them all human constructs of dubious validity.
The 'sermon' above largely suffers from just this same personification problem, although the construct is rightly more inclusive, and the author does acknowledge the, to me, much more acceptable views of Nietzsche and the ancient Hebrews,
I was brought up in the 'odor of sanctity', with the first house I remember living in being a twelth century bishop's palace, in which for a short while I was babysat and told stories by C.S.Lewis himself, and I later went to a school which took its music and particularly its religious music and its presentation very seriously indeed (I was thrown out of the school choir for 'untidy praying'). I did come to wonder whether, with all the ceremony and music, however much one enjoyed it, God did somehow get pushed to one side.
I think that my paternal grandfather was to some extent aware of this problem, but then on the other hand he clearly got a great deal of pleasure for example out of his enthronement at Hereford, in the same chair in which allegedly King Stephen was crowned in 1135, and holding an illuminated medieval bible. I myself get great pleasure and fascination out of owning a 1615 'breeches' bible although it is in very poor condition.
I'm sorry, I've wandered way off topic, but what it comes down to is that I can't give much intellectual weight to any human constructed dicta relating to people's innate sexual or gender orientation. We're much better sticking to 'I am what I am' and respecting our fellow humans.
