Geoffrey, I appreciate the benefit of the doubt regarding ER's theory that Neil and I are the same person. We're not.
However, I reject your suggestion that my defending myself from the suggestion that I hate gays is unjustifiable lecturing about other people's prejudice. If someone thinks that the position that homosexuality is immoral is equivalent to hatred for homosexuals, he is prejudiced.
You write, "It is clear from the Bible there are times that God is a pretty immoral, small-minded creature." If you hold that position, I still don't grasp how you can be confident in God's love for us.
Or, if you think that God really isn't immoral and small-minded and thus reject the Bible's characterization of God (as you understand it, with which I would probably not agree), then I don't see how you think the Bible is a reliable source regarding His love.
The overriding message of the Bible, for this humble sinner, is simply this - God's love for us continues even in the midst of our "immorality" precisely because God doesn't really care all that much about such things.
I disagree. The cross demonstrates both God's love for us and His hatred of sin. Jesus prayed that the cup would pass, and it did not.
Jesus affirmed the moral standards of the Old Testament, even teaching that lust and hatred are as immoral as adultery and murder. God's concern for justice and holiness prevented Him from offering grace on the cheap: it's offered as a free gift to us, but it cost Him plenty.(NB: The italicized sections are from a previous comment of mine)
I'm not sure how I'm prejudiced because I don't believe gays and lesbians are inherently immoral, and that those who do so believe are not prejudiced - there is something missing in this logical chain. Please don't try to explain it to me, because I might get a headache.
As for the confidence I have in God's love for me, if I also see God acting in ways I would deem "immoral" - the answer is simple. It takes nothing away from who God is to refuse to ascribe something called "morality" to Divine acts. In the late 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant said that it adds nothing to a subject to ascribe the empty concept "being" to it; rather than "perfect" it, ascribing some "thing" that makes it not nothing really adds nothing to the subject. In the late 20th century, American pragmatist Richard Rorty pulled the same thing with "truth"; we do not add anything substantive to an argument, discussion, sentence, whatever, if we insist that there is some thing called "truth" that inheres in that sentence that other sentences lack. Since the concept of truth is not one thing, but many things, we first have to determine what kind of truth we are speaking of, and make sure, once "truth" is ascribed to a sentence, that the particular kind of truth we are speaking of actually applies - it seems much easier to insist that there might not be some "thing" known as "truth" that attaches itself to certain sentences, giving them some kind of special status. Much better to be honest to say that "Such-and-such is what I believe for these reasons," without making transcendent claims for these sentences.
I do believe it is long past time we discarded the notion that "morality" is something Divine that inheres in certain human acts, giving them transcendent affirmation as coming from God. The Bible ascribes all sorts of acts to the Divine governance, which many contemporaries would consider morally questionable if not downright vicious. This does not mean that we should get rid of the concept of "morality", or that God's love and care for creation lacks a component that we could call "good" (it obviously is that). Rather, I do believe we should recognize that morality is a creature of the human brain. To judge the acts of God, whether the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, the razing of Jericho, the defeat and exile, or the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus as either moral or immoral only gets in the way of understanding the ways in which God's love become manifest. Sometimes, Divine Providence includes acts of horrific violence, interpersonal brutality and betrayal. Jesus even understood this, saying that he came to bring not peace but a sword to the family - for all those who believe that Jesus upholds the family, I might want to point in the general direction of this particular verse.
My point is not that morality is not important, or that we are now free to do whatever we choose. Rather, my point is the ascription of "morality" to God and God's actions. The Bible is full of what can only be called Divine immorality. So, the choice is rejection of God, or rejection of the notion that morality and God have anything to do with one another. My choice is the latter, for a whole host of reasons.
The single biggest reason is this - I am not God, Bubba is not God, Neil, ER, Alan, drlobojo - we aren't God. God's reasons for doing whatever - whether slaughtering the inhabitants of the promised land or bearing us on eagle's wings - are God's reasons and have nothing whatsoever to do with what any of us might consider moral or not, right or wrong. On the other hand, moral reasoning and choice are necessary for human beings to live together without completely slaughtering one another. The notion that morality needs divine sanction in order to stand on its own is ludicrous. To make this argument places all other moral codes and standards rooted in non-Judeo-Christian thought as ipso facto immoral, and unworthy of consideration as living alternatives for human life. Not only is this hubris of the worse sort, it is just plain, well, immoral to so judge the lives and lifeways of others based on incomplete information and a narrow point-of-view.
I'm not sure I really understand the basic question here, after all. How can I have faith in God, if I question the morality of Divine governance, or at least some parts of it? That's simple. My faith in God is rooted in my own experience of Divine love and grace, and that of a whole host of witnesses, living and dead. I would no more root my belief in God in one or another story from the Bible than I would one or another testimony of other Christians. I have multiple sources for my faith, not least the testimony from my own heart and life that confesses every day its thankfulness for God's transcendent, inscrutable, unfathomable love for me. I am confident that this love transcends any act I may commit, any thought I might have, any word or words I might say, not because I can point to this or that verse that might prove it so, but because of the experiences of my own life and the lives of so many who have gone before me in the faith. My God, and my faith, are far bigger than the contingent questions of our current historical moment, whether they be war and peace, or whether gays are inherently sinful and vicious or not. I do not believe we can use Scripture to bolster our arguments on these issues one way or another, ascribing moral virtue or viciousness to each other based on any of these passages. Far better to let the narrative of Scripture unfold for us on its own terms, over time as our faith deepens and widens, than to try to wrestle meaning from it which just doesn't exist.
