Manipulating Scripture

Today was one of those days the my writing seemed to flow. As I wrote it just seemed that I knew exactly where I wanted to go with my writing. The problem with this is that that is when I make my most grammatical errors, and those are usually the areas where I need to include more support. So I am sure I will be editing those pages I wrote today, quite a bit.

I wrote last time about how one of the ways Church leaders can be corrupt today is by placing unbearable burdens on people, creating standards they could not possibly live up to. Today I wrote about how Church leaders manipulate scripture, causing people to feel alienated. The best example I can think of for the moment is Romans 1 which leaders time and time again point to, to condemn homosexuals as sinners. The passage explicitly says men are not to lay with men, and women are not to lay with women. The leaders then proceed to condemn gay men and women to hellfire. The problem is that that passage is taken totally out of context. That passage is describing all of human kind and describes sins that everybody has been partakers in. Yet for some reason Church leaders single out the "sin" of homosexuality and neglect everything else in the passage. If they did their studying, these leaders would know that this passage is discussing the whole need for Jesus Christ to reconcile human kind to God and is a description of every single human being. This passage is not describing what behavior one needs to rid themselves of before becoming a Christian. It is a list of behavior written to show everyone why they need to turn to Christ. I do know that Scripture tells us to remove the log from our eye before pointing at the splinter in our neighbor's eye. The twist to this is that the removal of the log in our eye is a lifelong thing. Therefore, we should never be pointing out the splinter in our neighbor's eye.

I hope that before believing passively what your Pastor or other Church leader tells you, you do some digging of your own to see if the passage he or she is quoting from was taken out of context or not. You never know when you have the opportunity to correct one of their errors.
God Bless.
-Brandon