Homosexuality and American Culture

Many Christians try to fight the accepance of homosexuality in America culture by fighting things such as gay marriage. To me, the acceptance of homosexuality merely reflects people's attitudes, and instead of trying to stop them from accepting institutional changes, we should instead try to change attitudes through better evangelization. But more and more people with favorable attitudes towards homosexuality have pushed for institutional changes that have demonized the opposition to homosexuality. The rhetoric has changed to the extent that disagreement with homosexuality is now formally called "discrimination" by many organizations and institutions. We are still free to disagree and to voice our opinion, but many have called our disagreement hate speech. In Canada, it's already against the law to proclaim what the Bible says: that homosexuality is wrong. The way things are going in America, I wouldn't be surprised if our nation makes similar changes in the next few decades.

This got me to thinking, what would I personally do if America made it illegal to say homosexuality is wrong. There seem to be 3 options:

1. Move to another country

2. Stay in America, publicly say homosexuality is wrong, and risk going to jail.

3. Stay in America, and say nothing.

Would this be the time to stand up for the truth and go to jail? It is true that homosexuality is wrong, so to avoid saying what is true would be an offense to the truth. But obviously we don't always go around saying what is true. Just because someone is fat doesn't mean I'm going to walk up to them and say, "Hey, you're fat!" First of all, it's visibly true, and also there is no good reason to point it out. But as for homosexuality, it's not visibly true. Many people believe homosexuality is not wrong, so there is a need to witness to the truth. It is also a truth that needs to be witnessed to.

 If we move to another country, it's almost as if we are giving up on this country, and not staying to witness to the people in this country who need our witness.

But if we stay and don't say anything, then we've taken the easy way out. We haven't witnessed to truth, because the cost was too great. We didn't want to go to jail, so we didn't witness to the Truth. Doesn't remind me of the great Christian men and women who went before us who were imprisioned and martyred for their unwavering defense of the faith.

So we're gonna stay, and we're gonna say something, but should we intentionally go out of our way to proclaim the truth, or should we only say it when it is absolutely necessary? Should we publicly say homosexuality is wrong and invite the authorities to come take us to jail, or should we wait until the issue absolutely needs to be addressed. To be honest, I don't know how to act as a Christian in a country with religious persecution. I guess we would just do what the Church does in other persecuted countries, take part of the Church underground. But would we just take the one belief that homosexuality is wrong underground? To me that seems like a weak position and a bad witness.

I guess what it comes down to is, should Christians in persecuting countries hide and preach the gospel from the underground, or should they boldly proclaim the faith and be ready to accept the consequences?

I'm at a loss and don't have my mind made up yet. What do you think?

Buddhists, desire, and suffering

I came to the realization today that Buddhists are mostly right about desire and suffering, and probably have a deeper understanding about the topic than most Christians. Buddhism says that desire leads to suffering, and therefore we should seek to not desire. They almost have it right. Not quite, but they understand a great deal that Christians don’t seem to understand about desire and suffering.

Every desiring is a desiring to be content. If we are hungry, or thirsty, or bored, or in pain, or whatever, we are seeking to enter a state of being that is perfect, where things are just as we want them to be. Sound familiar? This is Heaven, and this is a desiring that ultimately only God can satisfy. This is a good desiring, but this desire can only be satisfied in Heaven. So while we are on earth, this desiring leads to suffering. I desire to be one with God completely, and yet I am separated from Him and have not achieved sanctification yet, so my desire can’t be satisfied, and I suffer! So we share in the suffering of Christ. We wait patiently, we offer up our suffering, and have hope for the day when all desire will be fulfilled and all suffering will end when we meet God face to face in Heaven.

There seems to be 2 kinds of desire, desire for worldly things and desire for God. But in a sense, it is all the same desire because all desire is desire for ultimate contentment. No one desires to have contentment and then have it end! The only reason why the contentment of food, sex, comfort, etc ends is because we are on earth. But many people seem to confuse the two kinds of desire. They treat desire for worldly things as if it were as important as desire for God. Of course they would acknowledge that God is way more important, but in a sense they seem to be trying to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth by fulfilling all desire on earth through their luxury. They avoid suffering at all costs, and by doing this in essence implicitly treat the fulfillment of worldly desire as if it were ultimate fulfillment. Instead of doing this, we should take up our cross and follow him. Not that avoiding suffering on earth is bad, but some people try to build up their lives in such a way that they never have to suffer. We are here on earth to suffer! (A Kempis) We are here on earth to realize our emptiness, to realize how crude and incompetent this world is, and to turn to Christ completely! To not seek ultimate satisfaction in worldly things, but to embrace the suffering that is brought about by loving God and loving neighbor. We are to wait patiently for the true kingdom of Heaven, which will only happen when we meet God face to face.

It’s not wrong to seek some contentment on this earth. But we must keep in mind that this contentment will not last, and we should treat it as such. It’s not wrong to eat food and satisfy our appetite, but it’s wrong to gorge ourselves with food and make ourselves obese. Even though we might not explicitly say it, such an lifestyle implicitly demonstrates that we were trying to find ultimate satisfaction in food. This search for contentment must never come between our love for God and neighbor. We must never seek contentment at the expense of neglecting to love our neighbor who dies from poverty. We must never seek such a volume of contentment that we neglect to pray, read the Bible, and go to Mass. As we progress in life, we should strive to find less and less contentment in the world, and more and more contentment in our hope in the Kingdom of Heaven.

 It’s only natural to seek ultimate contentment in the world, because the world is something tangible that can give us contentment. But after being on earth for a long enough time, we should realize that the world and all it has to offer is not good enough. It will never satisfy us, and to keep seeking satisfaction within it will only retard our spiritual growth and true satisfaction in God and in the hope of Heaven. As we grow in our faith, we should neglect the world and all of it’s temporary satisfactions, so that we can pay more and more attention to the eternal satisfaction offered to us by God in Heaven.

In Conclusion, one of the foundations of Buddhism is a very important insight into human nature, one that many Christians don’t seem to understand. Because the Buddhists didn’t know God, they saw all desire as leading to suffering, and the solution was to stop desiring and therefore to stop suffering. As Christians who know God, we realize that the only thing that will stop suffering is God. Once we reach Heaven, all desire will be fulfilled and we will never desire again. Either way, both sides recognize that our desires on earth will never be satisfied. Buddhists have a concrete foundation of the religion in order to combat this fact, but many Christians don’t seem to realize this, and want to have it both ways. They want to satisfy their earthly desires and have God too. But we can’t begin to really seek God until we leave behind our earthly desires, and go after God 100%. We can’t serve 2 masters, we can’t find contentment in God until we stop trying to find ultimate contentment in the world.

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