the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Spiritual reading list

Well, sort of.

I’ve been fascinated lately by some posts from a couple different regular reads of mine. They are all on the subject of God and/or religion.

A slew of these posts emanate from the furiously-typing hands of Fred Clark at Slacktivist. They all have to do with what many perceive as the strong bias of evangelicalism against homosexuality. While many in the evangelical community do differ on the subject, and broad brush strokes often do injustice to any large segment of people, Fred has an excellent series on the perception of evangelicals as “hating” gays. What he’s really examining, for those who look closer, is why homosexuality is treated in the Christian community as so much more abhorrent than the smaller sins like dishonesty, theft and marital infidelity (to name just a few). (The parts, so far are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.)

The other standout post on the subject of God is from the oft insightful Qazse, who wrote a brief piece of poetry called “The God Cage.” Having interacted on a few different virtual occasions with the pseudononymous blogger, I’m confident his spiritual expressions are anything but flip. This poem is a perfectly concise example of those expressions.

Amazingly good – thanks for the heads-up. been lax in my blog reading and I had forgotten how amazing a thinker and writer Slacktivist is…

“The Unilateral requires a faith that is so inflexible it becomes brittle—it can never bend, only break”…Stunningly perceptive phrasing, having known many on either side of the “break”

Howard,

Thank you for the mention in the same post as Slacktivist. I consider it an honor.

This whole gay issue is a non issue for the Great Spirit. All that matters: were you a peacemaker or a hate monger?
Everything else is protoplasm.

Peace

Ellen – Fred is a remarkable writer on these topics. I’m not sure I agree with every one of his points in this series, but I like that he makes the useful point (as a Christian speaking on pop Christian tendencies) about elevating homosexuality not only as a sin, but as a sin superior to almost any other. The point for me being that if you believe someone is doing something wrong, fine, state your position; but to belabor the point of someone else’s perceived flaw is a waste of time when each of us have so many of our own flaws to work on.

Qazse – You’re welcome for the mention. Your “God Cage” strikes me as a well-capsulized comment on how we as people seem to always try to capsulize Deity. Along these lines, I’ve always been fascinated by the Catholic concept of mystery – as in, sometimes it’s okay to not be able to explain everything.