Straight From Pastor Ey

This is one of the placards displayed during the same-sex wedding performed for eight gay couples by the Metropolitan Community Church last week in Baguio City on the day “New York became the sixth and largest state in the US to legalize gay marriage.” (Source: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/ ) For sure both sides would seek Jesus’ approval. In her “The Bible’s surprisingly mixed messages on sexuality” over CNN’s Belief Blog, Jennifer Wright Knust claimed that, “Jesus… says nothing at all about same-sex pairing”. But arguments from silence are not strong arguments at all. Silence does not mean support. Regis Nicol in his “The Dangers of Same-Sex Marriage: What’s Wrong with That?” countered that assertion: “While it’s true that Jesus said nothing explicitly about homosexuality, it’s also true he never mentioned the evils of bestiality, incest, pedophilia, rape, slavery, wife-beating, or substance abuse, to name a few. In fact, the New Testament records very few things that Jesus speci...

“Every big news stor y has a faith a ngle.” That’s one of the things that CNN learned after its Belief Blog (which is dedicated to discussing how faith factors in the news) marked its first year recently, “after publishing 1,840 posts and sifting through 452,603 comments”. (Source: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/) One encouraging observation: “People are still intensely curious about the Bible, its meaning and its origins… More of us may be reading it on iPhones these days, but the Good Book still matters a lot more than the popular culture lets on.” (Ibid) When Belief Blog posted a guest blog claiming that the Bible was more ambiguous as far as homosexuality is concerned, it got more than 4,000 comments. When a counter-article claimed that the Bible clearly condemns homosexuality, it “brought in an equal number of comments - and was the most popular story on CNN.com on the day it was published.” (Ibid) For me, this is a great open door for us Christ followers to declare and defen...

“We believe that understanding the role of faith in today’s world isn’t optional or nice to know. It’s need to know.” This is how CNN explained why they came up with Belief Blog , where they will “cover the role that faith and belief play in the news - and in [their] readers’ lives… [They] will focus on the places where faith bumps up against the rest of the news and the rest of the world, from breaking news to entertainment, from business to politics, and from foreign affairs to sports.” As far as CNN is concerned, these faith angles explain much of the news ranging from a young man’s failed plot to bomb New York’s Times Square (He is a Muslim who took a vow to defend Islam from “humiliation” ) to Barrack Obama’s rise to the presidency. (As a young Columbia University graduate, Obama had quit his first finance job and tried his hand in community organizing sponsored by Christian churches in Chicago. Not only that this launched his political career, it was “an experience that led...

Always believed that the Bible said these words? “God helps those who help themselves.” “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” “God works in mysterious ways.” “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Well, you’re in for a shocker. They’re not. Actually, those sayings are what CNN’s BeliefBlog called “phantom passages” (Source: CNN.com ) And, as religion professor Steve Bouma-Prediger of Hope College in Holland, Michigan pointed out, sadly “people rarely challenge them because biblical ignorance is so pervasive that it even reaches groups of people who should know better”. (Ibid) The “God-helping-the-self-help-people” saying is not in the Bible at all. “It’s actually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the [USA’s] founding fathers.” (Ibid) The “God-acts-mysteriously” was not from the Psalms but was really lifted from a 19th century hymn. (Ibid) The “clean-people-are-godly” saying “was coined by John Wesley, the 18th century evangelist who founded Methodism.” (Ibid) At least, the “sparing-...