Thread by @frodofied

So, @revjelowe and I are going to be off the grid for the next day or so, as needed.

But let me offer some last reflections on today's events regarding the @UMChurch and their adoption of the Traditional Plan. It is not just an anti-gay plan, it's aggressively so...

1/

It leaves almost no way for even well meaning allies to remain with @UMChurch in good conscience.

And why?

Well, to be frank one must look to the African Conference. They voted in a block and provided more than half of the votes for the Traditional Plan.

A sad truth.

2/

The basis, they claim, is the Bible.
The good book.
The Word.

A book which they hold to be literally true. From the first letter to the last, literally true.

Yet, even they, the most holy African Conference, only pick and choose which parts the text to follow.

3/

Of course they tend, like most people, to ignore only those parts that would inconvenience their own lives or the parts that clash with their own values.

Yet they fully expect others to follow the other parts no matter how uncomfortable things get.

4/

It has always seemed to me that we have tended to make God in our own image, and not the other way around.

The God of so many parts of the Bible is more human like, flawed even, than God-like.

Angry. Jealous. Vengeful even.

God.

God?

5/

The Christian God in many parts of biblical text seems prone to so many of our most dangerous shortcomings.

We claim that God is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere at once.

Unlimited everything apparently but still prone to anger and jealousy?

Strange.

6/

To me, these are limitations. They anathema to what a God of such power would actually do or possess or demand.

These are the reasons I find the biblical proscriptions against homosexuality and so much else to be questionable.

7/

The same God who created every thing we see or know actually cares whether people he created have sexual relations with any gender?

Sex feels good people, and gay sex feels real good. God certainly wouldn't have made it so if God expected us not to have it...

8/

Human limitations and prejudices attributed to an all powerful God.

The @UMChurch erred today.

They spoke for God and made God speak their words.

And God is still paying attention then I imagine that God is disappointed once again.

And rightly.

#UMCGC2019
#LOVEoverfear