Domestic Partners

The Toledo Blade supports health care benefits for domestic partners. (Domestic partner bill: Yes.   6/10/2012)  I’m okay with that I guess.  I’m just not sure what constitutes a domestic partner.  Are we speaking about homosexual lovers or fishing buddies? How will we prevent fraud?  Are we going to make people swear they engage in coitus before we consider them domestic partners?

Actually, society may be on the right track here.  Instead of issuing marriage licenses offer a “Domestic Partner” license to any couple that desire one; straight or gay.  A domestic partner could be your lover, your best friend or just someone you trust.  Everyone needs and should have a partner, someone to watch your back.  Anyone you choose could have the power of attorney, act as executor of your estate, and in relation to the editorial in review, receive benefits from your employer/health care provider

To summarize: remove the spiritually charged word “marriage” from State lexicon (separate church and state) and replace it with the term domestic partner.

Victory in Jesus

 6/7/2012

A recent letter in Readers Forum perfectly illustrates a misunderstanding held by most of Christendom.  (Cross a sign of joy, not failure, May 31, 2012)  The writer could not be more wrong.   The Cross of Christ is a sign of abject failure, shame, humiliation, disgrace and defeat.  When people wear a cross as jewelry, or worse, ascribe to it a superstitious, voodoo like power it only shows their ignorance of that fact.  

You can bet Satan was wringing his hands in devilish glee when Christ was nailed to the cross; thinking, “I finally got you, you pious bastard!”

Little did Satan realize at the time that the Cross represents a propitiation; an appeasement to God the Father for our sins.  We ought to be humiliated by the Cross because it should have been you and I on it.  When you realize our human family—that fallen nature we all share—would joyously do that to the Son of God for sport and entertainment dread should overtake your consciousness.

Here’s the tripping point.  Christ’s glory, the victory we now share is realized in the resurrection, not the crucifixion.  This may seem like splitting hairs to you, but consider what the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 15:17 “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”  

The Cross evokes a lot of emotions in me:  gratefulness, wonder, amazement to name a few.  Joy… not so much.

Just a Word

The Word

The Christian version of the, “Big Bang Theory” is found in Genesis Chapter One, God spoke and BANG it happened.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

(John 1:1). 

           

Charles Krauthammer made a good point in Saturday’s editorial (Obama boxed himself in on gay marriage, 5/20/12).  President Obama infers that if you haven’t yet evolved to the point where you can link the words homosexual and marriage than you must be a knuckle dragging Neanderthal. 

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender.   As William Shakespeare reminds us "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"; in other words it would still be a rose. Homosexuality by any other name is still homosexuality. 

Words can be powerful.  A word hurled your way in anger, insult, taunt, or mockery will not break your bone, but may crush your spirit, and scar your soul.  James the brother of Jesus calls the tongue a restless evil full of deadly poison (James 3:8).  Vibrations from our vocal cords have the spiritual force to drive a spouse to tears, prompt a teenager to commit suicide, and the power to create war.  Words can also inspire the soul and lift the spirit of man. 

Battle lines are being drawn.  If you follow President Obama’s line of reasoning to its logical conclusion than the crowning achievement of mankind’s evolutionary journey would be silencing the God of Scripture and crowning mankind as God.  That has been Satan’s Modus Operandi since the Garden of Eden.