Judgements

J has decided to take a break from small group for an indeterminate time. She is obviously really struggling to work out where she stands. Should she continue to go to small group; should she challenge churches; should she leave and allow churches to continue hurting people; should she direct people away from churches; should she train as a counsellor for the "church wounded"?

The news today that Colin Coward of Changing Attitude has received death threats just makes me wonder how such people can reconcile their actions with a supposed gospel of love. But then people's beliefs seem to trounce evidence again and again. For example, lots of Christians believe that homosexual people have a choice to be homosexual, despite all the evidence, so that flawed view becomes their reality - and they simply won't listen to alternatives unless it hits very close to home.

J wondered this morning whether the Christian church's policy is based more on the "yuck" factor - the idea of homosexual acts is "not nice" for heterosexual people to consider. I promoted the view that homosexual people probably find the idea of heterosexual acts "not nice" as well - and this effectively leads to bullying by the majority.

We also discussed the two-faced nature of the "enforced celibacy" rule - heterosexual people should be allowed to enjoy sex but homosexual people should not. This leads me to the view that the idea of God being involved in the creation of each and every person is deeply flawed. Either he was and is wilfully sadistic - creating people with a core driver that should simply be denied - or he never created people in the first place. Of course, that assumes that such a God exists in the first place... It really is easier to assume that God doesn't exist!

We have come to yet another decision point - and this one's entirely in J's court. All the points which were raised four years ago seem now to be viewed in a new light. I don't think she's prepared to subject us to any more pain from this area, but she hasn't really got a clue what to do about it - or, if she does, where does that actually leave her. Me - I'm not sure if I can be bothered to help church any more, but I do want to protect J from yet more hurt.


On a separate point, the credit crunch seems to have claimed our first victim. We were waiting for confirmation of sale for a proposed installation in a couple of weeks time. The customer is a solicitors practice that does a lot of conveyancing. In the current economic climate, the purchasing partner is apparently panicking - their income has dropped through the floor because no-one is able to get new mortgages so no-one is moving house - so all new IT spend is on hold. I wonder whether we will start to find it harder to sell our software. Sure, there's an element of talking ourselves into recession, but the Government does, at times, seem to rely too much on the power of words being able to talk us around it.