Ol’ Folks Song

I have consciously followed the issues of human life in that I believe life is the evidence of God (in his person); of love in that I believe that love is evidence of the nature of God (in his nature); and, service (in his ministry) in that God is a worker (in his creativity and sustaining power) – in his universe for good.  The fulfillment of that pattern of which mankind is a part relates to family, which in its ideal is a special context of love and fellowship.  In our life context with God, he is building his Kingdom with citizens who are members of the Family of God.  In that context, those who ask to be his children are adopted into the Family of God.  God is not reduced by the limitations of his children.  He cultivates them in a redemptive process that re-forms them to his image.  This does not mean his children become godlets.  They become formed in their own persons but reflecting the god nature.  They become living mirrors of God in their beings.  This is immortality.  As the children of God (physical), the adopted of God (spiritual) will do in their status with God as the children of a farmer serves the family for the love and purposes of the family.  Heaven will have its learning, fellowship, work on elevated levels from what is in nature, but mirrored in nature when we permit it to work as God would have us apply principles to model achievements.

What of those who have been abandoned by their families in mortal life and wish to gain some restoration?  They should function as though they had what they lost.  They may even adopt themselves to another family with whom they can identify so to give and receive into the meaning of the family context.  This may be done in various ways, such as mentoring, or friendship, even partnership. The balancing of intimacy and celibacy virtually for every person from our earliest mortal years to our last ones, like fasting from food and consumption of food, like balance of aloneness and fellowship, like work and play tells us much about ourselves and maturity in thought and conduct for physical and spiritual life.  When violated there is a cost that distorts the meaning God gave to mankind for the understanding and practice of values for meaning.

Same sex marriage that includes sexual intimacy violates the meaning God gave to the intimacy of hetero-sexual marriage for first purpose – bearing children.  In balance to values it appropriates pleasure and love.  Homosexuality offers a radical shift in marriage meaning for all of history; reduces the meaning of reproducing the family model (the first institution God gave); distorts relationships between genders for some; continues into adult life the fumbling experimenting in puberty forays; and, confuses the meaning of friendship meant to develop love and loyalty found in relationships (like that of David and Jonathan in Scripture).  The proposal of some that David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship has no evidence.  They were aware the mixing of genders in sexual experience required marriage in obedience to God, who joined the first marriage.  It continues to inspire idealism in the many centuries since that beginning.

That two persons of the same gender might enter into a legal partnership, offering the same privileges in legal society as those granted to traditional marriage there ought to be no doubt.  If the person wished to express a private partnership in friendship experience they might do so, as heterosexual couples often do in or out of the marriage contract.  Scripture provides for holy matrimony, and that always represented in a relationship that assumes children of united parents – even if children are not found in the marriage.  I enjoy the intense gratification of friends without sexual activity related to the friendships.  I have rejected any embarrassment from persons who have suggested that some of my relationships must be homosexual in that they have included travel together and many other factors that have included days of friendly fellowship.  Those days were not in any violation of a godly gift of friendship between persons of the same gender.  Women acquaintances of mine hold misinterpreted chaste friendships.  Friendships of love and mutuality are common.  Brothers/Sisters have sometimes joined for life   In the first line of this kind of friendship is that which emerges commonly for parents/children so that Mom and Dad become our best friends.  That is the way of it for me and my children which carries over to their mates in our experiences.