Texas Baptist Forum

Seminary retirement

Nothing has disappointed me more than Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary dropping insurance coverage of her retired staff/employees (July 5). I don’t think anything could be as personally devastating as this action.

But what really sets off the news put forth by the article is the photo of seminary President Paige Patterson, smiling like a Cheshire cat, without a trouble in the world. A more appropriate photo would have been one of Patterson with tears in his eyes because his heart is broken over the matter. The published picture is worthy of only one caption, “What, me worry?”

Sad, sad, sad!

God bless those faithful retired servants of God and those who follow in their footsteps.

Bill Simpson

San Antonio

 

Editor’s note: Southwestern Seminary provided the photo to accompany this story.

 

BGCT & homosexuals

The Baptist General Convention of Texas severed its relationship with Royal Lane Baptist Church after its Executive Board found the church’s ordination of homosexuals placed it “outside the BGCT understanding of biblical . . . ethics” (June 6).

The Bible says nothing about homosexuals. My eyes were opened to this truth when I read theology professor Elizabeth Stuart: “It is misleading to give the impression that the biblical authors talked about homosexuality at all, since the concept and reality of homosexuality … is barely a century old.” And highly regarded theologian Walter Wink writes, “The idea (of homosexuality) was not available in (the Bible writer’s) world.”

Of course! I was chagrined that I had not thought of it before. So every reference in the Bible to same-gender sex is to people we would call heterosexual, the only kind of people the writer could have had in his mind.

Homosexuality was discovered in 1869 when an Austrian author first suggested that some people were innately erotically attracted to others of the same gender and coined the word “homosexual” to define them. Historians tell us that in Bible times, same-gender sex by people obviously heterosexual was so common that men had debates about which sex—sex with a man or sex with a woman—was preferable. Pederasty, or keeping a young boy for sex, was widespread.

It was this lust of heterosexual people that the Bible writers condemned. There is nothing in the Bible about homosexuals.

Bruce Lowe

Dallas

 

Somewhere between acceptance and condemnation of homosexuals is an answer.

Are the lepers and the mentally ill “sinners”? And since when did the censured action of the man cohabiting with his mother-in-law or understanding that lifestyle homosexuality was unacceptable behavior to God become proof-texting or errant biblical interpretation?

I’m a pastor and not a relational theologian. Churches that want to reach out to sinners were warned not to embrace sin. Be it gossip, lying, sexual cohabitation outside of marriage or the sins of Israel, there is a difference in reaching out to people who are out-of-step with God and giving them leadership in the church, as lifestyle unrepentant sinners.

We need to appeal to churches to extend unconditional love to all sinners, without turning a blind eye to sin that destroys lives and God’s church.

Merv Noah

Marble Falls

 

What do you think? Send letters to Editor Marv Knox by mail: P.O. Box 660267, Dallas 75266-0267; or by e-mail: [email protected].