I’m totally for gay marriage, and I felt the need to discuss something I saw today. 

Feel free to keep scrolling!

There’s a chick on my facebook who said that next they’re going to legalize incest and beastiality. She ended her status saying, “but love is love, right?” I understand that everyone has a right to their own opinion, and I respect that. I also have a right to my opinion and discussion of your opinion. I love this girl dearly, but I frankly completely disagree with her argument.

—First of all, this rant is coming from a Roman Catholic, I’ve been one my whole life, and I’m okay with that, some of this discussion will be coming from a religious point of view.—

Okay, first order of business: the whole comparing gay marriage to beastiality. You know that’s never gonna happen. I love my dog, yes. Chance is great. But it’s wayyyy illegal in most places to have sex with him. You know why? He’s a dog. Dogs don’t have souls, and as much as they are loyal and loving to us, they don’t have emotions like humans have emotions. I totally believe a dog can love a human. I see it in my dog every time he barks and the mailman and tries to protect me. Love between human and human is TOTALLY different than love between human and animal. Therefore, that part of the argument is totally invalid.

Now on to the incest half of the argument. It’s not a pretty subject. No one likes to talk about that. There is no love in incest. There may be a distorted image of love, but everyone knows that there is no true love there. That’s why this half of the argument is invalid as well. There is no good reason for incest.For a grown human to feign romantic love for their own flesh and blood will never be okay. But you know what is okay? A grown human to actually profess their true love to another grown human being. Feeling a real, true love for someone is not a “phase” and you don’t “grow out of it.” Love is a super hard core emotion that’s really difficult to deny. People try (I’ve even tried!), but it always is in the back of his or her head, nagging away. Now can one fall out of love? Yes, absolutely. Welcome to the dating scene. But can one help who he or she may fall in or out of love with? No. Love is a natural, uncontrollable reaction. It just happens. It’s like gravity, as much as we can try to stop an object from falling to the earth with an increasing velocity of 10m/second, we just can’t. Gravity just happens. So does love, and that’s okay.

So in conclusion, two things:

1. Don’t take the statement “Love is love” out of context. We don’t mean love between humans and animals or humans and any object, for that matter. We’re talking about love between two human beings who have souls and consciences and who totally know what they’re doing. Saying “I love you” to someone is a big step, and 99% of people truly mean it when they say it. It takes a lot of courage, so anyone who can profess their love to someone else should be respected at least for that.

2. The day gay marriage affects your personal life enough to compare it to not-nice things such as beastiality and incest? Let me know. You’ll get a sincere apology on my behalf.

I had a very vivid dream last night, and I had this long conversation with an imaginary preacher. I asked him: 

“Why is it that we base our supernatural beliefs so strongly off a physical book? Is God nothing more than physical words? Is he no more than just verses and scripture? Also, what’s with the whole “he” thing anyway? We can assume Jesus identified as “he” since he refers to himself as such, but God only says “I am.” Somehow I don’t think it’s accurate to assume that God is a man, or has a penis, because the only reason our society refers to someone/something as “he” is if they are a man or have a penis and from what I understand, God doesn’t reproduce, God creates. Why is it that we’re constantly limiting teachings and references to only the Bible? Can we not look around and see all the many blessings that are around us and learn from our experiences? Can we not learn from small acts of kindness, good deeds, or love? I don’t think the Bible is complete fallacy, but it is not  right to say that we believe in a supreme being and yet only base the teachings of that being off a physical book that has been changed by man over thousands of years. If we are to truly believe in the word of God then we should have enough faith to believe that the Bible is not the only way of preaching and teaching God’s love. I honestly wasn’t brought to the Lord though the Bible, I was brought to the Lord through the love of my family and the love I experienced around me. I was very young when I accepted Christ, so it’s safe to say I wasn’t looking for an explanation, or answers to some bigger question about life. I wasn’t looking for salvation from Hell (which I probably didn’t even know what that was at the time). I simply wanted to find love, and a place of belonging. How have we gotten to this point? How have we as a people resorted to scare tactics and hate? Love is of God. Why can’t people see it?”

I don’t remember him ever having an answer for me, but a few minutes later, I woke up.

“these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” maybe it’s already been posted, but it’s my favorite line when talking with a christian who thinks that when jesus said love is the fulfillment of the law he only meant heterosexual love

- Alicia

That the violence and bloodshed will cease,that the doctors will heal and save, that the wounded will find relief, that families will find comfort and hope and the fallen are in peace.

Amen.

I know it’s a day late but today I want to talk about what Crucifixion is really about.

A few of you may have seen the Passion of the Christ, that is probably as close as you will get to what it is like.Most people have only seen sanitized  pictures of Jesus in a loincloth with a bit of blood here and there.

Once sentenced you were scourged. That means a whip with small pieces of bone attached to the tips of the strands. This would literally  rip your skin to shreds. The aim was to cause blood loss so you died more quickly.

Then there was the walk to Golgotha (meaning “place of the skull”) carrying the cross piece of your own crucifix.

Historical inaccuracy No.1 The whole cross was NOT carried. Your arms would be strapped  across the beam where your arms would be nailed/ tied for your execution. This not meant you couldn’t balance so would fall on your face every so often it also caused huge strain on your heart and lungs due to the position your arms are in. Imagine your back on fire as the majority of the crowd jeers and spits on you while you stagger your way to death, knowing your friends are in there somewhere hardly able to look at the agony you are in.

Historical accuracy No.2 You were stripped out of all your clothes. No artfully draped loincloths. That’s right all. Crucifixion was meant to be utterly degrading for even daring  to try and usurp Roman authority (which is why Jesus was crucified, false charges but that’s beside the point), it was a political death, which brings me to historical inaccuracy No.3 the two men Crucified on either side of Jesus could not  have been thieves. Crucifixion was ONLY for people who tried to overthrow their Roman occupiers. In most places they would crucify people in droves (particularly after  a large rebellion) along the sides of the roads. The message? “Mess with Rome this will happen to YOU.”

Historical inaccuracy No.4 The nails would not be through the feet and hands but rather between the two bones of the arm in the wrist (so there was more support for the body) and through the ankles once again to support the body and allow the victim to push themselves up to take the strain off their arms and then sag as it hurt their ankles and legs, the cause of death is a combination of shock, pain, exhaustion  and suffocation due to the way the position compresses the lungs.  Sometimes it could take up to several days for someone to die. Hence the request for the soldiers to break victims legs as it meant they died more quickly.

Jesus refused all attempts to ease his pain, the wine offered him would be laced with a drug to dull his senses and the pain but he refused.And as if it wasn’t enough, Jesus took on the punishment for every sin, past, present and future, He felt the abandonment of God that so many of us feel: “Eloi, Eloi lamach Sabachthani?”

“My God….my God. Why have you forsaken me?”

And even after He rose in glory, he still bore the marks of his crucifixion. And He took it back with him to heaven. That suffering became part of the trinity  and is therefore part of God. God knows what it is to be rejected, to be alone, to be lost, to be scared.

And He shares it with us now.

Lord Jesus, help us to remember what you did for us, in it’s full horror and agony. Help us to remember that through that we know how much you love us. Punished for a crime you did not commit and punished for us so we never have to be without you again.

Amen.

 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

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