One of the most unpopular aspects of the New Testament is that it contains many gray areas. There are practical reasons for that… you cannot have a monocultural global religion… but more importantly, Christ wants His followers to be transformed into gods. That requires breathing space for initiative and self-determination.
Many people don’t like that. Many people prefer their religion to be a list of rules rather than a fountain of opportunity. Their God is NOT bigger than a bread box, thank you very much. He fits very nicely between Saturday’s nightclub and Sunday’s football game.
Let’s start easy. I don’t disagree with this bishop, but what he didn’t say needs to be said very loudly.
Belgian Bishop Claims Euthanasia Is ‘Not Necessarily’ Morally Wrong
h ttps://www.breitbart.com/faith/2023/10/11/belgian-bishop-claims-euthanasia-is-not-necessarily-morally-wrong/
By Thomas D. Williams, PhD, 11 October 2023
For example, it’s easy to discern that Mr. Williams is an emotionally insecure midwit. He’s smart enough to get a PhD and insecure enough that he wants the world to know.
ROME — Catholic Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium, has sparked controversy by suggesting that euthanasia is not necessarily morally wrong in all circumstances.
In a recent interview, the progressive Bishop Bonny took aim at the Vatican, asserting that Church leaders are mistaken in teaching that euthanasia is “always an intrinsic evil, whatever the circumstances.”
“This is too simple an answer that leaves no room for discernment,” the bishop said, elaborating, “We will always oppose the wish of some to end a life too prematurely, but we must recognize that a request for euthanasia from a young man of 40 is not equivalent to that of a person of 90 who faces an incurable illness.”
“What do you say to someone who has been affected by an incurable illness for years and who has decided to request euthanasia after talking to their family, their doctor, their loved ones?” Bonny asked.
“We must always refer to the Bible, but nothing is more difficult than interpreting it and applying it to a particular situation without falling into fundamentalism,” he contended. “God relies on our intelligence to fully understand his word.”
That is correct.
The bishop said philosophy has taught him “never to be satisfied with generic black and white answers.”
That is NOT correct. Your philosophy degree and six dollars will buy you a cup of coffee in Kommiefornia, but you still won’t know what a woman is.
“All questions deserve answers adapted to a situation: a moral judgment must always be pronounced according to the concrete situation, the culture, the circumstances, the context,” he said.
The Christian moral judgement on euthanasia, in a vacuum, is that your life belongs to you. God does not want slaves; neither does He want us treating our siblings-in-Christ as slaves. You can choose to live or die. There will be consequences either way, but nowhere in Scripture does God impose a duty to live.
We would, on occasion, have to temporarily renounce Christ, if Christ’s Will for us was longevity.
BUT, that is Christian morality “in a vacuum”.
Saint Pope John Paul II said euthanasia is often accepted out of “misguided pity” but is also “sometimes justified by the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return and which weigh heavily on society.”
The boldfaced is where we are in Current Year. In the context of socialized health care, the opportunity to die becomes… very quickly… the duty to die. As soon as government starts paying your medical bills, government will start looking for ways to minimize your medical bills, and cue the Death Panels.
Euthanasia is immoral for the time being, because we are ruled by people who hate us and want us dead and are trying to create as many ways to off us as they can imagine. We should not allow the State to exploit our freedom over death.
That will not always be the situation. And yet, many Christians are so uncomfortable with the spirit of God’s Will that they insist upon the letter of God’s Will. If God was not explicit then Churchian bureaucrats… at the request of the insistently immature… will happily step in to correct God’s mistakes.
This is what they mean, when they say you cannot free a man who was born a slave. Little has changed since Moses wore a veil.
A major cause of church friction is clergy imposing moral codes where God did not, then refusing to change those moral codes as time passes and situations change. Perhaps there was a time when dancing was sexually immoral, but it’s not immoral everywhere and always. Perhaps there was a time when the King James Bible was supernaturally special, but today I can’t hardly read it. I once heard of a promising pro tennis player who decided he was making an idol of tennis, and walked away from the sport. No rule or prophet required him to do that. He simply wanted, to the best of his knowledge, what God wanted.
God will surely reward him for that devotion even if he was mistaken.
But no. Instead of churches being groups of men worshiping God and building up each other, they’re bureaucracies of variable relevance, united only in their certainty that a man should not be permitted to judge his own way through life.
The issue here, is that discernment is DEAD in the Christian Church. Deader than disco. Christians, ESPECIALLY clergy, fail so completely to recognize evil or identify God’s Will in changing situations, that many unbelievers see nothing unique about God.
Do Christians have more stable marriages? No and don’t argue otherwise, because “No” is what they honestly see. Any quoted statistics are secondary. You have not the beginnings of discernment, if when other people think for themselves, your knee-jerk response is “don’t believe your lying eyes”.
Can you tell the difference between a Godly young woman and a Godless young woman without having to ask? No. How often does a “believer” alter his life path specifically because he is a believer? Heh. Unbelievers watch Christians live no differently than non-Christians, and reasonably ask why they should bother with Christ.
I cannot answer them because “come to Jesus, shun His Church” is nearly the same thing as “don’t believe your lying eyes”. The only reason it isn’t, is because the average Christian is lying about being a Christian… but “90% of Christians are faking it” is a hard sell. I myself don’t attend church because I’m a believer. It would be a decent social opportunity; I could make some friends or at least hang out a little; but I would either live the complementarian lie they offer, or be kicked out for denouncing that lie.
And you know me. I’m so quiet. Got no tongue at all.
Discernment isn’t hard, or at least, you can start with the easy stuff like “when is self-killing a bad idea?” or “do I go to Hell if I burn with lust but no woman will marry me?” or “is getting involved in yet another Mideastern war, on behalf of foreigners who hate Jesus, something that Jesus would do? Even if we assume, despite the evidence and history, that their cause is legitimate?”
Or how about, “did God mean what He repeatedly said about women submitting to men and wearing head coverings? Nah, we today are smart enough to know that God secretly wanted us to do the exact opposite, just like the God-hating Marxists are teaching us to.”
IT’S NOT DIFFICULT, CHUCKLEHEADS!!!!
I’m not even asking for action. I’m asking you to make smarter choices about what you choose to believe & say, because it’s frustrating to be associated with morons who say God and do Satan. For serious, the typical “Christian” is two steps* away from believing Christ died so we wouldn’t have to sacrifice chickens on the pentagram any longer.
Christ has already covered any spiritual penalty for the inevitable mistakes you’ll make as you begin to actively participate in God’s plans for humanity. You have godhood to gain, and nothing to lose but your flesh.
…
*Step One: discover what your daughter is being taught at the local government school. Step Two: feel sad for the chicken.