Church was interesting today...

I have stopped attending church for that reason. I was worried for a while that god would hate me cuz I was gay but then I thought "Would God judge me for loving or others for hating?" I see it like this. If God did not want me to be gay he would have made me straight. But I still belive in god.

 

I used to go to church all the time until I got tired of hearing that gay people are going to hell. I had enough trouble trying to accept myself without people saying that. I do believe in god but I won't step foot into a church

 

Odd timing, as just today, I decided to attend church for the first time in several months, mostly to gauge how much of a rift there was between us, and also to converse with my pastor, again, to see if I wanted to continue attending there. I still fully believe in God, and in fact, my relationship with the Almighty has never been stronger. But, I cannot say the same for the church.

The service was all fine and dandy, and my conversation with Pastor went well, too. The real highlights were that we essentially agreed to disagree about homosexuality being a sin, but he considers everyone welcome, since we're all sinners. The interesting thing to me was that he essentially admitted that he had a lot to learn about homosexuality, so I think for the time being, I'm going to keep going in the hopes of giving him some insight. We'll see how it goes, and I figure if things go too far south, I'm not forced to stay.

 

I had to go to church today and there was this pamphlet for lil kids and I filled it out lol it had games like match the word with the number to see what Jesus said... he said something about Greed is bad... and yadda yadda
Which was perfect timing because 2 seconds before my mom had to convince me NOT to take the 20 that someone had stuck in the candle box... (you pay for a candle to be lit for whatever reason....) and it wasn't all the way in and It would have been SO easy to take....

 

The unfortunate thing with religion especially Christian is the dogma. All these rules and interpretations of what various passages in the bible are, etc. Sad really as most is personal opinion of some early leader and passed on as from God. Look at the history of the formation of the so called Christian Church in 500 AD and see from what a mess it came. The most important thing though lies in the telling of how God is all loving with unconditional love, kind and caring, and then all the rest of the claptrap of how He will punish this and that and has a tremendous number of human failings attributes. The organized religions has used/uses hocus-pocus and magic to hold sway over fellow humans. It is time for enlightened individuals to take notice of the man behind the curtain.

Religion is one thing, spirituality is another and it is spirituality that is most important because it is a means for you individually to connect with the higher power within us all. There is no need for a preacher, minister or anyone to intercede for us. Love is the only thing the higher power uses and all we need do is to learn to apply it in as many situation as we can in our lives. So for me it boils down to, All You Need is Love.

 

At 14 I opted out of my confirmation, for those of you who attend Chatholic Church this was somewhat of a scandal. The reason for this actually had nothing to do with sexuality, however it was a minor contributing factor. Anyway, I confided some things in my preist, who agreed to let me have time to figure things out. I still attend church, though my family does not. The situation is rather bizar so I won't bore you with details.

Anyway the point...My preist said something similar to that of Xequar's pastor, that we are all siners and that and that we should forgive those who sin against us. Even though He is Chatholic and opposed to homosexuality He is not so narrow minded as many others tend to be.

In my opinion it makes no sense to believe that God would forgive those who have commited murder, rape and other great sin's, but that he would condem those who have lived a life of compasion and love but whom have chosen a partner of the same gender.

 

I grew up, and to this day, attend a Catholic church. My mother is Catholic, my father atheist. I am also atheist. My mother forces me to attend church on Sundays, but I basically just sit there through the entire service. I guess she thinks that by forcing me to go to church, she is saving my soul. She knows I don't believe, but she still shoves it down my throat. It's quite annoying.

I personally, like I said, do not believe in a higher power or in any religion. I believe that people will naturally do the right thing, and the only afterlife is the positive or negative memories people leave behind. I think it's possible to be spiritual, but not religious. I think religion is a rather serious threat to our society, and that we should work towards its end. I know many of you disagree, but that's my personal belief. I believe that organized religion as a whole causes much more trouble than it avoids. I don't need an old book of rubbish to tell me that killing my neighbor is wrong. People who are good and praise God for making them that way, I believe, would have been good people without religion. There are plenty of good atheists, and plenty of horrible believers. I think, primarily, all organized religion does is incite people to hate, and do the things they preach against.

All that being said, if my church would begin openly condemning homosexuality, I would walk out of it regardless of my mother's objections. I would probably get in a serious load of trouble from here, but I wouldn't stand for it. It takes all my self control to sit there during the service.

 

:eusa_clap

good point

 

thank you :icon_bigg

 

Meh i dont like my church they teach all the Teenagers like ther 3yrs old and there 2face so i dont go unless my dad drags me kicking and screaming

 

My church isn't anti-homosexual its a perfect church.

However if I did go to a church that was anti-homosexual I'd yell out during the speech asking for reasons why God doesn't love one of its creations ect. Then I'd be all like 'BALLIN!"

 

My church never touched upon that subject, though I've never brought it up with my priest. However, like CrimsonThunder, if my church ever started talking about homosexuality as a sin, I'd make a scene no matter what my parents thought. If they simply called it a sin, I'd have a private talk with the priest about it to ask why he thinks it's a sin. Then I'd take my worship elsewhere. If he started talking about how God won't forgive homosexuals and they will go straight to hell with no chance of redemption, I'd stand up and say, "So he'll forgive murderers, cheaters, rapists, and all the rest, but he won't forgive someone who just goes by his or her natural feelings? If homosexuality is a sin, then why did God make homosexuals?." And I'd walk out and walk home. I'm lucky to be within walking distance of my family church. If he went somewhere between that, I'd simply walk out.

 

I love my church. We have gay priests, and sometimes the clergy will preach how homosexuality is natural, love is good, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong. Of course, I'm fairly certain our associate rector would kill anyone who preached otherwise...but it's still an awesome church, and it's nice having a faith that I can take comfort in no matter what.

 

As I mentioned in another post, I went to a welcoming church last night and it felt really good! I'm used to those fundamentalists preaching the "sins of homosexuality". I no longer attend those churches. I'm a spiritual person, not religious but I enjoyed my time there last night!

 

are there any churches that accept and marry homosexuals?

 

I'm sorry I know this has nothing to do with the subject but I just have to say I love your signature Behling! especially the "If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work: "Hello. Can't work today still queer"

Love it, it made me laugh.

 

I stumbled across an argument about why homosexuality isn't a sin and rather than just stating the obvious things like "God wouldn't hate one of his own creations" or whatever, the person/people who wrote it actually use passages of the bible to argue their case, I think they actually use passages from the bible that anti-homos use against homosexuality. I'm not religious myself but I still found what he had to say very interesting.

If anyone is interested the link is:
Homosexuality Is NOT A Sin: What Christ Said And More

There is a lot of debate about Christianity and homosexuality on this website and of the threads I've read I'd have to say this one has the strongest argument. Although (for me at least) I think he goes on a bit about adam and eve too much, I don't know, maybe it's relevant to his argument, I've never read the bible or anything, like I said, I'm not religious so maybe it makes sense to Christians/Catholics. It makes no sense to me though. Everything else makes sense to me though lol.

 

Well since marriage is only legal in Massachusettes, they can't really marry somebody but many churches do committment ceremonies. This is a website for Oregon but many of the churches listed here are also friendly in other states. I would look into some of those.
www.welcomingcongregations.org

 

The church/temple that I go to is riddled with lesbians, and really accepting of gays. :icon_bigg