I love Susan Cotrell. From her blog today:
We hear it a lot… “You are twisting scripture so you can justify homosexuality.” I do think there is a lot of twisting scripture going on, but I believe they have it backwards. You must twist and ignore the Bible – and deny the overall message and truth of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit – to believe that being gay is a sin.
I would defintely have less patience than Susan when dealing with some of the people who write to her. “Jen,” the writer today, accuses Susan of talking about Christianity “…with absolutely no mention of the Bible or Christ Himself.” Hmmm, first red flag. Has Jen read any of the posts on Susan’s blog? Jen goes on then to accuse Susan of misappropriating the Bible while labeling herself a Christian; of molding God to fit her own preconceived ideas. Does anyone have a mirror for Jen?
Wait – no mirror needed. Susan takes care of it:
I would return your request back to you: don’t mold God into who you want Him to be to justify your beliefs and then pass this along to others who need to justify their beliefs about those they disagree with. The church reaction throughout history has been deadly: to women, children, Jews, slaves, varieties of ethnic groups, and the LGBTQ community. It is nothing like what we see in Jesus’ life and teachings. Remember that religious leaders viewed Jesus as disobedient to God! (Matt. 15 and Mark 7)
After a life-long embrace of a particular brand of Christianity, I find myself somewhat adrift, and have little appreciation for anyone or anything that smacks of hatred in the name of religion. I am greatful for people like Susan – they give me hope for the church.
GregComesOut 
Hello. I think if there is a deity and it wished to communicate with humans, any document written would have to be alive, changing as the people changed and grew in understanding. Just as you do not teach a child the same as an adult, you tailor the lesson in language the child can understand, while the adult has experiences that let you speak a different way. That may be why the things in the Bible, or other holy books, were written in the way they were, with things that today we object to and understand are wrong, we have the understanding to know the real message was one of love and better living for all. But we had to grow into that ability to understand. IF we don’t let the bible breathe and grow with our understanding we doom God to being some kind of relic of the dark distant past. IF god is to be eternal and with us, for us, helping us, then he would wish to deal with us as we are, and guide our understanding to enlightenment and betterment for all. I often hear people talk about the end times and God coming back. I think God has a lot of our development to guide us through before we are ready for end times of anything. Just as our ancestors were not the pinnacle of what we can be, neither are we. There is plenty of room for future growth. But we can’t grown and have a God that doesn’t grow, or we will never hear the message that deity wants us to know. Hugs
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Beautifully said, Scottie.
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