I'm reading a poetry book and I found an excellent poem. The last stanza of this may particularly impact you christians out there. It impacted me. The whole thing did, really. You've got to live the gospel. I'm not talking practice what you preach- there is no practicing here. I'm talking living what you preach. And to do that, you gotta preach what you live. I know what I'm here for and I know what the lord is here for. The gospel, I will live and die by the gospel. I look around me and I see all the problems. I know people aren't living the gospel. I know they are too busy. The world is too loud. The sounds you hear in the hall are not the substance of love and kindness. I hear gossip, I hear spite, I hear fear. I do not hear the gospel. I do not feel the gospel. Except inside me. I can feel it there. And my friends. There are not many of us, Lord knows. But we are there for each other. The Lord loves things in three, and we are three. Lanie with her blue-covered bible, Tracy with her red-covered bible, and me with what I call Original Black. It's not that we walk around all buttoned up, not a part of the world. Don't think that. We know what's happening, and what's what. But we also know which end is up. School is not like a church. I knwo alot of people in my school are happy about this, but I think that's because they've known the wrong kind of churches, the ones that hold back instead of lifting up. I've seen the inside of those churches. Let me tell you, the gospel isn't there. Like turning on the television and hearing some man (he calls himself a preacher) use a cross to hit people over their heads spewing all that hate in the name of the Lord. That is not the gospel. That is not why we are here. -David Levithan ----- I hope somebody took soemthing from this...
GuitarGirl, that is a beautiful poem, and very meaningful too! The last stanza did have an impact on me. Are you a Christian too?
Yes, I am. BUT I'm not a "religious fanatic", I don't preach, and I don't constantly talk about God because I feel everyone should find what works for them. It's just my personal decision to welcome Christ into my life. I don't believe for a second these little..<fill in the blanks> demonstrators who claim god hates homosexuals, either. I feel God's prescense in my life nonetheless. I saw this demonstator on television the other day who called himself a preacher who enforced the hateful so-called values of christianity, and it happened that the next day I opened up the book and read "Gospel". I thought the folks here might appriciate it.. . If you want to read the book that this was extracted from, it's called "The Realm of Possibility". It's about 20 teenagers at a high school, who don't know each other, who's lives intertwine. However the entire thing is told in poetry. There is no narrative, only poetry. I would definitely reccomend it- he's also written a book called "Boy Meets Boy" (about gay kids). I haven't had a chance to read that as of yet (my friend took it out of the library first). I'm also almost certain that it is narrative.
Yeah, I may want to check out that book! Sounds interesting. I've never had a story being told by poems. That's really neat. What' the name of the author? I may be paying another visit to my local Borders soon. I use to devote so much to God and my religion, but this year, I've been really slacking on that. Recently, I'v began to try to come back to a life of religion devotion. It feels so good when God's with you! I loved serving him, and continue to (but I've just been pretty lazy about it this year). Because of how he transformed me, I am never complete unless I love others and give to them. So, I just need to go and open the bible again like I used to, and I will be back on track. I hope you don't mind my religious ranting. For anyone else who reads this, I hope you don't find what I say offending. You can ignore this section of this post in that case. Also, about those "little preachers" which you mentioned, the truth is, God really doesn't hate homosexuals at all! He doesn't even pronounce it an abomination, like those preachers would preach to you. First, they need to go back to the original Hebrew and Greek Text where King James and NIV version were originated from. They will find surprisingly what God really had saidl they will find out that there had been numerous mistranslations about "homosexuality being a sin," and it's been claimed these misinterpretations of the original text were based on the interpretors' own bias against homosexuality. There have been A NUMBER of researches that found this exact same thing (in more deph than what I said here of course), so it should be hard for those Christian Fundamentalists now to cling onto preaching this lie shall they ever have the chance to find out about what is really in the bible.
Quote from LowestVocal017 "Also, about those "little preachers" which you mentioned, the truth is, God really doesn't hate homosexuals at all! He doesn't even pronounce it an abomination, like those preachers would preach to you. First, they need to go back to the original Hebrew and Greek Text where King James and NIV version were originated from. They will find surprisingly what God really had saidl they will find out that there had been numerous mistranslations about "homosexuality being a sin," and it's been claimed these misinterpretations of the original text were based on the interpretors' own bias against homosexuality. There have been A NUMBER of researches that found this exact same thing (in more deph than what I said here of course), so it should be hard for those Christian Fundamentalists now to cling onto preaching this lie shall they ever have the chance to find out about what is really in the bible." Thats really interesting. I never knew about that- i knew it said so in the bible, but i have my own theories of the bible's amount of accuracy so...hah. I don't mind your religious ranting, lol. I've never read the bible in it's entirety but I do know the part about it being an abomination. (Note that homosexuality is compared as "abomination" to eating three day old meat and wearing two different fabrics. I sense a translator bias.) The author's name is David Levithan.
