There WILL be comments! By Matthew S Butler

Tag: From Slave to Son

  • The LGBTQ–Islamist Alliance: A Dangerous Contradiction

    • The Unholy Alliance: LGBTQ Activism and Islam
    • Strange Bedfellows: LGBTQ Activists and Islamic
    • The LGBTQ Paradox: Supporting Those Who Would Persecute and KILL You
    • When Tolerance Becomes Self-Destruction
    • The Enemy of My Enemy Is Not Always My Friend
    • The Deadly Irony of the LGBTQ–Islamist Alliance
    • LGBTQ Rights and Islamic Enforcement: A Collision of Ideologies

    Ethics seem hard, but they aren’t. But when agendas that seem opposed start preaching the same hate, things can get confusing. How can LGBTQ people be for something that will destroy them, given the opportunity?

    Alan Turing is a great example of where Christian-based Western ethics went wrong. He was a closet gay man and brilliant mathematician who helped break the Nazi Enigma code and allowed the Allied Forces to intercept and decipher German military communications during WWII. It made a HUGE difference in the Allied victory.

    Strange how nobody from sub-Saharan Africa took that one on during the war, but let’s not get into that rabbit hole in this post. Post coming…

    Being a closet gay man was the issue. At the time, homosexual acts were actually illegal in England. After making a major scientific contribution to winning the war, Turing was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and chose a year of probation and chemical castration rather than 2 years in prison. He died at the age of 41 from cyanide poisoning, in what was ruled a suicide.

    A man who should have been acknowledged as a national hero was shunned by the very society he helped preserve. That is an on-point example of when Western culture has failed the LGBTQ movement. What happened to Turing was wrong and brutal.

    Take that to America today and our modern cultural struggle with the LGBTQ world. I personally want nothing to do with living inside queerworld. But I’m not for punishing homosexuality. I’m not for chemically castrating kids or surgically mutilating them, which, ironically enough, the LGBTQ world is for. That is a die-on-a-hill issue for me personally.

    Homosexuality in the Bible is SIN, as clear as day and night. No matter how much trickery is involved in bending theology to its will, anyone who is literate and willing to listen to God’s conviction knows it is a SIN.

    But then again, looking at a woman with lust is a SIN. Cussing is a SIN. Being DRUNK is a SIN. Gathering wood on the Sabbath, under the Mosaic Law, punishable by stoning, was a SIN. A lot of things are SIN. We are all sinners.

    LGBTQ people are not special in that sense. SIN can be a personal struggle and its most important job is to show us that we are unable to fulfill God’s law to be in the presense of his rightiousness. But Jesus gave us a way, a free gift, of being in His presense and the devil HATES that. So he twists the minds of sinners to believe that God is a punisher, when in reality, He is actually Rightious and the Free Gift of His LOVE is what allows humans to be in his presense. But, like the Nehustan of Moses, you must believe. If you believe, you natually become very concerned with being pleasing to Jesus, mostly because you become intimately aware of what you have been saved from. Hell…

    But let’s talk about the fundamental difference between Christian ethics and Islamic ethics. Both trace their lineage to Abraham. Muslims are not God’s chosen people. They are the brother who hated the other brother who was chosen. Islamic ethics are HORRIBLE and twisted. Fundamentally, they involve submission or death adn killing in the hear and now as being faithful.

    If you are gay in the Muslim world, you will be killed for it, plain and simple. Alan Turing might never have had a chance to solve the Enigma problem if he had lived in an Islamically controlled society. He could have been killed at a young age or been so intimidated and afraid of being killed that he would have repressed those feelings out of fear rather than asking God to transform him through repentance. What England forgot about is Grace, the ultimate solution to every sinners plight.

    I spend a lot of my online time pointing out that Islam is something any Westerner should want NOTHING to do with. It is a barbaric structure that uses intimidation, submission, and fear as its Gestapo-like tactics to motivate hatred and compliance. Hatred of the West and Israel (the chosen brother) are its fundamental battle cries, and I personally do not trust any of them, even the ones who say they’ve found Jesus. Maybe they have; maybe they are blowing smoke up our collective skirts to play the long game. Only time will tell.

    We don’t want that way of life anywhere near us, and believe me, it’s an all-or-nothing game. The West does NOT want our cultures polluted by something hell-bent on destroying us. In easier days, people would understand that clearly. Tolerance, in this case, is stupidity, because no amount of tolerance will change the mind of someone who wants to kill you. It just makes it easier for them to kill you.

    So the LGBTQ world should LOVE America, Western culture, and Republicans because, although horrible things have happened in the past and will happen in the future, the right to exist is not in question. There is also the opportunity to receive God’s grace through understanding God’s righteousness, which defines what sin is, and God’s grace, demonstrated through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

    Through His death and resurrection, He gives us the FREEDOM to be. We who know Jesus are all 100% rescued SINNERS without exception. The difference is, we know it and accept it and for the truly faithful, we aren’t negociating sin with Jesus moment by moment, we are asking to be sanctified. But he allows those who negociate sin, even if for their entire lives. But, he does send away people who have done things in his name that he does not know.

    It’s mind-numbing to see that the LGBTQ world has aligned itself with the Islamic world. My experience is that most gay people are usually pretty smart and motivated, but burdened with guilt that is shifted onto societal judgment rather than recognized as conviction from God.

    Whatever the case may be, an LGBTQ person’s right to exist in Western culture has mostly been worked out. Chemical castration and child mutilation are a hard stop for conservatives, but ironically enough, accepted within LGBTQ ideology as a horrible example of where LGBTQ has become that which once punished it, in the name of its own freedom. Now that is some maniacle twisted stuff.

    But for almost all, what you do behind closed doors, I don’t really care about. I am more worried about your eternity than I am about your now. You have to be LOST to be FOUND. So get lost!

    I believe John 3:16–17. His grace is sufficient for everyone, even the theif on the cross.

    16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

    Take that in: Jesus did not come here to judge us. We are already judged. That part was in place when Eve ate the forbidden fruit. What is amazing is that God, by fulfilling His own mysterious roadmap of creation, came into the world so that we could know Him, and through Him, He would SET US FREE and SAVE US!

    If you are part of the LGBTQ world, I don’t want to be in your world, but I stand for your right to exist because you don’t have a stated purpose of killing me. But if you are Muslim, I don’t want to be in your world, and I will stand against you at every turn because your book says to kill and/or enslave me, and I’m not letting that in my front door.

    In my view, there are two types of Muslims: the so-called radicals, who have read the Quran, and the cultural, who have not. The cultural, once they read and understand what the Quran says, will either become apostates or become radicalized. The apostates are marked for being killed, even by their own family, the radicalized are turned into terrorist looking to dominate the world through the barbaric ways of Islam. No good choices… Saudi Arabia is the crown jewel of Islamic government. Believe me, no American wants to live in Saudi Arabia and especially not a LGBTQ person.

    So this is my question to every LGBTQ-loving person in the world:

    Why would you support a totalitarian dictatorship masquerading as a religion that plainly says it hates you and demonstrates that by publicly killing people like you in countries where its form of government runs the show?

    Please wake up to the reality of what you have aligned yourself with, because even though I don’t want anything to do with your lifestyle or culture, as long as you don’t want to kill me, I’m okay with coexistence. I’m sad for you and I do judge you if you hurt people along the way. But if you have a stated purpose of killing me, which all Muslims do, I’m an over-my-dead-body stand against that ideology and its a hill I will die on.

    How a cultural movement can align itself with something that says it will kill you, given the chance, really, truly has me questioning the mind of any LGBTQ person.

    What in the world are you thinking?

  • The Obligatory Guilt and Shame Driven Christian

    I keep encountering Christians whose faith seems driven by obligation, guilt, and shame: I should be doing more for God. I’m not doing enough. I’m disappointing Him. I need to try harder. Christianity becomes a continual evaluation of their own performance.

    It seems the mental equivilant of the catholic/orthodox practice of Flagellantism within Evangelical Christianity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellant

    But that seems contrary to the freedom Christ gives us:

    “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
    — Galatians 5:1 (ESV)

    Most importantly, Obligation, Shame and Guilt especially post acceptance of Jesus are NOT from God, they are form the accuser.

    1And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers[a] has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

    — Revelation 12:10 (ESV)

    If the desires you have create obligation, shame and guilt in you, they are NOT from God, they are from the flesh, as noble as they may appear. Desires from God might be scary because they are more than we think we can handle, but they never include God putting us to shame.

    Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

    — Psalm 37:4 (ESV)

    In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me!

    — Psalm 31:1 (ESV)

    The good news is that anywhere there is SHAME God’s plan is to sanctify that into HOPE.

    3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

    — Romans 5:3-5 (ESV)

    The New Testament does not teach that good works are unimportant. Jesus desires obedience, holiness, service, sacrifice, and fruit. But Scripture repeatedly shows that these things flow from our relationship with Christ rather than the individual creating or maintaining it.

    Jesus says:

    “Abide in me, and I in you… Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.”
    — John 15:4–5 (ESV)

    The order matters. The branch does not anxiously manufacture fruit so it can remain attached to the vine. It remains in the vine, receives life from it, and consequently bears fruit.

    Jesus similarly says:

    “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
    — John 14:15 (ESV)

    He does not say, Keep my commandments sufficiently so that I will love you. Love precedes obedience.

    That distinction also helps us understand heavenly rewards and “crowns.” Scripture genuinely teaches that believers will receive rewards for faithful service, but even our good works ultimately begin with God:

    “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
    — Ephesians 2:10 (ESV)

    Think of Moses, Noah, or David. None woke up one morning and decided, I’m going to become a great man of the Bible. God called them according to His purposes, and their responsibility was to respond faithfully. As Paul asks:

    “What do you have that you did not receive?”
    — 1 Corinthians 4:7 (ESV)

    The crown passages therefore emphasize faithfulness, perseverance, love for Christ, self-control, endurance, and willing service—not accumulating religious accomplishments to prove our worth.

    And Revelation gives us a powerful picture of what ultimately happens to crowns: the twenty-four elders cast their crowns before God’s throne, declaring Him worthy to receive “glory and honor and power” because He created all things (Revelation 4:10–11).

    That captures the proper posture toward every heavenly reward. Whatever God may commend in us, we recognize that He called us, equipped us, sustained us, and gave us the opportunity to serve.

    The crown is not ultimately a monument to human greatness. It becomes another reason to glorify the God from whom everything came.

    We are His servants and instruments. The glory, honor, and praise belong to Him.

    In fact, one of the clearest crown passages tells Christian leaders to serve:

    “not under compulsion, but willingly.”
    — 1 Peter 5:2 (ESV)

    Peter then speaks of receiving the “unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4). Scripture therefore does not support the idea that Christians should motivate themselves through guilt and compulsion in order to accumulate heavenly rewards.

    Paul makes another crucial distinction in 1 Corinthians 3:10–15. A believer’s work may survive God’s evaluation and receive reward, or it may be burned up and result in loss—yet Paul can still say of the latter person, “he himself will be saved.” Salvation and reward are not the same thing.

    God also evaluates more than visible productivity. He “will disclose the purposes of the heart” (1 Corinthians 4:5). Jesus similarly teaches in Matthew 6 that an outwardly good religious act can lose its reward when performed for human recognition. God is not operating a heavenly productivity spreadsheet.

    This is why the difference between conviction and chronic shame matters.

    Conviction says:

    I sinned. God is right. I confess it, repent, receive His forgiveness, and return to walking with Him.

    Shame says:

    My failure demonstrates my inadequacy before God. I need to work harder so I can finally become the Christian I should be.

    But Romans 8:1 says:

    “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

    Freedom does not mean freedom from obedience. Paul immediately guards against that misunderstanding:

    “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
    — Galatians 5:13 (ESV)

    Notice the progression:

    freedom → love → service

    rather than:

    obligation → performance → approval.

    Two Christians may perform exactly the same act of service while living from completely different motivations.

    One thinks:

    I should do this. Good Christians serve. I haven’t done enough lately. God expects more from me.

    The other thinks:

    Christ has loved me enormously. I love Him and this person, and I have an opportunity to help.

    The outward action may be identical, but the heart is entirely different.

    Paul then describes the fruit of the Spirit as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

    That raises an important question about a Christianity characterized primarily by guilt, anxiety, comparison, inadequacy, compulsive self-evaluation, and fear of not doing enough. There is no finish line to that system.

    You can always pray another hour, give another dollar, volunteer another day, read another chapter, or help another person. If peace with God depends upon answering “Have I done enough?”, there can never be a confident yes.

    That is the prison.

    The sanctifying breakthrough occurs when the fundamental question changes from:

    “Am I doing enough for God?”

    to:

    “Given what God has already done for me in Christ, how does He want me to respond to Him?”

    Paul says:

    “For the love of Christ controls us…”
    — 2 Corinthians 5:14 (ESV)

    And John says:

    “We love because he first loved us.”
    — 1 John 4:19 (ESV)

    The motivation increasingly becomes love rather than fear, comparison, obligation, or shame.

    This does not eliminate duty. Mature Christians sometimes obey when they do not feel like obeying. Taking up one’s cross is not always emotionally pleasant, but it always buttressed by a desire to please God.

    So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

    — 2 Corinthians 5:9

    But duty is no longer an attempt to establish our worth before God. Sometimes love says, I don’t want to do this right now, but I love Christ more than I want my own way.

    The person also becomes less preoccupied with measuring himself. Instead of continually asking How am I doing? Am I doing enough? Look what I did! How many rewards will I receive? attention increasingly moves toward Christ Himself.

    Paul’s great desire was not merely that I may accomplish enough, but:

    “that I may know him.”
    — Philippians 3:10 (ESV)

    And paradoxically, knowing Christ produced an extraordinarily fruitful life.

    The deepest change may be how the believer sees God. God stops appearing primarily as an employer reviewing productivity and is increasingly known as Father.

    The Christian stops living like an employee trying to satisfy the Boss and increasingly lives like a beloved son or daughter who wants to please their Father.

    So the Christian life is not:

    works → enough works → God’s approval → peace.

    It is:

    grace → acceptance in Christ → peace → security → love → gratitude → God implanted desire → obedience → fruit.

    That changes the believer’s heart. They can serve without keeping score, rest without guilt, repent without collapsing into shame, stop comparing themselves with others, and pursue holiness because they love the One they follow.

    The movement becomes:

    Christ loved me → Christ saved me → I belong to Him → I am free → I love Him → he gives me my desires → I obey Him → His Spirit produces fruit → others are blessed → God receives the glory.

    Rather than:

    I should do more → I haven’t done enough → guilt → harder work → self-evaluation → failure → shame → harder work.

    Galatians calls Christians away from that kind of slavery. And make no mistake, Galations 5:1 says clearly, thinking that way, IS SLAVERY.

    The breakthrough isn’t learning how to produce enough fruit.

    It’s understanding where the fruit comes from.

    I do not obey Christ in order to become free.

    Christ has made me free—and from that freedom, I am finally free to love and obey Him.