Trolls Trolling Us About Pride Month Posts

Trolls have been out hot and heavy trolling us about anything we post related to 'Pride Month.' Their favorite thing to do is post a bunch of scriptures about 'pride' in comments.

As usual, they miss the point entirely.

LBBTQA+ people have been bullied, beat up, burned in ovens (Hitler), put in camps (Hitler and others), and discriminated against in every conceivable way since the beginning of time. It's a very recent phenomena in the US that they've gained any measure of equality and acceptance.

Jesus himself admonished us as his followers that we are to 'Love God and love our neighbors as we do ourselves.' No exceptions. This being the case he gave us permission to 'love ourselves.' Loving ourselves in a healthy way is a good thing. If people hate themselves they will treat others poorly. That's just a fact.

Scriptures that point out pride being a bad thing do not refer to pride that comes from loving God, loving our neighbors, and loving ourselves. There is good and bad pride. Pride as it relates to 'Pride Month' is a good pride. It's the kind of pride that says 'I accept myself and I love myself the way God created me to be.' Further, 'I accept and love you as my neighbor because I am able to accept and love myself.' It's a healthy thing all the way around. It's win/win/win in the God-Self-Neighbor relationship.

Now, here's the kicker for the trolls who troll us over this. The pride they are acting out by lecturing us about Pride Month is the bad kind of pride God warns us about. They feel they need to come to a page they obviously don't relate to and lecture us and judge us with scriptures they don't understand. THAT is pride being a sin, but they will never accept that coming from us. They're blinded by pride and self-righteousness.

We pray for the Holy Spirit to open their eyes one day. We don't bother telling them here because we know they won't listen. We used to try to reason with right-wing, "Christian" trolls. We were never able to change a single one of their minds. They will literally argue for hundreds of hours and then go get their friends to join in.

LGBTQA+ people have every reason to love themselves and express pride in the newfound bit of acceptance they've garnered in modern western society. God made them the way they are. The 'clobber scriptures' in the Bible (like all other scriptures) must be studied from a historical and a contextual perspective.

Most of the clobber scriptures were written by Paul for various reasons like warning about temple desecration. The scriptures in the Old Testament were ancient Jewish civil law based on what they perceived as cleanliness. That's why eating shrimp and wearing mixed fibers are lumped in the same scriptures as admonishments about same-sex sexual activity.

'Don't rape your guests' was one of the the issues God had with Sodom. Then there's the scripture many ignore:  "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." - Ezekiel 16:49.  It always comes down to how we treat the poor, needy and oppressed with God. That doesn't fit well with modern Capitalism so folks ignore it and pick on gays, women, immigrants, minorities ... and the poor.  A great deal of study has been carried out on this topic by Bible scholars. It's out there.

In terms of Jesus himself speaking about marriage law he also mentioned exceptions to the law, namely to 'born eunuchs.' He said that 'some eunuchs were made that way by other people,' AND some were 'born that way from their mother's wombs.' There is a respectable amount of Bible scholarship that says Jesus was referring to LGBTQA+ people. To us it seems obvious. It's worth pointing out that Jesus never said one more word about it. Not one word. To us that speaks volumes.

​-- The Christian Left

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