Letters

Dear Christis,

While reading your last issue (60) a couple of thoughts came to mind while reading the excellently challenging article by Saffron Walking. My appreciation of her courage to speak forth so personally is nearly as strong as the sense of shame of learning that Christians, who I thought would assign to Christ’s greatest commandment of love one another, would treat a fellow human being in the way described.

Christians like all humans are subject to the prejudices of the society around us. Whether it is inherent racism of world maps not truly to scale on land area, thinking that the Scots are tight (think about it) or that homosexuals are a sub set of society possessed by the devil. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, an attitude that has worrying consequences for those who sling their arrows as the article describes: implicitly they become other Children of God; sinless.

While the Bible as the inspired word of God has something to say on the issue, are they and us interpreting it correctly? In the same issue, a monk is described as abating from his heterosexual practices for following the Lord. Practices rather than becoming someone with no sexual persuasion, or taking up another. Why then should we believe that homosexuals should give up their persuasion and convert to a stereotype of normal, whatever that may be? Surely the emphasis is on physical side, and risking rebuke, in my view, as a sinner, on not committing adultery. This follows on from the sense of marriage where any other physical sexual intercourse is seen as adultery, be it heterosexual or homosexual. Thus within both there is opportunity for friendship and companionship with either sex by an individual. But not intercourse other than with one’s, ideally one, spouse.

I hope that this helps the debate and is not seen as negative view on homosexuality. Far from it, I am in awe of the faith in which Saffron trusted the Lord to be able to speak about something that impacts upon the two most important aspects in her life: Christ and family. Can we all say the same?

Yours in the loving Christ,

Magnus Smyly