Let’s talk about my private parts

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So the Anglican Church has reached an applauded compromise: Gay stuff is indeed anti-biblical.

Unless the church building and diocese resides in a society that says gay must be okay.  Then it’s okay to be gay as well.  Whereas, if the church resides in a society that says gay is not okay, then being gay is also not okay.  Which – unless I am missing something – says less about the bible – isn’t even about societal norms – but is more about keeping the institution, power and wealth of church intact.

Got to tell you – I am so happy that this illustration of “correct bible teaching” is so clearly exposed.  Because I advocate not reading the bible at all.  Not, if like me, you have come to see the bible as teaching just one thing: love.  Teaching that love is love and nothing in those four letters needs anything added or taken away – nothing in those four letters needs interpretation or teaching – nothing in those four letters is “correct” or “incorrect” – it can’t be or it is not love.

As a baby I knew love (and the absence of love).  As a child I knew love (and the absence of love).  As a teenager I learned the difference between the “words of love” (and love).  As an adult I learned that love is love and that I had been taught a pile of bullshit by society and church when it came to love: the gooey pop-song valentines-day-commerce that we must be “perfect together” – and (hi church) that we can never love unconditionally on this earth – that only God can do that. That “love” sells stuff but isn’t of love – it’s a love of selling stuff.

Here is love I knew without being taught ….  

I love my wife, I love my grandchildren, I love my friends, I love a stranger in a moment of need, I am loved by a stranger passing-by in my moment of need.  I love the partners our children choose, I love the choices they make whether or not I agree, and I forgive them as they have forgiven me all their lives.  And not once have any of us discussed what any of us should do with our private parts when we speak of love when we demonstrate our love for each other, or when we love each other because we love each other. Love isn’t perfect – love is or is not.

As a family and individuals we fight and forgive (or choose not to). We are different and the same (but pick when those times are). We change always. We are not the same all day let alone all month or all of our lives, And we change differently – in time, space and being. And we can impact ourselves and others for good and bad – often without realising which it is. And living in our own heads is perhaps the worst company we can choose to keep. And that doesn’t mean we need to be told or taught. It means we need to be loved and love always.

Private parts ?

On a personal note I grimace inside when I see a man kiss a man with sexual tension.  My wife the same when she sees two ladies doing that.  That “sex on display” isn’t love and that is where the church seems to be stuck: that “that” is love-sex-dirty-wrong-sin-fucked-up and not be forgiven. But two men-women in love and expressing love as we all express love in public – as I express love – as you express love in public? No grimace at all because it is of love and not “sex”.

I grimace as much with the public sexually charged “get a room” displays of any preference.

And if one of our children or grandchildren found fulfilment in that expression of love then I would be proud.  An accident of their birth we made happen together – loved and loving. There would be only concern as with any blossoming relationship – will either be hurt or hurt the other in their journeying

What they do with their private parts in private is irrelevant to love just as are my private parts and what I do in private.

I have seen discrimination all my life.  We are addicted to making something a label and a category that can only include some so that others are excluded. So that one is correct whilst the other is incorrect.  So we can have yet more and more division and strife – more and right and wrong – more and more woke and unwoke – more and more inclusive whilst we exclude more and more.  And the institution of church thrives on all of this – teaches that only the bible (and its imperfect verses and chapters and books) with the institution of church’s correct interpretation can save me.

I was taught the bible was perfect.  That teaching made it above reproach and question.  And those “don’t ask” teachings became institutions even before the ink had dried.  Except that institutions are of imperfect societies created by divisive and exclusive people who have been taught by those same divisive and exclusive societies.  Which is what the Lambeth Conference so wonderfully demonstrated. Making the perfect bible fit everybody’s different correct teachings so that the institution survives in order to save me.

I advocate not reading the bible at all.

What reason is there to keep studying and dissecting, evaluating and interpreting, arguing and convincing – if not to divide and make yet more exclusive a church whose teaching is about numbers. The numbers of bums on seats, of increasing-decreasing the number of those who fit in, of promoting those who lead the fitting-in and increasing numbers, who have the power-prestige-celeb-status of increasing numbers of followers following their correct teaching.

I don’t just see this in the Anglican Church.  Every religion suffers (enjoys?) the same tension.  Every faith penalises those who disagree – calls them sinners – imposes societal norms in the name of scriptural teaching and correctness.  Our children have taught me forgiveness as we have taught them.  My parents taught me unconditional love.  So too my brothers and sisters.  Friends and strangers.  Never a bible, verse or church.

Just the kindness of love without condition – loved and loving – a being of love without thought for what love is – for what “correct” should be. I knew love (and the absence of love).

And something else I was taught.

How living with my mum and dad as an adult was so damned irritating.  That the very behaviours and traits that wound me up about them (and them about me) were the very ones I had adopted and taken as my own.  My version of them.  My interpretation of their teaching.  The same with our own children.  Our similarities are the fodder for fights.  Then we just add the fuel of our differences – of “if only you were more like me” (when we choose where that works best to win) – and we have a perfect lifetime of not being understood-heard. Or we can choose to allow each other and empower each other even in the tough times. No bible required. Not even church. I wonder …

If reading the bible could became only: love yourself, love each other and love something bigger than binds all of us together … isn’t THAT the real uncomplicated unconditional love much more than the institutional-scripturally-correct need-us-to-keep-you-on-the-godly-straight-and-narrow “love” taught both of and on and in this earth? 

I know love and the absence of love in myself and others. I always have and always will.

Love isn’t abusing another.  Excluding another.  Terrorising others.  Ignoring others.  Nor is it working so damn hard to make disciples that our own loved ones never see us and have to live lives unloved in the real sense of love.  An absence of love no different to addict-a-holics to anything but love.  Love that empowers.  Love that frees.  Love that is without condition other than of love itself.   

Anyway … what do my “private parts” have to do with love – real love?

Because so long as “non-gay” is being scripturally correct more than being pragmatically “gay okay” (but not scripturally correct), then the “love” that the Church teaches remains as conditional as it always has been. It’s only about private parts and “sex”. And that isn’t love at all.

And if foxes me why the church refuses to see that distinction.

9 thoughts on “Let’s talk about my private parts”

  1. A straight forward overview here and what I’m thinking right now after reading this is what I was thinking about when I reposted a previous blog article and specifically in it what a woman by the name of Anne Barnhardt stated in her pod cast about the destruction of Western Civilization which I believe your article is also pointing to as the number one tragedy that we are facing as children of God in a world that is extremely antichrist and where Satan is getting his due! What follows is the link to the video and also the link to the full article I republished in case anyone wants to examine all of that information!
    God bless.

    Brother in Christ Jesus,
    Lawrence Morra III

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    • Hi Lawrence, thank you. Not sure I see what you see and where you see it. If we are truly children of God – why the addiction to a bible full of words written in a way that keep the children of God focused on who is right and who is wrong rather than love self, other and all? Which is the only reason for deleting the link you added to your comment.

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      • Well you apparently don’t see the simplicity of the whole matter! Jesus Christ came to set each individual free with Truth and thereby to gain eternal life through His sacrifice, allowing us the “doomed” to death and eternal damnation, to instead have a path to righteousness and eternal life! This and all God is about provides “Freedom” and “all that is good,” whereas Satan who does exist is about lies, deception and death through “enslavement” or loss of “Freedom” as individuals created in God’s image, but, this enslavement just like Communism and Marxist or the Islamic political ideology dictators ram down the throats of their subjects, which is what Miss Berhardt that women in the video was trying to get across to Lindsey Graham who should know better and does; but he also doesn’t care, being that he is a liar and fraud, I happen to know for sure.

        Also the long essay with accompanying videos where Archbishop Viganò sent The Gateway Pundit his video and Appeal for an Anti-Globalist Alliance; who by the way is a very good man, who is doing God’s work on earth speaking out boldly to the evil dictators of this world, as being squarely against their totalitarian plans and the subsequent planned enslavement of the entire human race COVID FRAUD PANDEMIC ring a bell; where all of us will be nothing but numbers and under their total powerful control! Not so sure how you can’t be aware of any of this by now; but that isn’t for me to know anyway!

        I took the time to explain here not to win you or anyone over and gain anything other than the fact that I must live up to my responsibilities, and so because I stated something you didn’t understand properly at that “initial point,” or contact, so therefore it’s my responsibility to clarify that if possible; but if you can’t get it after this then that is all she wrote as far as I’m concerned!
        Amen.

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  2. We have reached a point in Christology where we can no longer be sure just what Jesus taught. Churches are no longer about teaching what He taught, but about what gets them more (as you said) “bums in the pews”. Can we get more “bums in the pews? (bips) than the one across the street if we accept LGBTQ+, ok, we accept them. Can we get more bips if we accept LGBTQ+-haters, ok, we accept them.

    There is now a movement to accept MLB’s (men-loving-boys) as just another form of “love”. Somewhat akin to your “private parts” argument. The movement agrees that they have a long way to go, but so did the LGBTQ+ movement, and they see themselves as just another +.

    I hear preachers of all denominations make arguments on both sides based on either “the OT and Paul says homosexuality is wrong” or “Jesus never said it was wrong, so it must be ok”. Problem with the first group is that if you teach based on the OT then you must accept all of the OT rules…quit eating lobster and shrimp; close down all businesses on the Sabbath – neither you nor your employees can work those days; etc. To the other group, there are lots of things Jesus did not teach about, in three years there is only so much that He had time to cover, and we only have what the Apostles thought important enough to cover. If you notice, the teachings in Scripture are only about issues that were important at the time. Homosexuality wasn’t important because it was considered a “done issue”.

    Then there is the “love” argument. We (universal) talk about loving everyone – but do we really mean it? If you love everyone then you cannot enslave people. If you love everyone then how can you employ people for a day’s wages, but keep those wages below what it costs to live for a day? Or, on the other hand, how can you force a person to pay someone a day’s wages when they do less than a day’s work? (i.e., management vs union argument).

    Can you truly love someone if you don’t admonish them when they do something wrong? Just because you see someone doing something wrong is no reason not to show them love. Jesus did teach that we are to love each other and forgive them when they do something wrong. But, he also admonished those who did something wrong, and told them not to continue in their wrong ways.

    We are so far from His times, and so many from the pulpit have twisted His teaching to meet their needs, that it is near impossible to know how He would have us act in almost any situation.

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    • In love (and as a son, lover, husband, father and grandfather – not to mention friend, stranger, employee, manager) I have “admonished” and been admonished more times than I care to remember. In love those times have been loving and respectful – and in love the sharing has been gentle and nurturing. Love without loving and careful honesty lacks “love” I think,.

      What I take from those selective writings of just three years of ministry is one who – whether in storm or calm, famine or feast, clamour or reflection, politics or courts of law – brought an inner peace and surety. The only being in my own life that comes anywhere near that is love – being loved, loving, and allowing all in love – including admonishing and being admonished. That strength and “knowing without knowing why” I have never had with a calm inner tranquility other than through love.

      That – and dose of curiosity of others, self and what we have in common and difference – leave me worrying less about what would Jesus have done and more in the moment of what we are doing.

      Having tested love (sounds precocious) I have yet to find anything stronger, more universal and alive in life and death. Which is why I decided to put down the bible and leave correctness of scriptural correctness to others. 🙂

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    • Seeing how I was in the neighborhood as they say I think this particular Scripture points out how Jesus and God have “Righteous Indignation” and do judge of course; and very importantly how for us not to see that and be wary of those who bring antichrist behavior or thinking and to not shun them or keep them away exercising our own righteous indignation is stupid! Could you sleep in your house if you allowed a known homicidal killer in to stay overnight; I know I wouldn’t let him in or even near my house nor try to be so foolish as to think that’s OK. God gave us a conscience and brains to reason with, so He expects us to use them accordingly.

      2 John 1:9-11 “Anyone who runs ahead without remaining in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever remains in His teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10If anyone comes to you but does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your home or even greet him. 11Whoever greets such a person shares in his evil deeds.”

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      • Hi again Lawrence, thank for tarrying awhile in the neighbourhood 🙂

        And as we are in the same neighbourhood, a story from me. Some years ago I was guided to a local church and the training to become a lay-preacher. Very quickly it became a “fitting-in exercise” where being on-message was the only way to succeed. He and I wrangled a lot over what I believed to be constricting in my faith and relationship. He asked that I stay awhile so I did. And yet more and more this constriction of compromise continued. Words written and marked. Academic bible study and theory and the correct denominational teachings. I gave it my all as He and had I agreed. So when He finally allowed me to walk away it was with a real sense of freedom on my part. All of which made little sense to those around me – and perfect sense to me.

        Each of us journey as best we are able. If there is a responsibility, for me, it is to listen less to each other and more to Him. As in when He and I agreed that the bible had become baggage best laid down as our journey continued. Not many agree with that. Should that matter to me? None of that makes me right or wrong in your any my coming-together in our own journeys.

        I find He prefers living in the moment rather than manipulating the future and this earthly kingdom. I find I prefer that too. For it seems to me this “kingdom” that we chase in our mission to be biblically correct might just miss the reality that the kingdom we seek is here and now.

        He showed me who you fear. This dark force – whatever name you prefer. Right inside our home – in the same room – just the three of us. I nearly pooped my pants. Yet in those few minutes that seemed forever I was shown how protected I was – how we all are if we allow – totally safe and protected. He came between us and said without any words at all everything that needed to be said. How can I fear after being part of that “coming together”?

        By the way – most of my journey and these moments are written down in the blog you bumped into. Many words which – just as with the bible – we agreed had come full circle. So no more words – or very few until this last post.

        I wish you well on your journey. We are all different and all loved. Big hugs.
        Paul

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