Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Sex question

 A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith
The next question which Mclaren tackels in his recent book 'A New Kind of Christianity' is the 'Sex Question'.

I've always found that Mclaren skirts around the question reading his literature as well as listening to his podcasts.
In the book, I found his arguments regarding sexuality compelling for a greater need of acceptance with those different in sexual orientation than ourselves. What I find is frustrating once we come to the same conclusion as Mclaren is what do we do with it our new understanding....

Some of the things that I thought compelling::

-What do we do with people who are born with intersexuality? Children born with male and female organs?
- What do we do with people who are born with Klinefelter's syndrome? They have XXY chromosomes rather than XY or XX chromosomes.
-"Jesus' treatment of the marginalised and stigmatised requires us to question the conventional approach (To those of a different sexual orientation). We have many examples of Jesus crossing boundaries to include outcasts and sinners, and not a single example of Jesus crossing his arms and refusing to do so."
 So what would Jesus do? I think Mclaren answers this with the above quote.
-Sexualtiy had changed in the last 50 years
-homosexual sexual problems seem to be highlighted in the  Church yet heterosexual issues are just as rampant. Mclaren gives two good pages of examples on this one.
-The venom has gone out a lot of Christians regarding this topic which a larger percentage of congregations not having any issues with homosexuality.