Description text goes“The Bible is just a book written by man, not God. How can it be reliable or true if man wrote it?”

So the Bible is not just a book. It’s 66 books. Written over 1500 years. Forty different authors. All books were compiled around 380-400 AD and before that, the Muratorian Canon with the New Testament (22 of the 27 books) about AD 180. The early Church was highly discernible to the canon for what was hewn together to make a complete historical analysis of quite recent events. After all, they couldn’t just accept any writing that claimed to be of the apostles or their direct followers. The Holy Spirit, not a force ofGod, but another Person of The Triune God, He dwells within us to counsel what direction we need to head and this was true in the time that manuscripts, letters, journals, all kinds of writings were being brought together. In John 14:16,17,& 26,” 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. 17 He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you…26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.” 

I hear you, “You’re using scripture to explain scripture!”. No. I am merely showing what scripture says about how these early believers discerned what was truth and what was heresy. But let’s look more into the process. In the ancient world, reliability is built upon one person's depiction. Two people would make the presentation of events unassailable. So with eleven INDEPENDENT sources to the person and crucifixion of Jesus, which any credentialed scholar or historian will tell you was an actual event with the actual person of Jesus, lends even more credibility to the reliability of the document. One important note with regards to the dead sea scrolls. They were written 100 years before Christ was born and as books and manuscripts from the old testament, they predicted what Jesus was coming to fulfill. Speaking of, there are over 63,000 cross references in the Bible making it the most complex, extensive interconnected document of all time. The new testament itself was written in manuscripts from 50-130 AD, less than 100 years with several accounts being from eyewitnesses. The copying process from all manuscripts, 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic Languages with the total supporting New Testament manuscript base of over 24,000, is 99.5% pure with the .5% attributed to the spelling of names. Nothing, agreeable by scholars and historians, believers and non-believers alike, affects the message of the document. No other work of historical manuscripts comes close. NONE. That’s why it’s infallible, reliable, and undisputed. 

Now, agreeing with what it says, that’s up to you. The problem today is we will read Truth from the Word, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.” (John 1:1-3) and the rejection rate is remarkable. It’s almost as if all the answers to the test are available in an open book format and choosing to fail because the belief is held that those answers aren’t good enough or the ones wanted. What’s even more concerning is when Biblical prophecy had been examined, accurate in its validity because the Bible has constantly been a resource archaeologically, scientifically, and philosophically, we see from the old testament there were 332 Messianic prophecies (prophecies the Messiah would come to fulfill) and Jesus fulfilled them all. ALL. The mathematical impossibility for any one person to fulfill 8 is 1 in 100 Quadrillion. One person fulfilling 351? In Psalms 22 the crucifixion is predicted 1000 years before the event. That wasn’t even a means of capital punishment in any part of the world yet. Historical studies have verified that the people were where they were and when they were when the Bible said they would be. 

Don’t buy into this just because it’s something I researched and wrote about, do your due diligence. Investigate. You’re the one who must make the decision if it’s just a book to you or if it's a reliable source of history.

Excellent question. I look at my faith as reliable and reasonable. To come to a better understanding of faith, I rely on evidence. Most non-Christians believe that faith in Christ is blind and based on opinion rather than historical data but that is outside of the framework in which God has laid the foundational structure for belief. Consider the Cosmological Argument, the Moral Argument, and the Historical Accounts for the foundation. There’s also the scientific discoveries made in recent human history that were told in the Bible long before man was able to verify the authenticity of its claims (ex. Streams feeding into the ocean from the ocean floor talked about in Job or the Genesis account of creation where geometrically when the earth was but water in space it can only hold one shape being spherical, both found to be accurate in the 1800s and as early as 6th century BC respectively). If you’re asking for hard nosed proof, I would ask you to prove our founding fathers existed or the taste buds you taste with taste the same that mine do. We rely on the evidence around us, not proof, for all of our decision making. While we’re on the subject, let’s talk about the burden of proof. It was evident to the ancient world that there was something outside of themselves and many worshiped many different gods around the world. Throughout that time One God stood out above all others because He was real, He had interactions with humanity after creating them, entire nations were delivered, saved, judged, destroyed, and came into existence because of Him. When other nations pit their gods against the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob they were soundly beaten, plagued, decimated, and cut-off. Other nations feared Him because of His deeds and they feared His people because of the power He blessed them with in His Spirit. So from the beginning throughout ancient times you have this being, God, who everyone at the VERY least acknowledges knowing that He is real, yet today we say the burden of proof is on the Christian even though nobody has disproved God. The science of evolution has been disproven simply because it is unobservable which is why it remains a theory, but God has not been unobservable. Science and the intricacies of how our universe is shaped and fashioned prove more the existence of an intelligent designer rather than the converse. Historically, cosmologically, morally, and scientifically God has presented Himself more trustworthy and reasonable than any other belief system fashioned by man. Then Jesus comes, offers hope for humanity who because of themselves are doomed to separation eternally from Him, lives a perfect and sinless life, was hated, scorned, beaten, and nailed to a cross all in order to take the punishment for sin which is that eternal separation from God on Himself as a sacrifice. No other belief system, no other methodology in any part of the world and its cultures presents their god stepping down from their throne to be among their creation and to suffer and die for it. Ironically, so many other religions out there today point in some form or direction to Jesus Christ either being a good teacher, a prophet, a good man, a good instructor, or one of many “ways to enlightenment.” There is a proclamation that all religions are the same. A poet named Steve Turner once wrote about that saying, “Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves. We believe he was a good teacher of morals but we believe that his good morals are really bad. We believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the one we read about was. They all believe in love and goodness, they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.” Jesus made a claim nobody else in history has claimed and proved themselves to be reliable after the statement when He said, “I am the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but through me.” When He appeared to over 500 people after His resurrection, He backed up that claim holding the power over death and hell. Mohammad, who was a thief, racist, rapist, pedophile, violent, manipulative, and fraudulent is dead. The brahma, the vishnu, and shiva aren’t real or proven, just the machinations of man who have never truly revealed themselves while also “discovering” more gods that have an effect over other things of the natural world such as fire, water, the sun,...roads. Buddha is dead with him having claims to supernatural abilities of which nobody was able to see evidence for like teleportation and clairvoyance, but if he could teleport, he wouldn’t have walked on his last day after being food poisoned leading to his death or that clairvoyance should have prevented his death and led him to the discovery of the coup attempted by his cousin. All of these showed either moral failures, a divisive character, or have no sense of authority within themselves. God revealed Himself to us through Christ where He lived a blameless, sinless life, performed miracles that could have only been done through deity, limited His own power to suffer like us, die like us, and be tempted like us. The Father sent the Son for the payment of our sins and now the Holy Spirit resides with us who believe as Christ makes intercession for us to the Father. He came offering peace through love, not the sword, and was executed for His troubles. He spoke of sin as detestable and challenged the hearts of men and women to show their faith while proving His divine nature in His limited human nature allowable only through His authority. From the very beginning He is there and to the very end of the world He’ll remain and beyond through eternity. The veracity of God’s word as the greatest historical account ever penned has proven beyond reasonable assertion that Christ was who he claimed to be with many eyewitnesses suffering martyrdom because of their unwillingness to denounce Him. You don’t die for what you know to be a lie. The other religions mentioned are of a newer thought meaning that, for instance, buddhism came about close to 4 BCE, Hinduism which some claim to be the oldest religion, formed as an offshoot of buddhism in the 5-6th century. Islam is newer on the founding of their prophet muhammad around 610 CE and even newer than that is norse mythology. Beforehand, the greek gods from around 2000-1100 BCE and came about from nothing and went the way of its creation. Before that, historical accounts point towards different gods of different nations such as the Canaanites, Phonecians, Egyptians, Moabites, Ammonites, Hittites, Philistines, and Babylonians. Of course, those civilizations were discovered through archeology because of the geographical data provided by the Bible who wrote the history of a people who worshiped God before all of the baals, chemosh, molech, amon, baal-zebub, tammuz, and other false gods before the proven God who revealed himself through His works, His creation, and the logical/historical consistency of the most verifiable historically accurate documents to be recovered/discovered throughout history that preserves itself because of its freedom from contradiction claims or statements. There has only been one constant throughout human history and that's “In the beginning, God…”

Jesus is the hinge point of history. He was in the beginning with the Father and He is the savior of a wicked world that is bent towards evil. The reliability throughout scripture, verified through eyewitness testimony and testimony outside of the Bible lend more than enough to the credibility that Jesus came fully in His human and divine nature equally to fulfill the satisfaction of the righteous, eternal God. Born knowing no sin through a virgin birth, living His life sinless, teaching the greatest account of ethics ever taught, being blameless yet people sought to kill Him, He hung on the cross after he was beaten to near unrecognizability and died as the Father poured His wrath on the Son. He died for a purpose, to give our lives meaning so that we would be living sacrifices for Him. That we would tell others of His miraculous gift He presented to a lost, dying, hungry, thirsty world. He paid our penalty in full. He then rose form the grave three days later. He appeared to many and His followers died horrific deaths because of what they had seen and witnessed. He conquered death and the grave so that neither could hold us, but that we would have freedom in Him from the complete separation from God. We are no longer bound to this great punishment because of Jesus and Jesus alone. For all of that, all He asked of me was to believe, call on His name, and turn away from my sins. He proved He was trustworthy in His words and authority. He lived, suffered, and died because of something inside of all of us. The eyewitnesses corroborate His testimony and through the veracity of historical discipleship, the New Testament shows no falsehoods or contradictions to what had been verified. Upon realizing all of this and looking how every belief system out there weighs and measure themselves, there is only one truth, that Jesus is alive, the Son of God, perfect in righteousness and judgement, and mediator between us and the Father. He is the Savior of my soul. I was a beggar, starving, looking for bread and water. He gave me nourishment and I will never hunger again.

That in a nutshell is why I believe what I believe.

For this discussion, I have written down in the Salvation or Perdition tab the moral argument. To summarize, if you know there is evil, you must believe there is good. If you believe there is good, logically there must be a moral law to differentiate the two. Since we as humans vary wildly in what we believe to be good and evil, we cannot make the distinction ourselves and all be correct so we must conclude that there is something outside of us that defines and carries out the moral law, a giver of the law. If there is no one to provide the moral law, there is no moral law which means there is no good and there is no evil. It’s crucial that when we talk about good and evil, we have to look at the measuring instrument. So, now that we’ve established the separation from evil and good and how it’s measured, from the moral law giver, we can talk about this question of evil.

Obviously there are evil, heinous, and perverse mindsets that lead to the destruction and separation of what makes someone do evil and someone do good. As people we have been given a conscious, a rather complex mind, and heart that constantly talks between the two. When we see evil as a “good” person, our hearts swell, our brain makes a decision to call evil what it is, and our conscience sears that information. The problem with us, not everyone sees evil the same, not everyone sees good the same. Where I find abortion abhorrent, some people believe it to be a simple matter of choice. So if there’s disagreement there, we’re already off the rails on one issue alone. But, there is something in that example, two choices. We are given by the moral law Giver, who is God, the freedom to make choices based on the moral compass and worldview we have accepted. Free will is a tool that we use and express with every decision we make throughout our lives. It’s why love can be real or not. It’s why passions can be explored for better, or worse. If God, our moral law giver, had not given us free will we wouldn’t be able to love Him or each other with any capacity other than what is programmed. 

So why allow evil? He’s all powerful, all knowing, always present, He could easily wipe evil out yet there still is evil, what gives? There was a choice made in the garden. It was a choice of rejecting the law given by God, “but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.” But why put the tree there in the first place? Adam and Eve were morally innocent not knowing what right and wrong was, but His law, like all of humanity, were inscribed on the heart, Romans 2:14-15, “14 So, when Gentiles, who do not by nature have the law, do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them.” If God truly created us in His image as He said, from the very beginning we had His law in our hearts, Adam and Eve had the law in their hearts. God had given them pleasures to enjoy, much fruit on many trees, just as a good father would to his children, showering them in blessings. God gave them life, He walked with them, His will, His nature, His wisdom, all were on display and Adam and Eve were in perfect obedience and worship. But like I said before, God didn’t want a programmed worshiper, He desired real, authentic love like He had for them. That means there had to be a choice, choose to trust and obey your Creator, or trust in your own knowledge believing you have a better understanding, that you have more authority, that you can care for yourself better than He can. 

Now before the ascension up the high horse begins, realize that we do the same. There are hundreds of items, tasks, choices, whatever that we base our judgment on if someone is doing right by us. A few examples. If I ask my child to do the dishes, they don’t, then there is a punishment, no phone until it’s done. At work, “I need this done by Friday,” and instead of doing the work, you’ve slacked off. There’s a judgment, an evaluation of your work. Actions, or in-actions, have consequences now matter the size and weight. Without them, without the ability to choose our actions, develop our thought processes, and respond in the manner our very being has chosen, there would be no capacity for a relationship at any level. 

Enter the serpent. Just like He gave man, God created angels of free will to serve Him or reject Him. When satan entered that serpent, he was railing against his Creator. Satan expressed his influence over Eve, making her doubt and formulate an opinion outside of her own. Everything that was ever taught to her was put on pause for a few seconds of the unknown. Temptation was fully realized and coercion to bend the heart towards evil was set. All she had to do was give her husband a taste. Adam trusted her over God. A radical change occurred and they became ashamed of their nakedness, fearful of confrontation with God, and hid themselves out of sight. Shame, fear, secrecy. Now, add a few thousand years to where we are today. The worst of sin has been on display since then with people creating and giving in to more depravity and wickedness. I believe because Adam made the choice to reject God not even of temptation, but just freely deciding so, that God honors man's decision and because of the freedom God has given us, some will do good, some will do evil. 

So why does He continue to allow it? Well, in Genesis 6, “ 5 When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, 6 the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. 7 Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” He was grieved to the point that He was DONE with humanity because they kept choosing evil over Him. Had Noah not found favor, none of us would be here. He could’ve wiped evil out completely, but think about that in terms of today. If we know God’s law and we violate one part, James 2 says, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” Romans says, “The wages of sin is death…” So if God wipes evil off the face of the earth based on how good a person is weighed against His moral law, none of us make it. 

Enter Jesus. Christ came to fulfill the law. He came to take your sin, my sin, everyone's sin, and nail it to a cross, to cover it with the ransom of sin paid in His blood. He died because of the evil in the world, the wickedness that man has chosen over God. Judgment of sin always comes. Judgment of evil always comes. If Christ’s death was the end of the story, all hope of being able to come out of sin and evil would be unobtainable. However, three days later, Christ bodily rose out of the grave, showing that the price had been paid, the law fulfilled, and that sin and death had been conquered. Evil is still present in the world in the hearts of all men, but God so desires a relationship with us that time keeps going so His word can reach those who are lost, bound, and shackled to their sin. It persists because of the evil inclinations of the mind and wickedness of the heart. The devil and his angels are, in 1 Peter 5:8, “ Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.” Judgment of sin and evil will come but if there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t put their complete trust and faith in what Christ has done and repent, to completely turn away from sin and wickedness to follow Him, then that time has not come yet. The world is in a constant state of viewing through the lens of life through our eyes without a conscience.

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What is the origin of sin? Many would argue that God, because He creates everything, would naturally be the creator of sin and use Isaiah 45:7 for that claim, “I form light and create darkness,I make success and create disaster;I am the Lord, who does all these things.” However, in context we see that points to God’s sovereignty where He rewards people, which we see clearly with His people throughout the Bible,  when they obey and punishes them when they disobey. In that sense, yes, it is God who creates disaster. God didn’t bring evil into existence. It’s the result of sin and our fallen world. John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him.” James 1:13 says, “No one undergoing a trial should say, "I am being tempted by God," since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself doesn’t tempt anyone.” Proverbs 8:13, “To fear the Lord is to hate evil.I hate arrogant pride, evil conduct,and perverse speech.” So if we were to look at it in a purely theological sense, if God was the author of evil, the Bible would be inconsistent and since the Bible is vetted against its own consistency and stands inerrant, it can't be inconsistent.

We have to remember what evil is and how it’s not a “thing” or “idea”. It’s deeply personal to the individual. Nothing outside of an individual is evil. The sword can be used to cut down evil or be used to create it all based on the intent of the person wielding it. In Genesis 3, we see the serpent enter and temp Eve. Eve then gave to Adam the fruit of the tree and he ate and we see in Romans the total picture of what that has wrought to us, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.” Both knew eating the fruit was wrong, one was deceived and the other accepted a new truth, certainly this tree is of good fruit. Certainly this tells us the origin of man’s sin, but there was a deceiver meaning that sin was something outside of humanity in the beginning.

So, the deceiver, satan, an angel of heaven was created without sin and blameless in his ways until unrighteousness was found in him. He was high in position and stature, chief among the cherubs, the closest to God in terms of his rank, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. In his pride he declared in his heart he could run the world better than God, that he would put his own throne above God’s throne. The deceiver had duped himself. 

I hear you, though. “Why would God create a being who would outright sin against Him especially when God is not surprised or shocked because of his omniscience?” We still have to wrestle with the one thing God affords us that we use throughout our entire life that was also given to the angels, free will. Angels have emotions (Luke 2:13–14), intelligence (2 Corinthians 11:3, 14), and wills (2 Timothy 2:26). While proportionately different, we have the same. That’s why one third of them were able to decide for themselves to follow satan in his rebellion. “But how could God allow him to do this?” My question would be why does God allow us to do evil? Why does God allow us to go against His very nature for the time we are here? If you were forced, you wouldn’t love. If you were coerced, you wouldn’t trust. Instead God allows you to freely pursue Him or pursue satan and the ways of the world. Through his pride and arrogance, satan brought sin into existence and delivered it to man to wound the Father. Hell was created for the devil and his angels, not for humanity. Because humanity has sinned, death and hell are the punishment of mankind along with the masters they serve and the only escape is through faith in Christ in His birth, death, burial, and resurrection.

Item Firstly we have to look at who God is.

• God is omniscient - knowing everything (1 John 3:19-20, Matthew 10:29-30, Psalm 139:1-4)

• God is omnipresent - present everywhere all at once (Psalm 139:7-10, Hebrews 4:14-16, Jonah)

• God is omnipotent - having unlimited power; able to do anything (Genesis 1:1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14)

• God is spaceless/timeless/immaterial - He is not constrained or contained, He is outside of time being the creator of it, and He’s not extended or divisible, or compounded, or visible, or tangible

• God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)

So, establishing God as the imperative first cause, meaning that space, time, matter, and energy have been created by Him (because space, time, matter, and energy cannot create nor sustain itself indefinitely without the presence of something outside if it), knowing what His design for his creation should be at the forefront of our minds when observing what is good for the spirit vs what is refuse to the spirit. If there is no moral law, then everything is relative meaning that if a man rapes a woman, the thought of someone else would be, “Well, that was good in his mind.” Since the majority of us reject that trail of thinking, we can surmise that there has to be a law outside of man because you cannot base laws on how you feel, rather the law must be based upon precepts outside of how we feel. For another example, in some cultures they invite you to dinner, in other cultures, you are dinner all based on what the other deems appropriate and good, their feelings.

Secondly, when we look at God’s moral law, we have to use discernment and realize the context. There was Judicial/Civil law, Levitical law, and Moral law. The judicial law was the law of the land, many that are still used in different cultures throughout the world today with standards we adhere to in our very nation. The moral law is God’s commandments. If someone failed one of the 10 commandments, the judicial law was there to give the human response. Levitical, or ceremonial law, include instructions on regaining right standing with God (e.g., sacrifices and other ceremonies regarding “uncleanness”), remembrances of God’s work in Israel (e.g., feasts and festivals), specific regulations meant to distinguish Israelites from their pagan neighbors (e.g., dietary and clothing restrictions), and signs that point to the coming Messiah (e.g., the Sabbath, circumcision, Passover, and the redemption of the firstborn).

Thirdly, now that we have established God is outside of His creation, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, never changing His law or His word, and we know the differences of types of laws, we can determine what God has said about the subject of sexual sin and what kind of love is good and what kind of love is sinful. Genesis 9:1-13 looks to the evil of what that sin in particular brought upon an entire nation. God’s judgment destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for this sin. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 calls it an abomination. The whole chapter of Leviticus 18 gives us, through the moral law, laws forbidding certain sexual acts. If you look at verse 18:23 and recognize that bestiality is certainly wrong, then you can’t say that one verse out of many didn’t “correctly state what God meant”. That would be heretical, blasphemous, and an incorrect interpretation of what the law was which in the depravity of the mind would be calling God a liar. 

I hear you saying, “Yeah, but that was the Old Testament, the old covenant. What does the New Testament say?” In Romans 1:24-32, Paul talks of women lying with women and men lying with men as unnatural, that they’ve traded truth for a lie. Even moreso, he goes on to say, “28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” 1 Corinthians says, “9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality”. 1 Timothy 1:8-11 says, “8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.” The New Testament echos the Old, it’s immoral, unnatural, unrighteous, evil, dishonorable, and abhorrent. 

“Ah, but Jesus didn’t say that!” I hear you say. John 1 says, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Jesus is God, He was there in the beginning with The Father and The Holy Spirit when the world was formed and the law was written. The importance of understanding who Jesus is brings the realization that God is in three persons, the individual person in complete agreement with the other and together being the God of the cosmos, The One God who outside of Himself established the law, we get a clear picture of what Jesus said about the subject. He said the same thing over and over again. Abominable, wicked, unrighteous, and cerebrally debased. I believe the biggest question the homosexual has against the Christian is, “Why are you so concerned with my lifestyle?”

Fair enough. In fact, we can no more force a change of opinion or thought of yours just as you can’t force us to do the same. But the presumption that Christians should mind their business and worry about themselves does not equate with what Christ has taught. Your sin is not worse than mine. Your sin is not more unrighteous than mine. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. A follower of Christ is a repentant sinner. A follower of Christ understands the weight and price of sin and wants all to come to repentance so they don’t spend eternity away from the presence of God. Love does not always equal love, but sin always equals sin. If the Christian seems too passionate, and prayerfully approaches with respect and humility, it’s because they have recognized the condition of their own heart. The struggle I have with sin is different from what others experience, but its sin nonetheless, simple as that. Anger is kindled when we hear of our sin because it’s a part of our lives we think we can’t live without, and most will say to God,” You can have every part of me EXCEPT that”. In Acts 10:34, Peter says, “ Peter began to speak: "Now I truly understand that God doesn’t show favoritism,”. He, a Jew, was associating with a Gentile, something he had grown up knowing he ought not do. But because God cleaned everything with the sacrifice of His Son, everything was made clean meaning that all, all who have sinned which is every person, can come to the redemption that He offers. There is no partiality in His grace…or His judgment. In summary, homosexuality is sinful and separates the individual from God just like lying, theft, murder, idolatry, hatred, abuse, the mockery of truth, anything that takes your love away from Him and for people, love that isn’t sinful but is good for the spirit.