You see what blindly following a really old book has led you? Attacking a harmless minority and comparing them to people that have sex with animals and children. Also so many other things.
Did you write the bible? Have you been here that long? Your bible is someone else's interpretation. God doesn't go against Love because God is Love. Here are Christians that believe differently than you do about gays and have alot of reason to.
http://www.geocities.com/rainbowchristian1225/GENESIS.html
Do you know how many times I have heard that? I used to be a Christian for 20 years and studied it a whole lot. I also know all of its faults, which is why I stopped being a Christian. The bible has been clearly shown to be humans interpretation of what the original texts were.
"The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God. The Word of God exists in something else." -- Thomas Paine, 'The Age of Reason'
The Bible was translated and retranslated, copied and recopied over and over again *by hand* for 1600 years. Each time allowing the translators views to be incorperated into it.
Which has resulted in the modern bible to be full of mistranslations and contradictions. Also resulting in tons of different denominations with there own interpretation, each one thinking there way is the only way. Something that has no real one way to interpret cannot be the vehicle of the word of God. It exists in something else. It exists in each of us and is Love itself.
It is circular reasoning to say have faith in a book that they has been proven to be munipulated because the very same book says so. Well why don't I go follow the Quran? It says so too or the documents of Zues?
If you say have faith in todays modern translation. Which one?? Go to different Christian denominations and ask their interpretation. They will each give you contradicting views and passages from the same book to back them up. That itself is proof of it being munipulated.
It is not a matter of faith when it has been clearly shown to have been mistranslated and everything else. For instance:
Bible contradiction #1:
We are saved by faith alone:
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph. 2:8-9)
"And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were grace would no longer be grace" (Rom. 11:6)
We are not saved by faith alone:
"You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone." (James 2:24)
Both concepts cannot be true.
Bible contradiction #2:
God is jealous: "For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." (Exod. 34:14)
Jealousy is a sin: "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious ... jealousy" (Gal. 5:19-20)
If jealousy is a sin, and God is jealous, then the only conclusion we can draw is that God is a sinner. The two scripture verses above flat out contradict each other. This absurd conclusion makes God out to be less than perfect.
Bible contradiction #3:
Nobody has seen God: "No one has ever seen God ..." (John 1:1
Jacob saw God: "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." (Gen. 32:30)
One of the verses above is in error because not only has Jacob seen God, but the Bible describes a large number of people who saw God. This does not even include the great multitude of people who saw God in a vision.
Bible contradiction #4:
God loves sinners: "For God so loved the world ..." (John 3:16)
God hates sinners: "... you hate all who do wrong." (Psalm 5:5)
If God loves some people and hates others, then God is a respecter of persons and his love is conditional.
In some parts of the Bible, an incorrect portrayal of a love/hate relationship between God and humanity is described. For example, in the beginning, God was pleased to create man. Then, man fell from favor with God. God expresses a regret in creating man to begin with but God allows them to be fruitful and multiply. Then one day, God decided to destroy everyone on earth except for relatively a few people. God's hatred for sin and sinners leads God to actually destroy practically everyone and everything on earth. God then becomes a tribal deity to a small group of Hebrews with God chooses only to save. But God commits horrible atrocities upon them and their neighbors because of their human failings. Later, Jesus came along teaching how much God loves everyone unconditionally. God has Jesus killed as a human sacrifice and a ransom to pay to someone holding humanity hostage. The Christian hurch teaches that God is no respecter of persons despite the strong partiality he has shown to Jews and those who accept the Jewish Messiah. At the end of the Bible, God is shown having a vast multitude of humanity cast headlong into the fire of hell to burn in eternal ****ation. These descriptions of God, when taken literally, is certainly schizophrenic to say at least. It demonstrates how an infallible Bible can lead to absurdities.
Here are only a little bit of the mistranslations that have been found:
The Radiant Face of Moses
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD .
Saint Jerome (who translated the Vulgate - the official Roman Catholic translation for centuries) made a mistake: he mistook the Hebrew word for "rays" or "beams" for the similar Hebrew word for "horns" so in Exodus 34, his translation said that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, horns (rather than rays) came out of Moses' head and it said this until the bible was tranlated into english- hence the many pictures and sculptures (including the most famous one by Michelangelo) that show Moses with a pair of horns!
Michelangelo's Moses
http://www.cptryon.org/hoagland/travels/stpeterchains/moses.html
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Leviticus 11:21-23
21 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;
22 Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.
23 But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.
In this passage in order to take it literally it states beetles have only four legs. Thats ofcoarse not true just look under any beetle (I know! Ew!) but whats wrong about this passage is that beetle wasn't the correct word for the hebrew word, which was:transliterate word Chargol)
1. a kind of locust, a leaping creature
That would make it a mistranslation.
If you read the NIV regarding Lev. 11:13-20, You can see the succinct footnote to Lev. 11:19
"The precise identification of some of the birds, insects, and animals in this chapter is uncertain."
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(KJV) Deuteronomy 24:1,
1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house
"then let him" should be "and he." As the Savior explained in Matthew 19, Moses did not command divorcement. This statute is regulating the permission of divorce because of the hardness of their hearts.
New International Version (NIV)
Deuteronomy 24
1 If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, "and he" writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house
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John 2:4
NRSV "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?"
NIV "Dear woman, why do you involve me?"
TEV "You must not tell me what to do, . . ."
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Is Jesus God’s only son or God’s only begotten son?
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (KJV, John 3:16) In the RSV we read that he gave his "only Son".
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Malachi 4:6 should read " . . . lest I come and smite the earth with utter destruction." "Curse" doesn't give the proper sense here. Same word used in Zechariah 14:11.
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(KJV)
Matthew 5:48 should be "Become ye therefore perfect" rather than "be ye therefore perfect." "Perfect" here means "spiritually mature." Sanctification is a process of overcoming with the
aid of the Holy Spirit.
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(KJV)
Luke 14:26 has the unfortunate translation of the Greek word miseo, Strong's #3404, as "hate", when it should be rendered "love less by comparison." We are not to hate our parents and family!
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(KJV)
How many years of famine?
2 Samuel 24:13 So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies…
1 Chronicles 21:11-12 So Gad came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD,
Choose thee Either three years' famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes…
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John 13:2 should be "And during supper" (RSV) rather than "And supper being ended"
(KJV).
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MATTHEW 7:14
KJV - "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life..."
NKJV - "Because narrow is the gate and DIFFICULT is the way which leads to life,"
Is the way unto eternal life difficult? No, that is false teaching. The way unto eternal life is "strait," as the KJV says, meaning "constricted, restricted, distressed, narrow, restrained."
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MATTHEW 20:20
KJV - "Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping him..."
NKJV - "Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Him with her sons, KNEELING DOWN..."
To kneel is obviously not the same as worship. "Worship" was in Tyndale's translation of 1526. It was in the Matthew's Bible of 1537. It was the Geneva of 1537. It was in the Authorized Version of 1611. Even the English Revised version of 1881 and the American Standard Version of 1901 retained the word "worship." It was the modernistic Revised Standard Version of 1952 which changed to "kneeling." Now the NKJV editors follow this same error.
Linguistic Drift
Language is ever changing words change meaning over time, (linguistic drift), accrue meanings that attach themselves. In short a word can change to mean the exact opposite of what it once did.
Translating from one language to another in some cases is virtually impossible, on a word for word basis. For example take the phrase "lilies of the field", try to use this phrase with some one who lives in the Amazon rain forest, they have never seen a Lilly and perhaps never seen a field. Or how about a culture that considers the liver the seat of feeling. (The Bible) you would come up to a good looking gal and say" hay babe you make my liver quiver".
There are a couple of basic truisms
1 A culture has all of the words that it needs.
2 lack or presence of a word is extremely indicative.
If I remember correctly the Inuit have approximately 20 words for snow. What you don’t say is often as important as what you do, e.g. too common place to be a concern.
For some cases you can do work around or go for equivalents if there are any.
Some factors in translations
1 language differences (lilies= orchids)
2 changes in languages over time
3 bias of the translators
4 lack of originality (not bucking the majority).
5 misunderstanding the context.
You can not isolate facts from their context and have them still be true.
We have to look at Bible passages in a number of ways.
Context, Historical
Culture
Original language
Is the theme repeated elsewhere? Is the specific concern repeated elsewhere? How do others refer to the passage elsewhere?
Does this leave a large potential area of conflict? Absolutely and not as much as you might think.
One fact that we have in essence with ancient manuscripts an unchangeable base to start from and biblical proscriptions against making changes (that jot and tittle thing) have succeeded.
One major area of conflict is the fact that a number of words with varying nuances have been translated in to one English word prime example is Sin.
One word used to translate many. Sin, 7 words with very different meaning.
Hamartia - is, literally "a missing of the mark," (and so not share in the prize)
Hasebeia - actively doing something you know is wrong.
Parakoi - Failing to hear when god speaks or ignoring what he has to say.
Anomia - means lawlessness, a contempt of Gods law.
Parabasis - Or the active breaking of a commandment. It means more than hamartia in that it implies intention.
Hittima - A sin of omission.
Agnoima - ignorance of what one ought to have known:
So we lose a great deal of vital information in the lack of English equivalents and hence meaning.
Now for a little demonstration this is a rather non-controversial passage.
Jeremiah 5:8
Septuagint [They became horses mad after females]
Vulgate Equi amatores et emissarii facti sunt [They have become passionate and wandering horses]
LB Wie die vollen mtifiigen Hengste [Like full, idle stallions]
RDV They are become as amorous horses and stallions
KJV They were as fed horses in the morning
RSV They were well-fed, lusty stallions
JBF C'dtaient des chevaux repus et bien membrds [They were well-fed and well-endowed horses]
JBS Son caballos lustrosos y enteros [They are shiny and robust horses]
JB They were well-fed, lusty stallions
JBG Feiste, wohlgebaute Hengste sind sie [Fleshy, well-built stallions they are]
NEB Like a well-fed and lusty stallion
NAB Lustful stallions they are
NIV They are well-fed, lusty stallions,
NASU They were well-fed lusty horses,
The Jersulem Bible had the same translation team for all three languages.
The Hebrew words in this passage (Jer 5: :
"They were" hayah (haw-yaw); a primitive root [compare OT:1933]; to exist, i.e. be or become, come to pass (always emphatic, and not a mere copula or auxiliary):
9999 inserted word (x);
"fed" zuwn (zoon); a primitive root; perhaps properly, to be plump, i.e. (transitively) to nourish:
"horse" cuwc (soos); or cuc (soos); from an unused root meaning to skip (properly, for joy); a horse (as leaping); also a swallow (from its rapid flight):
"in the morning": shakah (shaw-kaw'); a primitive root; to roam (through lust):
"every one" 'iysh (eesh); contracted for OT:582 [or perhaps rather from an unused root meaning to be extant]; a man as an individual or a male person; often used as an adjunct to a more definite term (and in such cases frequently not expressed in translation):
"neighed" tsahal (tsaw-hal'); a prim root; to gleam, i.e. (figuratively) be cheerful; by transf. to sound clear (of various animal or human expressions):
"after" 'el (ale); (but only used in the shortened constructive form 'el (el)); a primitive particle; properly, denoting motion towards, but occasionally used of a quiescent position, i.e. near, with or among; often in general, to:
"his neighbour's" rea` (ray'-ah); or reya` (ray'-ah); from OT:7462; an associate (more or less close):
"wife." 'ishshah (ish-shaw'); feminine of OT:376 or OT:582; irregular plural, nashiym
(naw-sheem'); a woman (used in the same wide sense as OT:582):
All of those different Bibles have come up with different interpretations of these words.
Contradictions
http://www.ffrf.org/lfif/contra.html
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tcont.htm
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html
I hope this info helps in anyway. I prayed for Gods wisdom and he/she showed me that Gods word doesn't exist within a book or organized religion. God is universal to everyone that tries to seek him no matter what religion and Gods word exists within each of us and is Love itself.
God does not go against Love and being gay is a form of that because it is capable of a caring, responsible and consenting relationship.
I am a Free Spirit and a Unitarian Universalist. Here are websites that explain pretty much what I believe,
Philosophy & Theology
http://loveangel.fineststars.com
Unitarian Universalists
http://www.uua.org/aboutuu/uufaq.html