A reader writes:
Your reader’s “Dissent of the Day” quoting Vaughan Roberts is maddening. It’s also horrible theology. Basically, the idea seems to be that “a seemingly intractable attraction to the same sex” is a natural disaster, to be ranked with “blindness, depression, alcoholism, [or] a difficult marriage,” but by “learning, no doubt through many difficult times, to look to Christ for the ultimate fulfillment of their relational longings,” they can turn their socially- and religiously-imposed emotional and existential suffering into spiritual bliss.
Very nice. Perhaps we should apply that same formula to heterosexuals. Who needs another human being when there’s God?
In fact, it’s pretty obvious that any relationship OTHER than one’s relationship with God is inferior, a distraction from our one and only necessary relationship. Right? This is nothing more than the same old homophobia dressed up in seemingly sweet words – but strip the “sweetness” away with a modicum of logic, and you again have a God who hates fags, and demands the sacrifice of personal integrity and emotional wholeness to earn His “love”: “God never asks us to give anything up, without giving us something better in return: himself.” So, God works through “deals”? You give up this, and I’ll go steady with you? This is “unconditional” love?
What a twisted theology. And then your reader tops it with the usual sauce of evangelical arrogance: “Of course, anybody who doesn’t experience life in this way doesn’t need moralizing, but rather a deep knowledge of the love of Christ.” In other words, if you disagree with my position, it merely shows you don’t have a “deep knowledge of the love of Christ.” Well, OK. I guess that settles that. End of discussion. Of course, there was never a “discussion” in the first place, was there? There never is: it’s all settled from the get-go.
I feel sorry for Vaughan Roberts. I feel sorry for your reader. But I don’t feel sorry for calling their theology ignorant and twisted, the root of social bias, inequality, self-hatred, and ultimately, always, violence.
The Dish 